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[{"model": "jrnl.postimage", "pk": 1, "fields": {"title": "gulf shores morning light", "image": "/home2/luxagraf/webapps/django1_2/luxagraf/media/images/2010/gulf_shores_morning_light.jpg"}}, {"model": "jrnl.postimage", "pk": 2, "fields": {"title": "gulf shores rainbow", "image": "/home2/luxagraf/webapps/django1_2/luxagraf/media/images/2010/gulf_shores_raibow.jpg"}}, {"model": "jrnl.postimage", "pk": 3, "fields": {"title": "oyster1", "image": "/home/luxagraf/webapps/luxagraf_live/luxagraf/site/media/images/2013/oyster1.jpg"}}, {"model": "jrnl.postimage", "pk": 4, "fields": {"title": "Marsh View", "image": "/home/luxagraf/webapps/luxagraf_live/luxagraf/site/media/images/2013/viewofmarsh.jpg"}}, {"model": "jrnl.postimage", "pk": 5, "fields": {"title": "Pemaquid", "image": "/home/luxagraf/webapps/luxagraf_live/luxagraf/site/media/images/2013/pemaquidmainedocks-ps.jpg"}}, {"model": "jrnl.postimage", "pk": 7, "fields": {"title": "famous oysters", "image": "/home/luxagraf/webapps/luxagraf_live/luxagraf/site/media/images/2013/famous_apalachicola_oysters.jpg"}}, {"model": "jrnl.postimage", "pk": 8, "fields": {"title": "St. George Island", "image": "/home/luxagraf/webapps/luxagraf_live/luxagraf/site/media/images/2013/stgeorgeislandbeach01.jpg"}}, {"model": "jrnl.postimage", "pk": 9, "fields": {"title": "Storm over the docks", "image": "/home/luxagraf/webapps/luxagraf_live/luxagraf/site/media/images/2013/stormoverthedocks.jpg"}}, {"model": "jrnl.postimage", "pk": 10, "fields": {"title": "Shrimper", "image": "/home/luxagraf/webapps/luxagraf_live/luxagraf/site/media/images/2013/shrimpboatatthedocks.jpg"}}, {"model": "jrnl.postimage", "pk": 11, "fields": {"title": "The old ships", "image": "/home/luxagraf/webapps/luxagraf_live/luxagraf/site/media/images/2013/theoldships.jpg"}}, {"model": "jrnl.postimage", "pk": 12, "fields": {"title": "Colorful Buoys", "image": "/home/luxagraf/webapps/luxagraf_live/luxagraf/site/media/images/2013/buoys.jpg"}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 2, "fields": {"title": "Farewell Mr. Cash", "slug": "farewell-mr-cash", "body_html": "<p>Farewell mr. cash. Sunday mornings won't be the same without you.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p><img class=\"postpic\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2003/cash.jpg\" alt=\"johnny Cash\" width=\"541\" height=\"480\"></p>\n</p>", "body_markdown": "Farewell mr. cash. Sunday mornings won't be the same without you.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpic\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2003/cash.jpg\" alt=\"johnny Cash\" width=\"541\" height=\"480\">\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n</p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n", "dek": "Johnny Cash heads for the western lands.", "pub_date": "2003-09-12T22:54:50", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-72.6280403036107174 42.3225087606193000)", "location": 44, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/cash.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/cash.jpg", "meta_description": "Farewell mr. cash. Sunday mornings won't be the same without you.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 5, "fields": {"title": "The Art of the Essay", "slug": "art-essay", "body_html": "<p class=\"pull-quote\">On the meridian of time there is no justice, only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and justice<br>—<cite> H. Miller</cite></p>\n\n<p><break></p>\n<p>Paul Graham is apparently pretty widely read on the web, though I had never heard of him until I saw mention of the piece on Michael Tsai's blog. Since Graham's piece is a touch out of date by internet standards, rather than comment on Tsai or Graham's site I thought I'd write a little rebuttal/extrapolation here.</p>\n<p>Generally speaking I prefer not to engage in the endless circular dialogue of the blog, but occasionally we all run into those writings which either, as in this case, irk us so badly or cheer us so warmly that we can't help but comment on them. The link from Tsai's site gave me hope that perhaps someone had something intelligent to say about what has to be the most common form of writing on the web — the essay — but, alas, several reads later I found Graham's essay ill-informed, poorly written, full of non-sequiturs and, to be blunt, an exercise in navel-gazing drivel. </p>\n<p>After staying up late one night reading a bunch of his essays I had to conclude that Graham is not only a poor writer but that he makes an ass of himself every time he strays from the technological realm. I can't comment on his LISP and SmallTalk articles since I don't know either of those languages, but his "Things You Can't Say" ranks pretty high on my all time worst list. I would go ahead and say it's the worst thing I've ever read, but then I picked over some transcripts of the recent presidential debates and changed my mind. Nevertheless Grahams's writing is bad. </p>\n<p>And yet it has potential. And potential is important. In fact, potential is the reason any of us are writing, but we'll get to that. First I think it's important that we start here at the beginning, with Graham's essay.</p>\n<h3>Mistakes</h3>\n\n<blockquote> Remember the essays you had to write in high school? Topic sentence, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion. The conclusion being, say, that Ahab in Moby Dick was a Christ-like figure. Oy. So I'm going to try to give the other side of the story: what an essay really is, and how you write one. Or at least, how I write one.</blockquote>\n\n<p>Graham's experience with the essay has already diverged from mine. Graham it seems, spent high school doing what was asked of him with no creative potential exercised on his part. That's fine, true to his experience, but not mine. not to say that my high school essays were works worthy of publication, but I do know I didn't crib my ideas out of Cliff's notes.</p>\n<p>So, here at the beginning of Graham's essay we find ourselves given great potential only to have it snatched away again. We get an invitation to explore "what an essay really is, and how you write one." Now that is almost guaranteed to be interesting. But then the mock self-effacing ego intrudes: "Or at least, how I write one." Now why would I care how Paul Graham writes an essay? This is someone with a low opinion of creative arts whose primary interest and field of knowledge is computer programing. I don't care how Paul Graham writes an essay and assuming that I do is huge mistake on the author's part.</p>\n<p>One more little quote and then we'll set Graham and his anti-art leanings aside.<blockquote> The other big difference between a real essay and the things they make you write in school is that a real essay doesn't take a position and then defend it. That principle, like the idea that we ought to be writing about literature, turns out to be another intellectual hangover of long forgotten origins.</blockquote></p>\n<p>Paul Graham seems to have had a really wretched time in school. he has devoted a whole essay to scrutinizing the artificial social structure of high school. It's actually one of his better pieces on the site, but it makes me curious about Graham's school experience. I feel bad for him, I really do. Personally I hated the bizarrely pointless physics problems—blocks sliding down inclined planes—problems that my otherwise brilliant physics teacher forced us to work out on paper. Writing about literature was an exercise in creative independence after that sort of monotony. Anyway my big question is, who among us isn't aware that the essay is a multifaceted form that far exceeds the limited examples we are exposed to in high school? [For which there is a specific term "argumentative essay" rather than just essay]</p>\n<p>I am, for instance, aware that the realm of physics far exceeds the inclined planes I hated so much even though I have never pursued the subject beyond that childish introduction. Graham's patronizing of his readers' intellectual development is rude and, to me, pretty bizarre. Rest assured you will not be patronized here at luxagraf. <sup id=\"fnr-1-10-20-04\"><a href=\"#fn-1-10-20-04\">1</a></sup></p>\n<h3>What great writing Does</h3>\n\n<p>Great writing, whether essay or story or poem or other form, is fundamentally the result of process. It is the confrontation with the unknown recorded and given over. The product itself often creates more questions than it does answers, but it is easy to tell whether or not the author had his/her life invested in the writing of it. The result is not on the petty plain that Graham would have it, whether "you got the right answers," but instead explores the troubling reality that there perhaps are no answers after all but only "the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth." </p>\n<p>My girlfriend likes to say that if the experience of something is truly great it has in some way helped you prepare for death. And neither I nor she mean this as a kind of melodrama, but simply this is the process. If you do not have a heartfelt stake in what you write your writing will never be any good regardless of your intelligence, education or any other number of factors that we often mistakenly attribute to informing the creative process.</p>\n<p>The essay then is a poetry of motion, a poetry of the mind turning over on itself and trying to get at the "the pure potential as potential."<sup id=\"fnr-2-10-20-04\"><a href=\"#fn-2-10-20-04\">2</a></sup> If we disregard the potential as potential in favor of the already known (another reexamination of high school?!), we confine ourselves to a world where everything that can be known is known. For instance:<blockquote>In technical matters, you have to get the right answers. If your software miscalculates the path of a space probe, you can't finesse your way out of trouble by saying that your code is patriotic, or avant-garde, or any of the other dodges people use in nontechnical fields.<br/>—<cite>from another of Graham's essays</cite></blockquote></p>\n<p>That may be good and well for software, but Graham is assuming that there are right answers in realms beyond software (even in the realm of software I would question that assertion, design choices yes, but right and wrong? equations within software can be wrong, but does that make the software wrong?) </p>\n<p>I for one do not wish to live in a world where there are right and wrong answers at every turn, where everything that can be known is already known. Nor do I want read essays that purport as much. If what Graham is railing against in his essay on essays is the formulaic nature of immature writing then certainly the answer does not lie in the formulaic nature of software. </p>\n<p>In a world where there is no potential to move beyond the known there would be no reason to write. The great essay (and contrary to Graham's assertions there are plenty of amazing essayists in this century, both those writing now, including on the web, and those whose work predates us) is the result of stepping beyond the comfortable, predictable results of the world already known into the pure potential as potential. The result then is the journey back.</p>\n<h3>On some common Misconceptions about writing/art</h3>\n\n<p>As cited above and noted in my sidebar I have been reading a collection of essays called Art and Reality. Now generally speaking this is not the sort of book I gravitate toward, but my neighbor is a book dealer and he sold it to me for 25¢. Anyway, I had all but abandoned this article until I read the first essay by entitled <strong>The Elements of "Art"</strong> (which, it's worth noting, was transcribed from Robert Irwin's's keynote address at a 1982 conference entitled <strong>Art and Reality</strong>).</p>\n<p>Now it was no accident that above I said the <strong>experience</strong> of something truly great should help you die. I could summarize Irwin's points on the interactive process of art, but it's better if I simply quote.<blockquote>So what we have is a structure, a process. And I will identify that as being what is being talked about here: the elements of art, <strong>the elements of the process</strong>. I would like to say that these are really more positions or perspectives, rather than being a hierarchical which assumes there is "a art" and that everything else is somehow subservient to it. I propose that we have instead a process. The first step of the process is the action of inquiry: the idea of looking at that pure potential &mdash the artist as an individual seeking out or re-examining for himself at his moment in time and in relation to the whole body of knowledge up to that moment in time, what we mean by the term art.</blockquote></p>\n<p>Art is indeed a verb rather than a noun. The noun that we are accustomed to throwing about is but a historical artifact that is the result of an art-action, to borrow Irwin's nomenclature. Now that is not to pass any sort of value judgment on those artifacts, but rather to say the essay is not the art; the writing of the essay is the art. the essay I the reader experiences (by reading) is an object, what is important is not the object, but our experience with it. So we end up with a noun, the essay, preceded and followed by verbs, art and experience. </p>\n<p>This emphasis on parts of speech is not a splitting of hairs, a semantic game or a "dodge" employed by one in a non-technical field. It is the fundamental point of what art, in this case writing, is: interaction between individuals mediated by some object. </p>\n<p>It has long amused artists to hear technophiles and, for lack of a better term, suits, expounding on the wonderful interactive nature of the web and how this can revolutionize art (naturally here in its cultural baggage form as a noun) and society when in fact art is and always has been an interactive experience mediated by a static medium. The web remains every bit as static as a painting or an essay. That we describe our experience with it as interactive is a result of the obviousness, not the uniqueness, of its interaction.</p>\n<p>Interactivity on the web requires a gadget (a computer) which is perhaps what clues us in to the fact that our experience is interactive, whereas art in other forms is often not mediated by a gadget so its seems more remote (especially given the gadget fetishism of our times). Perhaps another reason the interactivity of the web is so obvious is because it comes directly into our living room. There is no need to travel to the museum or library, it's all right here at our fingertips.</p>\n<p>But I think it's important to note that the writing of an essay is not fundamentally an act of expression or communication, something that Irwin nicely illustrates by posing the question: "can you think of anything that is not expression?" If everything is expression and communication how then would we differentiate between good essays and bad ones? For that matter, what differentiates essays from email? What we need is some better means of qualitative judgment.</p>\n<h3>why the rote essay is rampant on the web</h3>\n\n<p>So after picking on Paul Graham so extensively, let us salvage the gist of what I think he was trying to say. Essays on the web are often not very well written and lack the confrontation with the unknown that marks great writing/art.</p>\n<p>Now many people would herein proceed to argue that this is because we lack filters (i.e. editors, publishers, etc) to catch the bad stuff before it is disseminated to the world. There is of course some merit to this argument. I find myself often linking to Salon because the quality of writing published there far exceeds the other nine Google hits I get. And it might be that Salon's quality of writing is higher because it employs editors, but there is another more optimistic way of looking at writing on the web.</p>\n<p>With the disappearance of the filters that have shadowed writing for the last few centuries we finally have an opportunity for anyone to write about anything they please. Now this can have some serious downsides as we will explore in a a minute, but there is an upside. Universal exposure means that in simple terms of numbers there is a much greater possibility of finding great writing on the web than the new release table at your average bookstore. Even with my limited math I can process the law of averages. If a million people are publishing there is a much greater chance that there will be someone creating something great than when the poll of possibilities was limited to those with access to agents and publishers.</p>\n<p>A friend of mind used to often say that at any given moment the best band in America is probably playing for two people in a garage. The same is very likely true of writing. </p>\n<p>But we have overlooked the fact that we do have filters on the web and it's very likely that if anything they're worse than those we left behind. Google is our filter and Google is but a collection of algorithms. At least with traditional publishers there were those few that staffed their offices with truly passionate human beings who really cared about writing. Can an algorithm care about writing?</p>\n<p>Much to my dismay if you type 'the essay' into google, Paul Graham's drivel comes up as the seventh link. This is precisely why there is no link for it here.</p>\n<p>In a way the web is what our founding father's feared most — a tyranny of the majority. If the more sites point to it, a site gets the highest rank. In that sense it's our own fault that the drivel is prevalent.</p>\n<p>In closing let me leave you with some more thoughts from Irwin<blockquote>Ideas don't just come into the world <strong>ad hoc</strong>, or they don't just come in a sort of idle or free way. They come first to be weighted and justified in terms of their relevance, in terms of their impact, and in terms of how they might thread themselves into that body of knowledge. The process of weighing is really made up of all those people who are interested in what we mean by the concept of art. I would like to define that as "culture" (rather than how the word has normally been used) — as really a practice, culture playing back on the society as something deeply threaded into the society in the critical sense that this body of knowledge is culture, is civilization. The first action, a critical aspect, of culture is the weighing of any new idea in the light of the body of knowledge and the examining of its relevance and whether or not it's a worthwhile idea, and whether or not we should make any commitment toward the character and potential of the idea. And then the dialogue has to do with how it is threaded into this body of knowledge.</blockquote></p>\n<ol class=\"footnote\"><li id=\"fn-1-10-20-04\"><p class=\"note1\">1. For those of you electing not to actually read Graham's essay allow me to continue his thoughts in this footnote. It turns out that the \"intellectual hangover of long forgotten origins\" mentioned in the quote is actually, according to Graham, the study of law. Apparently law was prevalent in medieval seminaries. I can't vouch for that but it sounds right. Medieval religious types did need to have some good rhetorical training to defend the contradictory-to-observation belief systems that they held.<a href=\"#fnr-1-10-20-04\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p></li>\n\n<li id=\"fn-2-10-20-04\"><p class=\"note2\">2. **The Elements of \"Art\"**, Art and Reality. ed. Robin Blaser and Robert Duncan, Talonbooks Vancouver, 1986 <a href=\"#fnr-2-10-20-04\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩</a></p></li></ol>", "body_markdown": "<p class=\"pull-quote\">On the meridian of time there is no justice, only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and justice<br>—<cite> H. Miller</cite></p>\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nPaul Graham is apparently pretty widely read on the web, though I had never heard of him until I saw mention of the piece on Michael Tsai's blog. Since Graham's piece is a touch out of date by internet standards, rather than comment on Tsai or Graham's site I thought I'd write a little rebuttal/extrapolation here.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nGenerally speaking I prefer not to engage in the endless circular dialogue of the blog, but occasionally we all run into those writings which either, as in this case, irk us so badly or cheer us so warmly that we can't help but comment on them. The link from Tsai's site gave me hope that perhaps someone had something intelligent to say about what has to be the most common form of writing on the web — the essay — but, alas, several reads later I found Graham's essay ill-informed, poorly written, full of non-sequiturs and, to be blunt, an exercise in navel-gazing drivel. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAfter staying up late one night reading a bunch of his essays I had to conclude that Graham is not only a poor writer but that he makes an ass of himself every time he strays from the technological realm. I can't comment on his LISP and SmallTalk articles since I don't know either of those languages, but his "Things You Can't Say" ranks pretty high on my all time worst list. I would go ahead and say it's the worst thing I've ever read, but then I picked over some transcripts of the recent presidential debates and changed my mind. Nevertheless Grahams's writing is bad. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAnd yet it has potential. And potential is important. In fact, potential is the reason any of us are writing, but we'll get to that. First I think it's important that we start here at the beginning, with Graham's essay.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3>Mistakes</h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<blockquote> Remember the essays you had to write in high school? Topic sentence, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion. The conclusion being, say, that Ahab in Moby Dick was a Christ-like figure. Oy. So I'm going to try to give the other side of the story: what an essay really is, and how you write one. Or at least, how I write one.</blockquote>\r\n\r\nGraham's experience with the essay has already diverged from mine. Graham it seems, spent high school doing what was asked of him with no creative potential exercised on his part. That's fine, true to his experience, but not mine. not to say that my high school essays were works worthy of publication, but I do know I didn't crib my ideas out of Cliff's notes.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nSo, here at the beginning of Graham's essay we find ourselves given great potential only to have it snatched away again. We get an invitation to explore "what an essay really is, and how you write one." Now that is almost guaranteed to be interesting. But then the mock self-effacing ego intrudes: "Or at least, how I write one." Now why would I care how Paul Graham writes an essay? This is someone with a low opinion of creative arts whose primary interest and field of knowledge is computer programing. I don't care how Paul Graham writes an essay and assuming that I do is huge mistake on the author's part.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOne more little quote and then we'll set Graham and his anti-art leanings aside.<blockquote> The other big difference between a real essay and the things they make you write in school is that a real essay doesn't take a position and then defend it. That principle, like the idea that we ought to be writing about literature, turns out to be another intellectual hangover of long forgotten origins.</blockquote>\r\n\r\nPaul Graham seems to have had a really wretched time in school. he has devoted a whole essay to scrutinizing the artificial social structure of high school. It's actually one of his better pieces on the site, but it makes me curious about Graham's school experience. I feel bad for him, I really do. Personally I hated the bizarrely pointless physics problems—blocks sliding down inclined planes—problems that my otherwise brilliant physics teacher forced us to work out on paper. Writing about literature was an exercise in creative independence after that sort of monotony. Anyway my big question is, who among us isn't aware that the essay is a multifaceted form that far exceeds the limited examples we are exposed to in high school? [For which there is a specific term "argumentative essay" rather than just essay]\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI am, for instance, aware that the realm of physics far exceeds the inclined planes I hated so much even though I have never pursued the subject beyond that childish introduction. Graham's patronizing of his readers' intellectual development is rude and, to me, pretty bizarre. Rest assured you will not be patronized here at luxagraf. <sup id=\"fnr-1-10-20-04\"><a href=\"#fn-1-10-20-04\">1</a></sup>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3>What great writing Does</h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nGreat writing, whether essay or story or poem or other form, is fundamentally the result of process. It is the confrontation with the unknown recorded and given over. The product itself often creates more questions than it does answers, but it is easy to tell whether or not the author had his/her life invested in the writing of it. The result is not on the petty plain that Graham would have it, whether "you got the right answers," but instead explores the troubling reality that there perhaps are no answers after all but only "the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth." \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMy girlfriend likes to say that if the experience of something is truly great it has in some way helped you prepare for death. And neither I nor she mean this as a kind of melodrama, but simply this is the process. If you do not have a heartfelt stake in what you write your writing will never be any good regardless of your intelligence, education or any other number of factors that we often mistakenly attribute to informing the creative process.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe essay then is a poetry of motion, a poetry of the mind turning over on itself and trying to get at the "the pure potential as potential."<sup id=\"fnr-2-10-20-04\"><a href=\"#fn-2-10-20-04\">2</a></sup> If we disregard the potential as potential in favor of the already known (another reexamination of high school?!), we confine ourselves to a world where everything that can be known is known. For instance:<blockquote>In technical matters, you have to get the right answers. If your software miscalculates the path of a space probe, you can't finesse your way out of trouble by saying that your code is patriotic, or avant-garde, or any of the other dodges people use in nontechnical fields.<br/>—<cite>from another of Graham's essays</cite></blockquote>\r\n\r\nThat may be good and well for software, but Graham is assuming that there are right answers in realms beyond software (even in the realm of software I would question that assertion, design choices yes, but right and wrong? equations within software can be wrong, but does that make the software wrong?) \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI for one do not wish to live in a world where there are right and wrong answers at every turn, where everything that can be known is already known. Nor do I want read essays that purport as much. If what Graham is railing against in his essay on essays is the formulaic nature of immature writing then certainly the answer does not lie in the formulaic nature of software. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIn a world where there is no potential to move beyond the known there would be no reason to write. The great essay (and contrary to Graham's assertions there are plenty of amazing essayists in this century, both those writing now, including on the web, and those whose work predates us) is the result of stepping beyond the comfortable, predictable results of the world already known into the pure potential as potential. The result then is the journey back.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3>On some common Misconceptions about writing/art</h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAs cited above and noted in my sidebar I have been reading a collection of essays called Art and Reality. Now generally speaking this is not the sort of book I gravitate toward, but my neighbor is a book dealer and he sold it to me for 25¢. Anyway, I had all but abandoned this article until I read the first essay by entitled **The Elements of "Art"** (which, it's worth noting, was transcribed from Robert Irwin's's keynote address at a 1982 conference entitled **Art and Reality**).\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nNow it was no accident that above I said the **experience** of something truly great should help you die. I could summarize Irwin's points on the interactive process of art, but it's better if I simply quote.<blockquote>So what we have is a structure, a process. And I will identify that as being what is being talked about here: the elements of art, **the elements of the process**. I would like to say that these are really more positions or perspectives, rather than being a hierarchical which assumes there is "a art" and that everything else is somehow subservient to it. I propose that we have instead a process. The first step of the process is the action of inquiry: the idea of looking at that pure potential &mdash the artist as an individual seeking out or re-examining for himself at his moment in time and in relation to the whole body of knowledge up to that moment in time, what we mean by the term art.</blockquote>\r\n\r\nArt is indeed a verb rather than a noun. The noun that we are accustomed to throwing about is but a historical artifact that is the result of an art-action, to borrow Irwin's nomenclature. Now that is not to pass any sort of value judgment on those artifacts, but rather to say the essay is not the art; the writing of the essay is the art. the essay I the reader experiences (by reading) is an object, what is important is not the object, but our experience with it. So we end up with a noun, the essay, preceded and followed by verbs, art and experience. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThis emphasis on parts of speech is not a splitting of hairs, a semantic game or a "dodge" employed by one in a non-technical field. It is the fundamental point of what art, in this case writing, is: interaction between individuals mediated by some object. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIt has long amused artists to hear technophiles and, for lack of a better term, suits, expounding on the wonderful interactive nature of the web and how this can revolutionize art (naturally here in its cultural baggage form as a noun) and society when in fact art is and always has been an interactive experience mediated by a static medium. The web remains every bit as static as a painting or an essay. That we describe our experience with it as interactive is a result of the obviousness, not the uniqueness, of its interaction.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nInteractivity on the web requires a gadget (a computer) which is perhaps what clues us in to the fact that our experience is interactive, whereas art in other forms is often not mediated by a gadget so its seems more remote (especially given the gadget fetishism of our times). Perhaps another reason the interactivity of the web is so obvious is because it comes directly into our living room. There is no need to travel to the museum or library, it's all right here at our fingertips.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nBut I think it's important to note that the writing of an essay is not fundamentally an act of expression or communication, something that Irwin nicely illustrates by posing the question: "can you think of anything that is not expression?" If everything is expression and communication how then would we differentiate between good essays and bad ones? For that matter, what differentiates essays from email? What we need is some better means of qualitative judgment.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3>why the rote essay is rampant on the web</h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nSo after picking on Paul Graham so extensively, let us salvage the gist of what I think he was trying to say. Essays on the web are often not very well written and lack the confrontation with the unknown that marks great writing/art.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nNow many people would herein proceed to argue that this is because we lack filters (i.e. editors, publishers, etc) to catch the bad stuff before it is disseminated to the world. There is of course some merit to this argument. I find myself often linking to Salon because the quality of writing published there far exceeds the other nine Google hits I get. And it might be that Salon's quality of writing is higher because it employs editors, but there is another more optimistic way of looking at writing on the web.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nWith the disappearance of the filters that have shadowed writing for the last few centuries we finally have an opportunity for anyone to write about anything they please. Now this can have some serious downsides as we will explore in a a minute, but there is an upside. Universal exposure means that in simple terms of numbers there is a much greater possibility of finding great writing on the web than the new release table at your average bookstore. Even with my limited math I can process the law of averages. If a million people are publishing there is a much greater chance that there will be someone creating something great than when the poll of possibilities was limited to those with access to agents and publishers.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nA friend of mind used to often say that at any given moment the best band in America is probably playing for two people in a garage. The same is very likely true of writing. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nBut we have overlooked the fact that we do have filters on the web and it's very likely that if anything they're worse than those we left behind. Google is our filter and Google is but a collection of algorithms. At least with traditional publishers there were those few that staffed their offices with truly passionate human beings who really cared about writing. Can an algorithm care about writing?\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMuch to my dismay if you type 'the essay' into google, Paul Graham's drivel comes up as the seventh link. This is precisely why there is no link for it here.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIn a way the web is what our founding father's feared most — a tyranny of the majority. If the more sites point to it, a site gets the highest rank. In that sense it's our own fault that the drivel is prevalent.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIn closing let me leave you with some more thoughts from Irwin<blockquote>Ideas don't just come into the world **ad hoc**, or they don't just come in a sort of idle or free way. They come first to be weighted and justified in terms of their relevance, in terms of their impact, and in terms of how they might thread themselves into that body of knowledge. The process of weighing is really made up of all those people who are interested in what we mean by the concept of art. I would like to define that as "culture" (rather than how the word has normally been used) — as really a practice, culture playing back on the society as something deeply threaded into the society in the critical sense that this body of knowledge is culture, is civilization. The first action, a critical aspect, of culture is the weighing of any new idea in the light of the body of knowledge and the examining of its relevance and whether or not it's a worthwhile idea, and whether or not we should make any commitment toward the character and potential of the idea. And then the dialogue has to do with how it is threaded into this body of knowledge.</blockquote>\r\n\r\n<ol class=\"footnote\"><li id=\"fn-1-10-20-04\"><p class=\"note1\">1. For those of you electing not to actually read Graham's essay allow me to continue his thoughts in this footnote. It turns out that the \"intellectual hangover of long forgotten origins\" mentioned in the quote is actually, according to Graham, the study of law. Apparently law was prevalent in medieval seminaries. I can't vouch for that but it sounds right. Medieval religious types did need to have some good rhetorical training to defend the contradictory-to-observation belief systems that they held.<a href=\"#fnr-1-10-20-04\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p></li>\r\n\r\n<li id=\"fn-2-10-20-04\"><p class=\"note2\">2. **The Elements of \"Art\"**, Art and Reality. ed. Robin Blaser and Robert Duncan, Talonbooks Vancouver, 1986 <a href=\"#fnr-2-10-20-04\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩</a></p></li></ol>", "dek": "I generally ignore internet debates, they never go anywhere, so why bother. But we all have our weak points and when programmer Paul Graham posted what might be the dumbest essay on writing that's ever been written, I just couldn't help myuself. ", "pub_date": "2004-10-10T18:03:13", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-72.6283407110203711 42.3224770304372342)", "location": 44, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/essay.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/essay.jpg", "meta_description": "A brief essay on why Paul Graham wouldn't know good writing if it slapped him in the face.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 6, "fields": {"title": "Farewell Mr. Hunter S Thompson", "slug": "farewell-mr-hunter-s-thompson", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span>'m sure everyone has heard by now that 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>\n<p><break></p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>:<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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 class=\"pic\"><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/thompson.jpg\" alt=\"Hunter S Thompson\" align=\"center\" width=\"360\" height=\"230\" /></p>\n<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 href=\"#fnr-1-10-20-04\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" 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 href=\"#fnr-2-10-20-04\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩</a></p></li></ol>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span>'m sure everyone has heard by now that 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.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nUnfortunately, Thompson is probably best known for the unapologetic drug use of **Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas**. 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>, **Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas** 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nInto 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAlso 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 **Fear and Loathing**:<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>\r\n\r\nWhat 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 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. **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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nJust 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."\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAnd 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 class=\"pic\"><img src=\"[[base_url]]/2005/thompson.jpg\" alt=\"Hunter S Thompson\" align=\"center\" width=\"360\" height=\"230\" />\r\n\r\n<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 href=\"#fnr-1-10-20-04\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" 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 href=\"#fnr-2-10-20-04\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩</a></p></li></ol>", "dek": "Hunter S. Thompson departs on a journey to the western lands. Thompson's <em>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</em> delivered the penultimate eulogy for the dreams of the 1960's, one that mourned, but also tried to lay the empty idealism to rest.", "pub_date": "2005-02-24T18:11:10", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-72.6279544729221556 42.3226356811872861)", "location": 44, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/thompson.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/thompson.jpg", "meta_description": "The savage journey to the heart of the America Dream comes to an end.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 7, "fields": {"title": "One Nation Under a Groove", "slug": "one-nation-under-groove", "body_html": "<p class=\"pull-quote\">the need<br /> these closed-in days<br /> to move before you<br /> smooth-draped<br /> and color-elated<br /> in a favorable wind<br /> — <cite> Niedecker</cite></p>\n\n<p><break></p>\n<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>he 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. </p>\n<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>\n<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. <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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>Space is the Place</h3>\n\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>The New (Old) Danger</h3>\n\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>Its All Around You</h3>\n\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>No Alarms and No Surprises</h3>\n\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>You Were Wrong When You Said Everything's Gonna Be All Right</h3>\n\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>...And I Feel Fine</h3>\n\n<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>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "<p class=\"pull-quote\">the need<br /> these closed-in days<br /> to move before you<br /> smooth-draped<br /> and color-elated<br /> in a favorable wind<br /> — <cite> Niedecker</cite></p>\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\n<span class=\"drop\">T</span>he 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThis 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/archive/7/rosen.htm\" 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe 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. <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>\r\n\r\nI 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?\r\n\r\nAnd 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...).\r\n\r\nI 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).\r\n\r\n<h3>Space is the Place</h3>\r\n\r\nAt 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).\r\n\r\nI 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>\r\n\r\nWhy 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 />\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nWhat 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nRather 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?\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nHeadphones 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3>The New (Old) Danger</h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe 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?\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nNeither 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>\r\n\r\nI 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).\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nTypical 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>\r\n\r\nI 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe 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? \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIf 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAs 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3>Its All Around You</h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nNeither 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nShe 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMr. 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>\r\n\r\nBeware 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?\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIn 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>\r\n\r\nThis 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3>No Alarms and No Surprises</h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nWhen 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAt 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nBut 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nFor 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIn 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>.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIt 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3>You Were Wrong When You Said Everything's Gonna Be All Right</h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThough 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... \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIn 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI 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>\r\n\r\nA 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nSentimentality 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nPlease 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3>...And I Feel Fine</h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nPerhaps 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAt 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.", "dek": "The sky is falling! The iPod! It's ruining our culture! Or, uh, maybe it's just like the Walkman, but better. And since, so far as I can tell, the world did not collapse with the introduction of the Walkman and headphones, it probably isn't going to fall apart just because the storage format for our music has changed. [Photo to the right via <a href=\"http://flickr.com/photos/rogpool/2960735485/\">Flickr</a>]", "pub_date": "2005-03-25T18:12:59", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-72.6280403036105753 42.3225404907850375)", "location": 44, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/ipod.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/ipod.jpg", "meta_description": "The sky is falling! The iPod! It's ruining our culture! Or, uh, maybe it's just like the Walkman, but better.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 8, "fields": {"title": "Travel Tips and Resources", "slug": "tips-and-resources", "body_html": "<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h2>Guides, Flights, and General Planning Suggestions</h2>\n<h3>Guidebooks</h3>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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. </p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>Airline Tickets</h3>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>Vaccinations</h3>\n\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>Passports and Visas</h3>\n\n<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>\n<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>\n<p>Again time and money are issues here. Take care of this as soon as you can. </p>\n<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>\n<h3>Travel Insurance</h3>\n\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h2>Travel Equipment - what I'm bringing</h2>\n\n<h3>Osprey Transporter 60</h3>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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. </p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>Sweetwater Purifier System</h3>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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. </p>\n<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>\n<h3>ALL NEW SECTION - stuff you don't need</h3>\n\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<ul class=\"list-debi\">\n\n<li>Essentials\n\n<ul>\n\n<li>Address book with important phone numbers. Upload to net.</li>\n\n<li>Backpack</li>\n\n<li>Insurance ? health/travel</li>\n\n<li>Money ? card, converter, money belt, TCs, cash</li>\n\n<li>Passport</li>\n\n<li>Pencils, Pens </li>\n\n<li>Padlock</li>\n\n<li>Tickets and itinerary (airline, train, bus etc.) </li>\n</ul>\n\n</li>\n\n<li>Clothes\n<ul>\n\n<li>Bras</li>\n\n<li>Bikinis</li>\n\n<li><strike>Fleece </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Hat</strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Leggings</strike></li>\n\n<li>Light jacket</li>\n\n<li><strike>Trousers</strike> Not plural, just one.</li>\n\n<li><strike>Sandals, shower shoes</strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Shorts</strike> Not plural, just one.</li>\n\n<li><strike>Skirts</strike> Not plural, just one.</li>\n\n<li>Socks</li>\n\n<li>Sunglasses</li>\n\n<li><strike>T-shirts</strike></li>\n\n<li>Underwear</li>\n\n</ul></li>\n\n<li>Toiletries\n\n<ul>\n\n<li><strike>Anti-bacterial cream/wash </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Comb </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Cotton buds </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Dental floss</strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Deodorant </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Earplugs </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Face wash</strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Hair products (gel, spray etc.) </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Lip balm </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Blusher</strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Mirror </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Moisturizer (face and body) </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Razors </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Shampoo and Conditioner </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Shaving Cream </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Shower Gel</strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Sunscreen and After sun cream </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Tampons</strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Toilet bag</strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Toilet paper w. core out</strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Toothbrush</strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Toothpaste </strike></li>\n\n</ul></li>\n\n<li>\n\nFirst Aid Kit\n\n<ul>\n\n<li><strike>Anti histamines</strike></li>\n\n<li>Band aids</li>\n\n<li><strike>Diarrhea tablets</strike></li>\n\n<li>Insect and/or mosquito repellent</li>\n\n<li><strike>Iodine</strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Paracetemol, Tylenol etc. </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Pepper spray</strike></li>\n\n<li>Replacement salts</li>\n\n<li><strike>Vitamin pills </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Infection cream/Hydrocoritsone</strike></li>\n\n</ul></li>\n\n<li>\n\nOther Items\n\n<ul>\n\n<li><strike>Address Labels laminated</strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Batteries</strike></li>\n\n<li>Books</li>\n\n<li><strike>Bottled water </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Cards</strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Camera, film and batteries</strike> Spare flash cards or memory for digital camera</li>\n\n<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>\n\n<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>\n\n<li><strike>Electrical adapter and plug converter </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Fishing Line</strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Flashlight</strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Guidebooks </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>International Student Identification Card</strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Laundry detergent </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Matches - storm</strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Mobile phone or SIM card </strike></li>\n\n<li>Passport Photos</li>\n\n<li><strike>Phone for Skype</strike></li>\n\n<li>Photocopies of important documents in case they are stolen</li>\n\n<li><strike>Pillowcase to stuff with clothes </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Plastic bags </strike></li>\n\n<li>Recharger for electrical items</li>\n\n<li><strike>Rubber bands</strike></li>\n\n<li>Sewing Kit ? needle, thread, safety pins</li>\n\n<li><strike>Sleeping bag </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Swiss Army knife </strike></li>\n\n<li><strike>Towels </strike></li>\n\n<li>MP3 player</li>\n\n<li><strike>Watch</strike></li>\n\n<li>Ziplock bags</li>\n\n</ul></li>\n\n</ul>\n\n<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>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "[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.]\r\n\r\nWhen 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. \r\n\r\nWith 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. \r\n\r\nNaturally 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.\r\n\r\n##Guides, Flights, and General Planning Suggestions\r\n\r\n###Guidebooks\r\n\r\n<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. \r\n\r\nOnce 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. \r\n\r\nWhen 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. \r\n\r\nFor 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).\r\n\r\nI'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.\r\n\r\n<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>\r\n\r\n<h3>Airline Tickets</h3>\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\nAfter 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.\r\n\r\n<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>\r\n\r\n<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>\r\n\r\n<h3>Vaccinations</h3>\r\n\r\nCheck 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.\r\n\r\nIf 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.\r\n\r\n<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>\r\n\r\n<h3>Passports and Visas</h3>\r\n\r\n<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. \r\n\r\nVisas 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. \r\n\r\nAgain time and money are issues here. Take care of this as soon as you can. \r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n<h3>Travel Insurance</h3>\r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\nAbove 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.\r\n\r\nAs 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.\r\n\r\nThe 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.\r\n\r\nI 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. \r\n\r\n<span class=\"alert\">Yeah the insurance thing sucks. It costs a bunch of money, but don't be an idiot get some.</span>\r\n\r\n<h2>Travel Equipment - what I'm bringing</h2>\r\n\r\n<h3>Osprey Transporter 60</h3>\r\n\r\n<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. \r\n\r\n<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>\r\n\r\n<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>\r\n\r\n<h3>Sweetwater Purifier System</h3>\r\n\r\n<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. \r\n\r\n<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>\r\n\r\n<h3>ALL NEW SECTION - stuff you don't need</h3>\r\n\r\nMostly 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.\r\n\r\nFirst 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. \r\n\r\nA 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.\r\n\r\nA 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.\r\n\r\n<ul class=\"list-debi\">\r\n\r\n<li>Essentials\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n\r\n<li>Address book with important phone numbers. Upload to net.</li>\r\n\r\n<li>Backpack</li>\r\n\r\n<li>Insurance ? health/travel</li>\r\n\r\n<li>Money ? card, converter, money belt, TCs, cash</li>\r\n\r\n<li>Passport</li>\r\n\r\n<li>Pencils, Pens </li>\r\n\r\n<li>Padlock</li>\r\n\r\n<li>Tickets and itinerary (airline, train, bus etc.) </li>\r\n</ul></li>\r\n\r\n<li>Clothes\r\n<ul>\r\n\r\n<li>Bras</li>\r\n\r\n<li>Bikinis</li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Fleece </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Hat</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Leggings</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li>Light jacket</li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Trousers</strike> Not plural, just one.</li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Sandals, shower shoes</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Shorts</strike> Not plural, just one.</li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Skirts</strike> Not plural, just one.</li>\r\n\r\n<li>Socks</li>\r\n\r\n<li>Sunglasses</li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>T-shirts</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li>Underwear</li>\r\n\r\n</ul></li>\r\n\r\n<li>Toiletries\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Anti-bacterial cream/wash </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Comb </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Cotton buds </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Dental floss</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Deodorant </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Earplugs </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Face wash</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Hair products (gel, spray etc.) </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Lip balm </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Blusher</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Mirror </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Moisturizer (face and body) </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Razors </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Shampoo and Conditioner </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Shaving Cream </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Shower Gel</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Sunscreen and After sun cream </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Tampons</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Toilet bag</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Toilet paper w. core out</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Toothbrush</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Toothpaste </strike></li>\r\n\r\n</ul></li>\r\n\r\n<li>\r\n\r\nFirst Aid Kit\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Anti histamines</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li>Band aids</li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Diarrhea tablets</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li>Insect and/or mosquito repellent</li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Iodine</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Paracetemol, Tylenol etc. </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Pepper spray</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li>Replacement salts</li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Vitamin pills </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Infection cream/Hydrocoritsone</strike></li>\r\n\r\n</ul></li>\r\n\r\n<li>\r\n\r\nOther Items\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Address Labels laminated</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Batteries</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li>Books</li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Bottled water </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Cards</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Camera, film and batteries</strike> Spare flash cards or memory for digital camera</li>\r\n\r\n<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>\r\n\r\n<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>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Electrical adapter and plug converter </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Fishing Line</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Flashlight</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Guidebooks </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>International Student Identification Card</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Laundry detergent </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Matches - storm</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Mobile phone or SIM card </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li>Passport Photos</li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Phone for Skype</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li>Photocopies of important documents in case they are stolen</li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Pillowcase to stuff with clothes </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Plastic bags </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li>Recharger for electrical items</li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Rubber bands</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li>Sewing Kit ? needle, thread, safety pins</li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Sleeping bag </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Swiss Army knife </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Towels </strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li>MP3 player</li>\r\n\r\n<li><strike>Watch</strike></li>\r\n\r\n<li>Ziplock bags</li>\r\n\r\n</ul></li>\r\n\r\n</ul>\r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\nAnd 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.]\r\n", "dek": "An overview of the things you might want to bring on an extended trip, as well as some tips and recommendations on things like visas and vaccinations. The part that was most helpful for me was learning what I <em>didn't</em> need to bring — as it turns out, quite a bit. Nowadays my pack is much smaller and lighter.", "pub_date": "2005-10-19T18:14:56", "enable_comments": false, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-117.9012393784058901 33.6320939072363103)", "location": 77, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/travelgear.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/travelgear.jpg", "meta_description": "Some potentially helpful tips and stuff you might need for an extended trip around the world.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 9, "fields": {"title": "The New Luddites", "slug": "new-luddites", "body_html": "<p>[Update: I'm not entirely sure I still agree with this post. 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>\n\n<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>\n\n<p><break></p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<blockquote>\n<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>\n<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>\n</blockquote>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "<p>[Update: I'm not entirely sure I still agree with this post. 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>\r\n\r\n<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>\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\n<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? \r\n\r\nHere'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. \r\n\r\nThe 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.\r\n\r\nBut 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>:\r\n\r\n>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.\r\n\r\n>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.\r\n\r\nNow 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…\r\n\r\nThe 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. \r\n\r\nThis 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.\r\n\r\nSee, 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.\r\n\r\nNow 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.\r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\nIn 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.\r\n\r\nOpponents 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.\r\n\r\nSee 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.\r\n\r\nWriting 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.", "dek": "An older, non-travel piece about Google's plan to scan all the world's books and Luddite-like response from many authors. Let's see, someone wants to make your book easier to find, searchable and indexable and you're opposed to it? You're a fucking idiot.", "pub_date": "2005-10-08T18:17:45", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-117.9010677173524755 33.6321475049095753)", "location": 77, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/books.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/books.jpg", "meta_description": "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.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 10, "fields": {"title": "Twenty More Minutes to Go", "slug": "twenty-more-minutes-go", "body_html": "<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>\n<p><break></p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "<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.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nAcross 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.\r\n\r\nNowadays 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.\r\n\r\nSwings 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. \r\n\r\nThen 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?\r\n\r\nIn 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.", "dek": "Well 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. I walk across the street, over the drainage ditch and head for the swing set at the park. Right now I'm swinging in a park in Costa Mesa California. Tomorrow France. Weird. [Photo to the right, <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/scarin/53961434/\">via Flickr</a>]", "pub_date": "2005-10-20T18:19:10", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-117.9030203655148483 33.6333266452831765)", "location": 77, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/heretogo.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/nightswings.jpg", "meta_description": " 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.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 11, "fields": {"title": "Living in a Railway Car", "slug": "living-railway-car", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span>'m in France. 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>\n<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>\n<p><break></p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span>'m in France. It still doesn't quite seem real. But I'm here, staying in the Marais, in what must be the smallest apartment ever made. \r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nBut 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>.\r\n\r\nParis 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.\r\n\r\nOutside 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.\r\n\r\nSpeaking 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.\r\n\r\nI 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. \r\n\r\nThen 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>.\r\n\r\nWell 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. ", "dek": "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.", "pub_date": "2005-10-24T11:20:54", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (2.3617815968086964 48.8641642414168373)", "location": 11, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/sacrecoeur.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/letour.jpg", "meta_description": "I'm in Paris, staying in the Marais, in what might be the smallest apartment ever made. ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 12, "fields": {"title": "Sainte Chapelle", "slug": "sainte-chapelle", "body_html": "<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>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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. </p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<p><break></p>", "body_markdown": "<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. \r\n\r\nBut 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. \r\n\r\n<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. \r\n\r\nBut 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. \r\n\r\nThe 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. \r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n<break>", "dek": "Sainte Chapelle was interesting to see after the modern, conceptual art stuff at the Pompidou, rather than simple stained glass, Sainte Chapelle felt quite conceptual. In a sense the entire Bible (i.e. all history from that perspective) is unfolding simultaneously, quite a so-called post-modern idea if you think about it. And yet it was conceived and executed over 800 years ago. Kind of kicks a lot pretentious modern art in its collective ass.", "pub_date": "2005-10-28T18:25:56", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (2.3452591892792514 48.8555669485305586)", "location": 11, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/saintechapelle.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/saintechapelle.jpg", "meta_description": "Sainte Chapelle where the entire Bible is unfolding similtaneously in glass.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 13, "fields": {"title": "The Houses We Live In", "slug": "houses-we-live", "body_html": "<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>\n<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>\n<p><break>\nParis'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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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. </p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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]</p>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "<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.\" \r\n\r\nMr. 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n<break>\r\nParis'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.\r\n\r\n<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. \r\n\r\nWe'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.\r\n\r\nOf 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.\r\n\r\nThere 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.\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\nAt 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.\r\n\r\nYet 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.\r\n\r\n<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]\r\n\r\nWhat 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. ", "dek": "I'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.\" Indeed, Parisian architecture is completely unlike anything in America. Perhaps more than any other single element, architecture reflects culture and the ideas of the people that make up culture. ", "pub_date": "2005-11-01T10:40:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (2.3615670200875383 48.8640936621015811)", "location": 11, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/pariscityscape.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/pariscityscape.jpg", "meta_description": "People are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 14, "fields": {"title": "Bury Your Dead", "slug": "bury-your-dead", "body_html": "<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>\n<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>\n<p><break>\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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> <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>\n<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>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "<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. \r\n\r\nIn 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. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n<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. \r\n\r\nAfter 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. \r\n\r\nLater 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… ", "dek": "I would like to say that the catacombs of Paris 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. Maybe that in and off itself is the scary part.", "pub_date": "2005-11-06T18:28:52", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (2.3437571522311220 48.8862365662396172)", "location": 11, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/pariscatacombs.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/pariscatacombs.jpg", "meta_description": "The catacombs of Paris ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 15, "fields": {"title": "Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine", "slug": "riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine", "body_html": "<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>\n<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 src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.\n<break></p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "<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. \r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nAt 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.\r\n\r\nAnd 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). \r\n\r\nWhen 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.\r\n\r\nAnd 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.\r\n\r\nSo 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. \r\n\r\nSo 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.", "dek": "Well 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 in a Marais. 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; 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. ", "pub_date": "2005-11-08T18:30:13", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (2.3610734936288558 48.8635149079616440)", "location": 11, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/seinetower.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/republique.jpg", "meta_description": "Riots in Paris, the best Iraqi food in the Marais and the long bus ride to points unknown.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 16, "fields": {"title": "Vasco de Gama Exhumed", "slug": "vasco-de-gama-exhumed", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">A</span>fter 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>\n<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>\n<p><break></p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/princess.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"200\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Princess Street Fort Cochin India\" />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>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/treecochin.jpg\" width=\"113\" height=\"150\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"tree\" />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>\n<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>\n<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, <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/gama.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"150\" alt=\"graveyard\" class=\"postpicright\" />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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">A</span>fter 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. \r\n\r\nIn 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. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nI 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?\r\n\r\nI 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. \r\n\r\nWhat 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.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2005/princess.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"200\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Princess Street Fort Cochin India\" />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.\r\n\r\nAbout 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.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2005/treecochin.jpg\" width=\"113\" height=\"150\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"tree\" />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.\r\n\r\nAfter 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. \r\n\r\nThe 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, <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2005/gama.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"150\" alt=\"graveyard\" class=\"postpicright\" />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.\r\n\r\nAfter 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. \r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAfterward 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. ", "dek": "Fort Cochin is curious collision of cultures — Chinese, India and even Portuguese. 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, 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). ", "pub_date": "2005-11-11T00:51:41", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (76.2409114731516411 9.9643702310414088)", "location": 55, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/fortcochin.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/fortcochin.jpg", "meta_description": "Vasco de Gama died and was buried in Kerala, India for fourteen years before being moved back to Lisbon.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 17, "fields": {"title": "The Backwaters of Kerala", "slug": "backwaters-kerala", "body_html": "<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>\n<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>\n<p><break></p>\n<h3>You Never Had To Go Anywhere</h3>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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. </p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>The Way We Get By</h3>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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 src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<h3>Mixing Up The Medicine</h3>\n<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>\n<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 src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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>\n<h3>Sittin In A Rag Top Soaking Wet</h3>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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 src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/coconut.jpg\" height=\"75\" width=\"100\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"coconut\" /></p>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "<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. \r\n\r\nI 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. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\n###You Never Had To Go Anywhere###\r\n\r\n<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. \r\n\r\nI 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. \r\n\r\nWith 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. \r\n\r\nBefore 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.\r\n\r\n###The Way We Get By###\r\n\r\nThose 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. \r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\nWe 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.\r\n\r\n###Mixing Up The Medicine###\r\n\r\nThe 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. \r\n\r\nThe 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.\r\n\r\nAfter 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.\r\n\r\n###Sittin In A Rag Top Soaking Wet###\r\n\r\nAt 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. \r\n\r\nAs 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.\r\n\r\nOne 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.\r\n\r\nAt 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\" />\r\n\r\nThen 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.\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\nAnd 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. ", "dek": "The guide showed us Tamarind trees, coconut palms, lemon trees, vanilla vine, plantain trees and countless other shrubs and bushes whose names I have already forgotten. The most fascinating was a plant that produces a fruit something like a miniature mango that contains cyanide and which, as our guide informed us, is cultivated mainly to commit suicide with — as if it was no big deal and everyone is at least occasionally tempted to each the killer mango.", "pub_date": "2005-11-15T00:53:50", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (76.2533569229790942 9.9580299709641142)", "location": 55, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/keralabackwater.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/keralabackwater.jpg", "meta_description": "Touring the fabled backwaters of Kerala India.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 18, "fields": {"title": "Fish Story", "slug": "fish-story", "body_html": "<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>\n<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 src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<h3>Orange Blossom Special</h3>\n\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>The Sleepy Strange</h3>\n\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>A Salty Salute</h3>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>It's A Sight To Behold</h3>\n\n<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 src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvacow.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"160\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"sacred cow\" /></p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<p>When it finally arrived the fish was about the size of your standard American dinner plate and surrounded on one side by<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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. </p>", "body_markdown": "<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. \r\n\r\nQuite 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.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\n<h3>Orange Blossom Special</h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nBut 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. \r\n\r\nThere 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. \r\n\r\nThe 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3>The Sleepy Strange</h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3>A Salty Salute</h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nFor 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3>It's A Sight To Behold</h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe 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\" />\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe 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. \r\n\r\nLast 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nWhen 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. ", "dek": "The Arabian Sea is warm and the sand sucks at your feet when you walk, schools of tiny fish dart and disappear into each receding wave. In the morning the water is nearly glassy and the beach slopes off so slowly one can walk out at least 200 meters and be only waist deep.", "pub_date": "2005-11-20T00:54:46", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (73.9154147998914510 15.2772302271177711)", "location": 53, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/colvabeach.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/colvabeach.jpg", "meta_description": "It's not the cheapest meal in Goa, but you should definitely treat yourself to a whole curried fish at some point.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 19, "fields": {"title": "Anjuna Market", "slug": "anjuna-market", "body_html": "<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>\n<p><break></p>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "<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. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nTwo 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI'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. ", "dek": "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.", "pub_date": "2005-11-24T00:58:15", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (73.7388610737196473 15.5812894729370104)", "location": 52, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/anjunabeachmarket.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/anjunabeachmarket.jpg", "meta_description": "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. ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 20, "fields": {"title": "Living in Airport Terminals", "slug": "living-airport-terminals", "body_html": "<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>\n<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 src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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. </p>\n<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>\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\n<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>\n</ol>", "body_markdown": "<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. \r\n\r\nSo 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.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nBut 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. \r\n\r\nSomething 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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. \r\n\r\nEven 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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. \r\n\r\nTerminals 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\r\n<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>\r\n</ol>", "dek": "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. ", "pub_date": "2005-11-27T11:56:20", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (72.5623798269352278 23.0096752856247377)", "location": 51, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/ceilingfanindia.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/ceilingfanindia.jpg", "meta_description": "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.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 21, "fields": {"title": "The City Palace", "slug": "city-palace", "body_html": "<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>\n<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>\n<p><break></p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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 src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "<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. \r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAfter 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. \r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAbout 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. \r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAfter 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. ", "dek": "I spent some time sitting in the inner gardens of the City Place, listening to rustling trees and the various guides bringing small groups of western and Indian tourists through the garden. In the center of the hanging gardens was the kings, extremely oversized bath, which reminded me of children's book that 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.", "pub_date": "2005-11-28T22:00:46", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (73.6931991474565251 24.5913048791908366)", "location": 50, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/citypalaceudaipur.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/citypalaceudaipur.jpg", "meta_description": "Palaces are strange place, they overwhelm one with a vast and seemingly endless array of details designed to overawe and intimidate.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 22, "fields": {"title": "The Monsoon Palace", "slug": "monsoon-palace", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span>f I were to write of everything I have seen and done in this strange and wondrous place I would have to stop traveling now and simply write for months, probably even years, to begin to capture anything. </p>\n<p>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.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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. </p>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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. </p>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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. </p>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span>f I were to write of everything I have seen and done in this strange and wondrous place I would have to stop traveling now and simply write for months, probably even years, to begin to capture anything. \r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\n<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. \r\n\r\nEventually 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).\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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. \r\n\r\nThe 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\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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. \r\n\r\nThe 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.", "dek": "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, 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. As the sun slowly slunk behind the mountain range to the west the balconies and balustrades of the Monsoon Palace took on an increasingly orange hue. ", "pub_date": "2005-11-29T12:03:31", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (73.6880493061486845 24.6619943758805817)", "location": 50, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/monsoonpalace.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/monsoonpalace.jpg", "meta_description": "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. ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 23, "fields": {"title": "Around Udaipur", "slug": "around-udaipur", "body_html": "<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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. </p>\n<p><break></p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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. </p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "<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.\r\n\r\n<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. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nAfter 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. \r\n\r\nComprising 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.\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n<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. \r\n\r\nAmidst 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.\r\n\r\nAs 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.\r\n\r\nMy 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. ", "dek": "Just out of Udaipur is a government sponsored \"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, but on the other hand the \"artists colony\" is slightly creepy. Amidst displays of typical tribal life 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, or, for the creepy angle — human zoo.", "pub_date": "2005-11-30T19:05:47", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (73.7848663227366188 24.6676103687154580)", "location": 50, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/shiplogram.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/shiplogram.jpg", "meta_description": "Udaipur, Bagore-ki-Haveli and the strange, slightly creepy Shilpogram.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 24, "fields": {"title": "The Majestic Fort", "slug": "majestic-fort", "body_html": "<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>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<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>\n<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 src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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. </p>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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. </p>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "<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. \r\n\r\nFortunately 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. \r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nThe 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nEach 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAfter 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nLater 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. ", "dek": "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.", "pub_date": "2005-12-02T17:40:02", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (73.0176687138957732 26.2974163535435110)", "location": 49, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/jodhpurfort.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/jodhpurfort.jpg", "meta_description": "Johdpur and Meherangarh, or the Majestic Fort as it's known in English.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 25, "fields": {"title": "On a Camel With No Name", "slug": "camel-no-name", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span> arrived in Jaisalmer at about 5 AM to what has to be one of the most surreal sights in India, the 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 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>\n<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>\n<p><break></p>\n<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. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/camelsafari.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"175\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Camels Jaisalmer India\" />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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/thar.jpg\" width=\"245\" height=\"162\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"That Desert India\" />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>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/tharmoon.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"227\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Moonrise Thar Desert, India\" />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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<p>Oh and truthfully my camel had a name, but I couldn't pronounce it or spell it. </p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span> arrived in Jaisalmer at about 5 AM to what has to be one of the most surreal sights in India, the 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 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. \r\n\r\nOnce 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.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nBright 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. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2005/camelsafari.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"175\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Camels Jaisalmer India\" />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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2005/thar.jpg\" width=\"245\" height=\"162\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"That Desert India\" />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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOur 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2005/tharmoon.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"227\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Moonrise Thar Desert, India\" />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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nWe 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOur 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOh and truthfully my camel had a name, but I couldn't pronounce it or spell it. ", "dek": "The Thar Desert is a bewitching if stark place. 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.", "pub_date": "2005-12-05T22:46:54", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (70.8906555077099512 27.0040787605671362)", "location": 48, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/cameltrek.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/cameltrek.jpg", "meta_description": "Riding camels through the desert outside of Jaisalmer. The Thar Desert is a bewitching if stark place. ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 26, "fields": {"title": "The Taj Express", "slug": "taj-express", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">W</span>hen I first planned my travel route through India I was woefully ignorant. 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>\n<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>\n<p><break></p>\n<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 src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">W</span>hen I first planned my travel route through India I was woefully ignorant. 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. \r\n\r\nIt 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.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nBut 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAfter 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAnd 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. ", "dek": "The Taj Mahal is one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and, given the level of hype I was fully prepared to be underwhelmed, but I was wrong. I have never in my life seen anything so extravagant, elegant and colossal. The Taj Mahal seems mythically, spiritually, as well as architecturally, to have risen from nowhere, without equal or context.", "pub_date": "2005-12-09T17:49:40", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (78.0417680631718582 27.1728040125765204)", "location": 47, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/tajmahal.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/tajmahal.jpg", "meta_description": "The Taj Mahal is one of the 7 Wonders of the World. Given that level of hype, I was fully prepared to be underwhelmed, but I was wrong.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 27, "fields": {"title": "Goodbye India", "slug": "goodbye-india", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">S</span>trange though it seems my time in India is over, I leave this evening on a plane bound for Nepal where I will be spending the next two weeks. 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>\n<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>\n<p><break></p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">S</span>trange though it seems my time in India is over, I leave this evening on a plane bound for Nepal where I will be spending the next two weeks. 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. \r\n\r\nThe 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. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nI 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).\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThere 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).\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nStill 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nSeveral 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. \r\n\r\nI 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. \r\n\r\nIn 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.\r\n\r\nAnd 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. ", "dek": "I have taken almost 750 photos and traveled nearly 4000 km (2500 miles) in India, the vast majority of it by train. 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.", "pub_date": "2005-12-10T17:53:25", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (77.2109269988345090 28.6418241967323013)", "location": 46, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/indiadelhi.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/indiadelhi.jpg", "meta_description": "I have traveled nearly 4000 km in India. 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 ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 28, "fields": {"title": "Durbar Square Kathmandu", "slug": "durbar-square-kathmandu", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span> flew into Katmandu around ten o'clock at night, which meant I unfortunately missed any view of the Himalayas. 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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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). </p>\n<p><break></p>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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>.</p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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>\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\n<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>\n</ol>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span> flew into Katmandu around ten o'clock at night, which meant I unfortunately missed any view of the Himalayas. 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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). \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nNearly 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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>.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUnfortunately 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nEach 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMost 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe 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\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAfter 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\r\n<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>\r\n</ol>", "dek": "After saturating myself with the streets of Thamel I went on a longer excursion down to Durbar Square 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. ", "pub_date": "2005-12-15T17:57:48", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (85.3173780322519093 27.7033636906418366)", "location": 45, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/durbarsquare.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/durbarsquare.jpg", "meta_description": "Nevermind the Beatles, Durbar Square is still very much the hub of Katmandu. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 29, "fields": {"title": "Pashupatinath", "slug": "pashupatinath", "body_html": "<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>\n<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>\n<p><break></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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 src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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. </p>\n<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>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "<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. \r\n\r\nPashupatinath 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. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAfter 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI'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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOvercome 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAnd 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.", "dek": "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.", "pub_date": "2005-12-15T18:02:59", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (85.3485345721645245 27.7105731556869195)", "location": 43, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/nepalburninggahts.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/nepalburninggahts.jpg", "meta_description": "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.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 30, "fields": {"title": "Sunset Over the Himalayas", "slug": "sunset-over-himalayas", "body_html": "<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>\n<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>\n<p><break></p>\n<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 src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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 src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>Sarangkot</h3>\n\n<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 src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<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>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//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. </p>", "body_markdown": "<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. \r\n\r\nAny 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.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nAt 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nA 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3>Sarangkot</h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe 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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nBy 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. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<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. ", "dek": "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 gunwale and hung my feet over the opposite side so that they just skimmed the surface of the chilly water.", "pub_date": "2005-12-17T21:03:43", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (83.9582061650711893 28.2104827778703253)", "location": 41, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/pokharaboat.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/pokharaboat.jpg", "meta_description": "Rowing Fewa Lake, laying back, looking up at the Annapurna range in the destance.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 31, "fields": {"title": "Merry Christmas 2005", "slug": "merry-christmas-2005", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">S</span>easons Greeting from luxagraf. 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>\n<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>\n<p><break>\nI just wanted to post a little seasons greeting message to all of you still following along and thank you for your support. </p>\n<p>Cheers!</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">S</span>easons Greeting from luxagraf. 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. \r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n \r\n<break>\r\nI just wanted to post a little seasons greeting message to all of you still following along and thank you for your support. \r\n\r\nCheers!", "dek": "Seasons Greeting from luxagraf. I'm in Bangkok, Thailand at the moment. 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 in Bangkok, if such a thing is possible.", "pub_date": "2005-12-25T18:27:48", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (100.4934453824344587 13.7617909731483472)", "location": 40, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/bangkokfort.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/bangkokfort.jpg", "meta_description": "I just wanted to post a little seasons greeting message to all of you still following along and thank you for your support. ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 32, "fields": {"title": "Are You Amplified to Rock?", "slug": "are-you-amplified-rock", "body_html": "<p class=\"pull-quote\">\"Are you amplified to rock?<br />Are you hoping for a contact?<br />I’ll be with you<br />without you<br />again\"<br />- <cite>Robert Pollard</cite></p>\n\n<p><break>\n<span class=\"drop\">H</span>appy New Year from luxagraf. I hope everyone had a wonderful and semi-safe New Years Eve. I will be back to traveling and doing my usual, once-a-week-or-so postings again in the very near future, stay tuned.</p></p>", "body_markdown": "<p class=\"pull-quote\">\"Are you amplified to rock?<br />Are you hoping for a contact?<br />I’ll be with you<br />without you<br />again\"<br />- <cite>Robert Pollard</cite></p>\r\n<break>\r\n<span class=\"drop\">H</span>appy New Year from luxagraf. I hope everyone had a wonderful and semi-safe New Years Eve. I will be back to traveling and doing my usual, once-a-week-or-so postings again in the very near future, stay tuned.</p>", "dek": "It's a new year, are you amplified to rock? Ready, set, go.", "pub_date": "2006-01-01T18:37:48", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (100.4934453824343024 13.7617909731483472)", "location": 40, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/bangkokriver.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/bangkokriver.jpg", "meta_description": "Happy New Year, 2006, from luxagraf", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 33, "fields": {"title": "Brink of the Clouds", "slug": "brink-clouds", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>wo days after Christmas, I had just finished some internet business at the McBen Coffeehouse on Sukhumvit Soi 8, but I didn't yet feel like heading back to Khoasan Rd, so I took the sky train to Siam Square and walked over the Khlong Saen Saep canal to the Baiyoke Sky Hotel, which, as it proudly proclaims to anyone who will listen, is the tallest hotel in the world—not building mind you, I believe that honor goes to the Taipei 101 in Taiwan—the Baiyoke Sky is the tallest <em>hotel</em>. </p>\n<p>It can claim the tallest building in Bangkok though and indeed all of Thailand. It stands a singularly massive, circular structure jutting up into the Bangkok sky and looking up at it from the bridge over the canal gave me a mild feeling of vertigo, something that has always happened to me when gazing up at some great height. Strange but I have always experienced vertigo looking up at heights, never looking down from them. </p>\n<p><break>\nThe Baiyoke Sky Hotel is circular and the revolving observation deck on the eighty-seventh floor slowly swivels around at a soaring height of three hundred meters and, though the Empire State building is taller than the Baiyoke (by eighty one meters), is not as dramatic from the top. The Baiyoke has sheer, architecturally unbroken sides, when you lean out you look straight down and, unlike the Empire State building which is surrounded by other high rises, the Baiyoke massively dwarfs everything else in the area, which makes it seem much higher than the Empire State Building. </p>\n<p>However, for me, the most amazing thing about the Baiyoke Sky Hotel is the elevator. Somehow, seemingly by bending the rules of physics, LG has managed to construct an elevator that ascends nearly three hundred meters in forty seconds and produces almost no discernible sense of motion. Not only is that faster than any elevator I've ever ridden in, but even while watching the city lights shrink toward my feet, I still could not convince myself that I was moving. The sensation was almost creepy as if the movement were staged; the elevator motionless and a fake background rolling by; my ears popping at the rapid change in height were the only tangible sense of motion I could feel. It was such an extraordinary experience that before I left I rode it twice more up and down, just to make sure that my mind wasn't playing tricks on me.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bangkoknightscape.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"150\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Bangkok Thailand Nightscape\" />The physics defying ride exited on the eighty fifth floor and from there I made my way up two flights of stairs to the observation deck. The Bangkok nightscape stretched out beneath me like radioactive paint flung on a black felt canvas. From such heights it is difficult to pick out individual people and even cars on the highways and overpasses, the streaking red taillights and the dirty, yellow-white headlights, the color of angel wings too long in the smoggy air, become one continuous river of light flowing amongst the glittering black rock of buildings. The deck creaked as it turned and the occasional thumps and bumps of the mismatched joints beneath the steel top were the only sounds as I glided around the hotel, which gave me the sensation of standing on a ballerina's shoulder as she turned a slow, continuous pirouette round the clouds. </p>\n<p>In those moments when the mechanisms of turning fell silent, the faint sounds of the city could be heard rising from below, nothing distinct, more like the hum of a computer when you walk in the room, or the white noise of your refrigerator droning that you don't notice until you're sitting there late at night in the silence of an empty and sleeping house where suddenly the sound of the coils and Freon become an almost deafening noise. So with the sound of Bangkok from a great height, a height from which even Celine could not piss, though apparently the metal grating, which makes a nice brace for long exposure night shots, is the result of a team of Norwegians who base jumped from the deck in 2000. I tried to find out if anyone had ever committed suicide from the deck, but no one would give me an answer. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/baiyokepillar.jpg\" width=\"143\" height=\"200\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"\" />After having my fill of the heights I wandered down to the bar area two floors below the deck where supposedly the elevator ticket was good for a free drink, descending as I did into a candlelit darkness. Everyone seemed to be clearly out just as I arrived, but isn't that the way it always seems? I took a seat in one of the red vinyl chairs near the entrance just in front of a baluster that seemed to be imitating a telescope, starting small at the base and progressively growing out toward the ceiling, little circular shelves, a perfect matchbox race track complete with tubular florescent road lights that wound around, beads of blue light driving up the tiny path toward the ceiling. The tiny blue lights and a few candles were the only light in the bar. The darkness was occasionally punctuated by the lightning flashes of snap happy tourists at the window in front of the elevator apparently unaware of the limited range of such bulbs, but, sitting next to the window staring out at the city below the combined effect of the height and flashes of light gave me the feeling of sitting in some great stationary thunderhead, as if at any moment the wind might kick up and carry us westward dumping torrents of rain over the neighborhoods until finally we would dissipate over the South China Sea.</p>\n<p>As I sat in the lounge sipping whiskey from a crystal cordial glass which somewhat contrasted with the otherwise futuristic decor, I tried to calculate how long you would fall from this height. I'm not real great at math, but think you have about 12 seconds to regret your choice, or if you're Norwegian, to open your chute.</p>\n<p>\"The city is a cathedral\" writes James Salter, \"its scent is dreams,\" and though he may have been referring to New York, his words ring true, perhaps to a lesser degree but true nevertheless, in every large city. Or maybe you just have to be a lover of cities to feel it. We seem to embrace the hive replicas built perhaps from memories embedded in our DNA; we feel safety in numbers, a desire to be close to one another, yet seek to find our own honey in the comb as it were. And so cities become our greatest cathedrals, redolent with our most venerable dreams reflected out of the darkness of our fears and nightmares. Perhaps this is why night in the city is so compelling—this mixture of dualities, the one place where we can see everything together and mingling. </p>\n<p>I always feel younger in cities, something about the city at night makes everything seem possible, the sound of the wheels on the concrete, the determined and purposeful stride of strangers around you on the sidewalks, everything seems to have its place in the city, it grows out of the darkness of night to bring light. Even in Bangkok as I walked to the Baiyoke Hotel I found myself thinking of New York and how much I miss it, particularly the sound of the wheels on sixth avenue in the rain, that wet hiss punctuated with splashes and the rain muted sound of horns; in October when it starts to turn cold and all you want to do is get off the street into somewhere warm with friends, but something makes you linger there on the street watching the endless glitter of lights and windows reflecting and refracting in some perpetual bouncing circle so that you can feel earth turning, as if the energy of its core were right beneath you.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>wo days after Christmas, I had just finished some internet business at the McBen Coffeehouse on Sukhumvit Soi 8, but I didn't yet feel like heading back to Khoasan Rd, so I took the sky train to Siam Square and walked over the Khlong Saen Saep canal to the Baiyoke Sky Hotel, which, as it proudly proclaims to anyone who will listen, is the tallest hotel in the world—not building mind you, I believe that honor goes to the Taipei 101 in Taiwan—the Baiyoke Sky is the tallest *hotel*. \r\n\r\nIt can claim the tallest building in Bangkok though and indeed all of Thailand. It stands a singularly massive, circular structure jutting up into the Bangkok sky and looking up at it from the bridge over the canal gave me a mild feeling of vertigo, something that has always happened to me when gazing up at some great height. Strange but I have always experienced vertigo looking up at heights, never looking down from them. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\nThe Baiyoke Sky Hotel is circular and the revolving observation deck on the eighty-seventh floor slowly swivels around at a soaring height of three hundred meters and, though the Empire State building is taller than the Baiyoke (by eighty one meters), is not as dramatic from the top. The Baiyoke has sheer, architecturally unbroken sides, when you lean out you look straight down and, unlike the Empire State building which is surrounded by other high rises, the Baiyoke massively dwarfs everything else in the area, which makes it seem much higher than the Empire State Building. \r\n\r\nHowever, for me, the most amazing thing about the Baiyoke Sky Hotel is the elevator. Somehow, seemingly by bending the rules of physics, LG has managed to construct an elevator that ascends nearly three hundred meters in forty seconds and produces almost no discernible sense of motion. Not only is that faster than any elevator I've ever ridden in, but even while watching the city lights shrink toward my feet, I still could not convince myself that I was moving. The sensation was almost creepy as if the movement were staged; the elevator motionless and a fake background rolling by; my ears popping at the rapid change in height were the only tangible sense of motion I could feel. It was such an extraordinary experience that before I left I rode it twice more up and down, just to make sure that my mind wasn't playing tricks on me.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/bangkoknightscape.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"150\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Bangkok Thailand Nightscape\" />The physics defying ride exited on the eighty fifth floor and from there I made my way up two flights of stairs to the observation deck. The Bangkok nightscape stretched out beneath me like radioactive paint flung on a black felt canvas. From such heights it is difficult to pick out individual people and even cars on the highways and overpasses, the streaking red taillights and the dirty, yellow-white headlights, the color of angel wings too long in the smoggy air, become one continuous river of light flowing amongst the glittering black rock of buildings. The deck creaked as it turned and the occasional thumps and bumps of the mismatched joints beneath the steel top were the only sounds as I glided around the hotel, which gave me the sensation of standing on a ballerina's shoulder as she turned a slow, continuous pirouette round the clouds. \r\n\r\nIn those moments when the mechanisms of turning fell silent, the faint sounds of the city could be heard rising from below, nothing distinct, more like the hum of a computer when you walk in the room, or the white noise of your refrigerator droning that you don't notice until you're sitting there late at night in the silence of an empty and sleeping house where suddenly the sound of the coils and Freon become an almost deafening noise. So with the sound of Bangkok from a great height, a height from which even Celine could not piss, though apparently the metal grating, which makes a nice brace for long exposure night shots, is the result of a team of Norwegians who base jumped from the deck in 2000. I tried to find out if anyone had ever committed suicide from the deck, but no one would give me an answer. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/baiyokepillar.jpg\" width=\"143\" height=\"200\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"\" />After having my fill of the heights I wandered down to the bar area two floors below the deck where supposedly the elevator ticket was good for a free drink, descending as I did into a candlelit darkness. Everyone seemed to be clearly out just as I arrived, but isn't that the way it always seems? I took a seat in one of the red vinyl chairs near the entrance just in front of a baluster that seemed to be imitating a telescope, starting small at the base and progressively growing out toward the ceiling, little circular shelves, a perfect matchbox race track complete with tubular florescent road lights that wound around, beads of blue light driving up the tiny path toward the ceiling. The tiny blue lights and a few candles were the only light in the bar. The darkness was occasionally punctuated by the lightning flashes of snap happy tourists at the window in front of the elevator apparently unaware of the limited range of such bulbs, but, sitting next to the window staring out at the city below the combined effect of the height and flashes of light gave me the feeling of sitting in some great stationary thunderhead, as if at any moment the wind might kick up and carry us westward dumping torrents of rain over the neighborhoods until finally we would dissipate over the South China Sea.\r\n\r\nAs I sat in the lounge sipping whiskey from a crystal cordial glass which somewhat contrasted with the otherwise futuristic decor, I tried to calculate how long you would fall from this height. I'm not real great at math, but think you have about 12 seconds to regret your choice, or if you're Norwegian, to open your chute.\r\n\r\n\"The city is a cathedral\" writes James Salter, \"its scent is dreams,\" and though he may have been referring to New York, his words ring true, perhaps to a lesser degree but true nevertheless, in every large city. Or maybe you just have to be a lover of cities to feel it. We seem to embrace the hive replicas built perhaps from memories embedded in our DNA; we feel safety in numbers, a desire to be close to one another, yet seek to find our own honey in the comb as it were. And so cities become our greatest cathedrals, redolent with our most venerable dreams reflected out of the darkness of our fears and nightmares. Perhaps this is why night in the city is so compelling—this mixture of dualities, the one place where we can see everything together and mingling. \r\n\r\nI always feel younger in cities, something about the city at night makes everything seem possible, the sound of the wheels on the concrete, the determined and purposeful stride of strangers around you on the sidewalks, everything seems to have its place in the city, it grows out of the darkness of night to bring light. Even in Bangkok as I walked to the Baiyoke Hotel I found myself thinking of New York and how much I miss it, particularly the sound of the wheels on sixth avenue in the rain, that wet hiss punctuated with splashes and the rain muted sound of horns; in October when it starts to turn cold and all you want to do is get off the street into somewhere warm with friends, but something makes you linger there on the street watching the endless glitter of lights and windows reflecting and refracting in some perpetual bouncing circle so that you can feel earth turning, as if the energy of its core were right beneath you.", "dek": "\"The city is a cathedral\" writes James Salter, \"its scent is dreams.\" Salter may have been referring to New York, but his words ring true in Bangkok. And the best place to feel it at night is on the river or from the top of the Baiyoke Sky Hotel — where a circular, revolving observation deck offers 360° views of the Bangkok nightscape.", "pub_date": "2006-01-03T20:38:27", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (100.5431413510555245 13.7509217795793184)", "location": 40, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/bangkokfrombaiyoke.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/bangkokfrombaiyoke.jpg", "meta_description": "\"The city is a cathedral\" writes James Salter and nowhere in Bangkok is it more so than in the view from the top of the Baiyoke Sky Hotel", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 34, "fields": {"title": "Buddha on the Bounty", "slug": "buddha-bounty", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span> went for a walk one evening along the concrete pathways that line the Chao Phraya river trying to work out a the solution to a broken bit of code that had gotten tangled up in my mind and in the project I was working on. I find that walking tends to work these sorts of things out; either that or they simply float away like butterflies in search of a different orchid. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/chaophrayasunset.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"172\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Sunset Chao Phraya River Bangkok, Thailand\" />I was walking toward the park where the last Tai Chi class was finishing up and the lights had just come on at the Phra Sumen Fort; it was just after sundown, the sky still glowed with the hazy goodbye that lingers for about half an hour as a red glow in the west. The park and the fort are familiar to me now in an odd way as I have walked by them nearly every evening for the past two weeks. It's strange how fast you can leave your familiar only to recreate it again wherever you go.</p>\n<p><break>\nFor some reason a story <a href=\"http://www.salon.com/books/int/1997/12/cov_si_16int.html\" title=\"Murakami interview in Salon\">Haruki Murakami</a> recounts in his novel <em>South of the Border, West of the Sun</em> about something called Siberia Hysteria, popped into my head. I have no real way of knowing if this is true or not, but it is a good story and like most things probably gets closer to the truth if it isn't true. Murikami's narrative of Siberia Hysteria tells us to imagine that we are farmers in Siberia. Difficult at first, it works better if maybe you picture Barstow or Amarillo, someplace desolate, and everyday before dawn you get up and work the fields until sundown. Your life as a Siberian farmer is essentially, as Hobbes said, \"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.\" [In context this remark of Hobbes' comes from refuting the then popular notion, which still carries some currency today (especially among western travelers in the east), that \"natural man,\" which is Rousseau's enlightened pre-civilized conception of utopia, somehow lived a life of great spiritual enlightenment etc.] But this life of farming in the tundra is your life and you have no other and so you live it day in and day out, excepting of course the wintertime. But then one day you wake up and find that you can no longer do what you have always done. Instead of heading to the fields to work that day like you did the day before, you throw down the plough and begin to walk west to the mythical land beyond the sun. You walk day and night, never stopping to eat or rest. </p>\n<p>The idea that one day something in you snaps and you are simply unable to do what it was you did the day before seems a common thread in the lives of my fellow travelers. Sometimes it is not you that snaps but the world around you, however, usually if the world around you has snapped chances are you were close to snapping too. And by snapping I don't mean anything necessarily bad. Though the word \"snap\" perhaps carries a negative connotation in this context, I do not mean it that way, this is not the sort of snap that postal workers were historically prone to (no offense to Andy's dad or my mother's cousin Dick), but a snap that is simply a hairpin turn of capacity. </p>\n<p>The Siberian Farmer story was in my mind as I walked along the river though in truth I was wondering about Jim Thompson more than the possibly mythic Siberian farmer. For those that have never heard of him, Jim Thompson was an American born expat, who came to Thailand toward the end of WWII. He was sent as a military attache to help organize a Thai resistance and drive out the Japanese. But by the time Thompson got to Thailand the Japanese had already surrendered. He returned to Thailand shortly thereafter under the auspices of Allen Dulles' OSS, the precursor to the CIA. </p>\n<p>I haven't been able to dig up much information on what it was that Thompson did for the OSS, but clearly he liked Thailand. Thompson stayed around for a while before returning to New York where he had been an architect. But something in him must have snapped because he returned to Thailand two years later with an interest in the then cottage industry of silk weaving. He proceeded to single handedly created the modern silk industry in Thailand and in the process became fantastically wealthy. He built, or rather collected, a beautiful traditional Thai home, gathering buildings from around the country and bringing them together in Bangkok. Today his house is a museum open to the public and I had recently visited the area, which was why Jim Thompson was on my mind.</p>\n<p>But it wasn't the house I was thinking of exactly, I was wondering what happened to Jim Thompson. In 1967 Thompson went on vacation with some friends in the Cameroon highlands in Malaysia. On the afternoon of March 27th his friends lay down to take a nap and Thompson said he was going for a walk. He was never seen again. What's more there has never been a single shred of evidence of him ever found. It certainly wasn't for lack of trying. Malaysia sent four hundred soldiers into the jungle to look for him. They found nothing. No evidence of foul play, whether it have been human or tiger playing the foul, and no evidence of, well, just no evidence at all. </p>\n<p>It seems unlikely at this point that we will ever get to know what became of Thompson. It's possible he was kidnapped. It's possible a very thorough and hungry tiger ate him. It's possible he willfully disappeared. His brief employment with the fledging CIA naturally leads to speculation about these things since any sort of legitimate trading operation would be just the thing the CIA loves to use as a cover, but the truth is no one knows and know one ever will, it's as if Thompson simply slipped through a worm hole into that land beyond the sun.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/thompsonorchids.jpg\" width=\"203\" height=\"260\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Orchids Jim Thompson's House Bangkok, Thailand\" />The house he left behind is gorgeous, but the real charm is the garden and its orchids. I wandered around the gardens which really aren't that large for some time and then found a bench near a collection of orchids, where I sat for the better part of an hour, occasionally taking a photograph or two, but mostly thinking about how human orchids are. Of course in the west were most familiar with the ones on corsages, but Orchidaceae is one of the largest families in the plant kingdom and ranges in flower from tiny little ones the size of a mosquito to others the size of dinner plate. But the thing that struck me about them, which I had never noticed before is that the flowers of orchids are almost perfectly bilateral, just like the human body. Perhaps we are drawn to orchids because they reflect our symmetry and the symmetry we try to find in our lives. </p>\n<p>Symmetry implies a kind of duality, but dualities are out of vogue I suppose, Einsteinian notions being more cutting edge these days, and yet dualities still seem to pop up where ever you look. After staring for a while at the various red and yellow and purple orchids dropping gently at the end of their stalks, I started to think that maybe an Einsteinian world and a world of dualities are not so much at odds as we might think. Take the orchid for instance; on one hand its flower is bilateral, symmetrical, dual sides built around the tongue where insects land, and yet within this seeming constraint, the diversity of the flower size and color is relative to the species producing it.</p>\n<p>Eventually I pulled myself away from the orchids and went to see the collections of Thai silk and artwork that the tour mentioned, but skipped over. Thompson, while not a Buddhist, was a great collector of Buddhist art. Thailand is saturated with images of the Buddha, saturated and venerated to the point that sometimes it seems like perhaps the message of Buddha has been overlooked in favor of his iconography. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/headlessbuddha.jpg\" width=\"133\" height=\"239\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"7th Century Buddha, Bangkok, Thailand\" />Like most religious inspirers I believe it's likely that Buddha would quietly shake his head at the things people do in his name, but some of the pieces at Thompson's house were old enough and humble enough that they seemed like something the Buddha himself might have collected, were he a collector of art, which he most certainly was not. The one piece that particularly fascinated me was a headless, armless Buddha which the tour guide claimed was from the 7th century. After making my way through the various displays of very old silk, I returned to the headless statue of Buddha.</p>\n<p>I know I shouldn't have and I never have in a museum, but something about the stone, the ragged edge where the head had once been contrasted with the smooth, worn surface the builder intended, I couldn't help myself. After making sure no one was around, I ran my hands down the side of the statue along the broken edge and then across the polished carved portion. It was cool to the touch and though it may have been my overactive imagination, the stone felt somehow alive. It was then that I realized I don't want to see any more images of the Buddha, that stone was as close to Buddha as we will ever get.</p>\n<p>What made this Buddha different was its humility; it was broken, cracked, worn and somehow human. Perhaps that's our ultimate fantasy of art, that our Pygmalion wishes be granted, that art might literally become alive to us. But it already is alive, the stone is living, living so slowly and quietly that it's imperceptible, but living nonetheless. I've always found the duality in the question, ‘does life reflect art or art reflect life' to be the most irritating of dualities. Clearly both happen. True the statue that stood before me was not as it had been designed, its head had come off by accident not purpose, but isn't that why we make art, too see it interact with history? Without history, art becomes airless and stale, it's for sale at the side of the street—a ten dollar trinket. Isn't that the two way street, art does not reflect life it molds itself in life's reflection and life does not reflect art, but recasts art with the passage of time. This headless Buddha is both a reflection of life, of Buddha and yet life has added its own truth, taken away the head, as if to say, be honest, you have no idea what the Buddha looked like, better that you should not even try.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/phrasumenfort.jpg\" width=\"203\" height=\"270\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Phra Sumen Fort, Bangkok, Thailand\" />I sat down on a bench beside the fort to rest for a little while with thoughts of orchids, Jim Thompson, headless Buddha and Siberian Hysteria whirling round my head in an endless dialogue with one another when a headline from the morning's paper jumped out at me, it had said that a team of researchers using some advanced facial recognition algorithm to calculate that the Mona Lisa is 83% happy. I don't know much about algorithms except that there seems to be newer and shinier ones everyday. Arthur C. Clarke once said, \"any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.\" Algorithms are, to lay-people like me, sufficiently advanced as to appear magical. So I reworded the news in my head: a team of researchers used magic to determine that the Mona Lisa is 83% happy. What a poor use of magic. Better to have lopped the head of Michelangelo's' David so that in fourteen centuries we will remember what we don't know.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span> went for a walk one evening along the concrete pathways that line the Chao Phraya river trying to work out a the solution to a broken bit of code that had gotten tangled up in my mind and in the project I was working on. I find that walking tends to work these sorts of things out; either that or they simply float away like butterflies in search of a different orchid. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/chaophrayasunset.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"172\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Sunset Chao Phraya River Bangkok, Thailand\" />I was walking toward the park where the last Tai Chi class was finishing up and the lights had just come on at the Phra Sumen Fort; it was just after sundown, the sky still glowed with the hazy goodbye that lingers for about half an hour as a red glow in the west. The park and the fort are familiar to me now in an odd way as I have walked by them nearly every evening for the past two weeks. It's strange how fast you can leave your familiar only to recreate it again wherever you go.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\nFor some reason a story <a href=\"http://www.salon.com/books/int/1997/12/cov_si_16int.html\" title=\"Murakami interview in Salon\">Haruki Murakami</a> recounts in his novel *South of the Border, West of the Sun* about something called Siberia Hysteria, popped into my head. I have no real way of knowing if this is true or not, but it is a good story and like most things probably gets closer to the truth if it isn't true. Murikami's narrative of Siberia Hysteria tells us to imagine that we are farmers in Siberia. Difficult at first, it works better if maybe you picture Barstow or Amarillo, someplace desolate, and everyday before dawn you get up and work the fields until sundown. Your life as a Siberian farmer is essentially, as Hobbes said, \"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.\" [In context this remark of Hobbes' comes from refuting the then popular notion, which still carries some currency today (especially among western travelers in the east), that \"natural man,\" which is Rousseau's enlightened pre-civilized conception of utopia, somehow lived a life of great spiritual enlightenment etc.] But this life of farming in the tundra is your life and you have no other and so you live it day in and day out, excepting of course the wintertime. But then one day you wake up and find that you can no longer do what you have always done. Instead of heading to the fields to work that day like you did the day before, you throw down the plough and begin to walk west to the mythical land beyond the sun. You walk day and night, never stopping to eat or rest. \r\n\r\nThe idea that one day something in you snaps and you are simply unable to do what it was you did the day before seems a common thread in the lives of my fellow travelers. Sometimes it is not you that snaps but the world around you, however, usually if the world around you has snapped chances are you were close to snapping too. And by snapping I don't mean anything necessarily bad. Though the word \"snap\" perhaps carries a negative connotation in this context, I do not mean it that way, this is not the sort of snap that postal workers were historically prone to (no offense to Andy's dad or my mother's cousin Dick), but a snap that is simply a hairpin turn of capacity. \r\n\r\nThe Siberian Farmer story was in my mind as I walked along the river though in truth I was wondering about Jim Thompson more than the possibly mythic Siberian farmer. For those that have never heard of him, Jim Thompson was an American born expat, who came to Thailand toward the end of WWII. He was sent as a military attache to help organize a Thai resistance and drive out the Japanese. But by the time Thompson got to Thailand the Japanese had already surrendered. He returned to Thailand shortly thereafter under the auspices of Allen Dulles' OSS, the precursor to the CIA. \r\n\r\nI haven't been able to dig up much information on what it was that Thompson did for the OSS, but clearly he liked Thailand. Thompson stayed around for a while before returning to New York where he had been an architect. But something in him must have snapped because he returned to Thailand two years later with an interest in the then cottage industry of silk weaving. He proceeded to single handedly created the modern silk industry in Thailand and in the process became fantastically wealthy. He built, or rather collected, a beautiful traditional Thai home, gathering buildings from around the country and bringing them together in Bangkok. Today his house is a museum open to the public and I had recently visited the area, which was why Jim Thompson was on my mind.\r\n\r\nBut it wasn't the house I was thinking of exactly, I was wondering what happened to Jim Thompson. In 1967 Thompson went on vacation with some friends in the Cameroon highlands in Malaysia. On the afternoon of March 27th his friends lay down to take a nap and Thompson said he was going for a walk. He was never seen again. What's more there has never been a single shred of evidence of him ever found. It certainly wasn't for lack of trying. Malaysia sent four hundred soldiers into the jungle to look for him. They found nothing. No evidence of foul play, whether it have been human or tiger playing the foul, and no evidence of, well, just no evidence at all. \r\n\r\nIt seems unlikely at this point that we will ever get to know what became of Thompson. It's possible he was kidnapped. It's possible a very thorough and hungry tiger ate him. It's possible he willfully disappeared. His brief employment with the fledging CIA naturally leads to speculation about these things since any sort of legitimate trading operation would be just the thing the CIA loves to use as a cover, but the truth is no one knows and know one ever will, it's as if Thompson simply slipped through a worm hole into that land beyond the sun.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/thompsonorchids.jpg\" width=\"203\" height=\"260\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Orchids Jim Thompson's House Bangkok, Thailand\" />The house he left behind is gorgeous, but the real charm is the garden and its orchids. I wandered around the gardens which really aren't that large for some time and then found a bench near a collection of orchids, where I sat for the better part of an hour, occasionally taking a photograph or two, but mostly thinking about how human orchids are. Of course in the west were most familiar with the ones on corsages, but Orchidaceae is one of the largest families in the plant kingdom and ranges in flower from tiny little ones the size of a mosquito to others the size of dinner plate. But the thing that struck me about them, which I had never noticed before is that the flowers of orchids are almost perfectly bilateral, just like the human body. Perhaps we are drawn to orchids because they reflect our symmetry and the symmetry we try to find in our lives. \r\n\r\nSymmetry implies a kind of duality, but dualities are out of vogue I suppose, Einsteinian notions being more cutting edge these days, and yet dualities still seem to pop up where ever you look. After staring for a while at the various red and yellow and purple orchids dropping gently at the end of their stalks, I started to think that maybe an Einsteinian world and a world of dualities are not so much at odds as we might think. Take the orchid for instance; on one hand its flower is bilateral, symmetrical, dual sides built around the tongue where insects land, and yet within this seeming constraint, the diversity of the flower size and color is relative to the species producing it.\r\n\r\nEventually I pulled myself away from the orchids and went to see the collections of Thai silk and artwork that the tour mentioned, but skipped over. Thompson, while not a Buddhist, was a great collector of Buddhist art. Thailand is saturated with images of the Buddha, saturated and venerated to the point that sometimes it seems like perhaps the message of Buddha has been overlooked in favor of his iconography. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/headlessbuddha.jpg\" width=\"133\" height=\"239\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"7th Century Buddha, Bangkok, Thailand\" />Like most religious inspirers I believe it's likely that Buddha would quietly shake his head at the things people do in his name, but some of the pieces at Thompson's house were old enough and humble enough that they seemed like something the Buddha himself might have collected, were he a collector of art, which he most certainly was not. The one piece that particularly fascinated me was a headless, armless Buddha which the tour guide claimed was from the 7th century. After making my way through the various displays of very old silk, I returned to the headless statue of Buddha.\r\n\r\nI know I shouldn't have and I never have in a museum, but something about the stone, the ragged edge where the head had once been contrasted with the smooth, worn surface the builder intended, I couldn't help myself. After making sure no one was around, I ran my hands down the side of the statue along the broken edge and then across the polished carved portion. It was cool to the touch and though it may have been my overactive imagination, the stone felt somehow alive. It was then that I realized I don't want to see any more images of the Buddha, that stone was as close to Buddha as we will ever get.\r\n\r\nWhat made this Buddha different was its humility; it was broken, cracked, worn and somehow human. Perhaps that's our ultimate fantasy of art, that our Pygmalion wishes be granted, that art might literally become alive to us. But it already is alive, the stone is living, living so slowly and quietly that it's imperceptible, but living nonetheless. I've always found the duality in the question, ‘does life reflect art or art reflect life' to be the most irritating of dualities. Clearly both happen. True the statue that stood before me was not as it had been designed, its head had come off by accident not purpose, but isn't that why we make art, too see it interact with history? Without history, art becomes airless and stale, it's for sale at the side of the street—a ten dollar trinket. Isn't that the two way street, art does not reflect life it molds itself in life's reflection and life does not reflect art, but recasts art with the passage of time. This headless Buddha is both a reflection of life, of Buddha and yet life has added its own truth, taken away the head, as if to say, be honest, you have no idea what the Buddha looked like, better that you should not even try.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/phrasumenfort.jpg\" width=\"203\" height=\"270\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Phra Sumen Fort, Bangkok, Thailand\" />I sat down on a bench beside the fort to rest for a little while with thoughts of orchids, Jim Thompson, headless Buddha and Siberian Hysteria whirling round my head in an endless dialogue with one another when a headline from the morning's paper jumped out at me, it had said that a team of researchers using some advanced facial recognition algorithm to calculate that the Mona Lisa is 83% happy. I don't know much about algorithms except that there seems to be newer and shinier ones everyday. Arthur C. Clarke once said, \"any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.\" Algorithms are, to lay-people like me, sufficiently advanced as to appear magical. So I reworded the news in my head: a team of researchers used magic to determine that the Mona Lisa is 83% happy. What a poor use of magic. Better to have lopped the head of Michelangelo's' David so that in fourteen centuries we will remember what we don't know.", "dek": "The house Jim Thompson left behind in Bangkok is gorgeous, but the real charm is the garden and its orchids. I wandered around the gardens which really aren't that large for some time and then found a bench near a collection of orchids, where I sat for the better part of an hour, occasionally taking a photograph or two, but mostly thinking about how human orchids are. ", "pub_date": "2006-01-05T18:43:03", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (100.5473041394459983 13.7261281264665289)", "location": 40, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/jimthompsonhouse.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/jimthompsonhouse.jpg", "meta_description": "Exploring Jim Thompson's house and orchid gardens in Bangkok Thailand.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 35, "fields": {"title": "You and I Are Disappearing", "slug": "you-and-i-are-disappearing", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span> had been watching the eastern horizon for what felt like an hour, waiting for some perceptible change that would signal the coming of dawn, but it wasn't until after the bus stopped and my fellow passengers and I disembarked at the 7-11 next to the truck stop, that I finally noticed a slight glow. </p>\n<p>It had been, as Snoopy would say, a dark and stormy night, except that it wasn't stormy, it was simply dark. I have become completely incapable of sleeping in any sort of moving vehicle. When warping space through movement, time slows down and while this may sound metaphorical given that a bus does not move through space fast enough to <em>actually</em> slow down time, it is not. The two weeks I spent in Bangkok flew by, but when I am moving from place to place time always seems to slow down, and not just the actual traveling time, but all time, even that spent in a restaurant or at night in bed with a book; everything happens slower when you're traveling. </p>\n<p><break>\nI got off the bus and studied my fellow travelers many of whom I spent the last three hours observing in their sleep, comparing the personas I had invented for them while they slept with those they really possessed. I was tired, bleary-eyed tired, but for some reason unable to sleep. I spent most of the journey listening to my iPod with Daniel Carter's <em>Luminescence</em> looping over and over, which made a particularly compelling soundtrack to the passage of the darkness outside the window and the small beam of light on the highway in front of the bus. </p>\n<p>I bought a bottle of orange juice and sat down on the curb to watch the sunrise, but found my attention drawn instead to a dying moth fluttering about on its back making near perfect circles on the concrete. It continued without rest the entire time I sat there and seemed to me to signify something, though in my foggy sleep-deprived state, I could not say what it was the moth's movements meant to me, merely that they meant something.</p>\n<p>By the time we actually reached Chiang Mai it was well past dawn and the city just beginning to stir. After securing a room and depositing my belonging I considered trying to nap, but in the end decided to explore the town. What better way to see Buddhist temples than in the dreamy fog of sleeplessness? Chiang Mai has over three hundred wats within the somewhat sprawling city limits, most of them reasonablely modern and in my opinion not worth visiting. I narrowed the field to three, which I figured was a nice round one percent. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/chiangmaielephant.jpg\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Wat Chiang Man, Chiang Mai, Thailand\" />The most striking of the three was the oldest, wat Chiang Man from which Chiang Mai takes its name. The main stupha near the rear of the temple compound was a decaying edifice of what appeared to be limestone. The structure was about average in height, that is to say around 30 meters, and near the base a number of carved elephants jutted out. The stone was weathered black and splotchy from various lichens and mosses and of course the rain and pollution. I have no doubt it is earmarked for renovation, but I find that I enjoy crumbling, weather beaten temples more than those that have been carefully restored. Perhaps it is that the wear and tear of ages spent in the tropical sun lends some authenticity of age to stone, a reminder that these structures were around even when my own culture was still wearing its metaphorical diapers. I have always thought of the standard timeline of history as a circle viewed from the side, and from this perspective there is a backside to what we normally think of as the passage of time. Rather than moving forward down a line, events recede and grow closer as they move through time; the weathering of the stone elephants was to me a reminder of this two dimensional movement of time, as if the stone had not only passed along a line, but also moved forward and backward, picking up here and there a spot or streak of rain or growth of moss.</p>\n<p>While all of the wats were interesting in their own way, none compelled me to linger long and, finding myself at loose ends, I decided to ruin my round number and head to one more wat, wat Umong, located just outside the old city. I caught a ride with a songthaew (a truck taxi basically) to the entrance and wandered in. The main appeal of wat Umong was that, unlike the wats in the city, it sprawled out over a large forested hill. The forest reminded me a little of the area around Athens GA, but with no kudzu, a sort of forest I've never been able to put my finger on, not true jungle, but with lots of undergrowth and creeping vines crawling up the trunks of hardwood trees, and then broad leafed shrubs with white flowers, and an endless variety of ground cover much of it sprouting small purple flowers, even an orchid or two clinging to the trunk of an oak near the entrance; not what I would call jungle and not what I would call deciduous.</p>\n<p>Most wats have a central focal point, some particular image of Buddha or an old temple building or something that creates a locus around which everything else has been constructed, but wat Umong lacked that focal point entirely. Various paved trails took off in all directions and I could see a number of buildings poking their characteristic pointed roofs up into the branches of nearby trees. Toward the back of the wat was a network of tunnels quite obviously dug out by human means. According to the monks I spoke to no one knows who originally dug the caves; the local legend is that a solitary monk came here to meditate and created the place himself. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/watumongtunnel.jpg\" width=\"172\" height=\"174\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Wat UMong, Chiang Mai, Thailand\" />And though there is no historical evidence to support that story, I couldn't help but thinking of that solitary and one might think, maybe a little crazy, monk digging these tunnels with his bare hands. Such thoughts made the otherwise rather sterile and plain tunnels invested with an idiosyncratic quality, as if perhaps this fictitious monk were trying to get at some point in the tunnels, not some physical thing, but rather convey some mood or meaning through design alone.</p>\n<p>Perhaps the reason wat Umong has no centrality is that the main image of Buddha at the wat is rather frightening looking and represents the Buddha at the end of one of his failed early attempts at enlightenment. For those that aren't familiar with the life of Buddha, Buddha tried unsuccessfully to reach enlightenment through various methods before he found the middle way as it is known. The method represented at wat Umong shows Buddha as an emaciated skeleton at the end of a long period of self-mortification. What was so striking about this statue once one gets past the near skeletal appearance of Buddha were the eyes which seemed to glow with, for lack of a better word, hunger. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/emaciatedbuddha.jpg\" width=\"183\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Emaciated Buddha, Wat Umong, Chiang Mai, Thailand\" />But not the calm sort of hunger that one might imagine the Buddha to have, this was more of a ravenous devouring and vaguely frightening hunger. The sort of piercing stare that threatens to engulf you when you step into it. </p>\n<p>After loitering for a while in the peripherals of Buddha's famished gaze I made my way down to a small pagoda near the fishpond where, as the sign near the entrance had claimed, there would be an informal discussion on Buddhism with a monk. Several other westerners slowly trickled down as the appointed time arrived, including an older American man I had spoken to earlier. He had asked where I was from and I generally just answer that with the last place I've lived, which as it turned out he had also lived in. We spoke for a while of weather and the Red Socks and other things only New Englanders really care about and then I had wandered off to explore.</p>\n<p>The session began slowly, no one wanted to ask any questions and my sleep-deprived mind was too slow to formulate anything intelligent enough to say out loud. For their part the monks were perfectly comfortable with the vast periods of silence which I could tell left many of those in attendance feeling a bit awkward. It's not often you meet people who are comfortable with long periods of silence. Eventually a few questions were voiced, mostly technical things like the difference between how monks practice Buddhism versus what you could call a layperson practices Buddhism, or what the goals of meditation are. I had a number of questions in my mind by then, but for some reason found myself unwilling to ask them. Part of me suspected that perhaps I did not really want to know the answers as the more I learn of Buddhism, the less I agree with it.</p>\n<p>No matter where the questions began, in the course of his response the monk kept coming back to the phrase \"cause and effect,\" which in his pronunciation sounded more like \"cause and affect.\" This slight semantic difference became somehow telling to me the more he repeated it, as if his own language were betraying him. I have struggled to understand Buddhism as it is practiced in Thailand since I arrived. Much of what I have seen at wats has been out of line with what I know of the Buddha's teachings and indeed the monks confirmed that as with any religion, many of those who follow Buddhism do not really practice what the Buddha taught. The chief thing the monk seemed concerned with was the relationship between the causes of action and effect of those actions. But his, and perhaps Buddhism's in general, interpretation of that relationship seemed to me woefully simplified.</p>\n<p>I kept wondering what Buddhism would say to a theory like chaos mathematics. I did not ask because really I did not want to know, I prefer to wonder about these sort of things rather than have any definitive answer, assuming a definitive answer to such a nebulous question were even possible. But I failed to see how one could ever really determine a relationship between cause and effect given that the chain of events that follow from any one thought or action are far too wide reaching, complicated and extensive for the human mind to keep track of, and even if we were able to follow the chain clearly, it is unlikely that just because one's intentions were good, that it necessarily follows that the outcome of those intentions are positive for all that end up being effected by it. </p>\n<p>Somewhere in the middle of the talk I realized that, while it may have betrayed my westernness in thinking so, I believe in randomness and ambiguity and patterns so complex as to be indecipherable and to try and find the order and meaning within them is to miss the point of their existence. There is actually a word for this idea, pareidolia, which means simply the fanciful perception of meaning in something that is actually ambiguous, and this is perhaps what troubled me about the monks ideas, not that they were wrong, but that they strove to remove all ambiguity from life. I thought again of the moth fluttering on the concrete; the pattern of his dying arcs could hold some meaning if I chose to attach one to the other, but at the same time, perhaps the deeper meaning lay with my own awareness that I was creating it. That is to say, perhaps the moth was simply dying and any connection beyond that was an act of my imagination, not something inherent in the moth's death, which isn't to say that that connection shouldn't be made, but merely to acknowledge that the connection arose from the imagination. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/umongfishpond.jpg\" width=\"165\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Umong fishpond, Chiang Mai, Thailand\" />Eventually as new people arrived questions and answers began to repeat themselves and as discreetly as possible I slipped away and wandered down to the shores of the pond to watch the cumulous clouds forming over the distant hills. I sat for a while on a small bench near the shore thinking of the clouds and the patterns and shapes we sometimes see in them, which like the moth's circle are inventions of our mind at play. As I stood to walk home it occurred to me that perhaps that the joy of life is not to puzzle out the connections between things, but to play amongst them and with them.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span> had been watching the eastern horizon for what felt like an hour, waiting for some perceptible change that would signal the coming of dawn, but it wasn't until after the bus stopped and my fellow passengers and I disembarked at the 7-11 next to the truck stop, that I finally noticed a slight glow. \r\n\r\nIt had been, as Snoopy would say, a dark and stormy night, except that it wasn't stormy, it was simply dark. I have become completely incapable of sleeping in any sort of moving vehicle. When warping space through movement, time slows down and while this may sound metaphorical given that a bus does not move through space fast enough to *actually* slow down time, it is not. The two weeks I spent in Bangkok flew by, but when I am moving from place to place time always seems to slow down, and not just the actual traveling time, but all time, even that spent in a restaurant or at night in bed with a book; everything happens slower when you're traveling. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\nI got off the bus and studied my fellow travelers many of whom I spent the last three hours observing in their sleep, comparing the personas I had invented for them while they slept with those they really possessed. I was tired, bleary-eyed tired, but for some reason unable to sleep. I spent most of the journey listening to my iPod with Daniel Carter's *Luminescence* looping over and over, which made a particularly compelling soundtrack to the passage of the darkness outside the window and the small beam of light on the highway in front of the bus. \r\n\r\nI bought a bottle of orange juice and sat down on the curb to watch the sunrise, but found my attention drawn instead to a dying moth fluttering about on its back making near perfect circles on the concrete. It continued without rest the entire time I sat there and seemed to me to signify something, though in my foggy sleep-deprived state, I could not say what it was the moth's movements meant to me, merely that they meant something.\r\n\r\nBy the time we actually reached Chiang Mai it was well past dawn and the city just beginning to stir. After securing a room and depositing my belonging I considered trying to nap, but in the end decided to explore the town. What better way to see Buddhist temples than in the dreamy fog of sleeplessness? Chiang Mai has over three hundred wats within the somewhat sprawling city limits, most of them reasonablely modern and in my opinion not worth visiting. I narrowed the field to three, which I figured was a nice round one percent. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/chiangmaielephant.jpg\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Wat Chiang Man, Chiang Mai, Thailand\" />The most striking of the three was the oldest, wat Chiang Man from which Chiang Mai takes its name. The main stupha near the rear of the temple compound was a decaying edifice of what appeared to be limestone. The structure was about average in height, that is to say around 30 meters, and near the base a number of carved elephants jutted out. The stone was weathered black and splotchy from various lichens and mosses and of course the rain and pollution. I have no doubt it is earmarked for renovation, but I find that I enjoy crumbling, weather beaten temples more than those that have been carefully restored. Perhaps it is that the wear and tear of ages spent in the tropical sun lends some authenticity of age to stone, a reminder that these structures were around even when my own culture was still wearing its metaphorical diapers. I have always thought of the standard timeline of history as a circle viewed from the side, and from this perspective there is a backside to what we normally think of as the passage of time. Rather than moving forward down a line, events recede and grow closer as they move through time; the weathering of the stone elephants was to me a reminder of this two dimensional movement of time, as if the stone had not only passed along a line, but also moved forward and backward, picking up here and there a spot or streak of rain or growth of moss.\r\n\r\nWhile all of the wats were interesting in their own way, none compelled me to linger long and, finding myself at loose ends, I decided to ruin my round number and head to one more wat, wat Umong, located just outside the old city. I caught a ride with a songthaew (a truck taxi basically) to the entrance and wandered in. The main appeal of wat Umong was that, unlike the wats in the city, it sprawled out over a large forested hill. The forest reminded me a little of the area around Athens GA, but with no kudzu, a sort of forest I've never been able to put my finger on, not true jungle, but with lots of undergrowth and creeping vines crawling up the trunks of hardwood trees, and then broad leafed shrubs with white flowers, and an endless variety of ground cover much of it sprouting small purple flowers, even an orchid or two clinging to the trunk of an oak near the entrance; not what I would call jungle and not what I would call deciduous.\r\n\r\nMost wats have a central focal point, some particular image of Buddha or an old temple building or something that creates a locus around which everything else has been constructed, but wat Umong lacked that focal point entirely. Various paved trails took off in all directions and I could see a number of buildings poking their characteristic pointed roofs up into the branches of nearby trees. Toward the back of the wat was a network of tunnels quite obviously dug out by human means. According to the monks I spoke to no one knows who originally dug the caves; the local legend is that a solitary monk came here to meditate and created the place himself. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/watumongtunnel.jpg\" width=\"172\" height=\"174\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Wat UMong, Chiang Mai, Thailand\" />And though there is no historical evidence to support that story, I couldn't help but thinking of that solitary and one might think, maybe a little crazy, monk digging these tunnels with his bare hands. Such thoughts made the otherwise rather sterile and plain tunnels invested with an idiosyncratic quality, as if perhaps this fictitious monk were trying to get at some point in the tunnels, not some physical thing, but rather convey some mood or meaning through design alone.\r\n\r\nPerhaps the reason wat Umong has no centrality is that the main image of Buddha at the wat is rather frightening looking and represents the Buddha at the end of one of his failed early attempts at enlightenment. For those that aren't familiar with the life of Buddha, Buddha tried unsuccessfully to reach enlightenment through various methods before he found the middle way as it is known. The method represented at wat Umong shows Buddha as an emaciated skeleton at the end of a long period of self-mortification. What was so striking about this statue once one gets past the near skeletal appearance of Buddha were the eyes which seemed to glow with, for lack of a better word, hunger. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/emaciatedbuddha.jpg\" width=\"183\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Emaciated Buddha, Wat Umong, Chiang Mai, Thailand\" />But not the calm sort of hunger that one might imagine the Buddha to have, this was more of a ravenous devouring and vaguely frightening hunger. The sort of piercing stare that threatens to engulf you when you step into it. \r\n\r\nAfter loitering for a while in the peripherals of Buddha's famished gaze I made my way down to a small pagoda near the fishpond where, as the sign near the entrance had claimed, there would be an informal discussion on Buddhism with a monk. Several other westerners slowly trickled down as the appointed time arrived, including an older American man I had spoken to earlier. He had asked where I was from and I generally just answer that with the last place I've lived, which as it turned out he had also lived in. We spoke for a while of weather and the Red Socks and other things only New Englanders really care about and then I had wandered off to explore.\r\n\r\nThe session began slowly, no one wanted to ask any questions and my sleep-deprived mind was too slow to formulate anything intelligent enough to say out loud. For their part the monks were perfectly comfortable with the vast periods of silence which I could tell left many of those in attendance feeling a bit awkward. It's not often you meet people who are comfortable with long periods of silence. Eventually a few questions were voiced, mostly technical things like the difference between how monks practice Buddhism versus what you could call a layperson practices Buddhism, or what the goals of meditation are. I had a number of questions in my mind by then, but for some reason found myself unwilling to ask them. Part of me suspected that perhaps I did not really want to know the answers as the more I learn of Buddhism, the less I agree with it.\r\n\r\nNo matter where the questions began, in the course of his response the monk kept coming back to the phrase \"cause and effect,\" which in his pronunciation sounded more like \"cause and affect.\" This slight semantic difference became somehow telling to me the more he repeated it, as if his own language were betraying him. I have struggled to understand Buddhism as it is practiced in Thailand since I arrived. Much of what I have seen at wats has been out of line with what I know of the Buddha's teachings and indeed the monks confirmed that as with any religion, many of those who follow Buddhism do not really practice what the Buddha taught. The chief thing the monk seemed concerned with was the relationship between the causes of action and effect of those actions. But his, and perhaps Buddhism's in general, interpretation of that relationship seemed to me woefully simplified.\r\n\r\nI kept wondering what Buddhism would say to a theory like chaos mathematics. I did not ask because really I did not want to know, I prefer to wonder about these sort of things rather than have any definitive answer, assuming a definitive answer to such a nebulous question were even possible. But I failed to see how one could ever really determine a relationship between cause and effect given that the chain of events that follow from any one thought or action are far too wide reaching, complicated and extensive for the human mind to keep track of, and even if we were able to follow the chain clearly, it is unlikely that just because one's intentions were good, that it necessarily follows that the outcome of those intentions are positive for all that end up being effected by it. \r\n\r\nSomewhere in the middle of the talk I realized that, while it may have betrayed my westernness in thinking so, I believe in randomness and ambiguity and patterns so complex as to be indecipherable and to try and find the order and meaning within them is to miss the point of their existence. There is actually a word for this idea, pareidolia, which means simply the fanciful perception of meaning in something that is actually ambiguous, and this is perhaps what troubled me about the monks ideas, not that they were wrong, but that they strove to remove all ambiguity from life. I thought again of the moth fluttering on the concrete; the pattern of his dying arcs could hold some meaning if I chose to attach one to the other, but at the same time, perhaps the deeper meaning lay with my own awareness that I was creating it. That is to say, perhaps the moth was simply dying and any connection beyond that was an act of my imagination, not something inherent in the moth's death, which isn't to say that that connection shouldn't be made, but merely to acknowledge that the connection arose from the imagination. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/umongfishpond.jpg\" width=\"165\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Umong fishpond, Chiang Mai, Thailand\" />Eventually as new people arrived questions and answers began to repeat themselves and as discreetly as possible I slipped away and wandered down to the shores of the pond to watch the cumulous clouds forming over the distant hills. I sat for a while on a small bench near the shore thinking of the clouds and the patterns and shapes we sometimes see in them, which like the moth's circle are inventions of our mind at play. As I stood to walk home it occurred to me that perhaps that the joy of life is not to puzzle out the connections between things, but to play amongst them and with them.", "dek": "The all night bus reached Chiang Mai well past dawn, the city already beginning to stir. I considered trying to nap, but in the end decided to explore the town. What better way to see Buddhist temples than in the dreamy fog of sleeplessness? Chiang Mai has over three hundred wats within the somewhat sprawling city limits, most of them reasonably modern and, in my opinion, not worth visiting. I narrowed the field to three, which I figured was a nice round one percent. \r\n", "pub_date": "2006-01-12T00:52:30", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (98.9876746993554946 18.7870423436136527)", "location": 39, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/changmaiumong.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/changmaiumong.jpg", "meta_description": "Exploring the Wats of Chiang Mai, Thailand, particularly Wat UMong, home of the emaciated Buddha statue.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 36, "fields": {"title": "The King of Carrot Flowers", "slug": "king-carrot-flowers", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>he light outside the windows was still a pre-dawn inky blue when the freezing cold water hit my back. A cold shower at six thirty in the morning is infinitely more powerful, albeit not at long lasting, as a cup of coffee. After dropping my body temperature a few degrees and having no towel to dry off with, just a dirty shirt and ceaseless ceiling fan, a cup of tea seemed like a good idea so I stopped in at the restaurant downstairs and, after a cup of hot water with some Jasmine leaves swirling at the bottom of it, I climbed on my rental motorbike and set out for Doi Inthanan National Park.\n<break></p>\n<p>Normally such early morning antics are not part of my travel routine but it had already been made clear to me that if I hoped to make the 200 km journey to the highest point in Thailand in a single day, I had better start moving early. I rode out of Chiang Mai with painfully clenched fists and teeth that chattered uncontrollably at times, but the freedom of having my own transportation paled any discomforts the cold brought about. I had forgotten what freedom a vehicle of one's own can provide and I had never known the freedom that a motorbike provides. A motorbike, whether it be a clumsy scooter like mine or a more powerful, faster motorcycle, is to driving a car as body surfing is to using a board, without the board or the car there is in both case a kind intimacy with ones environment, the pavement, the curbs and lines of paint, the wind and the whip of passing cars and trucks, the grass growing in the cracks whizzing past below your feet, all of these things and a million other details you don't have the time to absorb become a symphony of movement not unlike the breaking of a wave or the rolling of distant thunder, a singular sensation which absorbs and is absorbed by your body whole and instantaneously and yet seems to stretch on forever.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/doifirstwaterfall.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Waterfall Doi Inthanan National Park Thailand\" />After a 60 or so kilometer ride on the main highway south of Chiang Mai I turned off onto the national park road and began to ascend through the dry grassy chaparral foothills and into the forest proper. My first stop was a small but peaceful waterfall. In fact nearly all my stops on the way to the summit were waterfalls except for one Karin village where I had lunch.</p>\n<p>My chief reason for coming to the park was the lady slipper orchid. There are many kinds of lady slipper orchids, which as you might imagine has a flower that resembled a lady's slipper, but the particular variety found here is only found here and nowhere else in the world (in the wild anyway).</p>\n<p>I don't know why I have become obsessed with orchids, but every since sitting at Jim Thompson's house staring at the that orchid, I have been studying up on them and wanting to see more of them. The previous day I rode the motorbike up to the Mae Sa Valley where there were a number of orchid farms and a very large botanical garden. It was at the Queen Sikrit Botanical Garden that I first read of the Lady Slipper Orchid that resides solely in Doi Inthanan National Park, and the specificity of such an ecological niche fascinated me. While wandering slowly through various greenhouses full of the same purple and orange and yellow orchids I had seen in Bangkok and elsewhere, I began to wonder why it was that some are right here, right everywhere, while others can require searches that lead to the far ends of the earth whether that be deep in the jungles of Thailand or the keys of Florida. What precisely is that drives evolution in such narrow back alleys that it can produce a plant on one mountain or one corner of a swamp and no other? Do all the pieces ultimately fit that tightly, and if they do then what does it mean when it turns out that the piece does not fit? What if the mountain changes, the icy northern glaciers begin to grow, the temperature drops and the orchid finds itself alone, stranded atop a mountain it never intended to climb?</p>\n<p>The basic orchid flower is composed of three sepals which make up the outer whorl, that region which we would generally think of as the flower, but then within this, if one studies the structure closer, that are three additional petals which form an inner whorl. The \"medial\" petal, which I have come to think of as the axis around which the rest of the petals turn, that lateral line which must be split, if only in the imagination, to arrival at the bilateral structure which I have previously written of, is usually modified and enlarged forming a tongue or lip-like platform for pollinators. The lady slipper belongs the family Pathiopedilum, in which the two lower sepals of the flower become fused together and the lip, instead of being flat, takes the form of a slipper. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/doirock.jpg\" width=\"227\" height=\"170\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Polished Rock Doi Inthanan National Park, Thailand\" />From the first waterfall where I lingered maybe an hour studying the water polished rocks along the shore of the river above the falls, I continued upward pausing at the Wachiratan waterfall. The Wachiratan falls were larger and generated a misty shroud of white around there base with rainbows arcing out through the white spray moving and receding as I walked about changing my angle from the sun. To escape from the chill of the spray I wandered down the riverbed among oaks and cashew trees with Tamarind trees reaching high into the sky and massive impenetrable stands of bamboo dark and foreboding in the growing afternoon shadows of the forest floor.</p>\n<p>I had the rather optimistic idea that perhaps I could find a Lady Slipper Orchid just clinging to a tree or sprouting out of a rock, but with a flower that rare, one does not just stumble across it. I tried without success to figure out why I even cared, there are after all billion and billions of flowers in the world, why did I care for this one? Perhaps the fascination in some way comes from the simple word slipper; it would not be the first time I had gone out of my way simply because of a well-chosen word. \"Slipper\" has a number of childhood connotations but perhaps the most obvious is Cinderella. And this connection is perhaps not entirely accidental since as we all know there was only one Cinderella, only one slipper, and so here, only one flower, only one mountain.</p>\n<p>Near the summit I paused to let some trucks pass and then waited a while not wanting to ride in the trail of exhaust they left behind. I sat on the bike staring at a pinkish leafed tree which stood out against the otherwise green hillsides. Behind the pink tree an afternoon thunder cloud drifted slowly by. The appeal I realized of Cinderella is the singularity of her existence. Just as this tree caught my eye because of its rarity, so to Cinderella captures our imagination because she is markedly different, rare we might say. And I understand the prince's obsession for once one has seen the rarist of flowers, the rest no longer hold sway. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/doipinktree.jpg\" width=\"159\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Pink Tree Doi Inthanan National Park, Thailand\" />We, like the prince, will move heaven and earth to find that which is rare and we cling to it, not unlike an orchid clings to a rock, once we have found it. And if we lose the rare things we seek it is not simply a brokenheartedness that follows, but a dissolution of life itself, as if, were the Lady Slipper to go extinct, what would be lost is not the personal, the plant, the flower, but the universal, the idea of the plant, the idea of the flower.</p>\n<p>At the summit I rested for a while beside a sign that read \"The Highest Point in Thailand,\" which I did not realize was the case, and perhaps not without some irony, was clearly not the highest point in Thailand, which required a five minute walk up from the parking area to the summit of the hill. At the summit after guzzling a bottle of ice-cold water and studying the map for a while I headed back down to a checkpoint I had passed on the way up. This checkpoint according to my information had one of the rare lady slipper orchids growing on the back of the soldiers quarters which the rangers would be happy to show you, if you stopped to ask.</p>\n<p>It took only ten minutes of motorless gliding down the hill to reach the checkpoint where I inquired after the orchid. Unfortunately it turned out that the plant in question had died. With little time left before sunset I was forced to give up the search for the lady slipper orchid. I sat for a minute on the steps outside thinking what a different tale if Cinderella had never been found, if the prince simply wandered about forever clutching a glass slipper, never finding a foot that fit, until old and with a long beard perhaps, he wandered out of the Kingdom stopping perhaps at a checkpoint not unlike this one, not unlike the one Lao Tzu is said to have stopped at, where the guards said, please, could you write down what you know? To which the prince might well have answered simply, \"I will never understand…\"</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>he light outside the windows was still a pre-dawn inky blue when the freezing cold water hit my back. A cold shower at six thirty in the morning is infinitely more powerful, albeit not at long lasting, as a cup of coffee. After dropping my body temperature a few degrees and having no towel to dry off with, just a dirty shirt and ceaseless ceiling fan, a cup of tea seemed like a good idea so I stopped in at the restaurant downstairs and, after a cup of hot water with some Jasmine leaves swirling at the bottom of it, I climbed on my rental motorbike and set out for Doi Inthanan National Park.\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nNormally such early morning antics are not part of my travel routine but it had already been made clear to me that if I hoped to make the 200 km journey to the highest point in Thailand in a single day, I had better start moving early. I rode out of Chiang Mai with painfully clenched fists and teeth that chattered uncontrollably at times, but the freedom of having my own transportation paled any discomforts the cold brought about. I had forgotten what freedom a vehicle of one's own can provide and I had never known the freedom that a motorbike provides. A motorbike, whether it be a clumsy scooter like mine or a more powerful, faster motorcycle, is to driving a car as body surfing is to using a board, without the board or the car there is in both case a kind intimacy with ones environment, the pavement, the curbs and lines of paint, the wind and the whip of passing cars and trucks, the grass growing in the cracks whizzing past below your feet, all of these things and a million other details you don't have the time to absorb become a symphony of movement not unlike the breaking of a wave or the rolling of distant thunder, a singular sensation which absorbs and is absorbed by your body whole and instantaneously and yet seems to stretch on forever.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/doifirstwaterfall.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Waterfall Doi Inthanan National Park Thailand\" />After a 60 or so kilometer ride on the main highway south of Chiang Mai I turned off onto the national park road and began to ascend through the dry grassy chaparral foothills and into the forest proper. My first stop was a small but peaceful waterfall. In fact nearly all my stops on the way to the summit were waterfalls except for one Karin village where I had lunch.\r\n\r\nMy chief reason for coming to the park was the lady slipper orchid. There are many kinds of lady slipper orchids, which as you might imagine has a flower that resembled a lady's slipper, but the particular variety found here is only found here and nowhere else in the world (in the wild anyway).\r\n\r\nI don't know why I have become obsessed with orchids, but every since sitting at Jim Thompson's house staring at the that orchid, I have been studying up on them and wanting to see more of them. The previous day I rode the motorbike up to the Mae Sa Valley where there were a number of orchid farms and a very large botanical garden. It was at the Queen Sikrit Botanical Garden that I first read of the Lady Slipper Orchid that resides solely in Doi Inthanan National Park, and the specificity of such an ecological niche fascinated me. While wandering slowly through various greenhouses full of the same purple and orange and yellow orchids I had seen in Bangkok and elsewhere, I began to wonder why it was that some are right here, right everywhere, while others can require searches that lead to the far ends of the earth whether that be deep in the jungles of Thailand or the keys of Florida. What precisely is that drives evolution in such narrow back alleys that it can produce a plant on one mountain or one corner of a swamp and no other? Do all the pieces ultimately fit that tightly, and if they do then what does it mean when it turns out that the piece does not fit? What if the mountain changes, the icy northern glaciers begin to grow, the temperature drops and the orchid finds itself alone, stranded atop a mountain it never intended to climb?\r\n\r\nThe basic orchid flower is composed of three sepals which make up the outer whorl, that region which we would generally think of as the flower, but then within this, if one studies the structure closer, that are three additional petals which form an inner whorl. The \"medial\" petal, which I have come to think of as the axis around which the rest of the petals turn, that lateral line which must be split, if only in the imagination, to arrival at the bilateral structure which I have previously written of, is usually modified and enlarged forming a tongue or lip-like platform for pollinators. The lady slipper belongs the family Pathiopedilum, in which the two lower sepals of the flower become fused together and the lip, instead of being flat, takes the form of a slipper. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/doirock.jpg\" width=\"227\" height=\"170\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Polished Rock Doi Inthanan National Park, Thailand\" />From the first waterfall where I lingered maybe an hour studying the water polished rocks along the shore of the river above the falls, I continued upward pausing at the Wachiratan waterfall. The Wachiratan falls were larger and generated a misty shroud of white around there base with rainbows arcing out through the white spray moving and receding as I walked about changing my angle from the sun. To escape from the chill of the spray I wandered down the riverbed among oaks and cashew trees with Tamarind trees reaching high into the sky and massive impenetrable stands of bamboo dark and foreboding in the growing afternoon shadows of the forest floor.\r\n\r\nI had the rather optimistic idea that perhaps I could find a Lady Slipper Orchid just clinging to a tree or sprouting out of a rock, but with a flower that rare, one does not just stumble across it. I tried without success to figure out why I even cared, there are after all billion and billions of flowers in the world, why did I care for this one? Perhaps the fascination in some way comes from the simple word slipper; it would not be the first time I had gone out of my way simply because of a well-chosen word. \"Slipper\" has a number of childhood connotations but perhaps the most obvious is Cinderella. And this connection is perhaps not entirely accidental since as we all know there was only one Cinderella, only one slipper, and so here, only one flower, only one mountain.\r\n\r\nNear the summit I paused to let some trucks pass and then waited a while not wanting to ride in the trail of exhaust they left behind. I sat on the bike staring at a pinkish leafed tree which stood out against the otherwise green hillsides. Behind the pink tree an afternoon thunder cloud drifted slowly by. The appeal I realized of Cinderella is the singularity of her existence. Just as this tree caught my eye because of its rarity, so to Cinderella captures our imagination because she is markedly different, rare we might say. And I understand the prince's obsession for once one has seen the rarist of flowers, the rest no longer hold sway. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/doipinktree.jpg\" width=\"159\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Pink Tree Doi Inthanan National Park, Thailand\" />We, like the prince, will move heaven and earth to find that which is rare and we cling to it, not unlike an orchid clings to a rock, once we have found it. And if we lose the rare things we seek it is not simply a brokenheartedness that follows, but a dissolution of life itself, as if, were the Lady Slipper to go extinct, what would be lost is not the personal, the plant, the flower, but the universal, the idea of the plant, the idea of the flower.\r\n\r\nAt the summit I rested for a while beside a sign that read \"The Highest Point in Thailand,\" which I did not realize was the case, and perhaps not without some irony, was clearly not the highest point in Thailand, which required a five minute walk up from the parking area to the summit of the hill. At the summit after guzzling a bottle of ice-cold water and studying the map for a while I headed back down to a checkpoint I had passed on the way up. This checkpoint according to my information had one of the rare lady slipper orchids growing on the back of the soldiers quarters which the rangers would be happy to show you, if you stopped to ask.\r\n\r\nIt took only ten minutes of motorless gliding down the hill to reach the checkpoint where I inquired after the orchid. Unfortunately it turned out that the plant in question had died. With little time left before sunset I was forced to give up the search for the lady slipper orchid. I sat for a minute on the steps outside thinking what a different tale if Cinderella had never been found, if the prince simply wandered about forever clutching a glass slipper, never finding a foot that fit, until old and with a long beard perhaps, he wandered out of the Kingdom stopping perhaps at a checkpoint not unlike this one, not unlike the one Lao Tzu is said to have stopped at, where the guards said, please, could you write down what you know? To which the prince might well have answered simply, \"I will never understand…\"", "dek": "The light outside the windows was still a pre-dawn inky blue when the freezing cold water hit my back. A cold shower at six thirty in the morning is infinitely more powerful, albeit not at long lasting, as a cup of coffee. After dropping my body temperature a few degrees and having no towel to dry off with, just a dirty shirt and ceaseless ceiling fan, a cup of tea seemed like a good idea so I stopped in at the restaurant downstairs and, after a cup of hot water with some Jasmine leaves swirling at the bottom of it, I climbed on my rental motorbike and set out for Doi Inthanan National Park.", "pub_date": "2006-01-17T18:53:17", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (98.8426208358502834 19.3150313814462677)", "location": 38, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/doiinthanonnp.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/maesaorchids.jpg", "meta_description": "An early morning motorbike ride in search of the Lady Slipper Orchid in Doi Inthanan National Park, just outside of Chang Mai Thailand", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 37, "fields": {"title": "Down the River", "slug": "down-river", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">M</span>orning in Chiang Khong Thailand revealed itself as a foggy, and not a little mysterious, affair with the far shore of the Mekong, the Laos shore, almost completely hidden in a veil of mist. The first ferry crossed at eight and not wanting to get caught in the mess of tourists crossing that day, I made sure to be on the first ferry.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/mekongfog.jpg\" width=\"239\" height=\"139\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Morning Mist Mekong River Laos\" />After crossing through the respective borders and getting my passport stamped, I made my way up the road to the docks where I was to catch a slow boat to Luang Prabang. My head was full of statistics as I walked through the bustling border town of Huey Xui, Laos. I half expected to see a sign that said welcome to the Mekong Valley where the U.S. led troops of Laos and Thailand never fought a secret war, where there were not one and a half more bombing sorties flown than in all of Vietnam, where the total metric tonnage of bombs dropped was not 450,000 which of course, was not a whooping half ton per man, woman and child in Laos, because if it is not written down, it did not happen. But there was no commemoration of the terrible legacy that still haunts Laos.</p>\n<p>You would never even realize a war had been fought here from aboard the slow boat where I and roughly sixty other passengers sat in cramped quarters watching the green jungle covered hills slide past. Indeed it was hard to imagine that anyone would want to invest the staggering $2 million dollars a day every day for nine years that the U.S. invested into the war in Laos. And yet the fact remains, Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the history of warfare.</p>\n<p>The slow boat, which is not necessary slow, it just isn't a speedboat several of which passed us in the course of our two day journey and without exception the passengers looked, cold, windblown, probably near deaf and generally miserable; the slow boat was meant for perhaps forty passengers, could actually seat about thirty and yet as with any transportation in the east, was packed to the gills. But the tight quarters often turn out to be fun in perverse ways; there is a certain bond that forms among those that suffer together. One of the best things about traveling is the people you meet, whether they are fellow travelers or indigenous locals. I had met up with a Swedish man named Robin and an Israeli lad, Ofir on the bus ride from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong and since we were all headed into Laos and down the Mekong to Luang Prabang, we just sort of fell in together. On the boat I found myself seated next to an Irish girl, Siobhan, who later tagged along with our multi-national travel party for a few days. </p>\n<p>Edward Abbey, the source of today's title, once wrote, \"everyone must at some point go down the river.\" No stranger to rivers, Abbey went down a few, both the metaphorical and literal sort and my journey down the Mekong was similarly filled with both the metaphorical and literal journeys. It took two eight hour days in cramped conditions to get from Huey Xui where we crossed into Laos, to Luang Prabang, which was to be my first stop. I was glad for the company of Robin, Ofir and Siobhan, but still there were long periods of near silence in which everyone's face seemed to me lost in some private mental journey, as if it were not possible to simply go down a river, but that the action necessary required an equal action on the part of the mind.</p>\n<p>I do not know what absorbed my fellow passengers between reading and talking, those relatively quite moments (save for the continuous roaring white noise of the smoking diesel engine) where we simply stared at the limestone cliffs or the sandbars along the shore, but for me the mental journey became a process of abandonment. To say that traveling changes you would be a gross misstatement, but it does bring into focus any number of things that may have previously only lingered on the peripherals of your mind. My journey has been a slow process of letting go; I would not say I am different than when I left, but nevertheless I suppose I somehow am. At the end of the day, when the sun sets over whatever river you happen to be headed down, there is inevitably some change from that foggy morning that saw you off. You must let go of things to travel down a river.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/mekongsunset.jpg\" width=\"286\" height=\"200\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Mekong Sunset, Laos\" />And while a voice in the back of my head said just before I stepped off the boat in Luang Prabang, you cannot let go completely of anything, you will always have this thin strand of cotton wrapped about your smallest finger if for no other reason than to let it fall aside is to abandon hope entirely, I did, somewhere in the muddy waters of the Mekong, cast off huge chunks of myself, chunks that had been falling away for some time, but now perhaps because of the river, perhaps only the free and empty time, those chunks seemed to slough off at last. Most of these things that fell off me were too nebulous or vague to understand, I could not for instance say what I was letting go of or whether or not I would miss it, rather that the process of letting go was what was difficult. The thing or idea or dream was inevitably a product of my imagination, it had never been real to begin with, so letting go of <strong>it</strong> was natural, even if the process perhaps was not. </p>\n<p>On the second day, after talking for a while with Siobhan about how dreams and traveling intermingle, I was in the ensuing silence suddenly struck by the thought that perhaps our dreams are ultimately acts of arrogance, or at least become so when we cling to them too tightly, cling to them until they do not guide us, but imprison us. Dreams must be cast off before reality is allowed to happen.</p>\n<p>Which is not to say my friends that a dream can not merge with reality, that they can not be one and same, but merely that they must be let go of in the mind before they will take shape in the world. It is perhaps the act of letting go that eliminates the certainties of cannot or will not, and replaces them with might, could and have; or, to put it in the vernacular of James Bond film titles, never say never.</p>\n<p>This feeling grew stronger and more disorienting when I fell ill with a bout of food poisoning. I lay on the floor of the guest house bathroom for the better part of two days vomiting horrible liquids out both ends of my digestive system, not a pleasant experience I can assure you, but somewhere in those tortured early morning hours, as I hugged the porcelain toilet that had become to sum total of my universe, it occurred to me how quickly our worlds can be reduced. Not just dreams we may try to let go of, but also our physical worlds and not only are we incapable of ever saying anything with certainty, we are incapable of even saying that. In other words, to say there is no certainty is itself a statement of certainty and therefore we find ourselves right where Joseph Heller so aptly described in <em>Catch-22</em>. </p>\n<p><break>\nDid I travel for two days down the Mekong River here to Luang Prabang? Is there a place where you still are, that I am not? Is there a place here that I am and you are not? Uncertainties I cannot wrap my still fevered brain around except to say that however the words might twist and turn like the Mekong, in the end they are the only things that make it real to me. </p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">M</span>orning in Chiang Khong Thailand revealed itself as a foggy, and not a little mysterious, affair with the far shore of the Mekong, the Laos shore, almost completely hidden in a veil of mist. The first ferry crossed at eight and not wanting to get caught in the mess of tourists crossing that day, I made sure to be on the first ferry.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/mekongfog.jpg\" width=\"239\" height=\"139\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Morning Mist Mekong River Laos\" />After crossing through the respective borders and getting my passport stamped, I made my way up the road to the docks where I was to catch a slow boat to Luang Prabang. My head was full of statistics as I walked through the bustling border town of Huey Xui, Laos. I half expected to see a sign that said welcome to the Mekong Valley where the U.S. led troops of Laos and Thailand never fought a secret war, where there were not one and a half more bombing sorties flown than in all of Vietnam, where the total metric tonnage of bombs dropped was not 450,000 which of course, was not a whooping half ton per man, woman and child in Laos, because if it is not written down, it did not happen. But there was no commemoration of the terrible legacy that still haunts Laos.\r\n\r\nYou would never even realize a war had been fought here from aboard the slow boat where I and roughly sixty other passengers sat in cramped quarters watching the green jungle covered hills slide past. Indeed it was hard to imagine that anyone would want to invest the staggering $2 million dollars a day every day for nine years that the U.S. invested into the war in Laos. And yet the fact remains, Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the history of warfare.\r\n\r\nThe slow boat, which is not necessary slow, it just isn't a speedboat several of which passed us in the course of our two day journey and without exception the passengers looked, cold, windblown, probably near deaf and generally miserable; the slow boat was meant for perhaps forty passengers, could actually seat about thirty and yet as with any transportation in the east, was packed to the gills. But the tight quarters often turn out to be fun in perverse ways; there is a certain bond that forms among those that suffer together. One of the best things about traveling is the people you meet, whether they are fellow travelers or indigenous locals. I had met up with a Swedish man named Robin and an Israeli lad, Ofir on the bus ride from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong and since we were all headed into Laos and down the Mekong to Luang Prabang, we just sort of fell in together. On the boat I found myself seated next to an Irish girl, Siobhan, who later tagged along with our multi-national travel party for a few days. \r\n\r\nEdward Abbey, the source of today's title, once wrote, \"everyone must at some point go down the river.\" No stranger to rivers, Abbey went down a few, both the metaphorical and literal sort and my journey down the Mekong was similarly filled with both the metaphorical and literal journeys. It took two eight hour days in cramped conditions to get from Huey Xui where we crossed into Laos, to Luang Prabang, which was to be my first stop. I was glad for the company of Robin, Ofir and Siobhan, but still there were long periods of near silence in which everyone's face seemed to me lost in some private mental journey, as if it were not possible to simply go down a river, but that the action necessary required an equal action on the part of the mind.\r\n\r\nI do not know what absorbed my fellow passengers between reading and talking, those relatively quite moments (save for the continuous roaring white noise of the smoking diesel engine) where we simply stared at the limestone cliffs or the sandbars along the shore, but for me the mental journey became a process of abandonment. To say that traveling changes you would be a gross misstatement, but it does bring into focus any number of things that may have previously only lingered on the peripherals of your mind. My journey has been a slow process of letting go; I would not say I am different than when I left, but nevertheless I suppose I somehow am. At the end of the day, when the sun sets over whatever river you happen to be headed down, there is inevitably some change from that foggy morning that saw you off. You must let go of things to travel down a river.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/mekongsunset.jpg\" width=\"286\" height=\"200\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Mekong Sunset, Laos\" />And while a voice in the back of my head said just before I stepped off the boat in Luang Prabang, you cannot let go completely of anything, you will always have this thin strand of cotton wrapped about your smallest finger if for no other reason than to let it fall aside is to abandon hope entirely, I did, somewhere in the muddy waters of the Mekong, cast off huge chunks of myself, chunks that had been falling away for some time, but now perhaps because of the river, perhaps only the free and empty time, those chunks seemed to slough off at last. Most of these things that fell off me were too nebulous or vague to understand, I could not for instance say what I was letting go of or whether or not I would miss it, rather that the process of letting go was what was difficult. The thing or idea or dream was inevitably a product of my imagination, it had never been real to begin with, so letting go of **it** was natural, even if the process perhaps was not. \r\n\r\nOn the second day, after talking for a while with Siobhan about how dreams and traveling intermingle, I was in the ensuing silence suddenly struck by the thought that perhaps our dreams are ultimately acts of arrogance, or at least become so when we cling to them too tightly, cling to them until they do not guide us, but imprison us. Dreams must be cast off before reality is allowed to happen.\r\n\r\nWhich is not to say my friends that a dream can not merge with reality, that they can not be one and same, but merely that they must be let go of in the mind before they will take shape in the world. It is perhaps the act of letting go that eliminates the certainties of cannot or will not, and replaces them with might, could and have; or, to put it in the vernacular of James Bond film titles, never say never.\r\n\r\nThis feeling grew stronger and more disorienting when I fell ill with a bout of food poisoning. I lay on the floor of the guest house bathroom for the better part of two days vomiting horrible liquids out both ends of my digestive system, not a pleasant experience I can assure you, but somewhere in those tortured early morning hours, as I hugged the porcelain toilet that had become to sum total of my universe, it occurred to me how quickly our worlds can be reduced. Not just dreams we may try to let go of, but also our physical worlds and not only are we incapable of ever saying anything with certainty, we are incapable of even saying that. In other words, to say there is no certainty is itself a statement of certainty and therefore we find ourselves right where Joseph Heller so aptly described in *Catch-22*. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\nDid I travel for two days down the Mekong River here to Luang Prabang? Is there a place where you still are, that I am not? Is there a place here that I am and you are not? Uncertainties I cannot wrap my still fevered brain around except to say that however the words might twist and turn like the Mekong, in the end they are the only things that make it real to me. ", "dek": "Morning in Chiang Khong Thailand revealed itself as a foggy, and not a little mysterious, affair with the far shore of the Mekong, the Laos shore, almost completely hidden in a veil of mist. The first ferry crossed at eight and I was on it, looking to meet up with the slow boat to Luang Prabang. ", "pub_date": "2006-01-17T20:13:26", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (102.1319961405680772 19.8750644479472349)", "location": 37, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/mekongslowboat.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/mekongslowboat.jpg", "meta_description": "Traveling the Mekong River by slow boat from Huey Xui to Laung Prabang.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 38, "fields": {"title": "Hymn of the Big Wheel", "slug": "hymn-big-wheel", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">A</span> misty haze settles over the Mekong River Valley every evening; it begins to gather as an almost imperceptible smoke around sundown, the mountains begin to look farther away, less distinct and then it builds through the night reaching its apex somewhere in the \"Bible black predawn\" as Jeff Tweedy put it. </p>\n<p>The fog burns off by midmorning, noon at the latest, but for those of us already stirring, perhaps seated at breakfast, bundled in sweaters, the mist has a chill that seems to work its way through any number of carefully layered clothing. When the midday sun finally breaks through the last of the fog and is replaced by a shockingly sudden and intense heat, the sweaters and jackets are quickly shed in favor of short sleeves.</p>\n<p>I have been traveling with, as mentioned previously, Robin and Ofir, as well as a Scottish couple Phill and Lorraine, and an Austrian man named Harry, none of whom have left any inclination toward temples and stuppas, which I sympathize with and understand, once you have seen a couple of temples you have essentially seen them all, and yet I feel compelled to see them still.</p>\n<p><break>\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/luangprabangtemple.jpg\" width=\"195\" height=\"260\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Temple, Luang Prabang, Laos\" />So I set out alone to see some of the many temples dotted throughout Luang Prabang. As I could have predicted, the temples of Luang Prabang are more or less the same as the others I have seen in Chang Mai or Bangkok or Nepal or India or, well, visit enough temples, shrines, synagogues, churches or any other place a culture calls holy, and you'll quickly realize there is only one thing, call it what you will, only one thing, that dwarfs our existence. For some it may be god by any number of names, but for me it simply wonder, wonder that any of this could have happened, wonder that anything exists, let alone me and wonder that I and the rest of it continue to exist. </p>\n<p>After spending the better part of the morning at a few temples basking in this sense of wonder it seemed only natural to set aside the manmade and head to the natural, the source as it were.</p>\n<p>Robin and I teamed up with a fellow American, Ed, to rent a songthaew out to Tat Kung Si waterfall. The limestone riverbed below the main falls creates series of smaller cascades and the river lacks much in the way of banks; instead it spreads out and flows almost arbitrarily over the whole area wrapping around the trunks of trees and dodging obstructions on its way down to the Mekong. I don't know if it's the stone in the area or some mineral in the water, but the deeper pools that form beneath the falls were a brilliant turquoise color and perfect for swimming.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/tatkungsifalls.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"193\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Tat Kung Si Falls, Laos\" />After a very steep, abrupt and very pointless climb to the top of the highest falls which in the midday heat quickly reduced Robin and I to panting, sweat-soaked misery, we returned to the crystalline waters which had never looked so inviting. We swam for a while in the lower pools and I chatted with Ed, a semi professional photographer, about various photographic geekery which I hadn't thought about since I dropped my art major ten years ago.</p>\n<p>As luck would have it the pool we swam in had a nice tree extending out over it which allowed for excellent jumping and being the sort that still finds infinite pleasure in the simple act of hurling my body out into space, I made several jumps off the tree into the pool which did nothing to help the headache I already had.</p>\n<p>Later, after drying off, I sat at a picnic bench and ate lunch while the package tourists wandered by cameras dangling and with much pointing enthusiasm. I had heard so much about Luang Prabang before coming, everyone raved about it, but I have been somewhat disappointed. I imagine five years ago Luang Prabang was probably alright, but with the paving of highway 13 and the advent of an airport capable of international flights Luang Prabang has turned to yet another touristy trap, which is unfortunate, but seemingly unavoidable.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/laosriver.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"River, Laos\" />I decided to take an amphibious walk through the trees to see if perhaps I could clear such negative thoughts from my already overworked brain. It was slow going because of slickness of the limestone, but I managed to work my way downstream to an old water wheel now in a state of disrepair and obviously not used in ages. What struck me most though was that the water no longer flowed beneath the wheel so that even if it weren't falling apart it still wouldn't be able to turn. Lower down the stream I had taken a picture of another wheel, also not working, but still surrounded by water. I started to take a second picture of this wheel but for some reason I stopped. Instead I sat down on a small stone and watched the water swirl past me on either side, still thinking about the sense of wonder that arises whenever I stop to think about anything really.</p>\n<p>But this word wonder is not really what we're after is it? Too nebulous and vague, it could even be something like nostalgia, a failure of feeling, Wallace Stevens called it. No, what we are after is more specific than wonder, perhaps awe or amazement would be closer, perhaps it's a word that doesn't exist, perhaps Jewish mysticism is right after all, we have forgotten the true name of god, or possibly we never knew it. It may well be something that exists before language or beyond language or outside and removed from language altogether. And of course we know language has is shortcomings, the cynical like to remind us that the words are not the things, that words cannot express anything really, that they are a delicate web fabricated and sustained by nothing other than more words, but what else have we got?</p>\n<p>It could also be that the language is in fact that very thing that severed us from this lost word, perhaps language was once something other, not words that conveyed meaning, but sounds that made objects, a language not a reflection, but creation. Jose Saramago writes in <em>The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis</em> that the gods \"journey like us in the river of things, differing from us only because we call them gods and sometimes believe in them.\"</p>\n<p>Sitting there in the middle of the river listening to the gurgle of water moving over stone and around trees I began to think that perhaps this is the sound of some lost language, a sound capable of creating mountains, valleys, estuaries, isthmuses and all the other forms around us, perhaps this is the sounds of what we feel, gurgling and sonorous but without clear meaning, shrouded in turquoise, a mystery through which we can move our sense of wonder intact.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">A</span> misty haze settles over the Mekong River Valley every evening; it begins to gather as an almost imperceptible smoke around sundown, the mountains begin to look farther away, less distinct and then it builds through the night reaching its apex somewhere in the \"Bible black predawn\" as Jeff Tweedy put it. \r\n\r\nThe fog burns off by midmorning, noon at the latest, but for those of us already stirring, perhaps seated at breakfast, bundled in sweaters, the mist has a chill that seems to work its way through any number of carefully layered clothing. When the midday sun finally breaks through the last of the fog and is replaced by a shockingly sudden and intense heat, the sweaters and jackets are quickly shed in favor of short sleeves.\r\n\r\nI have been traveling with, as mentioned previously, Robin and Ofir, as well as a Scottish couple Phill and Lorraine, and an Austrian man named Harry, none of whom have left any inclination toward temples and stuppas, which I sympathize with and understand, once you have seen a couple of temples you have essentially seen them all, and yet I feel compelled to see them still.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/luangprabangtemple.jpg\" width=\"195\" height=\"260\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Temple, Luang Prabang, Laos\" />So I set out alone to see some of the many temples dotted throughout Luang Prabang. As I could have predicted, the temples of Luang Prabang are more or less the same as the others I have seen in Chang Mai or Bangkok or Nepal or India or, well, visit enough temples, shrines, synagogues, churches or any other place a culture calls holy, and you'll quickly realize there is only one thing, call it what you will, only one thing, that dwarfs our existence. For some it may be god by any number of names, but for me it simply wonder, wonder that any of this could have happened, wonder that anything exists, let alone me and wonder that I and the rest of it continue to exist. \r\n\r\nAfter spending the better part of the morning at a few temples basking in this sense of wonder it seemed only natural to set aside the manmade and head to the natural, the source as it were.\r\n\r\nRobin and I teamed up with a fellow American, Ed, to rent a songthaew out to Tat Kung Si waterfall. The limestone riverbed below the main falls creates series of smaller cascades and the river lacks much in the way of banks; instead it spreads out and flows almost arbitrarily over the whole area wrapping around the trunks of trees and dodging obstructions on its way down to the Mekong. I don't know if it's the stone in the area or some mineral in the water, but the deeper pools that form beneath the falls were a brilliant turquoise color and perfect for swimming.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/tatkungsifalls.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"193\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Tat Kung Si Falls, Laos\" />After a very steep, abrupt and very pointless climb to the top of the highest falls which in the midday heat quickly reduced Robin and I to panting, sweat-soaked misery, we returned to the crystalline waters which had never looked so inviting. We swam for a while in the lower pools and I chatted with Ed, a semi professional photographer, about various photographic geekery which I hadn't thought about since I dropped my art major ten years ago.\r\n\r\nAs luck would have it the pool we swam in had a nice tree extending out over it which allowed for excellent jumping and being the sort that still finds infinite pleasure in the simple act of hurling my body out into space, I made several jumps off the tree into the pool which did nothing to help the headache I already had.\r\n\r\nLater, after drying off, I sat at a picnic bench and ate lunch while the package tourists wandered by cameras dangling and with much pointing enthusiasm. I had heard so much about Luang Prabang before coming, everyone raved about it, but I have been somewhat disappointed. I imagine five years ago Luang Prabang was probably alright, but with the paving of highway 13 and the advent of an airport capable of international flights Luang Prabang has turned to yet another touristy trap, which is unfortunate, but seemingly unavoidable.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/laosriver.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"River, Laos\" />I decided to take an amphibious walk through the trees to see if perhaps I could clear such negative thoughts from my already overworked brain. It was slow going because of slickness of the limestone, but I managed to work my way downstream to an old water wheel now in a state of disrepair and obviously not used in ages. What struck me most though was that the water no longer flowed beneath the wheel so that even if it weren't falling apart it still wouldn't be able to turn. Lower down the stream I had taken a picture of another wheel, also not working, but still surrounded by water. I started to take a second picture of this wheel but for some reason I stopped. Instead I sat down on a small stone and watched the water swirl past me on either side, still thinking about the sense of wonder that arises whenever I stop to think about anything really.\r\n\r\nBut this word wonder is not really what we're after is it? Too nebulous and vague, it could even be something like nostalgia, a failure of feeling, Wallace Stevens called it. No, what we are after is more specific than wonder, perhaps awe or amazement would be closer, perhaps it's a word that doesn't exist, perhaps Jewish mysticism is right after all, we have forgotten the true name of god, or possibly we never knew it. It may well be something that exists before language or beyond language or outside and removed from language altogether. And of course we know language has is shortcomings, the cynical like to remind us that the words are not the things, that words cannot express anything really, that they are a delicate web fabricated and sustained by nothing other than more words, but what else have we got?\r\n\r\nIt could also be that the language is in fact that very thing that severed us from this lost word, perhaps language was once something other, not words that conveyed meaning, but sounds that made objects, a language not a reflection, but creation. Jose Saramago writes in *The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis* that the gods \"journey like us in the river of things, differing from us only because we call them gods and sometimes believe in them.\"\r\n\r\nSitting there in the middle of the river listening to the gurgle of water moving over stone and around trees I began to think that perhaps this is the sound of some lost language, a sound capable of creating mountains, valleys, estuaries, isthmuses and all the other forms around us, perhaps this is the sounds of what we feel, gurgling and sonorous but without clear meaning, shrouded in turquoise, a mystery through which we can move our sense of wonder intact.", "dek": "Jose Saramago writes in <cite>The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis</cite> that the gods \"journey like us in the river of things, differing from us only because we call them gods and sometimes believe in them.\" Sitting in the middle of the river listening to the gurgle of water moving over stone and around trees I began to think that perhaps this is the sound of some lost language, a sound capable of creating mountains, valleys, estuaries, isthmuses and all the other forms around us, gurgling and sonorous but without clear meaning, shrouded in turquoise, a mystery through which we can move our sense of wonder intact.", "pub_date": "2006-01-19T19:37:46", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (102.4227905130863263 19.8274335100573538)", "location": 37, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/bluemilkwaterfall.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/bluemilkwaterfall.jpg", "meta_description": "Sitting in the middle of the river listening to the gurgle of water moving over stone and around trees I began to think that perhaps this is the sound of some lost language, a sound capable of creating mountains, valleys, estuaries, isthmuses ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 39, "fields": {"title": "I Used to Fly Like Peter Pan", "slug": "i-used-fly-peter-pan", "body_html": "<p class=\"update\">[Update (09/26/06): Many thanks to Ray who left the current link to <a href=\"http://www.gibbonx.org/index.php\" title=\"The Gibbon Experience\">The Gibbon Experience Website</a> in the comments below. One assumes that the contact form on their site is working...]</p>\n\n<p class=\"update\">[Update (7/31/06): For those of you wanting to do this trek... We arranged things from Luang Prabang via email (<a href=\"http://www.gibbonx.org/gibbon_contact.php\" title=\"contact the gibbon experience\">they have several addresses on this page</a>). Some people have reported that the gibbon experience email address is not working... your mileage may vary. They do actually have an office in Huay Xai, Laos on the main street near the ferry to Thailand. If you're crossing over from Thailand walk up the sloped driveway and hang a left. It's about three doors down on the left (by the way all those people selling you boat tickets along the way are generally a rip off, hitch a ride over to the actual dock and you'll pay less). Sorry that's all the information I have. If you know something more I left to comments open below, feel free to add knowledge.]</p>\n\n<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>he next time someone asks you, \"would you like to live in a tree house and travel five hundred feet above the ground attached to a zip wire?\" I highly suggest you say, \"yes, where do a I sign up?\"</p>\n<p>In my case the signing up happened via email over the internet with a semi-mysterious word-of-mouth-only outfit known as The Gibbon Experience. Luckily Robin was familiar with the Gibbon Experience and insisted that we go and check it out. The journey into the northern part of Laos began inauspiciously at the Luang Prabang bus station where, after waiting three hours, we discovered we had been sold tickets to a bus that was already full. Owing to a lack of time (we needed to be in specific place at a specific time in order to be picked up by the Gibbon Experience truck), we were forced to charter a mini bus from Luang Prabang to Laung Nam Tha. Although not cheap, the mini bus did have one nice part, we got to travel at night and have the next day free to explore Laung Nam Tha. Regrettably there isn't much to see in Luang Nam Tha, it's a rather small town on the banks of the Nam Tha River and not much seems to happen there except for the occasional wedding. </p>\n<p><break>\nWith the exception of route 13, which runs from the far south up to Pak Mong in the North, there are no paved roads in Laos. Thus travel beyond Laung Nam Tha is a fairly arduous, and in the dry season, dusty journey, which is better than the wet season when the roads are impassible. We could have chartered another mini bus, but we decided it would be more fun to take the local bus the rest of the way. The next morning at about six AM Robin and I bought tickets for the bus to Huay Xai and had a woman at our guest house write the name of the small village where we would get off in Lao. After packing up and catching a quick breakfast, we hoped on the bus and handed the sheet of paper to the driver who kind of nodded vaguely. The bus rarely got above 30km/hr, which, having since then ridden on many a local bus in Laos, I can now say is normal. At some point, coming down a fairly steep incline, I turned around to see how my travel companions were fairing and found the visibility inside the bus was limited to about 1 meter, after which everything vanished in an impenetrable mustard yellow cloud of dust. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibbonvillage.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"119\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"unknown village Laos\" />When we finally disembarked at the small village the three of us looked like old men, hair and skin silvered with dust and clothes decided more brown than not. After we straightened out some accommodations with a local family, we deposited our backpacks in their living room and, with the help of the local children, made down to the river where we swam for a while, trying in vain to get the dust off our bodies. Later, after watching the sunset over the hills opposite the river, we had dinner on the porch with the Lao family hosting us. The most common food in Laos is sticky rice and though we did not know it then, that meal marked the beginning an eight-day stretch in which we would eat sticky rice (along with a variety of vegetables) for every meal. Luckily I like sticky rice; Ofir and Robin were decidedly less thrilled with the food. </p>\n<p>The next morning after breakfast, a slightly disconcerting meal that was suspiciously similar to dinner and since it was served cold, I could only assume it was in fact dinner; two trucks pulled into the village with the rest of the people for the trek.<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibbontree.jpg\" width=\"189\" height=\"252\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Strangler Fig Treehouse, Laos\" /> Because the tree houses have a limited amount of space, the Gibbon Experience takes only twelve people at a time into the jungle. After meeting the rest of the group (who were traveling from Huay Xui at the other end of the long dusty road), we traveled about two hours up a smaller and even worse road to another village. From there we hiked for roughly two hours to reach the first zip line and tree house. The next tree house was connected to the first by a series of zip lines running through and over the jungle canopy; the highest ran about one hundred fifty meters (500 ft) above the ground. Luckily heights don't bother me, but some people in our group were clearly nervous the first day. As time went on most people adjusted or just learned to not look down and by the third day we were all zipping around for fun.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibbontreehouse1.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"211\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Treehouse One Gibbon experience, Laos\" />The first night Ofir, Robin and I stayed in the main tree house along with three people from England, and a Scottish man, Donald. After watching the misty clouds form in the valleys below us and eating morning glory leaves with sticky rice, one of the volunteer guides from the Gibbon Experience came up to the tree house and we passed around a bottle of lao lao, which is a local rice whiskey. At some point one of the English lads came up with the idea of slowly cabling out to look at the stars. A few of us clipped onto the zip lines and slowly pulled ourselves out into the pitch black jungle to look up with the stars. As with the camel safari back in India, there were more stars than I have ever seen, and again the giant clouds of the Milky Way were visible with the naked eye, but this time I was seeing it suspended from a wire forty meters in the air. I actually pulled myself all the way over to the hillside opposite the tree house and stood for a while in the darkness of the forest listening to various animals rustling about in the leaves and thinking about the now endangered tigers that may or may not have been lurking close by. Eventually when the mosquitoes found me I took a running leap off the platform and into the complete darkness of the jungle, zipping back toward the warm orange glow of the tree house.</p>\n<p>The next day a few people decided to go for a hike to the unfinished fourth tree house which overlooks a waterfall. Having had my fill of waterfalls in Luang Prabang, I decided to lounge around the tree house and get a little writing done. Ofir, one of the girls that works for the Gibbon Experience, and I sat around the tree house most of the morning sharing travel stories and recommendations until a curious creature showed up on one of the extending limbs of the tree. The animal was about the size of a large raccoon with the body and movements of squirrel. According to the girl, who had been there for six months, even the folks at the Gibbon Experience aren't sure what this animal is called. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibboncreature.jpg\" width=\"190\" height=\"143\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Unknown Creature, Laos\" />The Lao have a word for it, which I can neither pronounce nor spell, but no one seems to know the species name or any English common name for it. If anyone out there recognizes this animal or knows someone who might, <a href=\"http://www.luxagraf.com/travel/contact/\" title=\"Contact Form\">contact me</a> since the folks at the Gibbon Experience would like to know what it's called as well. And just for the record, no it wasn't <strong>that</strong> close to me, the close up photograph was taken by pointing my camera lens into the eyepiece of a 75X spotting scope.</p>\n<p>For the second night Robin, Ofir and I moved to the smaller and more isolated tree house two. Located about halfway down a long ridge, tree house two has a more commanding view of the surrounding wilderness. It's also only a twenty-minute walk from tree house three where everybody went to watch the sunset. Walking back in the rapidly approaching darkness was a bit eerie since we all knew from talking to the guides that dusk is the tigers' favorite hunting time. We never saw any tigers nor any signs of them, but something attacked the pig which lives under tree house one, though it didn't manage to kill it. The other thing was never saw were the namesake black gibbons, though we did hear them singing in the mornings and evenings. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/gibbonzip.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"224\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Zip Lines, Jungle, Laos\" />The Gibbon Experience was by far the best thing I've done so far in my travels and if you ever happen to pass through Huay Xai, Laos I highly recommend it (the office is just up the hill from immigration on your left). So far the project exists solely by word of mouth and even somehow managed to stay out of the Lonely Planet Guidebook. At some point in the next two years the Gibbon Experience will be turned over to the local people who are being trained and supported for now by three volunteers and the French man who started the whole thing. Hopefully it will, as it was intended to do, help show the local villages that sustainable long-term use of the forest is in end more beneficial than the logging and poaching on which much of the local economy currently depends.</p>", "body_markdown": "<p class=\"update\">[Update (09/26/06): Many thanks to Ray who left the current link to <a href=\"http://www.gibbonx.org/index.php\" title=\"The Gibbon Experience\">The Gibbon Experience Website</a> in the comments below. One assumes that the contact form on their site is working...]</p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"update\">[Update (7/31/06): For those of you wanting to do this trek... We arranged things from Luang Prabang via email (<a href=\"http://www.gibbonx.org/gibbon_contact.php\" title=\"contact the gibbon experience\">they have several addresses on this page</a>). Some people have reported that the gibbon experience email address is not working... your mileage may vary. They do actually have an office in Huay Xai, Laos on the main street near the ferry to Thailand. If you're crossing over from Thailand walk up the sloped driveway and hang a left. It's about three doors down on the left (by the way all those people selling you boat tickets along the way are generally a rip off, hitch a ride over to the actual dock and you'll pay less). Sorry that's all the information I have. If you know something more I left to comments open below, feel free to add knowledge.]</p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<span class=\"drop\">T</span>he next time someone asks you, \"would you like to live in a tree house and travel five hundred feet above the ground attached to a zip wire?\" I highly suggest you say, \"yes, where do a I sign up?\"\r\n\r\nIn my case the signing up happened via email over the internet with a semi-mysterious word-of-mouth-only outfit known as The Gibbon Experience. Luckily Robin was familiar with the Gibbon Experience and insisted that we go and check it out. The journey into the northern part of Laos began inauspiciously at the Luang Prabang bus station where, after waiting three hours, we discovered we had been sold tickets to a bus that was already full. Owing to a lack of time (we needed to be in specific place at a specific time in order to be picked up by the Gibbon Experience truck), we were forced to charter a mini bus from Luang Prabang to Laung Nam Tha. Although not cheap, the mini bus did have one nice part, we got to travel at night and have the next day free to explore Laung Nam Tha. Regrettably there isn't much to see in Luang Nam Tha, it's a rather small town on the banks of the Nam Tha River and not much seems to happen there except for the occasional wedding. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\nWith the exception of route 13, which runs from the far south up to Pak Mong in the North, there are no paved roads in Laos. Thus travel beyond Laung Nam Tha is a fairly arduous, and in the dry season, dusty journey, which is better than the wet season when the roads are impassible. We could have chartered another mini bus, but we decided it would be more fun to take the local bus the rest of the way. The next morning at about six AM Robin and I bought tickets for the bus to Huay Xai and had a woman at our guest house write the name of the small village where we would get off in Lao. After packing up and catching a quick breakfast, we hoped on the bus and handed the sheet of paper to the driver who kind of nodded vaguely. The bus rarely got above 30km/hr, which, having since then ridden on many a local bus in Laos, I can now say is normal. At some point, coming down a fairly steep incline, I turned around to see how my travel companions were fairing and found the visibility inside the bus was limited to about 1 meter, after which everything vanished in an impenetrable mustard yellow cloud of dust. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/gibbonvillage.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"119\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"unknown village Laos\" />When we finally disembarked at the small village the three of us looked like old men, hair and skin silvered with dust and clothes decided more brown than not. After we straightened out some accommodations with a local family, we deposited our backpacks in their living room and, with the help of the local children, made down to the river where we swam for a while, trying in vain to get the dust off our bodies. Later, after watching the sunset over the hills opposite the river, we had dinner on the porch with the Lao family hosting us. The most common food in Laos is sticky rice and though we did not know it then, that meal marked the beginning an eight-day stretch in which we would eat sticky rice (along with a variety of vegetables) for every meal. Luckily I like sticky rice; Ofir and Robin were decidedly less thrilled with the food. \r\n\r\nThe next morning after breakfast, a slightly disconcerting meal that was suspiciously similar to dinner and since it was served cold, I could only assume it was in fact dinner; two trucks pulled into the village with the rest of the people for the trek.<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/gibbontree.jpg\" width=\"189\" height=\"252\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Strangler Fig Treehouse, Laos\" /> Because the tree houses have a limited amount of space, the Gibbon Experience takes only twelve people at a time into the jungle. After meeting the rest of the group (who were traveling from Huay Xui at the other end of the long dusty road), we traveled about two hours up a smaller and even worse road to another village. From there we hiked for roughly two hours to reach the first zip line and tree house. The next tree house was connected to the first by a series of zip lines running through and over the jungle canopy; the highest ran about one hundred fifty meters (500 ft) above the ground. Luckily heights don't bother me, but some people in our group were clearly nervous the first day. As time went on most people adjusted or just learned to not look down and by the third day we were all zipping around for fun.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/gibbontreehouse1.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"211\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Treehouse One Gibbon experience, Laos\" />The first night Ofir, Robin and I stayed in the main tree house along with three people from England, and a Scottish man, Donald. After watching the misty clouds form in the valleys below us and eating morning glory leaves with sticky rice, one of the volunteer guides from the Gibbon Experience came up to the tree house and we passed around a bottle of lao lao, which is a local rice whiskey. At some point one of the English lads came up with the idea of slowly cabling out to look at the stars. A few of us clipped onto the zip lines and slowly pulled ourselves out into the pitch black jungle to look up with the stars. As with the camel safari back in India, there were more stars than I have ever seen, and again the giant clouds of the Milky Way were visible with the naked eye, but this time I was seeing it suspended from a wire forty meters in the air. I actually pulled myself all the way over to the hillside opposite the tree house and stood for a while in the darkness of the forest listening to various animals rustling about in the leaves and thinking about the now endangered tigers that may or may not have been lurking close by. Eventually when the mosquitoes found me I took a running leap off the platform and into the complete darkness of the jungle, zipping back toward the warm orange glow of the tree house.\r\n\r\nThe next day a few people decided to go for a hike to the unfinished fourth tree house which overlooks a waterfall. Having had my fill of waterfalls in Luang Prabang, I decided to lounge around the tree house and get a little writing done. Ofir, one of the girls that works for the Gibbon Experience, and I sat around the tree house most of the morning sharing travel stories and recommendations until a curious creature showed up on one of the extending limbs of the tree. The animal was about the size of a large raccoon with the body and movements of squirrel. According to the girl, who had been there for six months, even the folks at the Gibbon Experience aren't sure what this animal is called. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/gibboncreature.jpg\" width=\"190\" height=\"143\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Unknown Creature, Laos\" />The Lao have a word for it, which I can neither pronounce nor spell, but no one seems to know the species name or any English common name for it. If anyone out there recognizes this animal or knows someone who might, <a href=\"http://www.luxagraf.com/travel/contact/\" title=\"Contact Form\">contact me</a> since the folks at the Gibbon Experience would like to know what it's called as well. And just for the record, no it wasn't **that** close to me, the close up photograph was taken by pointing my camera lens into the eyepiece of a 75X spotting scope.\r\n\r\nFor the second night Robin, Ofir and I moved to the smaller and more isolated tree house two. Located about halfway down a long ridge, tree house two has a more commanding view of the surrounding wilderness. It's also only a twenty-minute walk from tree house three where everybody went to watch the sunset. Walking back in the rapidly approaching darkness was a bit eerie since we all knew from talking to the guides that dusk is the tigers' favorite hunting time. We never saw any tigers nor any signs of them, but something attacked the pig which lives under tree house one, though it didn't manage to kill it. The other thing was never saw were the namesake black gibbons, though we did hear them singing in the mornings and evenings. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/gibbonzip.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"224\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Zip Lines, Jungle, Laos\" />The Gibbon Experience was by far the best thing I've done so far in my travels and if you ever happen to pass through Huay Xai, Laos I highly recommend it (the office is just up the hill from immigration on your left). So far the project exists solely by word of mouth and even somehow managed to stay out of the Lonely Planet Guidebook. At some point in the next two years the Gibbon Experience will be turned over to the local people who are being trained and supported for now by three volunteers and the French man who started the whole thing. Hopefully it will, as it was intended to do, help show the local villages that sustainable long-term use of the forest is in end more beneficial than the logging and poaching on which much of the local economy currently depends.", "dek": "The next time someone asks you, “would you like to live in a tree house and travel five hundred feet above the ground attached to a zip wire?” I highly suggest you say, “yes, where do a I sign up?” If you happen to be in Laos, try the Gibbon Experience.", "pub_date": "2006-01-21T19:42:47", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (101.1909484722421126 20.8536785546513137)", "location": 36, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/gibbonexperience.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/gibbonexperience.jpg", "meta_description": "The Gibbon Experience: sailing high above the jungles of Laos on ziplines.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 40, "fields": {"title": "The Lovely Universe", "slug": "lovely-universe", "body_html": "<p>Because we didn't find out about the Gibbon Experience until we were halfway to Luang Prabang, we ended up making a loop through northern Laos and in the end Robin, Ofir and I found ourselves once more in the border town of Huay Xai. Robin had to return to Thailand and then headed home to Sweden. </p>\n<p>After talking it over for a while, Ofir and I decided that two more days on the slow boat back to Luang Prabang was marginally less miserable than taking the bus back over the dusty roads. Beside which the slow boat is good way to meet new people, so we ended up returning full circle to Luang Prabang. </p>\n<p>As it turned out the second trip down the river was an entirely different experience. Our boat was not a talkative bunch and we didn't meet anyone, but I did spend a good bit of time listening to music and contemplating the life the Strangler Fig Tree.</p>\n<p>In the west (or America anyway) the Strangler Fig is more commonly known as the Banyan tree and is most notable for its long drooping roots (which make it ideal for building tree houses since it's a very stable tree). But the most interesting thing about the Strangler Fig is how it grows. The seeds from a mature tree are eaten by arboreal animals that then deposit them (crap them out for the none scientific among us) in the branches of some unsuspecting and already full-grown tree. For a while the Strangler Fig lives a bit like an orchid (and is perhaps one of the reasons people think orchids are parasitic, but they aren't) attached to the host tree, but not yet parasitic. </p>\n<p>As the Strangler Fig grows its roots head downward, thin tendrils searching for the ground. When the roots finally reach the ground they dig in and begin to wrap around the host tree's roots stealing its water and nutrients. From there the fig just sort of takes over and eventually the original tree dies, but you can generally still see the trunk buried somewhere under the roots of the full grown fig. The largest Banyan tree in the world is somewhere in India and occupies the better part of two acres, but in Laos, because the fig must reach up out of the jungle canopy to get light, the trees tend to be tall rather than spread out. </p>\n<p>The fig is, though it may be a bit cynical to say so, is not unlike the ever growing tourism industry. One can almost see the way in which the first guest house in any given town started as a purely separate existence, an oddity growing in the branches of a village, but then, over time, the roots of travelers begin to squeeze out what was once a farming or fishing village, until at some point a critical mass is reached. Sometimes, as in case of Luang Prabang, it's fairly easy to find that tipping point, things like the UNESCO seal of approval and the completion of an airport might well be the moment the roots of the original tree finally give in, the economy shifted and what remains is merely tourism, a fig tree in which an endless amount of guesthouses and western style restaurants begin to appear.</p>\n<p>But perhaps the tree is best left simply as a tree, a good place to build a tree house if that is your inclination, or maybe just something to marvel out while you float down the same river that already took everything out of you; what's left when everything is gone? Laos. Whatever the case Ofir and I had already decided we didn't want to spend any more time in Luang Prabang.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vangviengsunset.jpg\" class=\"picwide960\" alt=\"Sunset view from the river, Vang Veing, Laos\" /></p>\n<p>The plan was to buy a bus ticket and then take it easy, eat an early dinner and catch up on some sleep. Of course when you're traveling that's easier said that done. We were sitting in small cafe on the main street in Luang Prabang when suddenly Ofir jumped up and took off down the street. I saw him talk for a while to someone and then the two of them came back over to the table and I met Andy, a German man Ofir had traveled with some months ago in India. Andy invited us to dinner (which is strange invitation to people eating dinner, but hey) with some people he had met on the slow boat two days before, which is the semi-convoluted way in which I met, Matt from Holland, Jackie, Keith, Matt from London, Georgia, and Debi. Of course the names mean nothing to you, so lets at least try it with a picture, from the back left corner: Ofir, Matt from Holland, Keith from Ireland, Jackie from Germany, Debi from London, Matt also from London, Georgia from Australia and me. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vangvienggroupn.jpg\" class=\"picfull\" alt=\"Group shot, Vang Veing, Laos\" /></p>\n<p>Ofir and I were headed for Vang Vieng and so was everyone else so we made plans to meet up at some point. After traveling more or less constantly for ten days over some very bad roads and very long rivers, Ofir and I arrived in Vang Veing with the intention of doing nothing for at least a week. After that we were planning to head back into Thailand. I had some work to do, articles to write and websites to build so the down time was good for me. Vang Vieng was a curious little town, a town where the strangler fig of tourism long ago squeezed out whatever the village used to be. But sometimes you need a bit of westernism. At this point Vang Vieng is chiefly famous for inner tubing trips down the river and its endless row of bars, the majority of which play old episodes of <em>Friends</em> from morning far into the night. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vangviengafternoonn.jpg\" class=\"picfull\" alt=\"Vang Vieng, Laos\" /></p>\n<p>I spent the majority of my time in Vang Vieng lying back in a small thatched awning hut beside the river, feet kicked up, alternately reading, writing and watching the light change hues through the afternoon. In the evenings, just after sundown, the cliffs in the distance emitted a massive smoky-looking plume out the western cliff face—bats, thousands and thousands of bats heading out into the night sky. It was one of the more amazing sights I've witnessed in Laos and it happened so regularly you could set your clock by it.</p>\n<p>When Andy and the rest of the larger group showed up, Ofir and followed them to new guesthouse which had nice sitting area, a free sauna, a great restaurant and cheap massages, which isn't bad for three dollars a night (Thank you Georgia). I would like to say that I have something memorable to write about Vang Vieng, but the truth is we mostly sat around doing nothing, making new friends, drinking a beer round the fire at night.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vangviengfireside.jpg\" class=\"picfull\" alt=\"Vang Vieng River Bar, Laos\" /> </p>\n<p>The only thing I managed to do was make a day trip down to Vientiane with Debi. Debi had an infected cut on her foot and wanted to have it look at by real doctors at the Australian clinic and I need to extend my Laos visa, which is strange considering I was only planning on spending a few days here to renew my Thai visa. So it was that we found ourselves at the bus station at six thirty in the morning trying to make a day trip to the capital. After taking care of the various medical and paperwork necessities in Vientiane, we passed the afternoon drinking beer at massage/spa (yes that is a strange place to spend your afternoon drinking beer, but if I were to list all the strange places there wouldn't be much else to write about). Having had no problem getting to Vientiane we assumed it would be no problem to get back, but such was not the case. Finally, after making a tuktuk powered tour of all three Vientiane bus stations, we finally found a bus back to Vang Vieng.</p>\n<p>The piece of bad new we discovered on our day trip to Vientiane was that Chinese new years was in full swing and unlike a western new years, the Asia countries take the whole week off, which meant none of us could get Cambodian visas until the following Monday. And so we were forced to relax beside the river for several more days than we intended. Yes friends, traveling is hard, but I do it for you.</p>", "body_markdown": "Because we didn't find out about the Gibbon Experience until we were halfway to Luang Prabang, we ended up making a loop through northern Laos and in the end Robin, Ofir and I found ourselves once more in the border town of Huay Xai. Robin had to return to Thailand and then headed home to Sweden. \r\n\r\nAfter talking it over for a while, Ofir and I decided that two more days on the slow boat back to Luang Prabang was marginally less miserable than taking the bus back over the dusty roads. Beside which the slow boat is good way to meet new people, so we ended up returning full circle to Luang Prabang. \r\n\r\nAs it turned out the second trip down the river was an entirely different experience. Our boat was not a talkative bunch and we didn't meet anyone, but I did spend a good bit of time listening to music and contemplating the life the Strangler Fig Tree.\r\n\r\nIn the west (or America anyway) the Strangler Fig is more commonly known as the Banyan tree and is most notable for its long drooping roots (which make it ideal for building tree houses since it's a very stable tree). But the most interesting thing about the Strangler Fig is how it grows. The seeds from a mature tree are eaten by arboreal animals that then deposit them (crap them out for the none scientific among us) in the branches of some unsuspecting and already full-grown tree. For a while the Strangler Fig lives a bit like an orchid (and is perhaps one of the reasons people think orchids are parasitic, but they aren't) attached to the host tree, but not yet parasitic. \r\n\r\nAs the Strangler Fig grows its roots head downward, thin tendrils searching for the ground. When the roots finally reach the ground they dig in and begin to wrap around the host tree's roots stealing its water and nutrients. From there the fig just sort of takes over and eventually the original tree dies, but you can generally still see the trunk buried somewhere under the roots of the full grown fig. The largest Banyan tree in the world is somewhere in India and occupies the better part of two acres, but in Laos, because the fig must reach up out of the jungle canopy to get light, the trees tend to be tall rather than spread out. \r\n\r\nThe fig is, though it may be a bit cynical to say so, is not unlike the ever growing tourism industry. One can almost see the way in which the first guest house in any given town started as a purely separate existence, an oddity growing in the branches of a village, but then, over time, the roots of travelers begin to squeeze out what was once a farming or fishing village, until at some point a critical mass is reached. Sometimes, as in case of Luang Prabang, it's fairly easy to find that tipping point, things like the UNESCO seal of approval and the completion of an airport might well be the moment the roots of the original tree finally give in, the economy shifted and what remains is merely tourism, a fig tree in which an endless amount of guesthouses and western style restaurants begin to appear.\r\n\r\nBut perhaps the tree is best left simply as a tree, a good place to build a tree house if that is your inclination, or maybe just something to marvel out while you float down the same river that already took everything out of you; what's left when everything is gone? Laos. Whatever the case Ofir and I had already decided we didn't want to spend any more time in Luang Prabang.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/vangviengsunset.jpg\" class=\"picwide960\" alt=\"Sunset view from the river, Vang Veing, Laos\" />\r\n\r\nThe plan was to buy a bus ticket and then take it easy, eat an early dinner and catch up on some sleep. Of course when you're traveling that's easier said that done. We were sitting in small cafe on the main street in Luang Prabang when suddenly Ofir jumped up and took off down the street. I saw him talk for a while to someone and then the two of them came back over to the table and I met Andy, a German man Ofir had traveled with some months ago in India. Andy invited us to dinner (which is strange invitation to people eating dinner, but hey) with some people he had met on the slow boat two days before, which is the semi-convoluted way in which I met, Matt from Holland, Jackie, Keith, Matt from London, Georgia, and Debi. Of course the names mean nothing to you, so lets at least try it with a picture, from the back left corner: Ofir, Matt from Holland, Keith from Ireland, Jackie from Germany, Debi from London, Matt also from London, Georgia from Australia and me. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/vangvienggroupn.jpg\" class=\"picfull\" alt=\"Group shot, Vang Veing, Laos\" />\r\n\r\nOfir and I were headed for Vang Vieng and so was everyone else so we made plans to meet up at some point. After traveling more or less constantly for ten days over some very bad roads and very long rivers, Ofir and I arrived in Vang Veing with the intention of doing nothing for at least a week. After that we were planning to head back into Thailand. I had some work to do, articles to write and websites to build so the down time was good for me. Vang Vieng was a curious little town, a town where the strangler fig of tourism long ago squeezed out whatever the village used to be. But sometimes you need a bit of westernism. At this point Vang Vieng is chiefly famous for inner tubing trips down the river and its endless row of bars, the majority of which play old episodes of *Friends* from morning far into the night. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/vangviengafternoonn.jpg\" class=\"picfull\" alt=\"Vang Vieng, Laos\" />\r\n\r\nI spent the majority of my time in Vang Vieng lying back in a small thatched awning hut beside the river, feet kicked up, alternately reading, writing and watching the light change hues through the afternoon. In the evenings, just after sundown, the cliffs in the distance emitted a massive smoky-looking plume out the western cliff face—bats, thousands and thousands of bats heading out into the night sky. It was one of the more amazing sights I've witnessed in Laos and it happened so regularly you could set your clock by it.\r\n\r\nWhen Andy and the rest of the larger group showed up, Ofir and followed them to new guesthouse which had nice sitting area, a free sauna, a great restaurant and cheap massages, which isn't bad for three dollars a night (Thank you Georgia). I would like to say that I have something memorable to write about Vang Vieng, but the truth is we mostly sat around doing nothing, making new friends, drinking a beer round the fire at night.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/vangviengfireside.jpg\" class=\"picfull\" alt=\"Vang Vieng River Bar, Laos\" /> \r\n\r\nThe only thing I managed to do was make a day trip down to Vientiane with Debi. Debi had an infected cut on her foot and wanted to have it look at by real doctors at the Australian clinic and I need to extend my Laos visa, which is strange considering I was only planning on spending a few days here to renew my Thai visa. So it was that we found ourselves at the bus station at six thirty in the morning trying to make a day trip to the capital. After taking care of the various medical and paperwork necessities in Vientiane, we passed the afternoon drinking beer at massage/spa (yes that is a strange place to spend your afternoon drinking beer, but if I were to list all the strange places there wouldn't be much else to write about). Having had no problem getting to Vientiane we assumed it would be no problem to get back, but such was not the case. Finally, after making a tuktuk powered tour of all three Vientiane bus stations, we finally found a bus back to Vang Vieng.\r\n\r\nThe piece of bad new we discovered on our day trip to Vientiane was that Chinese new years was in full swing and unlike a western new years, the Asia countries take the whole week off, which meant none of us could get Cambodian visas until the following Monday. And so we were forced to relax beside the river for several more days than we intended. Yes friends, traveling is hard, but I do it for you.", "dek": "I would like to say that I have something memorable to write about Vang Vieng, but the truth is we mostly sat around doing very little, making new friends, drinking a beer around the fire and waiting out the Chinese new year celebrations, which meant none of us could get Cambodian visas until the following Monday. We were forced to relax beside the river for several more days than we intended. Yes friends, traveling is hard, but I do it for you.", "pub_date": "2006-02-04T23:43:28", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (102.4375533915022345 18.9254486206557111)", "location": 35, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/vangveing.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/vangveing.jpg", "meta_description": "I would like to say that I have something memorable to write about Vang Vieng, but the truth is we mostly sat around doing very little, making new friends, drinking a beer around the fire and waiting out the Chinese new year celebrations", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 41, "fields": {"title": "Water Slides and Spirit Guides", "slug": "water-slides-and-spirit-guides", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>he quiet clatter of palm fronds in the evening breeze reminded me of Goa for a while, but soon, as the sun disappeared behind the western mountains, the similarities disappeared, the wind kicked up and the temperatures dropped dramatically, hinting perhaps at an impending storm and which is something that never happened in Goa. </p>\n<p>The dramatic black karst limestone mountains ringing Ban Na Hin grew darker as the light faded and were it not the dry season it would be easy to believe the monsoon had arrived. I was sitting alone on the back porch of our guesthouse watching the light fade from the bottoms of the clouds and wondering absently how many pages it would take to explain how I came to be in the tiny town of Ban Na Hin, <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunrestaurant.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"126\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Ralph's Restaurant, Ban Na Hin, Laos\" />or if there even existed an explanation. Just to consider how many first dates had to work out to even produce the DNA you call home is more or less a complete reconstruction of the history of the world. But then as we walked down to Ralph's restaurant I realized that kind of detail is best left to William T. Vollman and other prodigious folks with real publishers that deal print on real paper.\n<break></p>\n<p>My reconstructions are limited to the last several weeks, though at times even such limited recollections feel as though they might grow ever more detailed with every reexamination, another memory daisy-chained to the back of the one that preceded it, an effort that might ultimately require several chapters. Let us start with Ralph, or, as this chapter could be called, The English are Everywhere. On the bus ride from Vientiane to Vieng Kham we met an Englishman named Ralph, or, if I were to tell the story properly I would say, at some point on the bus ride, right near the end as a matter of fact, Matt wandered off for a bathroom break and returned from the bushes with an Englishman, which, as everyone knows, is not really uncommon, in fact I believe it's more unusual to find bushes lacking Englishman. Were I to ever climb Mt. Everest I would fully expect to arrive at the summit to see an Englishman enjoying an afternoon tea; the English are like that, wherever you go, there they are—Dr. Livingstone I presume? What's even more curious is that often these English folks are often not tourists but simply ended up wherever they are and apparently decided returning home was more traumatic than staying. So yes, out of the bushes came Ralph who as it turned out owned a restaurant in the Ban Na Hin (its worth pointing out that he had been on our bus the whole time, but see Englishmen don't meet each other on buses, they have to be out in foreign bushes before they notice each other).</p>\n<p>So with Ralph's help we were able to reach Ban Na Hin with no trouble at all and even better Ralph's wife Bon helped organize our trip to Tham Lot Kong Lo Cave (which was the real reason we had deviated off the main road in the first place). Bon seemed happy to arrange our transport to and from the cave and also went to the trouble of calling her cousin and arranging for him to make a five hour journey up river to pick us up and take us back down the Hin Bun River to the Mekong where we could continue southward. The Hin Bun River journey was the idyllic way out of the valley, which even the guidebook said could be tricky to arrange; I didn't have high hopes of finding a boatman, but it all worked out.</p>\n<p>The truth is though that it started much earlier than even this. Way back in Vang Vieng. Not unlike Agatha Christie's mystery novel <em>Ten Little Indians</em> people began to disappear from the group before we even left Vang Vieng. Some went back to Thailand and others on to Cambodia or Vietnam until in the end there remained only five of us, Jackie, Matt, Ofir, Debi and me. As I mentioned previously we were waiting for the Cambodian Embassy to reopen, or rather Matt, Debi and I were waiting since we had plans to head from southern Laos into Cambodia via the Mekong River. Jackie and Ofir wanted to see southern Laos, but were then headed to Vietnam and Thailand respectively.</p>\n<p>The five of us set out for Vientiane early one morning several weeks ago. Or possibly it was less than that; time is problematic when you're traveling. Whatever day it might have been, we reached Vientiane around noon. Vientiane is the largest city and capital of Laos, but it still manages to feel like a small town clustered beside the Mekong and looking peacefully across at the bustling Thai city, Nong Khai, on the opposite shore. Of course Vientiane has the usual amenities like internet and a wide variety of guesthouses and nicer hotels as well as a large selection of international restaurants, but for all intents and purposes it is more or less an oversized villages with houses made of concrete rather than bamboo. It is without a doubt the most laid back and relaxing capital city in the world. The only real reason we stopped for two nights in Vientiane was to renew our Laos visas and get Cambodian visas since the Mekong border in the far south is the one and only Cambodian border crossing that doesn't offer a visa on entry (I have since heard on good authority that the Cambodian border does now offer visas, but better to be on the safe side). </p>\n<p>After dropping our passports at the various agencies Matt and Debi and I went to the Laos National Museum. The National Museum was an interesting mix of natural history and political ideology. The highlight for me was getting to see the largest of the stone Jars that dot the Plain of Jars just outside Phonsavan, an area I originally wanted to go to, but ended up skipping out of sloth. The highlight for Matt and Debi was the signage in the political history area which constantly referred to \"the Imperialist Americans and their puppet soldiers.\" Naturally I had to travel to the National Museum of the one country that Britain never colonized in the company of two Londoners. But I am winning on the \"are-they-yours-or-are-they-mine\" game that Matt and I came up with, which consists in finding the silliest looking, idiotic dressed or just generally annoying tourists and finding out whether they are British or American, because they invariably are one or the other. I am happy to report that the score is thus far 3-6, though I am willing to concede that since only 6% of the America population actually holds a passport, I do have a distinct advantage in the game.</p>\n<p>Other than the beating I took on the propaganda, the National Museum was surprisingly informative about the history of Laos and maybe the only place in the world where the French and Americans get lumped together as indistinguishable imperialists. The interesting thing is not one Lao person, even those that I knew are old enough to have been alive when American (and possibly even French) bombs were falling seem to care that I am American, which is a distinct contrast to some stories I have heard of both Americans and Canadians being insulted and spit on by the Vietnamese (why the Canadians got such ill treatment is a mystery, maybe they're guilty by proximate geography or something).</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/vientianeriversidedinner.jpg\" width=\"190\" height=\"153\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Dinner by the Mekong, Vientiane, Laos\" />Both nights we ate dinner at the food venders along the banks of the river gorging ourselves on grilled pork ribs and plenty of laap, the national dish of Laos, or at least it should be, though truthfully it may be the <strong>only</strong> dish of Laos. In either case it's usually pretty good, mint, basil, chili and lime mixed with either chicken, pork, beef or, when by a river, fish. The second night in Vientiane we said goodbye to Debi whose foot still had not healed and was told by the Australian Clinic to go to Bangkok and seek, as they put it, \"proper medical attention.\" Laos is not totally backward, though it is fairly primitive in some areas, medicine being one of them. The general consensus among travelers is that if you injure yourself in Laos, you go to Thailand. Or just amputate, whatever you prefer. Debi apparently wanted to keep her foot attached to her leg so she booked an early morning flight to Bangkok while the rest of us caught the bus south with the vague idea that we would get off in a small town named Vieng Kham and then catch a truck to the even smaller town of Ban Na Hin. Ralph and Bon made the journey simpler than we thought and even cooked us up some dinner at their restaurant.</p>\n<p>In fact we liked Ban Na Hin so much we decided to stay an extra night and spend an afternoon hiking to a waterfall. Unfortunately as previous mentioned, this is the dry season and in many places Laos looks more like Africa than the jungle you might envision, and the waterfall was no exception, trickling over the cliff with little more power than a gibbon with a full bladder. So it was that I found myself back early, showered and city on the back porch watching the sky, listening to breeze and waiting for the others.</p>\n<h3>Konglor Cave</h3>\n\n<p>Though mentioned in the Lonely Planet guidebooks it seemed few people deviated from route 13 on their way from Vientiane to Pakse in the south, indeed in the four days we were in the Ban Ha Hin/Konglor Cave area we saw one other western tourist, Andy from Scotland who was traveling by motorcycle toward Vietnam. I would not say we were off the beaten path, but we were at the very least lucky enough to <em>feel</em> like we off the beaten path.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunroad.jpg\" width=\"159\" height=\"217\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Road to Konglor Cave, Laos\" />Our journey began the next morning after knocking back an English breakfast at Ralph's restaurant. We were picked up by a sawngthaew, piling in with a dozen or so Lao people and a few bags of rice, the odd chicken and duck here and there, all in all a full load. The road, if it may be called that, which heads south from Ban Na Hin to the cave was every bit the torturous, bumpy, dusty experience we all knew it would be, but somehow having travel live up to your worst fears does not make it any easier to bear the bone-jarring, ass-numbing roller coaster ride on wooden planks. The best part was we already knew we would have to repeat the trip the next morning to catch the boat.</p>\n<p>Despite the rough ride the scenery was spectacular and there is nothing like careening across a dried up rice paddy with the afternoon light playing across the distant trees and limestone cliffs to make you feel like yes, finally I have made it out there, whatever out there may mean. After roughly four perhaps five hours, we finally made it to the small village of Konglor where we would be spending the night with a host family. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunroadtree.jpg\" width=\"178\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Tree, Road to Konglor Cave, Laos\" />But before we had time to do much more than drop off the bags and grab a bowl of noodle soup, we were ushered down to the river and immediately set off for the cave. We were trying to make the trip through to the other side, see the hidden valley and make it back before nightfall so there wasn't a lot of time it linger.</p>\n<p>As would happen for the remainder of the time Matt and I traveled with her, the villagers immediately assumed he was her husband (later, in other places they would variously assume I was her husband); we decided without much debate to just leave it alone, since explaining cultural differences in broken English, French and Laos would be more confusing than just rolling with it. The idea that an unmarried woman would travel with three men is apparently unfathomable for the Lao. So it was that Matt and Jackie piled into one canoe and Ofir and I in the other and we set off down the river toward the cave.</p>\n<p>I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting the cave to be like, but I wasn't quite prepared for how absolutely massive it would be inside. According to Lonely Planet it's about 150 meters at its widest and about as high at its tallest. There were several places where the river was too low and we had to get out and wade while the guides carried the boats over various rapids and rocks, but then at other times my headlamp disappeared into to water that seemed like it may well have been 150 meters deep. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/insidekonglor.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Inside Konglor Cave, Laos\" />When I talked to Ralph about it later he said that no one has any idea how deep it is in some spots and the large cavern where we stopped to look at some stalactites and stalagmites has been extensively explored but no end yet found. If you happen to be into spelunking and such, this is definitely the place for you.</p>\n<p>On the far side of the cave from the village is a huge hidden valley ringed on all sides by karst limestone ridges. The water level was not high enough, nor was there enough daylight left, to go very far into the valley, but we did stop at the first village and enjoy some warm sodas and played with the local children. The sodas and everything else that the village gets that isn't grown by them must come like we did, through the cave. The surrounding ridges are impassible to all but the hardiest of climbers and for all intents and purposes impenetrable. The tribal people that live here came through to escape persecution at various times in their history and so far it has proved entirely successful.</p>\n<p>After taking some pictures and sharing them with the local children (the digital camera is a boon to the language barrier the world over, snap, display, laugh, etc), we piled back in the boats and set off. The boat Ofir and I were in was decidedly slower than the other and we were soon alone in the darkness of the cave, this time without the light of the other boat in the distance. But being the slow boat was actually quite nice since when we finally came out the other side of the cave the sunset was in full swing and as we headed upstream the local people were just wading out into the water and beginning to cast their nets looking for tomorrow's food.<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunsunset.jpg\" width=\"248\" height=\"195\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Sunset, Hin Bun River, Laos\" /></p>\n<p>Back at the stilt home where we were staying Ofir and I had dinner with our host family, sticky rice and an omelet with some instant noodles (for whatever reason in Laos, instant ramen noodles are regarded as a delicacy, I think more for the ease with which they can be prepared than for the taste, but many a restaurant proudly advertises \"instant noodles here\"). The dinner conversation was, well, it was non-existent since our Laos was probably better than their English, but we managed to convey a few ideas through hand gestures and some consolation with the back of the guidebook. After dinner Ofir and I went out to explore the village and maybe stumble across a cold Beer Lao, which we managed to find and again endured the awkwardness of impenetrable language barriers. I have managed to pick up a little Lao, I can count to ten, order food, say hello, goodbye, please, thank you, you're welcome, how much, and more of these sorts of things, but nothing approaching conversation. But the Laos people seemed quite happy to talk amongst themselves and watch us drink our beer. We already knew it would be an early night; Lao villagers go to bed around eight pm, which was just as well since we had to get back in the truck at six AM.</p>\n<p>I lay in bed for a while with my headphones on, listening to music and thinking about life in Lao villages. I was trying to go over our actions of the last few hours and make sure that we had not offended anyone; the majority of villages in central and south Laos are animists and believe in spirits, the most important of which is often the house spirit. Consequently there are a number of things listed in the Lonely Planet book that one ought not to do inside a villager's house. For instance clapping is big no-no and will likely result in the slaughter of a buffalo to appease the offended spirits, which is something the villagers can't afford and certainly don't want to do. I'm not sure how intact these beliefs still are given the prevalence of satellite television in Laos (yes even the smallest villages the first thing they do when the get electricity is not refrigeration, it's television), but I didn't want to be responsible for the death of any buffalo.</p>\n<p>According to Ralph, and I relate this as purely anecdotal evidence, shortly after the quake that triggered the tsunami there was a residual quake somewhere in the mountains north and here and it would seem that some sort of large fissure opened up and for the better part of the day the river was swallowed by the earth. The villagers were naturally freaked out by having their livelihood disappear and after gathering the stranded, beached fish they promptly sacrificed a buffalo. One hour later the water begin to refill the riverbed and within the week the river was back to normal. So perhaps their faith in the spirits is understandably quite intact.</p>\n<p>There is a saying in Southeast Asia that the Vietnamese plant the rice, the Cambodians watch it grow and the Lao listen to it grow. I'm not exactly sure what this is getting at since I haven't been to Vietnam or Cambodia, but I think the gist of what it's saying is that the Lao are very very relaxed. And please don't confuse relaxed with lazy; when there is work to be done the Lao do it, but they do it at a Lao pace and according to what everyone who visits comes to refer to as \"Lao time,\" distinctly slower and more relaxed than western time, Lao time accords plenty of the day to having fun. As Ralph said, when the Lao want to build a house they first have a party, when they get done building the house, they have another party. But it isn't that they don't want to build the house, they just seem to recognize that life is in some sense, or is for them anyway, much more of a relaxed, fun-filled experience than for many of us in the west with all our so-called modern worries. I don't know how long it will be before the Lao start to adopt such western worries, or even if they ever will, but let us hope it is no time soon.</p>\n<p>Its easy to see why communism is popular here, the Laos are essentially communist without the ideology, which is not to say that the ideology does not get in the way or that there is none of the usual corruption, of course there is that, but it is no worse than the States. For instance several Lao have complained to us that the hill tribes are being driven out of the mountains and down to the river plains so that the government can award illegal contracts to Vietnamese logging companies which then clear-cut the hills. But the people themselves in their everyday actions are close to what Karl Marx wrote about than anything I have ever seen elsewhere. Or perhaps really they are closer to what Rousseau wanted the ideal pre-civilized man to be; except that the Laos are highly civilized and yet they retain a spirit of community that simple does not exist in the west.</p>\n<p>And they do so without being tight lipped or exclusive, the Laos are in fact probably friendlier and even more inviting than the Indians. I'm not going to pretend to understand Lao culture, nor pretend I have been a part of it, but if you are walking down the street you will be inundated with calls of sabaai-dii (hello) from small children, babies perched in their parents arms, old women smoking cheroot, school children walking home in uniforms, teenagers on bikes, middle-aged Lao eager to practice their English and always excited to teach you some Lao. Late at night there is always someone willing to break the law, sell you a little Beer Lao and try to communicate through a mixture of all languages including the most universal—excitement. Of all the places I have been Laos would be top of the list for a return trip; perhaps it is after all really just a matter or listening to rice grow.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunsunrise.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Sunrise Hin Bun River, Laos\" />The next morning we awoke at five and walked down to the river to watch the sunrise as the women gathered water in buckets and the children splashed on the banks. Ofir and I then had a quick breakfast with our host family, after which, despite some harsh sounding words from the sawngthaew driver, our hosts preformed what is know as a Baci ceremony. We held a boiled egg and a bit of sticky rice in our right hand while the host waved their hands over ours, saying prayers and offering the rice to the spirits in exchange for luck. The ceremony ended with a simple pieced of string tied about our wrists. Because he was able to speak some French with the other host family, we later learned from Matt that the string brings the luck and blessing of the spirits with you on your journey. Say what you will of animism or any other primitivism spirituality, we have had extraordinary luck ever since those simple pieces of string were tied around our wrist.</p>\n<p>Many thanks to Bon and Ralph as well as Bon's cousin and all the others who helped us see the Hin Bun River Valley and welcomed us into their homes.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>he quiet clatter of palm fronds in the evening breeze reminded me of Goa for a while, but soon, as the sun disappeared behind the western mountains, the similarities disappeared, the wind kicked up and the temperatures dropped dramatically, hinting perhaps at an impending storm and which is something that never happened in Goa. \r\n\r\nThe dramatic black karst limestone mountains ringing Ban Na Hin grew darker as the light faded and were it not the dry season it would be easy to believe the monsoon had arrived. I was sitting alone on the back porch of our guesthouse watching the light fade from the bottoms of the clouds and wondering absently how many pages it would take to explain how I came to be in the tiny town of Ban Na Hin, <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/hinbunrestaurant.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"126\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Ralph's Restaurant, Ban Na Hin, Laos\" />or if there even existed an explanation. Just to consider how many first dates had to work out to even produce the DNA you call home is more or less a complete reconstruction of the history of the world. But then as we walked down to Ralph's restaurant I realized that kind of detail is best left to William T. Vollman and other prodigious folks with real publishers that deal print on real paper.\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nMy reconstructions are limited to the last several weeks, though at times even such limited recollections feel as though they might grow ever more detailed with every reexamination, another memory daisy-chained to the back of the one that preceded it, an effort that might ultimately require several chapters. Let us start with Ralph, or, as this chapter could be called, The English are Everywhere. On the bus ride from Vientiane to Vieng Kham we met an Englishman named Ralph, or, if I were to tell the story properly I would say, at some point on the bus ride, right near the end as a matter of fact, Matt wandered off for a bathroom break and returned from the bushes with an Englishman, which, as everyone knows, is not really uncommon, in fact I believe it's more unusual to find bushes lacking Englishman. Were I to ever climb Mt. Everest I would fully expect to arrive at the summit to see an Englishman enjoying an afternoon tea; the English are like that, wherever you go, there they are—Dr. Livingstone I presume? What's even more curious is that often these English folks are often not tourists but simply ended up wherever they are and apparently decided returning home was more traumatic than staying. So yes, out of the bushes came Ralph who as it turned out owned a restaurant in the Ban Na Hin (its worth pointing out that he had been on our bus the whole time, but see Englishmen don't meet each other on buses, they have to be out in foreign bushes before they notice each other).\r\n\r\nSo with Ralph's help we were able to reach Ban Na Hin with no trouble at all and even better Ralph's wife Bon helped organize our trip to Tham Lot Kong Lo Cave (which was the real reason we had deviated off the main road in the first place). Bon seemed happy to arrange our transport to and from the cave and also went to the trouble of calling her cousin and arranging for him to make a five hour journey up river to pick us up and take us back down the Hin Bun River to the Mekong where we could continue southward. The Hin Bun River journey was the idyllic way out of the valley, which even the guidebook said could be tricky to arrange; I didn't have high hopes of finding a boatman, but it all worked out.\r\n\r\nThe truth is though that it started much earlier than even this. Way back in Vang Vieng. Not unlike Agatha Christie's mystery novel *Ten Little Indians* people began to disappear from the group before we even left Vang Vieng. Some went back to Thailand and others on to Cambodia or Vietnam until in the end there remained only five of us, Jackie, Matt, Ofir, Debi and me. As I mentioned previously we were waiting for the Cambodian Embassy to reopen, or rather Matt, Debi and I were waiting since we had plans to head from southern Laos into Cambodia via the Mekong River. Jackie and Ofir wanted to see southern Laos, but were then headed to Vietnam and Thailand respectively.\r\n\r\nThe five of us set out for Vientiane early one morning several weeks ago. Or possibly it was less than that; time is problematic when you're traveling. Whatever day it might have been, we reached Vientiane around noon. Vientiane is the largest city and capital of Laos, but it still manages to feel like a small town clustered beside the Mekong and looking peacefully across at the bustling Thai city, Nong Khai, on the opposite shore. Of course Vientiane has the usual amenities like internet and a wide variety of guesthouses and nicer hotels as well as a large selection of international restaurants, but for all intents and purposes it is more or less an oversized villages with houses made of concrete rather than bamboo. It is without a doubt the most laid back and relaxing capital city in the world. The only real reason we stopped for two nights in Vientiane was to renew our Laos visas and get Cambodian visas since the Mekong border in the far south is the one and only Cambodian border crossing that doesn't offer a visa on entry (I have since heard on good authority that the Cambodian border does now offer visas, but better to be on the safe side). \r\n\r\nAfter dropping our passports at the various agencies Matt and Debi and I went to the Laos National Museum. The National Museum was an interesting mix of natural history and political ideology. The highlight for me was getting to see the largest of the stone Jars that dot the Plain of Jars just outside Phonsavan, an area I originally wanted to go to, but ended up skipping out of sloth. The highlight for Matt and Debi was the signage in the political history area which constantly referred to \"the Imperialist Americans and their puppet soldiers.\" Naturally I had to travel to the National Museum of the one country that Britain never colonized in the company of two Londoners. But I am winning on the \"are-they-yours-or-are-they-mine\" game that Matt and I came up with, which consists in finding the silliest looking, idiotic dressed or just generally annoying tourists and finding out whether they are British or American, because they invariably are one or the other. I am happy to report that the score is thus far 3-6, though I am willing to concede that since only 6% of the America population actually holds a passport, I do have a distinct advantage in the game.\r\n\r\nOther than the beating I took on the propaganda, the National Museum was surprisingly informative about the history of Laos and maybe the only place in the world where the French and Americans get lumped together as indistinguishable imperialists. The interesting thing is not one Lao person, even those that I knew are old enough to have been alive when American (and possibly even French) bombs were falling seem to care that I am American, which is a distinct contrast to some stories I have heard of both Americans and Canadians being insulted and spit on by the Vietnamese (why the Canadians got such ill treatment is a mystery, maybe they're guilty by proximate geography or something).\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/vientianeriversidedinner.jpg\" width=\"190\" height=\"153\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Dinner by the Mekong, Vientiane, Laos\" />Both nights we ate dinner at the food venders along the banks of the river gorging ourselves on grilled pork ribs and plenty of laap, the national dish of Laos, or at least it should be, though truthfully it may be the **only** dish of Laos. In either case it's usually pretty good, mint, basil, chili and lime mixed with either chicken, pork, beef or, when by a river, fish. The second night in Vientiane we said goodbye to Debi whose foot still had not healed and was told by the Australian Clinic to go to Bangkok and seek, as they put it, \"proper medical attention.\" Laos is not totally backward, though it is fairly primitive in some areas, medicine being one of them. The general consensus among travelers is that if you injure yourself in Laos, you go to Thailand. Or just amputate, whatever you prefer. Debi apparently wanted to keep her foot attached to her leg so she booked an early morning flight to Bangkok while the rest of us caught the bus south with the vague idea that we would get off in a small town named Vieng Kham and then catch a truck to the even smaller town of Ban Na Hin. Ralph and Bon made the journey simpler than we thought and even cooked us up some dinner at their restaurant.\r\n\r\nIn fact we liked Ban Na Hin so much we decided to stay an extra night and spend an afternoon hiking to a waterfall. Unfortunately as previous mentioned, this is the dry season and in many places Laos looks more like Africa than the jungle you might envision, and the waterfall was no exception, trickling over the cliff with little more power than a gibbon with a full bladder. So it was that I found myself back early, showered and city on the back porch watching the sky, listening to breeze and waiting for the others.\r\n\r\n<h3>Konglor Cave</h3>\r\n\r\nThough mentioned in the Lonely Planet guidebooks it seemed few people deviated from route 13 on their way from Vientiane to Pakse in the south, indeed in the four days we were in the Ban Ha Hin/Konglor Cave area we saw one other western tourist, Andy from Scotland who was traveling by motorcycle toward Vietnam. I would not say we were off the beaten path, but we were at the very least lucky enough to *feel* like we off the beaten path.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/hinbunroad.jpg\" width=\"159\" height=\"217\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Road to Konglor Cave, Laos\" />Our journey began the next morning after knocking back an English breakfast at Ralph's restaurant. We were picked up by a sawngthaew, piling in with a dozen or so Lao people and a few bags of rice, the odd chicken and duck here and there, all in all a full load. The road, if it may be called that, which heads south from Ban Na Hin to the cave was every bit the torturous, bumpy, dusty experience we all knew it would be, but somehow having travel live up to your worst fears does not make it any easier to bear the bone-jarring, ass-numbing roller coaster ride on wooden planks. The best part was we already knew we would have to repeat the trip the next morning to catch the boat.\r\n\r\nDespite the rough ride the scenery was spectacular and there is nothing like careening across a dried up rice paddy with the afternoon light playing across the distant trees and limestone cliffs to make you feel like yes, finally I have made it out there, whatever out there may mean. After roughly four perhaps five hours, we finally made it to the small village of Konglor where we would be spending the night with a host family. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/hinbunroadtree.jpg\" width=\"178\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Tree, Road to Konglor Cave, Laos\" />But before we had time to do much more than drop off the bags and grab a bowl of noodle soup, we were ushered down to the river and immediately set off for the cave. We were trying to make the trip through to the other side, see the hidden valley and make it back before nightfall so there wasn't a lot of time it linger.\r\n\r\nAs would happen for the remainder of the time Matt and I traveled with her, the villagers immediately assumed he was her husband (later, in other places they would variously assume I was her husband); we decided without much debate to just leave it alone, since explaining cultural differences in broken English, French and Laos would be more confusing than just rolling with it. The idea that an unmarried woman would travel with three men is apparently unfathomable for the Lao. So it was that Matt and Jackie piled into one canoe and Ofir and I in the other and we set off down the river toward the cave.\r\n\r\nI'm not entirely sure what I was expecting the cave to be like, but I wasn't quite prepared for how absolutely massive it would be inside. According to Lonely Planet it's about 150 meters at its widest and about as high at its tallest. There were several places where the river was too low and we had to get out and wade while the guides carried the boats over various rapids and rocks, but then at other times my headlamp disappeared into to water that seemed like it may well have been 150 meters deep. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/insidekonglor.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Inside Konglor Cave, Laos\" />When I talked to Ralph about it later he said that no one has any idea how deep it is in some spots and the large cavern where we stopped to look at some stalactites and stalagmites has been extensively explored but no end yet found. If you happen to be into spelunking and such, this is definitely the place for you.\r\n\r\nOn the far side of the cave from the village is a huge hidden valley ringed on all sides by karst limestone ridges. The water level was not high enough, nor was there enough daylight left, to go very far into the valley, but we did stop at the first village and enjoy some warm sodas and played with the local children. The sodas and everything else that the village gets that isn't grown by them must come like we did, through the cave. The surrounding ridges are impassible to all but the hardiest of climbers and for all intents and purposes impenetrable. The tribal people that live here came through to escape persecution at various times in their history and so far it has proved entirely successful.\r\n\r\nAfter taking some pictures and sharing them with the local children (the digital camera is a boon to the language barrier the world over, snap, display, laugh, etc), we piled back in the boats and set off. The boat Ofir and I were in was decidedly slower than the other and we were soon alone in the darkness of the cave, this time without the light of the other boat in the distance. But being the slow boat was actually quite nice since when we finally came out the other side of the cave the sunset was in full swing and as we headed upstream the local people were just wading out into the water and beginning to cast their nets looking for tomorrow's food.<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/hinbunsunset.jpg\" width=\"248\" height=\"195\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Sunset, Hin Bun River, Laos\" />\r\n\r\nBack at the stilt home where we were staying Ofir and I had dinner with our host family, sticky rice and an omelet with some instant noodles (for whatever reason in Laos, instant ramen noodles are regarded as a delicacy, I think more for the ease with which they can be prepared than for the taste, but many a restaurant proudly advertises \"instant noodles here\"). The dinner conversation was, well, it was non-existent since our Laos was probably better than their English, but we managed to convey a few ideas through hand gestures and some consolation with the back of the guidebook. After dinner Ofir and I went out to explore the village and maybe stumble across a cold Beer Lao, which we managed to find and again endured the awkwardness of impenetrable language barriers. I have managed to pick up a little Lao, I can count to ten, order food, say hello, goodbye, please, thank you, you're welcome, how much, and more of these sorts of things, but nothing approaching conversation. But the Laos people seemed quite happy to talk amongst themselves and watch us drink our beer. We already knew it would be an early night; Lao villagers go to bed around eight pm, which was just as well since we had to get back in the truck at six AM.\r\n\r\nI lay in bed for a while with my headphones on, listening to music and thinking about life in Lao villages. I was trying to go over our actions of the last few hours and make sure that we had not offended anyone; the majority of villages in central and south Laos are animists and believe in spirits, the most important of which is often the house spirit. Consequently there are a number of things listed in the Lonely Planet book that one ought not to do inside a villager's house. For instance clapping is big no-no and will likely result in the slaughter of a buffalo to appease the offended spirits, which is something the villagers can't afford and certainly don't want to do. I'm not sure how intact these beliefs still are given the prevalence of satellite television in Laos (yes even the smallest villages the first thing they do when the get electricity is not refrigeration, it's television), but I didn't want to be responsible for the death of any buffalo.\r\n\r\nAccording to Ralph, and I relate this as purely anecdotal evidence, shortly after the quake that triggered the tsunami there was a residual quake somewhere in the mountains north and here and it would seem that some sort of large fissure opened up and for the better part of the day the river was swallowed by the earth. The villagers were naturally freaked out by having their livelihood disappear and after gathering the stranded, beached fish they promptly sacrificed a buffalo. One hour later the water begin to refill the riverbed and within the week the river was back to normal. So perhaps their faith in the spirits is understandably quite intact.\r\n\r\nThere is a saying in Southeast Asia that the Vietnamese plant the rice, the Cambodians watch it grow and the Lao listen to it grow. I'm not exactly sure what this is getting at since I haven't been to Vietnam or Cambodia, but I think the gist of what it's saying is that the Lao are very very relaxed. And please don't confuse relaxed with lazy; when there is work to be done the Lao do it, but they do it at a Lao pace and according to what everyone who visits comes to refer to as \"Lao time,\" distinctly slower and more relaxed than western time, Lao time accords plenty of the day to having fun. As Ralph said, when the Lao want to build a house they first have a party, when they get done building the house, they have another party. But it isn't that they don't want to build the house, they just seem to recognize that life is in some sense, or is for them anyway, much more of a relaxed, fun-filled experience than for many of us in the west with all our so-called modern worries. I don't know how long it will be before the Lao start to adopt such western worries, or even if they ever will, but let us hope it is no time soon.\r\n\r\nIts easy to see why communism is popular here, the Laos are essentially communist without the ideology, which is not to say that the ideology does not get in the way or that there is none of the usual corruption, of course there is that, but it is no worse than the States. For instance several Lao have complained to us that the hill tribes are being driven out of the mountains and down to the river plains so that the government can award illegal contracts to Vietnamese logging companies which then clear-cut the hills. But the people themselves in their everyday actions are close to what Karl Marx wrote about than anything I have ever seen elsewhere. Or perhaps really they are closer to what Rousseau wanted the ideal pre-civilized man to be; except that the Laos are highly civilized and yet they retain a spirit of community that simple does not exist in the west.\r\n\r\nAnd they do so without being tight lipped or exclusive, the Laos are in fact probably friendlier and even more inviting than the Indians. I'm not going to pretend to understand Lao culture, nor pretend I have been a part of it, but if you are walking down the street you will be inundated with calls of sabaai-dii (hello) from small children, babies perched in their parents arms, old women smoking cheroot, school children walking home in uniforms, teenagers on bikes, middle-aged Lao eager to practice their English and always excited to teach you some Lao. Late at night there is always someone willing to break the law, sell you a little Beer Lao and try to communicate through a mixture of all languages including the most universal—excitement. Of all the places I have been Laos would be top of the list for a return trip; perhaps it is after all really just a matter or listening to rice grow.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/hinbunsunrise.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Sunrise Hin Bun River, Laos\" />The next morning we awoke at five and walked down to the river to watch the sunrise as the women gathered water in buckets and the children splashed on the banks. Ofir and I then had a quick breakfast with our host family, after which, despite some harsh sounding words from the sawngthaew driver, our hosts preformed what is know as a Baci ceremony. We held a boiled egg and a bit of sticky rice in our right hand while the host waved their hands over ours, saying prayers and offering the rice to the spirits in exchange for luck. The ceremony ended with a simple pieced of string tied about our wrists. Because he was able to speak some French with the other host family, we later learned from Matt that the string brings the luck and blessing of the spirits with you on your journey. Say what you will of animism or any other primitivism spirituality, we have had extraordinary luck ever since those simple pieces of string were tied around our wrist.\r\n\r\nMany thanks to Bon and Ralph as well as Bon's cousin and all the others who helped us see the Hin Bun River Valley and welcomed us into their homes.", "dek": "The dramatic black karst limestone mountains ringing Ban Na Hin grew darker as the light faded. I was sitting alone on the back porch of our guesthouse watching the light slowly disappear from the bottoms of the clouds and wondering absently how many pages it would take to explain how I came to be in the tiny town of Ban Na Hin, or if such an explanation even really existed.", "pub_date": "2006-02-10T19:47:12", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (104.4978332374018919 18.0628503575035602)", "location": 62, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/konglorcave.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/konglorcave.jpg", "meta_description": "If you find Ban Na Hin, Laos you're a better traveler than I. I'm still not sure how I ended up here, but I'm damn glad I did, it's been my favorite stop in Laos.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 42, "fields": {"title": "Everyday the Fourteenth", "slug": "everyday-fourteenth", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span>f the water had been high enough we could have simply headed downstream from Konglor village and followed the Hin Bun River all the way to a small village where we could walk to route 13, the major north south artery of Laos. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunboat.jpg\" width=\"152\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Boat, Hin Bun River, Laos\" />Unfortunately for us the water level was too low to leave from Konglor so we set off at 6 AM by sawngthaew to retrace the brutal journey of the day before. Perhaps it was the fact that we already knew where we were going, perhaps we stopped less along the way, perhaps we went faster, whatever the case, the second time the road didn't seem as long or as bad. We got dropped off at Ralph's restaurant, ate some breakfast and then took a tuk-tuk down to the river with Bon's cousin who was piloting the boat. We then piled four large bags, four daypacks and five people in a six meter dugout canoe. At least it looked like a dugout canoe, but it leaked like a sieve which leads me to believe there must have been a seam somewhere. Jackie and I traded off bailing to keep our bags dry. </p>\n<p>The boat was powered by the ever-present-in-southeast-Asia long tail motor which is essential a lawnmower engine with a three meter pole extending out of it to which a small propeller is attached—perfect for navigating shallow water. And by shallow I mean sometimes a mere inch between the hull and the riverbed.\n<break></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunriver.jpg\" width=\"216\" height=\"165\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Hin Bun River, Laos\" />We passed through series of stunning valleys with jagged karst mountains on all sides. The dark limestone has a way of looking menacing and foreboding even in the glare of the midday sun. As with the untapped spelunking, there is a wealth of amazing climbing routes just waiting for first ascents from someone willing the brave the tigers and UXO.</p>\n<p>The scenery was beautiful, but the sun baked our skin and the hard wooden planks on which we sat for five hours without stopping did nothing to help our already sore butts. In fact even two weeks later as I write this, I still have difficulty sitting on anything wooden for more than an hour. There is certain point at which even molded plastic chairs seem like luxurious padding.</p>\n<p>We were dropped off in a small unremarkable roadside town and after paying Bon's cousin we walked up to route 13 just as the sun was setting and plopped our bags at the side of the road. I will admit that our prospects for a ride did not look good. We bet on how long it would take and it was Jackie, ever the optimist, who got closest—a mere ten minutes. We barely had time to buy some oranges before a bus came to a roaring stop next to our bags. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hinbunwaiting.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"182\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Waiting for the Bus, Hin Bun, Laos\" />We threw our belongings on the roof and climbed over the various bags of rice and still flopping fish that are standard fare on any Lao bus ride. We didn't meet them that night, but there was another western couple of the bus who later confessed to being deeply impressed that we were just standing at the side of the road in a town that doesn't even make it on most maps. Of course the truth is our journey off the beaten path was anything but challenging, but naturally we didn't tell them that.</p>\n<p>Matt and I remained standing in the aisle most of the four hour ride to Savannakhet, which was just fine with me since I had been sitting for fifteen hours previously. Checking into a guesthouse in Savannakhet proved a surreal experience since the owner was watching BBC news; I hadn't seen the news since I left Thailand almost six weeks ago. It was vaguely depressing to notice that while the names changed and the countries involved were sometimes different, the news was essentially the same, probably always was the same and probably always will be the same. Ofir and I flipped on the in room TV and watched some Mad Max, which, like the news, was essentially the same as last time I saw it, but Mad Max has a character named \"feral boy\" which is something the news generally lacks.</p>\n<p>We spent the next day exploring Savannakhet by bicycle, but really there wasn't much to see so we mainly sat in the room recuperating and watching movies. Early next morning we continued on to Pakse, but after one night there we didn't see much point in staying. Jackie, Matt and I headed up onto the Bolaven Plateau to a small town named Tat Lo, which was essentially the same as Vang Vieng though slightly less touristy. Ofir decided to part ways and head down to the four thousand islands area since his visa was about to expire. We were sorry to see him go, especially me since I had been traveling with him for over a month by that point. Good luck Ofir, enjoy the rest of your time in Thailand.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/tatlofalls.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"123\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Tat Lo Waterfall, Laos\" />Tat Lo was peaceful and swimming in the waterfall on a hot afternoon was very refreshing but the place didn't really grab us. We decided to wait one extra day and see if Debi would indeed meet up with us again. The only remarkable thing that happened in Tat Lo was Valentines Day which we celebrated by, well, going to bed early and alone the way single people tend to celebrate Valentine's Day. Jackie very thoughtfully gave both Matt and I paper roses and cigarette lighters which she found god knows where. And of course we had nothing to reciprocate with which might go a long way to explain why the both of us are single. But then again the day before, riding in the back of a sawngthaew we watched a young Lao lad on a motorbike try to give a rose to a young Lao girl on the back of another motorbike, which would have been terribly endearing except that she didn't accept it. Sorry we're such flakes Jackie, but you already knew that; this post is hereby dedicated to you. Happy Valentine's Day.</p>\n<p>As I mentioned earlier the idea behind going to Tat Lo was to find somewhere pleasant to wait for Debi to catch up, but Jackie was out of time and went to join Ofir in the four thousand Islands before her visa ran out. I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip Jackie and I promise I'll visit you in Berlin. Matt and I were a little unsure what to do since we had told Debi to come to Tat Lo, but we didn't like it much so we elected to head farther out over the Bolaven Plateau to the town of Sekong. It turned out that Debi was having her own little misadventure having flown to the wrong city in Thailand. So she had to catch an over night bus to Pakse, which despite the hilarity of it (never have your brother's <strong>ex</strong>girlfriend book your plane flight, even if she is Thai), worked out perfectly when she met us the next night in Sekong.</p>\n<p>Many thanks to Ofir and Jackie for the use of their photos; the first is Ofir's and the one of us at the side of the road is Jackie's.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span>f the water had been high enough we could have simply headed downstream from Konglor village and followed the Hin Bun River all the way to a small village where we could walk to route 13, the major north south artery of Laos. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/hinbunboat.jpg\" width=\"152\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Boat, Hin Bun River, Laos\" />Unfortunately for us the water level was too low to leave from Konglor so we set off at 6 AM by sawngthaew to retrace the brutal journey of the day before. Perhaps it was the fact that we already knew where we were going, perhaps we stopped less along the way, perhaps we went faster, whatever the case, the second time the road didn't seem as long or as bad. We got dropped off at Ralph's restaurant, ate some breakfast and then took a tuk-tuk down to the river with Bon's cousin who was piloting the boat. We then piled four large bags, four daypacks and five people in a six meter dugout canoe. At least it looked like a dugout canoe, but it leaked like a sieve which leads me to believe there must have been a seam somewhere. Jackie and I traded off bailing to keep our bags dry. \r\n\r\nThe boat was powered by the ever-present-in-southeast-Asia long tail motor which is essential a lawnmower engine with a three meter pole extending out of it to which a small propeller is attached—perfect for navigating shallow water. And by shallow I mean sometimes a mere inch between the hull and the riverbed.\r\n<break>\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/hinbunriver.jpg\" width=\"216\" height=\"165\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Hin Bun River, Laos\" />We passed through series of stunning valleys with jagged karst mountains on all sides. The dark limestone has a way of looking menacing and foreboding even in the glare of the midday sun. As with the untapped spelunking, there is a wealth of amazing climbing routes just waiting for first ascents from someone willing the brave the tigers and UXO.\r\n\r\nThe scenery was beautiful, but the sun baked our skin and the hard wooden planks on which we sat for five hours without stopping did nothing to help our already sore butts. In fact even two weeks later as I write this, I still have difficulty sitting on anything wooden for more than an hour. There is certain point at which even molded plastic chairs seem like luxurious padding.\r\n\r\nWe were dropped off in a small unremarkable roadside town and after paying Bon's cousin we walked up to route 13 just as the sun was setting and plopped our bags at the side of the road. I will admit that our prospects for a ride did not look good. We bet on how long it would take and it was Jackie, ever the optimist, who got closest—a mere ten minutes. We barely had time to buy some oranges before a bus came to a roaring stop next to our bags. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/hinbunwaiting.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"182\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Waiting for the Bus, Hin Bun, Laos\" />We threw our belongings on the roof and climbed over the various bags of rice and still flopping fish that are standard fare on any Lao bus ride. We didn't meet them that night, but there was another western couple of the bus who later confessed to being deeply impressed that we were just standing at the side of the road in a town that doesn't even make it on most maps. Of course the truth is our journey off the beaten path was anything but challenging, but naturally we didn't tell them that.\r\n\r\nMatt and I remained standing in the aisle most of the four hour ride to Savannakhet, which was just fine with me since I had been sitting for fifteen hours previously. Checking into a guesthouse in Savannakhet proved a surreal experience since the owner was watching BBC news; I hadn't seen the news since I left Thailand almost six weeks ago. It was vaguely depressing to notice that while the names changed and the countries involved were sometimes different, the news was essentially the same, probably always was the same and probably always will be the same. Ofir and I flipped on the in room TV and watched some Mad Max, which, like the news, was essentially the same as last time I saw it, but Mad Max has a character named \"feral boy\" which is something the news generally lacks.\r\n\r\nWe spent the next day exploring Savannakhet by bicycle, but really there wasn't much to see so we mainly sat in the room recuperating and watching movies. Early next morning we continued on to Pakse, but after one night there we didn't see much point in staying. Jackie, Matt and I headed up onto the Bolaven Plateau to a small town named Tat Lo, which was essentially the same as Vang Vieng though slightly less touristy. Ofir decided to part ways and head down to the four thousand islands area since his visa was about to expire. We were sorry to see him go, especially me since I had been traveling with him for over a month by that point. Good luck Ofir, enjoy the rest of your time in Thailand.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/tatlofalls.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"123\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Tat Lo Waterfall, Laos\" />Tat Lo was peaceful and swimming in the waterfall on a hot afternoon was very refreshing but the place didn't really grab us. We decided to wait one extra day and see if Debi would indeed meet up with us again. The only remarkable thing that happened in Tat Lo was Valentines Day which we celebrated by, well, going to bed early and alone the way single people tend to celebrate Valentine's Day. Jackie very thoughtfully gave both Matt and I paper roses and cigarette lighters which she found god knows where. And of course we had nothing to reciprocate with which might go a long way to explain why the both of us are single. But then again the day before, riding in the back of a sawngthaew we watched a young Lao lad on a motorbike try to give a rose to a young Lao girl on the back of another motorbike, which would have been terribly endearing except that she didn't accept it. Sorry we're such flakes Jackie, but you already knew that; this post is hereby dedicated to you. Happy Valentine's Day.\r\n\r\nAs I mentioned earlier the idea behind going to Tat Lo was to find somewhere pleasant to wait for Debi to catch up, but Jackie was out of time and went to join Ofir in the four thousand Islands before her visa ran out. I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip Jackie and I promise I'll visit you in Berlin. Matt and I were a little unsure what to do since we had told Debi to come to Tat Lo, but we didn't like it much so we elected to head farther out over the Bolaven Plateau to the town of Sekong. It turned out that Debi was having her own little misadventure having flown to the wrong city in Thailand. So she had to catch an over night bus to Pakse, which despite the hilarity of it (never have your brother's **ex**girlfriend book your plane flight, even if she is Thai), worked out perfectly when she met us the next night in Sekong.\r\n\r\nMany thanks to Ofir and Jackie for the use of their photos; the first is Ofir's and the one of us at the side of the road is Jackie's.", "dek": "We piled four large bags, four daypacks and five people in a six meter dugout canoe. The boat was powered by the ever-present-in-southeast-Asia long tail motor which is essential a lawnmower engine with a three meter pole extending out of it to which a small propeller is attached — perfect for navigating shallow water. And by shallow I mean sometimes a mere inch between the hull and the riverbed.", "pub_date": "2006-02-14T19:50:35", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (104.7502612921811362 16.5604357571361831)", "location": 106, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/hinbunriver.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/hinbunriver.jpg", "meta_description": "We piled four large bags, four daypacks and five people in a six meter dugout canoe and set out down a no name river in central Laos.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 43, "fields": {"title": "Safe as Milk", "slug": "safe-milk", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">S</span>ekong was a nice little town with not much in it save the UXO museum, which took all of five minutes to explore. The peculiar thing about the UXO museum was, well, you would think, if you were the United States and you were illegally and unofficially bombing a foreign country you might not want to stamp \"US Bomb\" on the side of your bombs, and yet there it was: \"US Bomb.\" </p>\n<p>Of course the bomb in the photo below is probably fake, but plenty of the real ones lying about (disarmed and hollow of course) still had paint flakes that clearly read \"US\" on the side of them. Obviously somebody didn't think things all the way through, especially given that roughly one third of said bombs failed to explode.</p>\n<p><break>\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/usbomb.jpg\" width=\"204\" height=\"157\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"US Bomb, Sekong, Laos\" />Sekong province was the most heavily bombed area in all of the \"Second Indochina War\" as it's referred to around here. Indeed everyday we were in the Bolaven Plateau area we saw at least one U.N. UXO jeep either coming or going somewhere off in the countryside. That said, the threat to tourists is small, the major towns are clear (or simple relocated in the case of Paksong) and even the villages are for the most part no threat. Still Sekong province is not a good place to live out those cross-country bushwhacking-over-the-mountains-to-Vietnam fantasies you've been thinking about for years. If you are planning to travel off the major roads it's a good idea to hire a guide who knows where is safe and where isn't. And keep in mind that UXO is not just a problem here, the same trucks are scouring the hills of Bosnia right now as well, and as Matt and Debi told me even London still turns up the occasional German bomb when somebody digs a new foundation deeper than they should. The tragic reality of war is that it doesn't end when a truce is signed.</p>\n<p>One thing I did not know until I got to Sekong was that there were major ground battles in this area and in fact a U.S. led collection of Thai, Laos, and South Vietnamese armies held the area for a while before being driven out by the NVA. Most of the evidence of such activities, abandoned tanks, jeeps and downed warplanes, has long since been chopped up and carted off to Thailand or Vietnam for sale as scrap metal. Still one does see rather odd things like a thousand-pound bomb sawed in half length wise and turned into a planter for flowers, or a water trough for livestock. The hotel where I am writing this has chopped smaller bombs in half and turned then on their fins to use as ashtrays.</p>\n<p>But the reason we spent an extra day in Sekong has nothing to do with scrap metal or UXO; it was the people. I have written before about how friendly the Lao are, but the farther south we go the friendlier they get. Nearly everywhere we went in Sekong we attracted a throng of people just curiously following along, some stopping to practice their English or find out where we were from (and no they didn't seem to hold it against me that my country bombed the living hell out of them for ten years).</p>\n<p>The very first night, after we met up with Debi, we were all headed out for dinner when two teenage Lao girls riding by on a bike stopped to talk to us. For the most part they talked to Matt and Debi and I continued on ahead not thinking too much about it, people always stop to talk to you on the street. When Matt later joined us, he said that the girls wanted to show us around the town. Again we didn't think too much of it, people always want to show you around, sometimes you let them sometimes you don't. But then the next morning the girls were knocking on the hotel door at ten in the morning. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/mattandgirlfriend.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Matt contempates the details of a Lao Wedding, Sekong, Laos\" />At this point Matt began to get a little nervous thinking perhaps he might end up in Lao wedding if he wasn't careful. So when we ran into them again down at the market and they helped negotiate a cheaper price for our tuk-tuk ride out to see a local waterfall, it seemed only polite to invite them along. I think Matt may have actually started sweating for a minute when we had to stop by the girls' house and meet their parents. It did seem for a while like Matt might be going on a date and of course I did nothing to discourage him from thinking that (hey what are friends for?), but at least half of his suspicions were unfounded. Or maybe a quarter of them. Actually, looking back on it now, he was probably right, he was on a date with a girl and her sister.</p>\n<p>Whatever their intentions were the girls were very nice and spent the afternoon with us at the waterfall. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/pufferfishpool.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"188\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Debi at the pufferfish pool, Sekong, Laos\" />The waterfall deserves mention if only because the pool below it is apparently home to fresh water pufferfish with, and I quote from The Rough Guide, \"a piranha like appetite.\" The locals claim the pufferfish seems to have a penchant for biting off the tip of a man's penis and we didn't see anyone venture into the lower pool the whole time we were there. Between UXO, penis eating pufferfish and teenage girls chasing blond Londoners through the countryside, we had an interesting afternoon. Speaking of blond I never realized how fascinating blond is to the people of southeast Asia; Matt gets stared at wherever he goes and sometime children will come up and try to pull the hair out of his arms as if checking to make sure it's real. Any westerner who travels to the smaller towns and villages will get stared out, but the attention you get if you're blond is easily double what I get.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/sekongfalls.jpg\" width=\"165\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Waterfall, Sekong, Laos\" />In spite of the pufferfish we swam for a while (in the small pools above the falls rather than the big one below) and even sat in the middle of the falls and let the water cascade over us. Eventually it began to look like rain and thunder rumbled off in the distance (or possibly that was the UXO teams at work you never know), so we headed back to Sekong and had a late lunch. </p>\n<p>The next morning we left for Attapeu but not before the girls stopped by and gave us presents, some polished gourds whose purpose we weren't exactly clear on, but they were very nice. Debi and I couldn't help laughing when we noticed that Matt's gourd was larger, had been more ornately decorated and had a couple extra woven baskets attached to it.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">S</span>ekong was a nice little town with not much in it save the UXO museum, which took all of five minutes to explore. The peculiar thing about the UXO museum was, well, you would think, if you were the United States and you were illegally and unofficially bombing a foreign country you might not want to stamp \"US Bomb\" on the side of your bombs, and yet there it was: \"US Bomb.\" \r\n\r\nOf course the bomb in the photo below is probably fake, but plenty of the real ones lying about (disarmed and hollow of course) still had paint flakes that clearly read \"US\" on the side of them. Obviously somebody didn't think things all the way through, especially given that roughly one third of said bombs failed to explode.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/usbomb.jpg\" width=\"204\" height=\"157\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"US Bomb, Sekong, Laos\" />Sekong province was the most heavily bombed area in all of the \"Second Indochina War\" as it's referred to around here. Indeed everyday we were in the Bolaven Plateau area we saw at least one U.N. UXO jeep either coming or going somewhere off in the countryside. That said, the threat to tourists is small, the major towns are clear (or simple relocated in the case of Paksong) and even the villages are for the most part no threat. Still Sekong province is not a good place to live out those cross-country bushwhacking-over-the-mountains-to-Vietnam fantasies you've been thinking about for years. If you are planning to travel off the major roads it's a good idea to hire a guide who knows where is safe and where isn't. And keep in mind that UXO is not just a problem here, the same trucks are scouring the hills of Bosnia right now as well, and as Matt and Debi told me even London still turns up the occasional German bomb when somebody digs a new foundation deeper than they should. The tragic reality of war is that it doesn't end when a truce is signed.\r\n\r\nOne thing I did not know until I got to Sekong was that there were major ground battles in this area and in fact a U.S. led collection of Thai, Laos, and South Vietnamese armies held the area for a while before being driven out by the NVA. Most of the evidence of such activities, abandoned tanks, jeeps and downed warplanes, has long since been chopped up and carted off to Thailand or Vietnam for sale as scrap metal. Still one does see rather odd things like a thousand-pound bomb sawed in half length wise and turned into a planter for flowers, or a water trough for livestock. The hotel where I am writing this has chopped smaller bombs in half and turned then on their fins to use as ashtrays.\r\n\r\nBut the reason we spent an extra day in Sekong has nothing to do with scrap metal or UXO; it was the people. I have written before about how friendly the Lao are, but the farther south we go the friendlier they get. Nearly everywhere we went in Sekong we attracted a throng of people just curiously following along, some stopping to practice their English or find out where we were from (and no they didn't seem to hold it against me that my country bombed the living hell out of them for ten years).\r\n\r\nThe very first night, after we met up with Debi, we were all headed out for dinner when two teenage Lao girls riding by on a bike stopped to talk to us. For the most part they talked to Matt and Debi and I continued on ahead not thinking too much about it, people always stop to talk to you on the street. When Matt later joined us, he said that the girls wanted to show us around the town. Again we didn't think too much of it, people always want to show you around, sometimes you let them sometimes you don't. But then the next morning the girls were knocking on the hotel door at ten in the morning. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/mattandgirlfriend.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Matt contempates the details of a Lao Wedding, Sekong, Laos\" />At this point Matt began to get a little nervous thinking perhaps he might end up in Lao wedding if he wasn't careful. So when we ran into them again down at the market and they helped negotiate a cheaper price for our tuk-tuk ride out to see a local waterfall, it seemed only polite to invite them along. I think Matt may have actually started sweating for a minute when we had to stop by the girls' house and meet their parents. It did seem for a while like Matt might be going on a date and of course I did nothing to discourage him from thinking that (hey what are friends for?), but at least half of his suspicions were unfounded. Or maybe a quarter of them. Actually, looking back on it now, he was probably right, he was on a date with a girl and her sister.\r\n\r\nWhatever their intentions were the girls were very nice and spent the afternoon with us at the waterfall. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/pufferfishpool.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"188\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Debi at the pufferfish pool, Sekong, Laos\" />The waterfall deserves mention if only because the pool below it is apparently home to fresh water pufferfish with, and I quote from The Rough Guide, \"a piranha like appetite.\" The locals claim the pufferfish seems to have a penchant for biting off the tip of a man's penis and we didn't see anyone venture into the lower pool the whole time we were there. Between UXO, penis eating pufferfish and teenage girls chasing blond Londoners through the countryside, we had an interesting afternoon. Speaking of blond I never realized how fascinating blond is to the people of southeast Asia; Matt gets stared at wherever he goes and sometime children will come up and try to pull the hair out of his arms as if checking to make sure it's real. Any westerner who travels to the smaller towns and villages will get stared out, but the attention you get if you're blond is easily double what I get.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/sekongfalls.jpg\" width=\"165\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Waterfall, Sekong, Laos\" />In spite of the pufferfish we swam for a while (in the small pools above the falls rather than the big one below) and even sat in the middle of the falls and let the water cascade over us. Eventually it began to look like rain and thunder rumbled off in the distance (or possibly that was the UXO teams at work you never know), so we headed back to Sekong and had a late lunch. \r\n\r\nThe next morning we left for Attapeu but not before the girls stopped by and gave us presents, some polished gourds whose purpose we weren't exactly clear on, but they were very nice. Debi and I couldn't help laughing when we noticed that Matt's gourd was larger, had been more ornately decorated and had a couple extra woven baskets attached to it.", "dek": "You would think, if you were the United States and you were illegally and unofficially bombing a foreign country you might not want to stamp \"US Bomb\" on the side of your bombs, and yet there it was all over Laos: \"US Bomb.\" Clearly somebody didn't think things all the way through, especially given that roughly one third of said bombs failed to explode. ", "pub_date": "2006-02-18T19:54:24", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (106.5756225437582003 14.6239495050692359)", "location": 33, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/usbombs.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/usbombs.jpg", "meta_description": "If you were illegally bombing a foreign country, you probably wouldn't stamp your name on the side of your bombs. But that's what the U.S. did when it bombed Laos.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 44, "fields": {"title": "Can’t Get There From Here", "slug": "cant-get-there-here", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>he most magical light in Laos lives on the Bolevan Plateau. For some reason not many tourists seem to make it out to the Bolevan Plateau, in spite of the fact that the roads are quite good, transport runs regularly, the villages peaceful, relaxed, even sleepy, little hamlets, a rarely used word that fits exactly what I mean. </p>\n<p>All in all the Bolevan Plateau is wonderful, and not the least in part because no one else is there. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/attapeucanoe.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"176\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Sekong River, Attapeu, Laos\" />In eight days of traveling we saw maybe ten tourists. The curious thing about it was that those we did meet seemed to for some reason think that we must know what we were doing and where we were going, which is comical to us since nothing could be further from the truth. Nevertheless, as luck would have it, often the first question someone asked would be the one thing we did know and so perhaps for that reason we came off as semi-knowledgeable. We met a very nice British couple our last night in Sekong, Jules and Ben, which for Francois Truffaut fans such as myself, was eerily close to <strong>Jules et Jim</strong> so I took an immediate liking to them. We ended up running into Jules and Ben again on the bus to Attapeu and shared a tuk-tuk to the guesthouse, which was actually more of a luxury hotel (by Laos standards anyway). Matt, Debi and I discovered that many of the nicer hotels have rooms with a double and single bed, thus fitting three people and solving the chief dilemma of traveling with three people—who has to pay more for their own room. Splitting the nice hotel three ways brought the costs down to roughly equal what we would typically pay at a rundown guesthouse and is obviously, well, nicer.</p>\n<p><break>\nAs I've mentioned before, wandering around this area of Laos without a guide is not the safest activity in the world, but guides cost money. Luckily, with the addition of Jules and Ben (and yes I am going to keep typing their names out, because it's fun to say), the price of three motorbikes and guide became roughly the same as the two motorbikes we would have needed anyway. So we went for it especially given that the place we were interested in visiting was the epicenter of American bombing—the Ho Chi Minh Trail.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/hochiminhtrail.jpg\" width=\"197\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Villager, Ho Chi Minh Trail, Laos\" />Ask your average American to describe what they think the Ho Chi Minh Trail looks like and they would likely paint you a picture bearing some resemblance to an Oliver Stone film, a thin trail snaking though the jungle, a network of tunnels and, as I used to think, they would likely say it ran through Vietnam. In fact the Ho Chi Minh \"Trail\" was a road, and not just one road, but a whole network of roads crisscrossing the jungle and vast majority of it ran through Laos and Cambodia, not Vietnam.</p>\n<p>Although we asked to be taken to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, in the morning our guide took us out to see a \"tribal village\", which turned out to be rather more like one woman camped out in the middle of the jungle, roasting a mouse for lunch. Not to say that we were ripped off, but it was sort of a waste of a morning. It was nice to meet her and see how the villagers live when they're out in the jungle (not very well, most having been driven out of the more fertile hill areas by the government), but it was hardly worth the effort it took to get there. </p>\n<p>The afternoon was somewhat better; we headed to Pa'am a small village at a junction on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The road getting there was a bit bumpy, especially for Matt and I. With the two of us on one motorbike we easily outweighed the rest of the group and on an aging Honda Dream with nothing much in the way of shocks (or brakes or mirrors for that matter), weight is not what you want. On the way there I made some attempts at dodging potholes and gullies (often skidding to do so), on the way back Matt drove and decided that the straight path was at least quicker, if not smoother. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/russianmissile.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"150\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Russian SAM, Pa'am, Laos\" />In case anyone had any doubts about whether or not the Russians were helping the North Vietnamese in the war, they left behind a now rusted and falling apart SAM missile and launcher (presumably the warhead has been removed, but we never got a straight answer on that one). Otherwise the Ho Chi Minh Trail was somewhat anti-climatic, more of what I like to call a checklist site, that is, see it, check it off the list and move on.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/attapeumarket.jpg\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Vegetables, Market, Attapeu, Laos\" />Back in Attapeu we took a stroll around the evening market and then headed down to the banks of Sekong River to watch the sunset and sip a Beer Lao. The sunset was gorgeous, reflecting off the water and lingering on the distant clouds far longer than anywhere else we've seen in Laos. We watched the fishermen casting nets and canoes plying their way up and down the river with various cargos. Up the shoreline from us a group of boys played volleyball (a very popular sport in Laos) in the fading light.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/attapeuvolleyball.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"126\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Playing Volleyball, Attapeu, Laos\" />If you look at a map of Laos (the one thing I haven't been good about on this site is showing maps, I'll work on that), there is a road that continues from Attapeu back around to Champasak where it joins route 13. This bit of road would make it possible to complete a loop around the Bolevan Plateau without having to retrace your steps. Unfortunately no public transport plies this road. Later in the evening after the sun had gone down and we climbed up the bank of the river to a restaurant, we ran into an Austrian man who was traveling by motorcycle (real motorcycle, not a Honda Dream) who had come over the road. He put it at roughly eighteen hours to cover one hundred kilometers and muttered something about \"lots of rivers.\" At one point in his trip it had started to rain at which point he said he was covering about five kilometers an hour.</p>\n<p>The next day we rented motorbikes again and set out down that road for a day trip to see what sort of villages and sights might be found along the way. At least leaving Attapeu the road wasn't too bad, but looking off at the distant cliffs and hills of the Bolevan Plateau it was easy to see how the road would likely get pretty bad. Nevertheless we had a good ride through the countryside stopping here and there to amuse the locals (we contemplated various song and dance routines, but just our existence seemed to sufficient for side-splitting entertainment, especially for children). </p>\n<p>The one regret I have about traveling in Laos is that I'm here at the peak of the dry season, as such, as I've mentioned before, most plant life is brown or leafless, sort of like what you would find in Massachusetts right about now, but hot. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/attapeuboy.jpg\" width=\"195\" height=\"250\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Village Boy, outside Attapeu, Laos\" />Every now and then though we run across an irrigated rice paddy and for a moment it's possible to imagine how beautiful Laos is around the end of August or beginning of September when the wet season is just ending and everything that's now brown has turned a bright, almost iridescent green. If you ever come to Laos I recommend August or September, though it will be hot and probably pretty steamy.</p>\n<p>It was nearly nightfall by the time we made it back to Attapeu. We grabbed a bite to eat at small restaurant where some Vietnamese truck drivers tried to ply us with drinks and make conversation in very rough English with the occasional Laos phrase. Walking home we decided to stop by the carnival that was in town for a few days. We wandered about the various stalls and played a few rounds of the apparently worldwide game where you throw darts at balloons. Debi and I won mints; Matt was somewhat more successful and won an orange drink of some sort. We also paid to see two obviously poorly treated monkeys ride bicycles around a centrifuge, which we at first thought might spin them around or something rather awful like that, but luckily for the monkeys their act was short and involved no spinning. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/attapeucircus.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"165\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Circus, Attapeu, Laos\" />The spinning was left to the bigger and perhaps one it tempted to say, not as bright monkeys—humans. Using the centrifugal force about six circus performers climbed walls, sat on chairs and did other tricks for about five minutes. It made me dizzy just to watch them. My understanding of centrifuges was that they separated fluids of different densities (ah Mr. Dukes would be so proud that I remember that), but apparently, at least in Southeast Asia, it's a circus act as well.</p>\n<p>Eventually the number of people began to dwindle and not wanting to steal too much attention from the real circus acts, we headed home, feeling not a little bit guilty about contributing to the rough treatment of what looked like some truly miserable monkeys. Back in the hotel we sat up watching <strong>Lost in Translation</strong> on my laptop and drinking some of the wine Debi had brought from Thailand, all and all the perfect way to end a day.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>he most magical light in Laos lives on the Bolevan Plateau. For some reason not many tourists seem to make it out to the Bolevan Plateau, in spite of the fact that the roads are quite good, transport runs regularly, the villages peaceful, relaxed, even sleepy, little hamlets, a rarely used word that fits exactly what I mean. \r\n\r\nAll in all the Bolevan Plateau is wonderful, and not the least in part because no one else is there. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/attapeucanoe.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"176\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Sekong River, Attapeu, Laos\" />In eight days of traveling we saw maybe ten tourists. The curious thing about it was that those we did meet seemed to for some reason think that we must know what we were doing and where we were going, which is comical to us since nothing could be further from the truth. Nevertheless, as luck would have it, often the first question someone asked would be the one thing we did know and so perhaps for that reason we came off as semi-knowledgeable. We met a very nice British couple our last night in Sekong, Jules and Ben, which for Francois Truffaut fans such as myself, was eerily close to **Jules et Jim** so I took an immediate liking to them. We ended up running into Jules and Ben again on the bus to Attapeu and shared a tuk-tuk to the guesthouse, which was actually more of a luxury hotel (by Laos standards anyway). Matt, Debi and I discovered that many of the nicer hotels have rooms with a double and single bed, thus fitting three people and solving the chief dilemma of traveling with three people—who has to pay more for their own room. Splitting the nice hotel three ways brought the costs down to roughly equal what we would typically pay at a rundown guesthouse and is obviously, well, nicer.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\nAs I've mentioned before, wandering around this area of Laos without a guide is not the safest activity in the world, but guides cost money. Luckily, with the addition of Jules and Ben (and yes I am going to keep typing their names out, because it's fun to say), the price of three motorbikes and guide became roughly the same as the two motorbikes we would have needed anyway. So we went for it especially given that the place we were interested in visiting was the epicenter of American bombing—the Ho Chi Minh Trail.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/hochiminhtrail.jpg\" width=\"197\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Villager, Ho Chi Minh Trail, Laos\" />Ask your average American to describe what they think the Ho Chi Minh Trail looks like and they would likely paint you a picture bearing some resemblance to an Oliver Stone film, a thin trail snaking though the jungle, a network of tunnels and, as I used to think, they would likely say it ran through Vietnam. In fact the Ho Chi Minh \"Trail\" was a road, and not just one road, but a whole network of roads crisscrossing the jungle and vast majority of it ran through Laos and Cambodia, not Vietnam.\r\n\r\nAlthough we asked to be taken to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, in the morning our guide took us out to see a \"tribal village\", which turned out to be rather more like one woman camped out in the middle of the jungle, roasting a mouse for lunch. Not to say that we were ripped off, but it was sort of a waste of a morning. It was nice to meet her and see how the villagers live when they're out in the jungle (not very well, most having been driven out of the more fertile hill areas by the government), but it was hardly worth the effort it took to get there. \r\n\r\nThe afternoon was somewhat better; we headed to Pa'am a small village at a junction on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The road getting there was a bit bumpy, especially for Matt and I. With the two of us on one motorbike we easily outweighed the rest of the group and on an aging Honda Dream with nothing much in the way of shocks (or brakes or mirrors for that matter), weight is not what you want. On the way there I made some attempts at dodging potholes and gullies (often skidding to do so), on the way back Matt drove and decided that the straight path was at least quicker, if not smoother. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/russianmissile.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"150\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Russian SAM, Pa'am, Laos\" />In case anyone had any doubts about whether or not the Russians were helping the North Vietnamese in the war, they left behind a now rusted and falling apart SAM missile and launcher (presumably the warhead has been removed, but we never got a straight answer on that one). Otherwise the Ho Chi Minh Trail was somewhat anti-climatic, more of what I like to call a checklist site, that is, see it, check it off the list and move on.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/attapeumarket.jpg\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Vegetables, Market, Attapeu, Laos\" />Back in Attapeu we took a stroll around the evening market and then headed down to the banks of Sekong River to watch the sunset and sip a Beer Lao. The sunset was gorgeous, reflecting off the water and lingering on the distant clouds far longer than anywhere else we've seen in Laos. We watched the fishermen casting nets and canoes plying their way up and down the river with various cargos. Up the shoreline from us a group of boys played volleyball (a very popular sport in Laos) in the fading light.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/attapeuvolleyball.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"126\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Playing Volleyball, Attapeu, Laos\" />If you look at a map of Laos (the one thing I haven't been good about on this site is showing maps, I'll work on that), there is a road that continues from Attapeu back around to Champasak where it joins route 13. This bit of road would make it possible to complete a loop around the Bolevan Plateau without having to retrace your steps. Unfortunately no public transport plies this road. Later in the evening after the sun had gone down and we climbed up the bank of the river to a restaurant, we ran into an Austrian man who was traveling by motorcycle (real motorcycle, not a Honda Dream) who had come over the road. He put it at roughly eighteen hours to cover one hundred kilometers and muttered something about \"lots of rivers.\" At one point in his trip it had started to rain at which point he said he was covering about five kilometers an hour.\r\n\r\nThe next day we rented motorbikes again and set out down that road for a day trip to see what sort of villages and sights might be found along the way. At least leaving Attapeu the road wasn't too bad, but looking off at the distant cliffs and hills of the Bolevan Plateau it was easy to see how the road would likely get pretty bad. Nevertheless we had a good ride through the countryside stopping here and there to amuse the locals (we contemplated various song and dance routines, but just our existence seemed to sufficient for side-splitting entertainment, especially for children). \r\n\r\nThe one regret I have about traveling in Laos is that I'm here at the peak of the dry season, as such, as I've mentioned before, most plant life is brown or leafless, sort of like what you would find in Massachusetts right about now, but hot. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/attapeuboy.jpg\" width=\"195\" height=\"250\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Village Boy, outside Attapeu, Laos\" />Every now and then though we run across an irrigated rice paddy and for a moment it's possible to imagine how beautiful Laos is around the end of August or beginning of September when the wet season is just ending and everything that's now brown has turned a bright, almost iridescent green. If you ever come to Laos I recommend August or September, though it will be hot and probably pretty steamy.\r\n\r\nIt was nearly nightfall by the time we made it back to Attapeu. We grabbed a bite to eat at small restaurant where some Vietnamese truck drivers tried to ply us with drinks and make conversation in very rough English with the occasional Laos phrase. Walking home we decided to stop by the carnival that was in town for a few days. We wandered about the various stalls and played a few rounds of the apparently worldwide game where you throw darts at balloons. Debi and I won mints; Matt was somewhat more successful and won an orange drink of some sort. We also paid to see two obviously poorly treated monkeys ride bicycles around a centrifuge, which we at first thought might spin them around or something rather awful like that, but luckily for the monkeys their act was short and involved no spinning. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/attapeucircus.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"165\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Circus, Attapeu, Laos\" />The spinning was left to the bigger and perhaps one it tempted to say, not as bright monkeys—humans. Using the centrifugal force about six circus performers climbed walls, sat on chairs and did other tricks for about five minutes. It made me dizzy just to watch them. My understanding of centrifuges was that they separated fluids of different densities (ah Mr. Dukes would be so proud that I remember that), but apparently, at least in Southeast Asia, it's a circus act as well.\r\n\r\nEventually the number of people began to dwindle and not wanting to steal too much attention from the real circus acts, we headed home, feeling not a little bit guilty about contributing to the rough treatment of what looked like some truly miserable monkeys. Back in the hotel we sat up watching **Lost in Translation** on my laptop and drinking some of the wine Debi had brought from Thailand, all and all the perfect way to end a day.", "dek": "The most magical light in Laos lives on the Bolevan Plateau. For some reason not many tourists seem to make it out to the Bolevan Plateau, in spite of the fact that the roads are quite good, transport runs regularly, the villages peaceful, even sleepy, little hamlets. In short, the Bolevan Plateau is wonderful, and not the least in part because no one else is there.", "pub_date": "2006-02-24T20:00:03", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (106.8368911594444910 14.8060855248319463)", "location": 32, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/attapeulight.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/attapeulight.jpg", "meta_description": "The most magical light in Laos lives on the Bolevan Plateau, an amazing, wonderful place, and not the least because no one else is here.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 45, "fields": {"title": "Little Corner of the World", "slug": "little-corner-world", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">A</span>fter my time in Attapeu I felt I had had my fill of the various small towns in southern Laos. Debi and Matt opted to head up to Salavan and then on to a small village called Tahoy, where rumor had it the tigers were so plentiful it wasn't safe to go out at night. It sounded fun and if they had seen tigers, I would have regretted my decision, but I've come to be pretty wary of anything written in a guidebook so I opted to take the bus straight back to Pakse where I was pretty sure some website revisions would be waiting for me in my inbox. </p>\n<p><break>\nMy hunch was correct and I spent a day and a half in Pakse working on the website I started way back in Vang Vieng. After a trip to the morning market the next day, I caught a truck down to Champasak where I was to wait for Matt and Debi. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/paksemarket.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Morning Market, Pakse, Laos\" />The chief draw in Champasak is an aging wat that dates from the Angkor period and was apparently the northern most outpost of the Angkor Empire. Aside from the wat, the town of Champasak is yet another very sleepily and very small town along the Mekong, but not an unpleasant place to pass a few days. I briefly toured around the wat, which was nice, and perhaps a bit of warm up for Angkor Wat, but regrettably most of the great artifacts from Wat Phu were at some point carted off and then later returned and now housed in a museum at the base of the wat. </p>\n<p>Wat Phu is another UNESCO site and was at the time I was there an active archeological dig. Perhaps at some point the original statues, figures and carvings will be returned to the grounds of the wat, but for the time being there are house in air conditioned comfort and thus the wat itself is rather lacking. Just to once again slag the Lonely Planet Guide to Laos, if, as the book says, this is \"one of the highlights\" to your visit to Laos, well, I pity you, you have not seen much of Laos. [I have a sneaking suspicion that the authors of the Laos Lonely Planet deliberately build up the more touristy areas and neglect the lesser known parts out of self-interest—they want to keep the good stuff to themselves—which is fine with me since it isn't that hard to figure everything out once you get here, provided you invest a modicum of effort].</p>\n<p>Mainly I spent my time in Champasak sitting of the veranda of my guesthouse reading and writing. The second afternoon, somewhat to my surprise, Debi and Matt wandered up the stairs.<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/champasakgh.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"150\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"View from Guesthouse, Champasak, Laos\" /> I wanted to meet up with them again, but given that we had no real means of communication I wasn't sure it would happen, but luckily it did. The next day I met an American woman, Christie, and we all caught the bus down to the four thousand Islands to relax for a few days before heading into Cambodia. </p>\n<p>It's difficult to explain but the further south you go in Laos the more relaxed life becomes. Since life in the north is not exactly high stress, by the time we arrived in the four thousand Islands we had to check our pulse periodically to ensure that time was in fact still moving forward. That sounds like a complaint, but it's not meant to be. Southern Laos is simply, well, the villagers tend to the fields in the morning and evening, or fish or weave and generally the heat of the day is spent lying around trying not to move. There is good reason for that, it's hot and the air is deathly still most of the time. When the air does move it's somewhat like the puff of heat that might come from a convention oven when you open the door.</p>\n<p>I have long held to a theory that the environment shapes culture and the people who create it. For instance heavy industrial development does not seem to happen in equatorial areas and there's a good reason for that. Those that think the west is more \"advanced\" because of their work ethic or that sort of thing, ought to come out here to Laos and see how motivated for work they are at one in the afternoon.</p>\n<p>I came to the four thousand islands to avoid everything involving heavy machinery and peacefully wind down my time in Laos. There isn't much to see nor much to do, which provides some excellent time for lying in hammock and reflecting on the two months I've spent here. Just down the Mekong lies a whole new experience—Cambodia—but before I move on I wanted to spend a few days thinking about where I've been. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/finalsunsetlaos.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Sunset over the Sekong River, Laos\" />As I've written before I had no intention of spending more than a few weeks in Laos, just enough time to see the big sights and then drop back into Thailand with a new visa. As fate or life or what have you often works my plans disappeared in a puff of smoke somewhere on the Mekong that first day in Laos. This compounded with some personal events that I will not mention here compelled me to dig deeper into Laos. For these reasons and many more, too many to list, Laos will always occupy a profoundly vivid spot in my memory. The people of Laos did what I did not think would be possible, they topped the enthusiasm, warmth and friendliness of India (which is in no way meant to diminish the Indians). The landscape is some of the most beautiful I've seen in Southeast Asia and I will return here someday, I wouldn't consider any trip to Southeast Asia complete without a few months in Laos. </p>\n<p>Farewell Laos and people of Laos, I look forward to returning one day.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">A</span>fter my time in Attapeu I felt I had had my fill of the various small towns in southern Laos. Debi and Matt opted to head up to Salavan and then on to a small village called Tahoy, where rumor had it the tigers were so plentiful it wasn't safe to go out at night. It sounded fun and if they had seen tigers, I would have regretted my decision, but I've come to be pretty wary of anything written in a guidebook so I opted to take the bus straight back to Pakse where I was pretty sure some website revisions would be waiting for me in my inbox. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\nMy hunch was correct and I spent a day and a half in Pakse working on the website I started way back in Vang Vieng. After a trip to the morning market the next day, I caught a truck down to Champasak where I was to wait for Matt and Debi. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/paksemarket.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Morning Market, Pakse, Laos\" />The chief draw in Champasak is an aging wat that dates from the Angkor period and was apparently the northern most outpost of the Angkor Empire. Aside from the wat, the town of Champasak is yet another very sleepily and very small town along the Mekong, but not an unpleasant place to pass a few days. I briefly toured around the wat, which was nice, and perhaps a bit of warm up for Angkor Wat, but regrettably most of the great artifacts from Wat Phu were at some point carted off and then later returned and now housed in a museum at the base of the wat. \r\n\r\nWat Phu is another UNESCO site and was at the time I was there an active archeological dig. Perhaps at some point the original statues, figures and carvings will be returned to the grounds of the wat, but for the time being there are house in air conditioned comfort and thus the wat itself is rather lacking. Just to once again slag the Lonely Planet Guide to Laos, if, as the book says, this is \"one of the highlights\" to your visit to Laos, well, I pity you, you have not seen much of Laos. [I have a sneaking suspicion that the authors of the Laos Lonely Planet deliberately build up the more touristy areas and neglect the lesser known parts out of self-interest—they want to keep the good stuff to themselves—which is fine with me since it isn't that hard to figure everything out once you get here, provided you invest a modicum of effort].\r\n\r\nMainly I spent my time in Champasak sitting of the veranda of my guesthouse reading and writing. The second afternoon, somewhat to my surprise, Debi and Matt wandered up the stairs.<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/champasakgh.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"150\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"View from Guesthouse, Champasak, Laos\" /> I wanted to meet up with them again, but given that we had no real means of communication I wasn't sure it would happen, but luckily it did. The next day I met an American woman, Christie, and we all caught the bus down to the four thousand Islands to relax for a few days before heading into Cambodia. \r\n\r\nIt's difficult to explain but the further south you go in Laos the more relaxed life becomes. Since life in the north is not exactly high stress, by the time we arrived in the four thousand Islands we had to check our pulse periodically to ensure that time was in fact still moving forward. That sounds like a complaint, but it's not meant to be. Southern Laos is simply, well, the villagers tend to the fields in the morning and evening, or fish or weave and generally the heat of the day is spent lying around trying not to move. There is good reason for that, it's hot and the air is deathly still most of the time. When the air does move it's somewhat like the puff of heat that might come from a convention oven when you open the door.\r\n\r\nI have long held to a theory that the environment shapes culture and the people who create it. For instance heavy industrial development does not seem to happen in equatorial areas and there's a good reason for that. Those that think the west is more \"advanced\" because of their work ethic or that sort of thing, ought to come out here to Laos and see how motivated for work they are at one in the afternoon.\r\n\r\nI came to the four thousand islands to avoid everything involving heavy machinery and peacefully wind down my time in Laos. There isn't much to see nor much to do, which provides some excellent time for lying in hammock and reflecting on the two months I've spent here. Just down the Mekong lies a whole new experience—Cambodia—but before I move on I wanted to spend a few days thinking about where I've been. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/finalsunsetlaos.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Sunset over the Sekong River, Laos\" />As I've written before I had no intention of spending more than a few weeks in Laos, just enough time to see the big sights and then drop back into Thailand with a new visa. As fate or life or what have you often works my plans disappeared in a puff of smoke somewhere on the Mekong that first day in Laos. This compounded with some personal events that I will not mention here compelled me to dig deeper into Laos. For these reasons and many more, too many to list, Laos will always occupy a profoundly vivid spot in my memory. The people of Laos did what I did not think would be possible, they topped the enthusiasm, warmth and friendliness of India (which is in no way meant to diminish the Indians). The landscape is some of the most beautiful I've seen in Southeast Asia and I will return here someday, I wouldn't consider any trip to Southeast Asia complete without a few months in Laos. \r\n\r\nFarewell Laos and people of Laos, I look forward to returning one day.", "dek": "It's difficult to explain but the further south you go in Laos the more relaxed life becomes. Since life in the north is not exactly high stress, by the time we arrived in the four thousand Islands we had to check our pulse periodically to ensure that time was in fact still moving forward. ", "pub_date": "2006-02-28T20:13:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (105.8378219457163567 14.1309158427409614)", "location": 31, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/siphondon.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/siphondon.jpg", "meta_description": "It's difficult to explain, but the further south you go in Laos the more relaxed life becomes. It's a beautiful thing.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 46, "fields": {"title": "Ticket To Ride", "slug": "ticket-ride", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span> can't see. My eyebrows are orange with dust. I cannot see them, but I know they must be; they were yesterday. Every now and then when her legs clench down on my hips or her fingernails dig into my shoulders, I remember Debi is behind me and I am more or less responsible for not killing both of us. </p>\n<p>The sudden pain from her fingernails or the flashes of adrenaline that her periodic death grips induce are actually good, they snap me out of my daze and remind me that I am riding a motorcycle on a very bumpy dirt road. I can usually tell where the significant bumps are based on the amount of terror I've managed to induce in my passenger which is good since I really can't see through the dust and wind. The Honda Dream is capable of all. The worst dirt roads are nothing, the dirt bike a luxury no one can afford, fuck it, let's take a Dream. The Honda Dream is capable of anything. I unfortunately am not. The road is shimmering though I can't tell if it's the heat or the tears formed by dust and wind whipping up under, over, and around my glasses as if they weren't even there. Helmets? Helmets? You're joking right? <strong>Name your top three memories from this trip</strong> A voice. Coming from somewhere behind me, distant. I am simply trying to steer through the hunger and exhaustion right now; all my favorite memories of this trip are light years from my brain. When I get a bit feverish I tend to disappear into fantasyland and right when Debi was yelling her question in my left ear Scotty was yelling in the other ear, <em>it's only a Honda dream Jim, you can't push ‘er any more than you are.</em> And then the wheels slipped a bit on a curve that ended up being sharper than I had anticipated and I realized Scotty was right (is he ever wrong?). I slowed up a bit and tried to organize a response.\n<break>\nAt that moment all time seemed a bit compressed and I couldn't for example have told you if that slippage of the back tire was my fault or perhaps I was still on the back of the bike on my way down from Sarangkot to Pokhara, Nepal when the bike also slipped a bit coming round a corner. I did have a distinct memory that sprang to mind but I discarded it because it was less than an hour ago that we crossed the river and strolled up to the Kachon village, a moment that seemed lifted from Indiana Jones, provided Indy were to finally split into a triplicate of American and British particles. For a moment it felt as if we were the first westerners to have ever entered the village, but the girl with the Brittany Spears t-shirt on seemed to indicate that was not true. And then there was the coca cola and exchanging of money for a tour of the spirit houses. But for a moment, walking up from the sandbar where our boatman dropped us, already feeling the first signs of a fever and the beating afternoon sun cooking my face, for just a brief moment I understood what it must have been like to discover an entirely new world, to make contact with people that had never seen white men or women before, and though it might be illusion, it was nevertheless a curiously exhilarating moment.</p>\n<p>Beyond that immediate memory my brain was too fogged to come up with a true answer. Later over a late lunch I finally decided that indeed Sarangkot would be one, Udaipur at twilight would be another and our more recent trip through Kunglor Cave would be the third. Though the food helped somewhat, the fever tapered but did not depart for a few days.</p>\n<p>We had come out to Ban Lung, Cambodia because we knew the northeast corner of Cambodia was likely to be the least touristy part of the country and I for one knew that I needed to ease myself back into the concept of other white people being around. From the moment we crossed under the Laos border gates, Cambodia was immediately and obviously different from Laos, though in ways that are difficult to explain; I might be tempted to say Cambodia is more modern provided you were to take modern in the narrowest possible sense, but perhaps it would be even better to say that Cambodia is louder and more exuberant than Laos. Even the landscape changed significantly once we crossed the border, the trees were no longer leafless and dead looking, the timing of the monsoon here is obviously quite different than it is in Laos. </p>\n<p>We crossed the border at a no name town about two hours north of Strung Treng. After an uneventful bus ride to Stung Treng we set about hiring a taxi (the main mode of transport in the remoter regions of Cambodia is taxi). But this is not a taxi in the sense of a New York City yellow cab. A Cambodian taxi is a white, late model Toyota Camry. The Camry is considered to hold six passengers plus a driver and the purchase of a ride is by seat, but if you don't have enough people to fill all the seats you are expected either to wait until there are enough people or simply buy up the extra seats. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/backofacab.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"123\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Matt, Debi and I\" />We ended up buying the extra seats since we only have thirty days and Strung Treng seemed more of a crossroads than a destination. We spent the afternoon there waiting on a bus from Phnom Phen which might have been bearing some people interested in going to Ban Lung. We had a bit of an explore around the market and, much to the amusement of the locals, Matt and I decided to get haircuts.</p>\n<p>It was nearly nightfall when we gave up and bought the extra back seat and a Cambodian woman bought the extra seat in the front so that we set out with only five people in the car, which I suppose sounds normal to someone who hasn't been traveling southeast asia for five months where the general rule is if you can move, there's room for more.</p>\n<p>Perhaps the reason I say Cambodia is more exuberant than Laos is reflected by the curious characters we first encountered, namely a man named Mr. T in Strung Treng who spoke excellent English and spent the afternoon helping us organize the taxi. It is difficult now to recall any exact thing he did that could be called exuberant, but he had a personality that was somehow larger than life, which was shockingly loud compared to the people we met in Laos, who were every bit as friendly and helpful, but simply quieter and more reserved by nature. The second person I spoke with at any length was Mr. Leng of the Star Hotel in Ban Lung. We arrived fairly late at night, round tem Pm or so and Matt and Debi headed straight for bed. My seemingly chronic insomnia drove me downstairs to have a beer with Mr. Leng (a beer poured over ice, Cambodian-style he informed me, which isn't as bad at it sounds).</p>\n<p>It was Mr. Leng who gave me the hand drawn map we used the next day to try and find some waterfalls. Debi wasn't feeling well so Matt and I set out on our own. We found one waterfall with relative ease, but then failed to find the others. We did however ride through some quite amazing though obviously replanted clear-cut forests. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/banlungforest.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Ban Lung Forest\" />And we got an introduction to Cambodia scooter riding. We're no slouches with the Honda dream and we'd been down plenty of bad dirt roads in Laos, but neither of us had ever been passed by a man on a motorbike with his wife on the back who had a bag of vegetables in one arm and was breastfeeding a baby with the other arm, all the while bouncing over gullies and ditches as if they weren't there. It makes you feel. Well. Like you can do better.</p>\n<p>That afternoon we went back for Debi and then headed out to Boeng Yeak Lom lake, a crater lake formed by an asteroid or something of that nature since it really is a perfectly round lake quite obviously the result of some very large object. Since there are no volcanoes in the area the asteroid story makes since, though I have no idea whether it's actually true. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/boengyeaklom.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"204\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Boeng Yeak Lom, Ban Lung, Cambodia\" />Regardless of origin the lake was a very beautiful, idyllic spot to spend the afternoon swimming, floating and generally lying about doing nothing.</p>\n<p>The next morning we set out for the small village of Kachon people one of several ethnic minorities living in the hills here near the Vietnamese border. The ride out was fine and we managed to find a boat and cross the river to the village despite having no language in common with the people helping us. Rural Cambodian villages are not all that different from rural Laos villages, but this was the first time that the chief had come out to greet us, while the entire village gathered around to watch. We walked through the spirit shrines, which are something like a local variation on crypts, but with effigies representing the deceased person's occupation.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/spirittotem.jpg\" width=\"159\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Spirit Totem, near Ban Lung, Cambodia\" />It wasn't until later in the even when we were having dinner at the hotel restaurant and Debi casually said <em>yeah that was really nice, quite lovely the way the chief came out and the children were sweet and that guy with six fingers and the boat ride…</em> Wait?! What?! Yes it was only then the Matt and I realized we had apparently overlooked the fact that our boatman had an extra appendage on one of his hands. I don't know about you, but given that we were in a situation where no one could understand each other and there was no harm in saying whatever you wanted in English, I probably would have said, hey guys don't all look at once but that bloke over there has an extra finger.</p>\n<p>But maybe that's just me.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span> can't see. My eyebrows are orange with dust. I cannot see them, but I know they must be; they were yesterday. Every now and then when her legs clench down on my hips or her fingernails dig into my shoulders, I remember Debi is behind me and I am more or less responsible for not killing both of us. \r\n\r\nThe sudden pain from her fingernails or the flashes of adrenaline that her periodic death grips induce are actually good, they snap me out of my daze and remind me that I am riding a motorcycle on a very bumpy dirt road. I can usually tell where the significant bumps are based on the amount of terror I've managed to induce in my passenger which is good since I really can't see through the dust and wind. The Honda Dream is capable of all. The worst dirt roads are nothing, the dirt bike a luxury no one can afford, fuck it, let's take a Dream. The Honda Dream is capable of anything. I unfortunately am not. The road is shimmering though I can't tell if it's the heat or the tears formed by dust and wind whipping up under, over, and around my glasses as if they weren't even there. Helmets? Helmets? You're joking right? **Name your top three memories from this trip** A voice. Coming from somewhere behind me, distant. I am simply trying to steer through the hunger and exhaustion right now; all my favorite memories of this trip are light years from my brain. When I get a bit feverish I tend to disappear into fantasyland and right when Debi was yelling her question in my left ear Scotty was yelling in the other ear, <em>it's only a Honda dream Jim, you can't push ‘er any more than you are.</em> And then the wheels slipped a bit on a curve that ended up being sharper than I had anticipated and I realized Scotty was right (is he ever wrong?). I slowed up a bit and tried to organize a response.\r\n<break>\r\nAt that moment all time seemed a bit compressed and I couldn't for example have told you if that slippage of the back tire was my fault or perhaps I was still on the back of the bike on my way down from Sarangkot to Pokhara, Nepal when the bike also slipped a bit coming round a corner. I did have a distinct memory that sprang to mind but I discarded it because it was less than an hour ago that we crossed the river and strolled up to the Kachon village, a moment that seemed lifted from Indiana Jones, provided Indy were to finally split into a triplicate of American and British particles. For a moment it felt as if we were the first westerners to have ever entered the village, but the girl with the Brittany Spears t-shirt on seemed to indicate that was not true. And then there was the coca cola and exchanging of money for a tour of the spirit houses. But for a moment, walking up from the sandbar where our boatman dropped us, already feeling the first signs of a fever and the beating afternoon sun cooking my face, for just a brief moment I understood what it must have been like to discover an entirely new world, to make contact with people that had never seen white men or women before, and though it might be illusion, it was nevertheless a curiously exhilarating moment.\r\n\r\nBeyond that immediate memory my brain was too fogged to come up with a true answer. Later over a late lunch I finally decided that indeed Sarangkot would be one, Udaipur at twilight would be another and our more recent trip through Kunglor Cave would be the third. Though the food helped somewhat, the fever tapered but did not depart for a few days.\r\n\r\nWe had come out to Ban Lung, Cambodia because we knew the northeast corner of Cambodia was likely to be the least touristy part of the country and I for one knew that I needed to ease myself back into the concept of other white people being around. From the moment we crossed under the Laos border gates, Cambodia was immediately and obviously different from Laos, though in ways that are difficult to explain; I might be tempted to say Cambodia is more modern provided you were to take modern in the narrowest possible sense, but perhaps it would be even better to say that Cambodia is louder and more exuberant than Laos. Even the landscape changed significantly once we crossed the border, the trees were no longer leafless and dead looking, the timing of the monsoon here is obviously quite different than it is in Laos. \r\n\r\nWe crossed the border at a no name town about two hours north of Strung Treng. After an uneventful bus ride to Stung Treng we set about hiring a taxi (the main mode of transport in the remoter regions of Cambodia is taxi). But this is not a taxi in the sense of a New York City yellow cab. A Cambodian taxi is a white, late model Toyota Camry. The Camry is considered to hold six passengers plus a driver and the purchase of a ride is by seat, but if you don't have enough people to fill all the seats you are expected either to wait until there are enough people or simply buy up the extra seats. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/backofacab.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"123\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Matt, Debi and I\" />We ended up buying the extra seats since we only have thirty days and Strung Treng seemed more of a crossroads than a destination. We spent the afternoon there waiting on a bus from Phnom Phen which might have been bearing some people interested in going to Ban Lung. We had a bit of an explore around the market and, much to the amusement of the locals, Matt and I decided to get haircuts.\r\n\r\nIt was nearly nightfall when we gave up and bought the extra back seat and a Cambodian woman bought the extra seat in the front so that we set out with only five people in the car, which I suppose sounds normal to someone who hasn't been traveling southeast asia for five months where the general rule is if you can move, there's room for more.\r\n\r\nPerhaps the reason I say Cambodia is more exuberant than Laos is reflected by the curious characters we first encountered, namely a man named Mr. T in Strung Treng who spoke excellent English and spent the afternoon helping us organize the taxi. It is difficult now to recall any exact thing he did that could be called exuberant, but he had a personality that was somehow larger than life, which was shockingly loud compared to the people we met in Laos, who were every bit as friendly and helpful, but simply quieter and more reserved by nature. The second person I spoke with at any length was Mr. Leng of the Star Hotel in Ban Lung. We arrived fairly late at night, round tem Pm or so and Matt and Debi headed straight for bed. My seemingly chronic insomnia drove me downstairs to have a beer with Mr. Leng (a beer poured over ice, Cambodian-style he informed me, which isn't as bad at it sounds).\r\n\r\nIt was Mr. Leng who gave me the hand drawn map we used the next day to try and find some waterfalls. Debi wasn't feeling well so Matt and I set out on our own. We found one waterfall with relative ease, but then failed to find the others. We did however ride through some quite amazing though obviously replanted clear-cut forests. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/banlungforest.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Ban Lung Forest\" />And we got an introduction to Cambodia scooter riding. We're no slouches with the Honda dream and we'd been down plenty of bad dirt roads in Laos, but neither of us had ever been passed by a man on a motorbike with his wife on the back who had a bag of vegetables in one arm and was breastfeeding a baby with the other arm, all the while bouncing over gullies and ditches as if they weren't there. It makes you feel. Well. Like you can do better.\r\n\r\nThat afternoon we went back for Debi and then headed out to Boeng Yeak Lom lake, a crater lake formed by an asteroid or something of that nature since it really is a perfectly round lake quite obviously the result of some very large object. Since there are no volcanoes in the area the asteroid story makes since, though I have no idea whether it's actually true. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/boengyeaklom.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"204\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Boeng Yeak Lom, Ban Lung, Cambodia\" />Regardless of origin the lake was a very beautiful, idyllic spot to spend the afternoon swimming, floating and generally lying about doing nothing.\r\n\r\nThe next morning we set out for the small village of Kachon people one of several ethnic minorities living in the hills here near the Vietnamese border. The ride out was fine and we managed to find a boat and cross the river to the village despite having no language in common with the people helping us. Rural Cambodian villages are not all that different from rural Laos villages, but this was the first time that the chief had come out to greet us, while the entire village gathered around to watch. We walked through the spirit shrines, which are something like a local variation on crypts, but with effigies representing the deceased person's occupation.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/spirittotem.jpg\" width=\"159\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Spirit Totem, near Ban Lung, Cambodia\" />It wasn't until later in the even when we were having dinner at the hotel restaurant and Debi casually said <em>yeah that was really nice, quite lovely the way the chief came out and the children were sweet and that guy with six fingers and the boat ride…</em> Wait?! What?! Yes it was only then the Matt and I realized we had apparently overlooked the fact that our boatman had an extra appendage on one of his hands. I don't know about you, but given that we were in a situation where no one could understand each other and there was no harm in saying whatever you wanted in English, I probably would have said, hey guys don't all look at once but that bloke over there has an extra finger.\r\n\r\nBut maybe that's just me.", "dek": "I can't see. My eyebrows are orange with dust. I cannot see them, but I know they must be; they were yesterday. Every now and then when her legs clench down on my hips or her fingernails dig into my shoulders, I remember Debi is behind me and I am more or less responsible for not killing both of us.", "pub_date": "2006-03-07T23:39:02", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (106.9794130176398426 13.7345492998401646)", "location": 30, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/hondadream.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/hondadream.jpg", "meta_description": "Riding the mighty Honda dream through the backroads of Cambodia.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 47, "fields": {"title": "Blood on the Tracks", "slug": "blood-tracks", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span>t was a fittingly dull grey overcast sky, remnants of the previous night's thunderstorm which kept me up for an hour or more while I sat on the spare bed beneath the window watching the room light up like a dance floor under a strobe, it had stopped raining, but it was still cloudy when I climbed on the back of a moto and headed out to the killing fields. </p>\n<p>The killing fields outside of Phnom Penh are in fact just that, fields with depressions, large holes in the ground, some marked with staggering numbers, others with no sign at all. The Khmer Rouge slaughtered over 12,000 people at this site alone. It did not rain any more that morning but the sky remained dark and the holes were partially filled with water.\n<break></p>\n<p>As I mentioned in the last entry I came down with a bit of a fever for a few days. This was accompanied by what we in the group have come to term, for lack of a nicer, but equally descriptive term—pissing out the ass. Yes it's not a pretty picture. Nor is it a pleasant experience, but we have all done it, it was simply my turn. Consequently I don't have a real clear recollection of the journey from Ban Lung to Kratie, nor do I have all that great of a recall from Kratie out to Sen Monoron. I do however remember near the end of the journey to Sen Monoron, as I sat in the cab of a Toyota pickup with ass cheeks clenched and stomach rumbling ominously, we came upon an accident blocking a bridge. A large transport truck had rammed into the side of a bridge and apparently been abandoned. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/truckaccident.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"174\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Truck Accident, Sen Monoron, Cambodia\" />The accident did not look recent, but the wreck remained. And was blocking all traffic over the bridge. The majority of the cars using the road to Sen Monoron were four-wheel drive and didn't have too much trouble heading down around the bridge and through the riverbed. Naturally our cheap transport was only two-wheel drive and very top heavy. After studying the situation for the better part of half an hour, our driver apparently decided he could do it. Wrong. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/trucktipping.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"300\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Truck Tipping Over, Sen Monoron, Cambodia\" />The result was a heavily loaded Toyota pickup nearly turned on its side in the middle of a small riverbed. Luckily the villagers in attendance seemed to have sensed our driver's folly and were able to run in with various pieces of wood which they used to brace the truck and stop it from turning completely on its side. It took nearly an hour to get it unstuck and finally across the river. Rather frustratingly about three or four NGOs in their shiny new 4runners passed by without much trouble nor I might add offering much in the way of aid, despite what might have been stenciled on the side of their trucks.</p>\n<p>Matt has a fairly intense aversion to NGO's which I am beginning to share, needless to say this experience did not help their cause in our eyes. The thing is we have traveled quite extensively in the backcountry of Laos and Cambodia and we have seen some pretty intense poverty. However we rarely see NGO groups out in these areas. We tend to find them near large resort towns like Luang Prabang or Seam Reap where air conditioning and western food is plentiful, or as we would witness down south, NGO's seem to enjoy a bit of surf fishing from the comfort of their shiny 4x4s. So yes we have developed a healthy disrespect for those that claim to help, but spend their time close to the comforts of home. Lest we seem self righteous let me absolve a couple of spectacular NGO groups, the land mine people, that is, anyone clearing land mines and UXO, and the Friends organization in Phnom Penh which teaches street children how to cook and run restaurants. These two NGOs are superb and beyond reproach in all respects. However the vast majority of NGOs out here are, in the words of the English, a bunch of wankers.</p>\n<p>Where for instance were the NGOs in 1974? Where was the west in general when Cambodia needed it? Where was the west when 3 million people were killed in less than four years? It's easy to help when somebody else has solved the difficult problems (that would be the Vietnamese who, fed up with the Khmer Rouge, invaded Cambodia and drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979). </p>\n<p>And just who were the Khmer Rouge? For those that don't know here is the sound bite synopsis: in something like 1974 the US backed a military coup by a member of the Cambodian Army named Lol Nol. The coup disposed the King and sent him into exile. Just before he left he told the Cambodian people loyal to him to head to the hills and join the then fledgling Khmer Rouge. Lol Nol lasted some six months in power. The US backed him because he let them bomb the Viet Kong operating on Cambodia soil. Unfortunately he seems to have been quite corrupt and at the bare minimum was not popular. Roughly eight months later the US had lost the Vietnam War, pulled out of Southeast Asia and left behind a power vacuum (sound familiar?) which allowed the Khmer Rouge to step out of the jungle and into power.</p>\n<p>In the beginning the Khmer Rouge were simply Cambodian nationalists who opposed Lol Nol, but by the time they seized power the Khmer Rouge had transformed themselves into something approaching Maoists. The Khmer Rouge's goal was to an agrarian utopia in which all people were equal and worked the land. Unfortunately for the average person this meant the economy had to go. Money was abolished, the post service destroyed, and everyone was driven out of cities into the fields where they were worked to death. The Khmer Rouge set about destroying all literature, art, education, banned music, and basically took all the things that make life worth living and destroyed them. At some point a man whose name is undoubtedly familiar to most came to lead the Khmer Rouge, Brother Number One—Pol Pot. Under Pol Pot the killings escalated. Anyone educated was killed. Anyone literate was killed. Toward the end, anyone wearing glasses was killed. Those that survived did so by hiding and trying to blend in. </p>\n<p>For the actual killings the Khmer Rouge favored lining people up in a field beside a large hole and then walking along behind them bashing in the back of their skulls with a blunt hammer. If you consider they killed three million people in four years you arrive at a figure of over 2000 people a day. The killing fields genocide museum outside Phnom Penh is not the only killing field. There is no \"killing field,\" there are thousands of them. Cambodia is covered in killing fields, the one outside of Phnom Penh is merely the one chosen to represent them all.</p>\n<p>During this time the west did absolutely nothing.</p>\n<p>The U.N. finally stopped recognizing the Khmer Rouge in 1991. </p>\n<p>Imagine for a moment of the UN had recognized the Nazi Party as the rightful leader of Germany until 1957.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/killingfieldswomenandchildrenpit.jpg\" width=\"158\" height=\"200\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Killing Fields, Phnom Penh Cambodia\" />After spending about an hour walking around the Killing Fields, seeing the graves, the tree where children where tied and beaten while their parents were forced to watch, seeing the clothes still leeching up out of the soil, seeing the tree where the Khmer soldiers hung speakers to blare music that would drown out the screaming, seeing the massive towering monument full of skulls and clothes, after seeing as much horror and sadness as I could bear and perhaps a little more, I sat down at a table beneath some trees and smoked a cigarette. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/skullskillingfields.jpg\" width=\"215\" height=\"149\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Skulls, Killing Fields, Phnom Penh, Cambodia\" />I found it somewhat odd that although the bench and table were concrete they had been molded and painted to look as if they were wood. I thought for a while about the tree rings on display at Sequoia National Park in California where each ring is marked with a corresponding event from history. You can see how large the Sequoia was when Christ was born, when China built the great wall, when Columbus discovered America, and so on. The rings painted on the table before me were spaced rather widely such that as best I could count, given that I am not an expert at such things, the faux tree appeared to be roughly thirty years old, as if the artist may well have intended it to be a way to peer back in time, to create a point a singularity if you will from which all modern Cambodian history must come. The Khmer Rouge reset the calendar, calling the year of their rise to power year zero. The fake tree trunk before was, whether intentionally or not, painted to look as though it began life in that artificial year zero.</p>\n<p>After a while my moto driver saw me sitting there and wandered over, I was half expecting him to say it was time to go, but instead he sat down at the bench opposite me and crossed his legs. <em>A very sad place no…?</em> he said. I nodded but did not say anything. I was trying the judge his age. As best I could guess he would have probably been around eight when the Khmer Rouge took power. There is an entire generation missing in Cambodia, people of his generation are few and far between and most that you see are actually Vietnamese or Chinese emigres.</p>\n<p><em>I was very young when this happened.</em> He did not go on. I nodded and he smiled. He asked for a cigarette which I gave him. <em>I worked in a field. From before dawn to after dark. I was seven. It was very hard. I got a fever and the Khmer Rouge gave us rabbit shit as pills because they could not afford medicine. My parents were dead already, but I had seen my mother boil the leaves of that tree and give them to my brother when he was sick.</em> I looked behind me and he pointed, but I could not decipher which tree he meant. <em>So I crush the leaves and made tea and I got better.</em></p>\n<p>He did not say any more except to mention that it was time to go if I wanted to see the film at S21, which I did. I sat on the back of the moto as we headed into town wondering what I would do in the face of something like the Khmer Rouge. I decided that I would try to flee, but I'm not sure if that's cowardly or not. If it was too late and I could not flee I do not know what I would do and I do not think anyone can know what they would do until they face such a situation.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/S21tortureroom.jpg\" width=\"179\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Torture Chamber, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia\" />S21 is perhaps a little less known than the Killing Fields, owing no doubt to its lack of Hollywood endorsement, but S21 is even more chilling for the fact that it looks as if it were abandoned yesterday. Originally a school, the buildings became the central processing area for Khmer Rouge detainees, which is a sanitized way of saying it was a torture chamber. With the typical despots flair for brevity it was designated simply S21. Of the more than 17,000 people that passed through the walls and corridors of S21 under the Khmer Rouge, seven were alive when the Vietnamese liberated Phnom Penh. Other than scrubbing the stains from the walls and floors it seems as though very little had been done at S21. It looks like it might have been an active torture chamber a few hours before you arrived. The left hand building is a series of classrooms each totally bare save for a wire frame beds, a wrought iron bar and a car battery. These rooms served as torture chambers where prisoners' were restrained while their fingernails were pulled out, their bodies electrocuted and battery acid poured on their skin. Standing alone in the bare rooms you can almost hear the screams.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2006/S21pictures.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"165\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Victim Photos, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia\" />The creepy thing about S21 is that the Khmer Rouge were methodical in their record keeping. Everyone who passed through S21 was photographed and a detailed biographical record was made. Some of these were lost, but the vast majority remain. Several halls of the museum are now simply rows and rows of black and white photographs of those who were tortured and killed at S21. I have not been to Auschwitz or for that matter any other genocide museum, but I cannot imagine a more stark and yet moving tribute to the victims than the bare walls and floors and endless rows of photographs.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/S21victim.jpg\" width=\"144\" height=\"200\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Child Victim, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia\" />After touring the various rooms and halls of S21 I went up to the film room to watch a documentary film about the Khmer Rouge. The film itself was good, but in no way as moving as the simple existence of the place, which has a physical reality about it that is far more chilling than anything cinema is capable of. I found my mind wandering back to the same question I had been asking all day, How? How could the Khmer Rouge have happened? I've read a couple of books about life under the Khmer Rouge but I still can't wrap my head around genocide, I just don't understand how it happens, or how it can continue to happen. Like most people I want to know some reason, but it's never that simple, there may not be a reason or even a collection of reasons that could explain the Khmer Rouge.</p>\n<p>It would be nice to think the Khmer Rouge were just plain evil or crazy, but I don't think it's as simple as that. Pol Pot was educated in Paris, the head of S21 was a former professor of mathematics and the guards were hardened and formed just like the sadistic guards of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Certainly these were not murderous simpletons on a rampage. The truth is there are a million tiny explanations, a million things that can add up to a genocide, but breaking them down and isolating them does not help to explain the overall phenomenon nor in my opinion does it help to prevent further genocides. I do not believe it is possible to stop wars. So long as there is a disparity of resources there will always be wars. And given that different climates are better and worse at generating resources there will probably always be a disparity of resources. But while it may not be possible to stop all wars, it may not be possible to stop all genocides, if we stop just one that would be a step in the right direction.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span>t was a fittingly dull grey overcast sky, remnants of the previous night's thunderstorm which kept me up for an hour or more while I sat on the spare bed beneath the window watching the room light up like a dance floor under a strobe, it had stopped raining, but it was still cloudy when I climbed on the back of a moto and headed out to the killing fields. \r\n\r\nThe killing fields outside of Phnom Penh are in fact just that, fields with depressions, large holes in the ground, some marked with staggering numbers, others with no sign at all. The Khmer Rouge slaughtered over 12,000 people at this site alone. It did not rain any more that morning but the sky remained dark and the holes were partially filled with water.\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nAs I mentioned in the last entry I came down with a bit of a fever for a few days. This was accompanied by what we in the group have come to term, for lack of a nicer, but equally descriptive term—pissing out the ass. Yes it's not a pretty picture. Nor is it a pleasant experience, but we have all done it, it was simply my turn. Consequently I don't have a real clear recollection of the journey from Ban Lung to Kratie, nor do I have all that great of a recall from Kratie out to Sen Monoron. I do however remember near the end of the journey to Sen Monoron, as I sat in the cab of a Toyota pickup with ass cheeks clenched and stomach rumbling ominously, we came upon an accident blocking a bridge. A large transport truck had rammed into the side of a bridge and apparently been abandoned. <img src=\"[[base_url]]2006/truckaccident.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"174\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Truck Accident, Sen Monoron, Cambodia\" />The accident did not look recent, but the wreck remained. And was blocking all traffic over the bridge. The majority of the cars using the road to Sen Monoron were four-wheel drive and didn't have too much trouble heading down around the bridge and through the riverbed. Naturally our cheap transport was only two-wheel drive and very top heavy. After studying the situation for the better part of half an hour, our driver apparently decided he could do it. Wrong. <img src=\"[[base_url]]2006/trucktipping.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"300\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Truck Tipping Over, Sen Monoron, Cambodia\" />The result was a heavily loaded Toyota pickup nearly turned on its side in the middle of a small riverbed. Luckily the villagers in attendance seemed to have sensed our driver's folly and were able to run in with various pieces of wood which they used to brace the truck and stop it from turning completely on its side. It took nearly an hour to get it unstuck and finally across the river. Rather frustratingly about three or four NGOs in their shiny new 4runners passed by without much trouble nor I might add offering much in the way of aid, despite what might have been stenciled on the side of their trucks.\r\n\r\nMatt has a fairly intense aversion to NGO's which I am beginning to share, needless to say this experience did not help their cause in our eyes. The thing is we have traveled quite extensively in the backcountry of Laos and Cambodia and we have seen some pretty intense poverty. However we rarely see NGO groups out in these areas. We tend to find them near large resort towns like Luang Prabang or Seam Reap where air conditioning and western food is plentiful, or as we would witness down south, NGO's seem to enjoy a bit of surf fishing from the comfort of their shiny 4x4s. So yes we have developed a healthy disrespect for those that claim to help, but spend their time close to the comforts of home. Lest we seem self righteous let me absolve a couple of spectacular NGO groups, the land mine people, that is, anyone clearing land mines and UXO, and the Friends organization in Phnom Penh which teaches street children how to cook and run restaurants. These two NGOs are superb and beyond reproach in all respects. However the vast majority of NGOs out here are, in the words of the English, a bunch of wankers.\r\n\r\nWhere for instance were the NGOs in 1974? Where was the west in general when Cambodia needed it? Where was the west when 3 million people were killed in less than four years? It's easy to help when somebody else has solved the difficult problems (that would be the Vietnamese who, fed up with the Khmer Rouge, invaded Cambodia and drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979). \r\n\r\nAnd just who were the Khmer Rouge? For those that don't know here is the sound bite synopsis: in something like 1974 the US backed a military coup by a member of the Cambodian Army named Lol Nol. The coup disposed the King and sent him into exile. Just before he left he told the Cambodian people loyal to him to head to the hills and join the then fledgling Khmer Rouge. Lol Nol lasted some six months in power. The US backed him because he let them bomb the Viet Kong operating on Cambodia soil. Unfortunately he seems to have been quite corrupt and at the bare minimum was not popular. Roughly eight months later the US had lost the Vietnam War, pulled out of Southeast Asia and left behind a power vacuum (sound familiar?) which allowed the Khmer Rouge to step out of the jungle and into power.\r\n\r\nIn the beginning the Khmer Rouge were simply Cambodian nationalists who opposed Lol Nol, but by the time they seized power the Khmer Rouge had transformed themselves into something approaching Maoists. The Khmer Rouge's goal was to an agrarian utopia in which all people were equal and worked the land. Unfortunately for the average person this meant the economy had to go. Money was abolished, the post service destroyed, and everyone was driven out of cities into the fields where they were worked to death. The Khmer Rouge set about destroying all literature, art, education, banned music, and basically took all the things that make life worth living and destroyed them. At some point a man whose name is undoubtedly familiar to most came to lead the Khmer Rouge, Brother Number One—Pol Pot. Under Pol Pot the killings escalated. Anyone educated was killed. Anyone literate was killed. Toward the end, anyone wearing glasses was killed. Those that survived did so by hiding and trying to blend in. \r\n\r\nFor the actual killings the Khmer Rouge favored lining people up in a field beside a large hole and then walking along behind them bashing in the back of their skulls with a blunt hammer. If you consider they killed three million people in four years you arrive at a figure of over 2000 people a day. The killing fields genocide museum outside Phnom Penh is not the only killing field. There is no \"killing field,\" there are thousands of them. Cambodia is covered in killing fields, the one outside of Phnom Penh is merely the one chosen to represent them all.\r\n\r\nDuring this time the west did absolutely nothing.\r\n\r\nThe U.N. finally stopped recognizing the Khmer Rouge in 1991. \r\n\r\nImagine for a moment of the UN had recognized the Nazi Party as the rightful leader of Germany until 1957.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2006/killingfieldswomenandchildrenpit.jpg\" width=\"158\" height=\"200\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Killing Fields, Phnom Penh Cambodia\" />After spending about an hour walking around the Killing Fields, seeing the graves, the tree where children where tied and beaten while their parents were forced to watch, seeing the clothes still leeching up out of the soil, seeing the tree where the Khmer soldiers hung speakers to blare music that would drown out the screaming, seeing the massive towering monument full of skulls and clothes, after seeing as much horror and sadness as I could bear and perhaps a little more, I sat down at a table beneath some trees and smoked a cigarette. <img src=\"[[base_url]]2006/skullskillingfields.jpg\" width=\"215\" height=\"149\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Skulls, Killing Fields, Phnom Penh, Cambodia\" />I found it somewhat odd that although the bench and table were concrete they had been molded and painted to look as if they were wood. I thought for a while about the tree rings on display at Sequoia National Park in California where each ring is marked with a corresponding event from history. You can see how large the Sequoia was when Christ was born, when China built the great wall, when Columbus discovered America, and so on. The rings painted on the table before me were spaced rather widely such that as best I could count, given that I am not an expert at such things, the faux tree appeared to be roughly thirty years old, as if the artist may well have intended it to be a way to peer back in time, to create a point a singularity if you will from which all modern Cambodian history must come. The Khmer Rouge reset the calendar, calling the year of their rise to power year zero. The fake tree trunk before was, whether intentionally or not, painted to look as though it began life in that artificial year zero.\r\n\r\nAfter a while my moto driver saw me sitting there and wandered over, I was half expecting him to say it was time to go, but instead he sat down at the bench opposite me and crossed his legs. *A very sad place no…?* he said. I nodded but did not say anything. I was trying the judge his age. As best I could guess he would have probably been around eight when the Khmer Rouge took power. There is an entire generation missing in Cambodia, people of his generation are few and far between and most that you see are actually Vietnamese or Chinese emigres.\r\n\r\n*I was very young when this happened.* He did not go on. I nodded and he smiled. He asked for a cigarette which I gave him. *I worked in a field. From before dawn to after dark. I was seven. It was very hard. I got a fever and the Khmer Rouge gave us rabbit shit as pills because they could not afford medicine. My parents were dead already, but I had seen my mother boil the leaves of that tree and give them to my brother when he was sick.* I looked behind me and he pointed, but I could not decipher which tree he meant. *So I crush the leaves and made tea and I got better.*\r\n\r\nHe did not say any more except to mention that it was time to go if I wanted to see the film at S21, which I did. I sat on the back of the moto as we headed into town wondering what I would do in the face of something like the Khmer Rouge. I decided that I would try to flee, but I'm not sure if that's cowardly or not. If it was too late and I could not flee I do not know what I would do and I do not think anyone can know what they would do until they face such a situation.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2006/S21tortureroom.jpg\" width=\"179\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Torture Chamber, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia\" />S21 is perhaps a little less known than the Killing Fields, owing no doubt to its lack of Hollywood endorsement, but S21 is even more chilling for the fact that it looks as if it were abandoned yesterday. Originally a school, the buildings became the central processing area for Khmer Rouge detainees, which is a sanitized way of saying it was a torture chamber. With the typical despots flair for brevity it was designated simply S21. Of the more than 17,000 people that passed through the walls and corridors of S21 under the Khmer Rouge, seven were alive when the Vietnamese liberated Phnom Penh. Other than scrubbing the stains from the walls and floors it seems as though very little had been done at S21. It looks like it might have been an active torture chamber a few hours before you arrived. The left hand building is a series of classrooms each totally bare save for a wire frame beds, a wrought iron bar and a car battery. These rooms served as torture chambers where prisoners' were restrained while their fingernails were pulled out, their bodies electrocuted and battery acid poured on their skin. Standing alone in the bare rooms you can almost hear the screams.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2006/S21pictures.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"165\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Victim Photos, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia\" />The creepy thing about S21 is that the Khmer Rouge were methodical in their record keeping. Everyone who passed through S21 was photographed and a detailed biographical record was made. Some of these were lost, but the vast majority remain. Several halls of the museum are now simply rows and rows of black and white photographs of those who were tortured and killed at S21. I have not been to Auschwitz or for that matter any other genocide museum, but I cannot imagine a more stark and yet moving tribute to the victims than the bare walls and floors and endless rows of photographs.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/S21victim.jpg\" width=\"144\" height=\"200\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Child Victim, S 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia\" />After touring the various rooms and halls of S21 I went up to the film room to watch a documentary film about the Khmer Rouge. The film itself was good, but in no way as moving as the simple existence of the place, which has a physical reality about it that is far more chilling than anything cinema is capable of. I found my mind wandering back to the same question I had been asking all day, How? How could the Khmer Rouge have happened? I've read a couple of books about life under the Khmer Rouge but I still can't wrap my head around genocide, I just don't understand how it happens, or how it can continue to happen. Like most people I want to know some reason, but it's never that simple, there may not be a reason or even a collection of reasons that could explain the Khmer Rouge.\r\n\r\nIt would be nice to think the Khmer Rouge were just plain evil or crazy, but I don't think it's as simple as that. Pol Pot was educated in Paris, the head of S21 was a former professor of mathematics and the guards were hardened and formed just like the sadistic guards of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Certainly these were not murderous simpletons on a rampage. The truth is there are a million tiny explanations, a million things that can add up to a genocide, but breaking them down and isolating them does not help to explain the overall phenomenon nor in my opinion does it help to prevent further genocides. I do not believe it is possible to stop wars. So long as there is a disparity of resources there will always be wars. And given that different climates are better and worse at generating resources there will probably always be a disparity of resources. But while it may not be possible to stop all wars, it may not be possible to stop all genocides, if we stop just one that would be a step in the right direction.", "dek": "As I mentioned in the last entry I came down with a bit of a fever for a few days. This was accompanied by what we in the group have come to term, for lack of a nicer, but equally descriptive phrase — pissing out the ass. It's not a pretty picture. Nor is it a pleasant experience, and consequently I don't have a real clear recollection of the journey from Ban Lung to Kratie or from Kratie out to Sen Monoron.", "pub_date": "2006-03-14T23:41:41", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (104.9275016638606246 11.5659755905209405)", "location": 29, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/killingfields.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/killingfields.jpg", "meta_description": "Fever dreams of Ban Lung, Kratie and Sen Monoron. Dysentery is a bitch.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 48, "fields": {"title": "Beginning to See the Light", "slug": "beginning-see-light", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span> once wrote a novel, which thankfully only one person has ever read in its entirety (thank you for suffering through it Rhiannon), and hopefully only one person will ever read. It's a terrible novel (though I like to think well written at least). It is the novel of a very young and very stupid man. While I will not profess to be any smarter I am at least older and I have come to absolutely hate the central premise of the novel. The central premise is so sophomorically postmodern as to be laughable, but here it is— nothing ever happens. </p>\n<p>The central character spends most of the novel waiting for something to happen. Yes just like the Radiohead song. When a band can summarize your novel in a three-minute pop song it's not a good sign. </p>\n<p><break>\nI have now after seven months of traveling come to have a journal full of notes, verbal sketches, transcribed conversations, anecdotal stories, and writings of that nature, which are chiefly concerned with the fact that something is always happening. In fact so many things are happening that I am sometimes paralyzed by the thought of having to choose what to record and what to ignore. </p>\n<p>I could for instance describe the early morning market in Phnom Penh that surrounds the bus station. I could tell about the bananas and dragon fruit, the fish arriving in trucks, the women walking among the stalls, the way they paused sometimes to feel the firmness of the piece of fruit or try a taste of some dried meat, the throngs of flies on the pig guts, the blood on the chopping block, the unidentifiable meat hanging in the dark rafters, the blue plastic tarps, the sound of the motorbikes coming and going, the dizzying rush of cars, the lottery ticket sellers, the taxi drivers waiting, the bamboo baskets full of freshwater clams, baskets full of dried shrimp, baskets full of chilies, baskets full of lotus heads, baskets full of dried fish, the baskets full of cucumbers, full of seaweed, full of tomatoes, full of beetles, full of fish, full of things I've never seen before, and the smell of fish and meat and cigarette smoke and rotting garbage and stale water and grilled meat and sautéed onions and noodle soup in bowls climbing up into the already steaming morning heat. </p>\n<p>But none of that is actually in the journal, that's just memory. And that skips all the fun of the dialogue, breakfast at a food stand, Matt and Debi and I bartering for tuk-tuks, waiting in the bus station….</p>\n<p>I could write about the bus, the bags of mysterious liquid stuff hanging from the backs of the local's seats, the sticky rice with Soya beans cased in bamboo, the book I was reading, the sound of the woman's voice behind me, the creak of the rusty seats, the grinding roar of the engine, the smell of petrol, the inevitable stopping, the chickens clucking in their baskets, the pig squealing in his, or us falling asleep all askew with our mouths open, or the endless bartering to obtain motorbikes for the afternoon. We were headed you see to the floating village of Kampong Luong, just offshore from Krakor on the edge of Tonle Sap. And yes, you might think motorbikes are a poor mode of transport for a lake, but there was the ride to the lake to consider (and of course I have said before that the Honda Dream is capable of all, I have no doubt that somewhere someone has converted one into a boat). But see even with that I've missed a million little details. I remember for instance that on the way back the key bounced right out of my bike. Disappeared into the ether of Cambodian roads, never to be seen again. I remember the trucks and their deafening horn blasts that nearly unseat you when they sneak up behind you and let loose, I remember the laughter on the drivers face as he passed knowing he just nearly made you piss yourself. I remember stopping for petrol and losing something. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/floatingvillage.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"162\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Kampong Luong, Floating Village, Cambodia\" />A village that floats on the water is not so ordinary as to be forgotten. And yet surprisingly a floating village is not that different than a village on the land. There are the same stores, the computer repair shop, the grocers, the petrol station, the temple, the dance hall and all the other things that makeup a town. I could even say with some authority that the town is laid out in streets, watery pathways that form nearly perfect lines. When viewed from above, I imagine the floating village would be scarcely any different than a normal village. But what made it special was that it was not a normal village and while a computer repair store may not be all that special in the average town, float one out in the middle of lake and it becomes fascinating. That such a thing might exist in floating village is remarkable, I for one was not expecting that people living on water would have computers, let alone have enough that there is exists a market for repair. After all it's only a ten-minute boat ride to shore. </p>\n<p>But the one place the notes and photographs fail me are when it comes to describing what it feels like to be there. The further and longer I travel the more I realize that I cannot begin to convey what these places feel like, the smells and sounds can be described, the sights may be captured in words or pictures, but then they are no longer sights, nor sounds, nor smells, they are simply words here on the page, on the screen, repeated in our heads. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/skybluefloating.jpg\" width=\"165\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Floating Village, Cambodia\" />I remember the sky was crystalline blue with windswept high altitude clouds that made the water seem brown and paltry in comparison. The villagers, ethnically Vietnamese, were not stoically unwelcoming as the guidebook suggested, but full of friendly smiles and gregarious waves (more or less everything in a guidebook is dead wrong, but you have to actually go somewhere to realize it). <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/villagersfloatingvillage.jpg\" width=\"260\" height=\"166\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"\" />I do not know why the village was built on the water, perhaps it's closer to the fish, perhaps all the land was taken, perhaps it just seemed like more fun to them, but I can tell you there is something wonderfully appealing, magical even, amazing, bewitching and any number of other adjectives I can dig out of the Oxford English Dictionary about the place. But I can't tell you how it felt. Maybe ask Debi, she wanted to move in.</p>\n<p>But we wouldn't let her. So the next day we headed on around the lake to Battambang. Just outside Battambang is what's known as the Bamboo Railway. After the Khmer Rouge destroyed most of it, the local rail line was abandoned. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bamboorailway.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Bamboo Railway, Battambang, Cambodia\" />But the people of Southeast Asia (and I imagine anywhere in the developing world where governments do not do the sorts of things we expect governments to do like build highways) are far too ingenious to let some abandoned track go to waste. They found a bunch of old wheel housings and built bamboo flatbeds for them. Throw in the ubiquitous four-stroke engine and you're away.</p>\n<p>It's a bit kitschy I suppose, even by local standards and it probably only persists because tourists like it, and it <strong>is</strong> fun. We hired motorbikes and rode out to the railroad, this time with guides. We were waiting for the locals to put together a bamboo car to take us back into town via the tracks when we noticed one of our guides was buying a grilled rat. We have seen rat for sale various places in the last two months, typically small villages in Laos, but we had never quite worked up the courage to try any. For me it wasn't so much that it was rat, it was more that it's typically been flattened to the point that it's lost a dimension and hardly seems worth it. Plus, well, it's a rat. We all sort of stood around watching as he ate it. He laughed at what must have been semi-horrified looks on our faces and offered us some. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/girlwithrat.jpg\" width=\"196\" height=\"273\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Girl with Grilled Rat, Battambang, Cambodia\" />Now purchasing a whole rat always seemed to me a bit of a commitment, but trying a piece was not so daunting. Still I hesitated. Matt went for it, tore off a bit of stringy meat and started chewing it. Not to be out done I grabbed a piece and popped it in my mouth. Somewhere between chicken and beef, not what I would call good, but not that bad either. Eventually after exerting an undue amount of both Cambodian and English and American peer pressure we convinced Debi to have a bite. Some people claim there was physical cohesion, but that simply isn't true. Matt even had seconds.</p>\n<p>When I was laid up ill in Sen Monoron I watched a bit of the Discovery channel (and no one was eating rats). I saw one program in particular which fascinated me. Biologists in Africa who study elephant behaviors have come to the conclusion that when elephants lay their trunks flat on the ground they are actually listening (so to speak), to distant vibrations. Not listening to sounds that we could hear, or even sounds they could hear, but rather to the very deep long wavelengths of sound that we might, when they're big enough, feel as an earthquake. And what do the elephants learn from such listening? There were if I remember correctly several theories, but none of them are worth recounting, what interested me was that there are hundreds of vibrations that pass under our feet that we are simply not equipped to sense. In fact when you come down to it our sense have a very narrow biological slant—they keep us alive.</p>\n<p>But in narrowing down the world to what was necessary to survive we may have missed out on a whole lot of stuff that was well, fun. Eating rat was not biologically necessary, I wasn't even hungry, but it was fun. Maybe elephants lay their trunks on the ground and \"listen\" to distant vibrations because they enjoy it the same way your grandmother likes it when you call long distance or your sister likes a postcard from Africa to hang on her fridge or you like to stare at the sunset. Even animals stare at the sunset and you'll never convince me it isn't because they have fun watching it. It's been fun to realize how wrong I was. It's fun to know that something is always happening; you just have to know where to look. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bamboorailwaybikes.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"192\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Matt, me, Honda Dreams, Bamboo Railway, Battambang, Cambodia\" />My only regret is I cannot capture details as a whole. I have to pick and chose and focus on individual bits to try and build a whole. But words are reductive, they take wholes and deconstruct them into parts and attempt to put them back together, but they never can. All the Kings men can't put the rat in your mouth, but I'm glad we have this at least, some little bit to give and take. Though it may not convey the spatial and temporal and it may not get you here or me there, it does serve as some bridge, however rickety, between worlds. And believe me you'd be surprised the rickety bridges that will actually hold your weight. Oh yeah and I regret that I have a really bad novel taking up space on my hard drive.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span> once wrote a novel, which thankfully only one person has ever read in its entirety (thank you for suffering through it Rhiannon), and hopefully only one person will ever read. It's a terrible novel (though I like to think well written at least). It is the novel of a very young and very stupid man. While I will not profess to be any smarter I am at least older and I have come to absolutely hate the central premise of the novel. The central premise is so sophomorically postmodern as to be laughable, but here it is— nothing ever happens. \r\n\r\nThe central character spends most of the novel waiting for something to happen. Yes just like the Radiohead song. When a band can summarize your novel in a three-minute pop song it's not a good sign. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\nI have now after seven months of traveling come to have a journal full of notes, verbal sketches, transcribed conversations, anecdotal stories, and writings of that nature, which are chiefly concerned with the fact that something is always happening. In fact so many things are happening that I am sometimes paralyzed by the thought of having to choose what to record and what to ignore. \r\n\r\nI could for instance describe the early morning market in Phnom Penh that surrounds the bus station. I could tell about the bananas and dragon fruit, the fish arriving in trucks, the women walking among the stalls, the way they paused sometimes to feel the firmness of the piece of fruit or try a taste of some dried meat, the throngs of flies on the pig guts, the blood on the chopping block, the unidentifiable meat hanging in the dark rafters, the blue plastic tarps, the sound of the motorbikes coming and going, the dizzying rush of cars, the lottery ticket sellers, the taxi drivers waiting, the bamboo baskets full of freshwater clams, baskets full of dried shrimp, baskets full of chilies, baskets full of lotus heads, baskets full of dried fish, the baskets full of cucumbers, full of seaweed, full of tomatoes, full of beetles, full of fish, full of things I've never seen before, and the smell of fish and meat and cigarette smoke and rotting garbage and stale water and grilled meat and sautéed onions and noodle soup in bowls climbing up into the already steaming morning heat. \r\n\r\nBut none of that is actually in the journal, that's just memory. And that skips all the fun of the dialogue, breakfast at a food stand, Matt and Debi and I bartering for tuk-tuks, waiting in the bus station….\r\n\r\nI could write about the bus, the bags of mysterious liquid stuff hanging from the backs of the local's seats, the sticky rice with Soya beans cased in bamboo, the book I was reading, the sound of the woman's voice behind me, the creak of the rusty seats, the grinding roar of the engine, the smell of petrol, the inevitable stopping, the chickens clucking in their baskets, the pig squealing in his, or us falling asleep all askew with our mouths open, or the endless bartering to obtain motorbikes for the afternoon. We were headed you see to the floating village of Kampong Luong, just offshore from Krakor on the edge of Tonle Sap. And yes, you might think motorbikes are a poor mode of transport for a lake, but there was the ride to the lake to consider (and of course I have said before that the Honda Dream is capable of all, I have no doubt that somewhere someone has converted one into a boat). But see even with that I've missed a million little details. I remember for instance that on the way back the key bounced right out of my bike. Disappeared into the ether of Cambodian roads, never to be seen again. I remember the trucks and their deafening horn blasts that nearly unseat you when they sneak up behind you and let loose, I remember the laughter on the drivers face as he passed knowing he just nearly made you piss yourself. I remember stopping for petrol and losing something. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/floatingvillage.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"162\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Kampong Luong, Floating Village, Cambodia\" />A village that floats on the water is not so ordinary as to be forgotten. And yet surprisingly a floating village is not that different than a village on the land. There are the same stores, the computer repair shop, the grocers, the petrol station, the temple, the dance hall and all the other things that makeup a town. I could even say with some authority that the town is laid out in streets, watery pathways that form nearly perfect lines. When viewed from above, I imagine the floating village would be scarcely any different than a normal village. But what made it special was that it was not a normal village and while a computer repair store may not be all that special in the average town, float one out in the middle of lake and it becomes fascinating. That such a thing might exist in floating village is remarkable, I for one was not expecting that people living on water would have computers, let alone have enough that there is exists a market for repair. After all it's only a ten-minute boat ride to shore. \r\n\r\nBut the one place the notes and photographs fail me are when it comes to describing what it feels like to be there. The further and longer I travel the more I realize that I cannot begin to convey what these places feel like, the smells and sounds can be described, the sights may be captured in words or pictures, but then they are no longer sights, nor sounds, nor smells, they are simply words here on the page, on the screen, repeated in our heads. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/skybluefloating.jpg\" width=\"165\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Floating Village, Cambodia\" />I remember the sky was crystalline blue with windswept high altitude clouds that made the water seem brown and paltry in comparison. The villagers, ethnically Vietnamese, were not stoically unwelcoming as the guidebook suggested, but full of friendly smiles and gregarious waves (more or less everything in a guidebook is dead wrong, but you have to actually go somewhere to realize it). <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/villagersfloatingvillage.jpg\" width=\"260\" height=\"166\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"\" />I do not know why the village was built on the water, perhaps it's closer to the fish, perhaps all the land was taken, perhaps it just seemed like more fun to them, but I can tell you there is something wonderfully appealing, magical even, amazing, bewitching and any number of other adjectives I can dig out of the Oxford English Dictionary about the place. But I can't tell you how it felt. Maybe ask Debi, she wanted to move in.\r\n\r\nBut we wouldn't let her. So the next day we headed on around the lake to Battambang. Just outside Battambang is what's known as the Bamboo Railway. After the Khmer Rouge destroyed most of it, the local rail line was abandoned. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/bamboorailway.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Bamboo Railway, Battambang, Cambodia\" />But the people of Southeast Asia (and I imagine anywhere in the developing world where governments do not do the sorts of things we expect governments to do like build highways) are far too ingenious to let some abandoned track go to waste. They found a bunch of old wheel housings and built bamboo flatbeds for them. Throw in the ubiquitous four-stroke engine and you're away.\r\n\r\nIt's a bit kitschy I suppose, even by local standards and it probably only persists because tourists like it, and it **is** fun. We hired motorbikes and rode out to the railroad, this time with guides. We were waiting for the locals to put together a bamboo car to take us back into town via the tracks when we noticed one of our guides was buying a grilled rat. We have seen rat for sale various places in the last two months, typically small villages in Laos, but we had never quite worked up the courage to try any. For me it wasn't so much that it was rat, it was more that it's typically been flattened to the point that it's lost a dimension and hardly seems worth it. Plus, well, it's a rat. We all sort of stood around watching as he ate it. He laughed at what must have been semi-horrified looks on our faces and offered us some. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/girlwithrat.jpg\" width=\"196\" height=\"273\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Girl with Grilled Rat, Battambang, Cambodia\" />Now purchasing a whole rat always seemed to me a bit of a commitment, but trying a piece was not so daunting. Still I hesitated. Matt went for it, tore off a bit of stringy meat and started chewing it. Not to be out done I grabbed a piece and popped it in my mouth. Somewhere between chicken and beef, not what I would call good, but not that bad either. Eventually after exerting an undue amount of both Cambodian and English and American peer pressure we convinced Debi to have a bite. Some people claim there was physical cohesion, but that simply isn't true. Matt even had seconds.\r\n\r\nWhen I was laid up ill in Sen Monoron I watched a bit of the Discovery channel (and no one was eating rats). I saw one program in particular which fascinated me. Biologists in Africa who study elephant behaviors have come to the conclusion that when elephants lay their trunks flat on the ground they are actually listening (so to speak), to distant vibrations. Not listening to sounds that we could hear, or even sounds they could hear, but rather to the very deep long wavelengths of sound that we might, when they're big enough, feel as an earthquake. And what do the elephants learn from such listening? There were if I remember correctly several theories, but none of them are worth recounting, what interested me was that there are hundreds of vibrations that pass under our feet that we are simply not equipped to sense. In fact when you come down to it our sense have a very narrow biological slant—they keep us alive.\r\n\r\nBut in narrowing down the world to what was necessary to survive we may have missed out on a whole lot of stuff that was well, fun. Eating rat was not biologically necessary, I wasn't even hungry, but it was fun. Maybe elephants lay their trunks on the ground and \"listen\" to distant vibrations because they enjoy it the same way your grandmother likes it when you call long distance or your sister likes a postcard from Africa to hang on her fridge or you like to stare at the sunset. Even animals stare at the sunset and you'll never convince me it isn't because they have fun watching it. It's been fun to realize how wrong I was. It's fun to know that something is always happening; you just have to know where to look. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/bamboorailwaybikes.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"192\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Matt, me, Honda Dreams, Bamboo Railway, Battambang, Cambodia\" />My only regret is I cannot capture details as a whole. I have to pick and chose and focus on individual bits to try and build a whole. But words are reductive, they take wholes and deconstruct them into parts and attempt to put them back together, but they never can. All the Kings men can't put the rat in your mouth, but I'm glad we have this at least, some little bit to give and take. Though it may not convey the spatial and temporal and it may not get you here or me there, it does serve as some bridge, however rickety, between worlds. And believe me you'd be surprised the rickety bridges that will actually hold your weight. Oh yeah and I regret that I have a really bad novel taking up space on my hard drive.", "dek": "Surprisingly, a floating village is not that different than a village on the land. There are the same stores, the computer repair shop, the grocers, the petrol station, the temple, the dance hall and all the other things that makeup a town. I could even say with some authority that the town is laid out in streets, watery pathways that form nearly perfect lines. ", "pub_date": "2006-03-16T20:45:20", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (104.0405273292673485 12.8211748484759234)", "location": 70, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/floatingvillage.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/floatingvillage.jpg", "meta_description": "A village that floats on the water is not so ordinary as to be forgotten. And yet surprisingly a floating village is not that different than a village on the land.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 49, "fields": {"title": "...Wait 'til it Blows", "slug": "wait-til-it-blows", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">F</span>rom Battanbang we headed northeast by boat to Seam Reap. The journey was a tedious and very shallow one. The guidebook makes a passing mention of the fact that local villagers are not all that fond of the tourist ferry boats and having ridden some way on the roof and watched the wake sink longtail boats left and right and snag and rip fishing lines and nets, I can see why. </p>\n<p>Eventually the river opened up into Tonle Sap and stopped disrupting the locals, but anyone thinking of taking the journey by boat, I discourage you from doing so. This is first thing I've seen in S.E. Asia that I think should be taken out of the guidebooks and avoided until it disappears. The journey isn't particularly nice or scenic and the fact that you piss off everyone along the way just makes it worse. Take the bus.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>We disembarked about 30 km south of Seam Reap and were met by a cartel tuk-tuk. There is a sort of cartel among guesthouses in Cambodia where you are more or less handed off to the next town. Typically you book a ticket through wherever you're staying and then they call a cousin in the town you're heading for and often they will meet you at the bus station or boat dock or wherever you happen to be arriving. Not to say that there's anything wrong with such practices, they're generally fine since all the guesthouses we've seen here are more or less the same thing with only minor fluctuation in price (the real secret in selecting a guesthouse is to take careful notice of any construction that might be nearby). The funny part about our waiting tuk-tuk driver at the dock was that he actually had a placard with our names on it, or rather the names Matt had given out when he bought the boat tickets. Fake names of course, and misspelled at that. </p>\n<p>The next morning we decided not to head straight for Angkor Wat. We slept in quite late and it was around two (heat of the day of course) when we decided to head out to the landmine museum. </p>\n<p>One the things I may have failed to mention thus far in my Cambodia reportage is that this was/is one of the most heavily mined areas in the world. The Thais, the French, the U.S. and others have all laid mines in the area, but no one laid as many nor with such sick preference for killing and maiming innocent targets as the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge mined the borders to keep everyone else out and the Cambodians in, they mined roads, they mined circular arcs around villages to prevent villagers from leaving. They mined rice paddies, they mined cities, they mined the jungle. They were the Johnny Appleseeds of land mines, except that it isn't funny. And there are still a lot of mines in Cambodia.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/landminemuseum.jpg\" height=\"165\" width=\"220\" alt=\"Faux Minefield, Land Mine Museum, Seam Reap, Cambodia\" class=\"postpic\" />The museum is on the edge of town (though give it a couple years and the town will have far over taken it) and consists of a large shed full of information on various landmines, their manufacturers and techniques for removal as well an educational video and, most fascinating, a faux minefield for you to stare at and try to determine how many you can see. Even when they aren't hidden, as they would be in the actual jungle, landmines are very very difficult to spot. I was feeling pretty good about spotting what I thought was most of the obvious ones when I happened to look up and notice that I was standing under a mortar shell with a bit of fishing line wrapped around a tree. If I were to have stepped to my left I would have tripped the wire. Or course none of them were real mines, but it was a bit unsettling nonetheless.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.akiramineaction.com/story.html\" title=\"Aki Ra, My Life Story\">Mr. Aki Ra who set up the landmine museum</a> is dedicated to educating the public in landmines (he's also exhibited art as far away as Salt Lake City and participated in several documentaries on the subject). Judging by the photos around the museum area Mr. Ra has been in no less than five armies, which gives you some idea of the turmoil of Cambodian history, including the Khmer Rouge. But at some point, realizing that he had laid one to many land mines, Aki decided it was time to undo what he had done and he has dedicated the rest of his life to both the removal of mines and helping the victims of landmines. In addition to the museum the small compound also provides food and shelter for a number of landmine victims, most missing arms or legs, some both.</p>\n<p>You might think that removing landmines involves sophisticated technology of the sort you see in BBC documentaries on Bosnia, but here in Cambodia landmine removal is most often handled by the technological marvel of southeast Asia—the bamboo stick. (While that last sentence may sound sarcastic it's really not meant that way, In my five months here I have seen people do things with bamboo that had to have taken thousands of years to perfect. Given a choice between a power saw and a good piece of bamboo I would go with the bamboo). The museum has a number of posters showing the techniques used to find and remove the mines. Sadly the removal of mines generally begins with a local villager finding a mine. Provided the mine does kill the person who stumbles across it, Aki is called and comes out with a long piece of bamboo which he used to feel around the mine, determine what type of mine it is and very carefully extract it. Landmine removal has a zero percentage error factor, so the fact that Mr. Ra has been doing this for ten years obviously means he's good at it. Fortunately for the Cambodians most of the mines on their soil are generally older and not quite so deadly as the new and improved mines (like the \"bouncing betty\" made in the US and designed not simply to blow your legs off, but to actually bounce out of the ground and explode at chest height maximizing the \"kill radius\" as jargon would have it).</p>\n<p>Landmines aren't glamorous. They lack the universal terror of nuclear bombs or long-range missiles. They aren't the sort of thing anyone but the BBC is going to report on, but landmines kill more people than any other weapon deployed in the world. The problem with landmines is they last forever. Long after both sides have faded into history, the mines still exist. The mines lie dormant in the ground until someone steps on one, drives a car over it, ploughs it up in a field, or trips a wire in the bamboo thicket. Landmines are forever and then some. And because they aren't as obviously destructive as say a nuclear warhead, it's tougher to find support for their ban. Everyone is afraid of nuclear weapons, but only people who have actually dealt with landmines seem to understand how much more destructive and immediate their threat is.</p>\n<p>The real problem with landmines is that they exist. In late 1999 a treaty passed through the UN calling for a worldwide ban on landmines. Lots of people signed it. The U.K, Spain, Ukraine, Germany, 151 in all, but not, you guessed it, the United States. Ever wonder why? I wonder about these things. Why did China, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia and the U.S. not sign a treaty banning land mines? Are these really the countries we want to side with? Landmines aren't actually very effective in today's battlefield where increasingly robots and kids with laptops are the first ones to enter a potentially mined area. It turns out that the five biggest suppliers of arms to the world, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China and France are also all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. These countries have a necessary economic interest in wars; they manufacture the majority of the weapons used, regardless of whether their own troops are involved. And yet, as member of the U.N. Security Council they are ones who often have the power to decide whether or not the wars happen. </p>\n<p>So long as the military industrial complex is pressed between the sheets with the Federal government the landmines will keep getting made. And that's not an indictment against Bush, it's an indictment against the entire US government, Democrats, Republicans and any oddball third parties for good measure. Take away the military industrial complex and see how many candidates can afford television commercials. </p>\n<p>Do I sound angry? Good. I am. I've seen too many things over here to ever be able trust American government. I've seen the effects on innocent people. Regrettably I'm too much of a realist to believe anything can be done. Just remember when you head down to the polling booth to vote for whoever you think is right, that somewhere in the world someone is strapping on their prosthetic leg, or pulling themselves onto their wheeled cart. Someone who very likely has had little or no education, no food and no idea why someone s/he's never even met would want to take away their leg, their arm, or the lives of the ones they love.</p>\n<p>If you'd like to help I encourage you to do so. If you would like to donate some money to <a href=\"http://www.akiramineaction.com/help.html\" title=\"Help the Landmine Museum Seam Reap, Cambodia\">The Landmine Museum</a> in Seam Reap, every bit helps. You can have a look at <a href=\"http://www.icbl.org/\" title=\"Support the International Ban on Landmines\">the international ban on landmines</a> which seems like a step in the right direction (and co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize). Write to your senator/representative and encourage them to pressure Bush. Ask them why the U.S won't sign the treaty. But more than anything I encourage you to try to broaden your understanding of current international events. So much of what happens in the world is ignored by the U.S. media. I for one will never be able to read an American newspaper again. Nor will I suffer through the local <strike>news</strike> bullshit ever again. The whole global village thing that lots of pundits in America like to talk about already exists. America just isn't part of it. We remain with our heads in the sand. Someday the landmines will be on our soil and then we won't be able to bury our heads in the sand any more. We have a choice I suppose, do something about now while we have a choice or wait until we <em>have</em> to do something about it. Choose wisely.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">F</span>rom Battanbang we headed northeast by boat to Seam Reap. The journey was a tedious and very shallow one. The guidebook makes a passing mention of the fact that local villagers are not all that fond of the tourist ferry boats and having ridden some way on the roof and watched the wake sink longtail boats left and right and snag and rip fishing lines and nets, I can see why. \r\n\r\nEventually the river opened up into Tonle Sap and stopped disrupting the locals, but anyone thinking of taking the journey by boat, I discourage you from doing so. This is first thing I've seen in S.E. Asia that I think should be taken out of the guidebooks and avoided until it disappears. The journey isn't particularly nice or scenic and the fact that you piss off everyone along the way just makes it worse. Take the bus.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nWe disembarked about 30 km south of Seam Reap and were met by a cartel tuk-tuk. There is a sort of cartel among guesthouses in Cambodia where you are more or less handed off to the next town. Typically you book a ticket through wherever you're staying and then they call a cousin in the town you're heading for and often they will meet you at the bus station or boat dock or wherever you happen to be arriving. Not to say that there's anything wrong with such practices, they're generally fine since all the guesthouses we've seen here are more or less the same thing with only minor fluctuation in price (the real secret in selecting a guesthouse is to take careful notice of any construction that might be nearby). The funny part about our waiting tuk-tuk driver at the dock was that he actually had a placard with our names on it, or rather the names Matt had given out when he bought the boat tickets. Fake names of course, and misspelled at that. \r\n\r\nThe next morning we decided not to head straight for Angkor Wat. We slept in quite late and it was around two (heat of the day of course) when we decided to head out to the landmine museum. \r\n\r\nOne the things I may have failed to mention thus far in my Cambodia reportage is that this was/is one of the most heavily mined areas in the world. The Thais, the French, the U.S. and others have all laid mines in the area, but no one laid as many nor with such sick preference for killing and maiming innocent targets as the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge mined the borders to keep everyone else out and the Cambodians in, they mined roads, they mined circular arcs around villages to prevent villagers from leaving. They mined rice paddies, they mined cities, they mined the jungle. They were the Johnny Appleseeds of land mines, except that it isn't funny. And there are still a lot of mines in Cambodia.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/landminemuseum.jpg\" height=\"165\" width=\"220\" alt=\"Faux Minefield, Land Mine Museum, Seam Reap, Cambodia\" class=\"postpic\" />The museum is on the edge of town (though give it a couple years and the town will have far over taken it) and consists of a large shed full of information on various landmines, their manufacturers and techniques for removal as well an educational video and, most fascinating, a faux minefield for you to stare at and try to determine how many you can see. Even when they aren't hidden, as they would be in the actual jungle, landmines are very very difficult to spot. I was feeling pretty good about spotting what I thought was most of the obvious ones when I happened to look up and notice that I was standing under a mortar shell with a bit of fishing line wrapped around a tree. If I were to have stepped to my left I would have tripped the wire. Or course none of them were real mines, but it was a bit unsettling nonetheless.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://www.akiramineaction.com/story.html\" title=\"Aki Ra, My Life Story\">Mr. Aki Ra who set up the landmine museum</a> is dedicated to educating the public in landmines (he's also exhibited art as far away as Salt Lake City and participated in several documentaries on the subject). Judging by the photos around the museum area Mr. Ra has been in no less than five armies, which gives you some idea of the turmoil of Cambodian history, including the Khmer Rouge. But at some point, realizing that he had laid one to many land mines, Aki decided it was time to undo what he had done and he has dedicated the rest of his life to both the removal of mines and helping the victims of landmines. In addition to the museum the small compound also provides food and shelter for a number of landmine victims, most missing arms or legs, some both.\r\n\r\nYou might think that removing landmines involves sophisticated technology of the sort you see in BBC documentaries on Bosnia, but here in Cambodia landmine removal is most often handled by the technological marvel of southeast Asia—the bamboo stick. (While that last sentence may sound sarcastic it's really not meant that way, In my five months here I have seen people do things with bamboo that had to have taken thousands of years to perfect. Given a choice between a power saw and a good piece of bamboo I would go with the bamboo). The museum has a number of posters showing the techniques used to find and remove the mines. Sadly the removal of mines generally begins with a local villager finding a mine. Provided the mine does kill the person who stumbles across it, Aki is called and comes out with a long piece of bamboo which he used to feel around the mine, determine what type of mine it is and very carefully extract it. Landmine removal has a zero percentage error factor, so the fact that Mr. Ra has been doing this for ten years obviously means he's good at it. Fortunately for the Cambodians most of the mines on their soil are generally older and not quite so deadly as the new and improved mines (like the \"bouncing betty\" made in the US and designed not simply to blow your legs off, but to actually bounce out of the ground and explode at chest height maximizing the \"kill radius\" as jargon would have it).\r\n\r\nLandmines aren't glamorous. They lack the universal terror of nuclear bombs or long-range missiles. They aren't the sort of thing anyone but the BBC is going to report on, but landmines kill more people than any other weapon deployed in the world. The problem with landmines is they last forever. Long after both sides have faded into history, the mines still exist. The mines lie dormant in the ground until someone steps on one, drives a car over it, ploughs it up in a field, or trips a wire in the bamboo thicket. Landmines are forever and then some. And because they aren't as obviously destructive as say a nuclear warhead, it's tougher to find support for their ban. Everyone is afraid of nuclear weapons, but only people who have actually dealt with landmines seem to understand how much more destructive and immediate their threat is.\r\n\r\nThe real problem with landmines is that they exist. In late 1999 a treaty passed through the UN calling for a worldwide ban on landmines. Lots of people signed it. The U.K, Spain, Ukraine, Germany, 151 in all, but not, you guessed it, the United States. Ever wonder why? I wonder about these things. Why did China, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia and the U.S. not sign a treaty banning land mines? Are these really the countries we want to side with? Landmines aren't actually very effective in today's battlefield where increasingly robots and kids with laptops are the first ones to enter a potentially mined area. It turns out that the five biggest suppliers of arms to the world, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China and France are also all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. These countries have a necessary economic interest in wars; they manufacture the majority of the weapons used, regardless of whether their own troops are involved. And yet, as member of the U.N. Security Council they are ones who often have the power to decide whether or not the wars happen. \r\n\r\nSo long as the military industrial complex is pressed between the sheets with the Federal government the landmines will keep getting made. And that's not an indictment against Bush, it's an indictment against the entire US government, Democrats, Republicans and any oddball third parties for good measure. Take away the military industrial complex and see how many candidates can afford television commercials. \r\n\r\nDo I sound angry? Good. I am. I've seen too many things over here to ever be able trust American government. I've seen the effects on innocent people. Regrettably I'm too much of a realist to believe anything can be done. Just remember when you head down to the polling booth to vote for whoever you think is right, that somewhere in the world someone is strapping on their prosthetic leg, or pulling themselves onto their wheeled cart. Someone who very likely has had little or no education, no food and no idea why someone s/he's never even met would want to take away their leg, their arm, or the lives of the ones they love.\r\n\r\nIf you'd like to help I encourage you to do so. If you would like to donate some money to <a href=\"http://www.akiramineaction.com/help.html\" title=\"Help the Landmine Museum Seam Reap, Cambodia\">The Landmine Museum</a> in Seam Reap, every bit helps. You can have a look at <a href=\"http://www.icbl.org/\" title=\"Support the International Ban on Landmines\">the international ban on landmines</a> which seems like a step in the right direction (and co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize). Write to your senator/representative and encourage them to pressure Bush. Ask them why the U.S won't sign the treaty. But more than anything I encourage you to try to broaden your understanding of current international events. So much of what happens in the world is ignored by the U.S. media. I for one will never be able to read an American newspaper again. Nor will I suffer through the local <strike>news</strike> bullshit ever again. The whole global village thing that lots of pundits in America like to talk about already exists. America just isn't part of it. We remain with our heads in the sand. Someday the landmines will be on our soil and then we won't be able to bury our heads in the sand any more. We have a choice I suppose, do something about now while we have a choice or wait until we *have* to do something about it. Choose wisely.\r\n\r\n", "dek": "One the things I may have failed to mention thus far in my Cambodia reportage is that this was/is one of the most heavily mined areas in the world. You might think that removing landmines involves sophisticated technology of the sort you see in BBC documentaries on Bosnia, but here in Cambodia landmine removal is most often handled by the technological marvel of southeast Asia — the bamboo stick.", "pub_date": "2006-03-18T23:52:55", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (103.8614845131301081 13.3612287240783321)", "location": 27, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/landmines.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/landmines.jpg", "meta_description": "Land mines are the legacy of modern warfare and Cambodia has plenty. If you'd like to help, consider donating to the Aki Ra Landmine Museum.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 50, "fields": {"title": "Angkor Wat", "slug": "angkor-wat", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">A</span>t some point during the four days I was in Seam Reap I emailed on of my friends the following, which she found utterly hilarious: \"I can honestly say I have never been this hot or even close to this hot ever in my life. Right now it's about 8 pm and I'm sitting with a fan blowing on me and that does nothing to stop the sweat pouring off of me. It's hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot.\" Which, aside from Angkor itself remains my overwhelming impression of the place. </p>\n<p>I have since read in several places that mid March to mid April is the worst time to be in Seam Reap heat wise, but then again I never have been much for planning and that's what you get when you don't plan. So yes, it was hot. Really really hot. Think of Phoenix in the summer and then turn the humidity knob to the Spinal Tap favorite and you'll be in the neighborhood. \n<break>\nBut if it's going to be hot, well you might as well embrace it. We eschew air conditioning (why tease yourself?) and make it a point to do any walking in the heat of the day. Perverse though it may sound it's not without reason, particularly in tourist mecca's like Seam Reap where you can generally have the sites to yourself at those hours since no one else is crazy enough to go out at one in the afternoon. Including the Cambodians who, like the Laos and Thai, generally spend the hours of noon to two sitting in the shade under fans doing as little as humanly possible. The heat of the day is the way forward, trust me, but in Seam Reap we took it to another level by throwing in dehydration, hangovers and no sleep. It may not be the key to longevity if Benjamin Franklin is to be believed, but for Angkor Wat I firmly believe it's the way to do it. Or not.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorcrowds.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"150\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Crowds at Phnom Bakheng, Angkor Cambodia\" />Three day passes to Angkor Wat can be purchased starting at 5pm in the evening and that evening does not count as one of the three days. I mentioned this to someone recently and they seemed a little surprised. \"You spent three days at a temple?\" Angkor Wat is, yes, a temple, but it's not the only temple. Angkor, as the general area is known, contains more than 100 stone temples in all, and is all that remains of the grand religious, social and cultural seat of the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Empire\" title=\"Wikipedia entry on The Khmer Empire\">Khmer Empire</a> whose other buildings — palaces, public buildings, and houses — were built of bamboo and are long since decayed and gone. Angkor Wat itself is the largest religious structure in the world (Though I suppose if you wanted to get technical, Animists, Transcendentalists, Pagans and any of the Goddess/Nature religions have the worlds largest religious site, since the whole world is a religious site in those religions). </p>\n<p>I have since read that roughly half a million people a year visit Angkor Wat. That first evening we decided to see just how tourist filled Angkor was by heading to the most popular sunset temple, Phnom Bakheng, to watch the sunset. There were a lot of tourists at Angkor Wat. Thousands of them. And that was just at one temple. Thus was hatched the plan. See Angkor in the heat of the day. Yes it will be hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot. But hopefully empty. What we were not counting on was the sudden appearance of Rob and Jules.</p>\n<p>After splashing out of a lovely dinner at a posh hotel, the three of us were innocently walking around Seam Reap looking for a spot to have a drink when all the sudden I looked up to see a strange man shaking hands and hugging Matt. After traveling for a while the appearance of random people you know is not all that odd, and in fact we had even heard Matt mention that some of his friends were in the area. We had even heard a few stories, particularly about Rob. Debi and I briefly discussed whether or not we ought to fade away and let friends from home catch up. It's one thing to run into people you have traveled with, that happens a good bit, but it's rare to have visitors from home. After conferring once or twice we decided that what we had here was a beautiful opportunity to hear hilarious stories about Matt from two of the people that knew him best. And Rob did not disappoint, he is a master storyteller, particularly the embarrassing sort of stories that we wanted to hear. And while I decided I would not repeat any of them here, I do have a couple questions for you Matt… what were you planning to do with the toilet? How did you get a large tree into the room? And why of all things a ski jacket?</p>\n<p>Anyway we stayed up far too late, drank far to many beer Lao and eventually decided that since sunrise was just around the corner anyway we might as well stay up all night and catch sunrise at Angkor Wat. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorwatsunrise.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"165\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Angkor Wat Sunrise, Angkor Cambodia\" />We started at Angkor Wat, which in spite of the row after row of coaches parked out front, didn't feel as crowded as it was. I went in briefly, but did not spend too much time exploring. I went back outside and made a few quick photos and then lay down on a stone wall and watched the onslaught of temple goers heading inward.</p>\n<p>I was feeling a bit grumpy by the time we headed to Angkor Thom and Bayon. Our tuk-tuk driver had put me in a foul mood. Generally speaking the people of Southeast Asia are the nicest and warmest I've met; unless they happen to be tuk-tuk drivers, the majority of whom can choke on diesel fumes for all I care. Our tuk-tuk driver started out nice and friendly and then things went downhill when he found out we didn't want to spend two hours inside Angkor Wat. Apparently he had agreed to another fare thinking that we would be in the temple for the standard amount of time. Unfortunately for him, this was not part of our plan. And this is the thing I hate about guides and drivers, you never get your experience, you get theirs. Eventually after arguing a bit, I simply walked away and let Matt use his diplomatic touch. I was all for the plan I used frequently in India—smile, jump out without paying and move on to the next tuk-tuk. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorwatmonk.jpg\" width=\"172\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"\" />I was going to skip Bayon and pass out in the tuk-tuk but since the driver was aggravating me, I decided to make a quick loop through the main courtyard. I did fall asleep in the tuk-tuk while Matt and Debi went to see a temple that didn't look like anymore than a crumbled wall of stones to me.</p>\n<p>I snapped to for Ta Prohm, which was the one temple I really wanted to see. Ta Prohm is the least restored, most overgrown of all the Angkor Temples and I was looking forward to seeing it. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkortaprohm.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"307\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Ta Prohm, Angkor, Cambodia\" />As I wandered about Ta Prohm I couldn't shake the feeling that it all seemed somehow familiar to me. I started half thinking maybe I was getting in touch with a former life as a 700 AD Khmer priest when I overheard someone saying that Ta Prohm is where they filmed the first Tomb Raider movie. I've never seen the movie, but I did once for about a month get highly addicted to the game. I must confess to Shirley, that I really wanted to do some crazy kicking back flip combination move that would unlock all the cool weapons and find myself suddenly in possession of the grenade launcher, which was, in the context of the game, my favorite and highly overkill means of getting rid of the pesky bats that drain your energy bars. </p>\n<p>The real Ta Prohm has no bats, nor sadly, any sign of Angelina Jolie (though Cambodia is missing a small child; if anyone happens to run into her maybe mention it). It may not have been the religious experience it's builders envisioned but I felt strangely connected to it nevertheless, if only through a video game.</p>\n<p>The Angkor Temples are difficult to describe. For one thing all the temples are different and while they have common threads, such as sandstone blocks, they vary quite a bit in styles and even religion. The temples were built by various rulers of the Khmer Empire between 800-1400 CE during which time the principle religion was Hinduism. Thus the temples bear some resemblance to those I've seen in India, with bas-reliefs depicting Hindu mythology as well as the various exploits of kings and armies, but the architecture is unique and utilizes massive sandstone blocks. They are also all in varying conditions. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorcreeperfig.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Creeper Figs, Angkor Cambodia\" />Many have been or are being restored. Others are still overgrown to the extent that it's difficult to tell whether the creeper figs (remember creeper figs? They're back) are holding up the walls or the walls are holding up the fig trees. I actually enjoyed the temples that were in various states of disrepair as they had more of a sense of history about them. After all one doesn't really expect buildings over a thousand years old to be in that good of shape, especially in this climate.</p>\n<p>But restoration seems to be the wave of the future. I for one hope they don't take it too far. However if they are going to take it too far, I have a suggestion. If they are going to restore the temples to \"former grandeur\" they may as well take the next step and improve upon them slightly. And what you may ask would I suggest as an improvement? Simple, the same thing I want every time I stand on top of something—zip lines. Think of it, you climb to the top of Angkor Thom or Angkor Wat, you don't want to climb down, the reward is in the uphill; the downhill is just a necessity, or in the in case of Angkor Wat, vaguely dangerous. Zip lines are the way forward. Clip on and away you go. Angkor Wat is only ten years from being Disneyland anyway, might as well get started with the rides.</p>\n<p>After falling asleep in the back of the tuk-tuk a second time we decided that perhaps skipping sleep, while adding a vaguely hallucinatory element to the temples, was maybe not the best way to see them. We went home and slept the remainder of the day. That evening over dinner we decided that tomorrow would be full on, none of this stopping at noon to get out of the heat crap. We set off just after dawn and did not return until after sunset. I climbed up and down so many temples I lost track of which were which, though truthfully I don't think it ever mattered to me. I am not a historian nor am I a temple connoisseur. Angkor Wat is a grand experience, but describing it seems tedious. There are a whole lot of limestone blocks, vines, moss and carvings. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorfacecarving.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Carved Face Bayon, Angkor Cambodia\" />At its pinnacle it must have been quite a things to behold. But now it exists much like an echo, it gets inside you and bounces about in some way you can't quite figure out. We spent the entire day dragging our grumpy and very reluctant tuk-tuk driver all over the place, not in the usual order, we just glance at the map and went here, then there, then back to here then… it was great, I've never enjoyed temples so much as when we sat in the shade of a pillar atop, well I could look up the name I suppose, but it really doesn't matter. We sat in the shade of a pillar and looked down on the courtyard below and passed long periods of time in total silence praying for the occasional puff of wind the might make you temporarily feel like it was just hot, instead of hot hot hot. </p>\n<p>Later in the evening we went back to Angkor Wat proper to watch the sunset which was this time quite nice and not too many tourists about. I climbed up to the top and spent a good while dodging security guards who were trying to get everyone out before the sunset. I wanted to be up there to watch the sun actually set. Luckily the shadows deepen around then and with a bit of walking in carefully timed circles and sliding into darkened corners, I was able to pull it off. Eventually I wandered back out to the courtyard to find Matt and Debi passing a few surprised security guards on the way. If you planned ahead and brought a pillow you could probably spend the night up there. If you wanted to that is.</p>\n<p>Like the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat is, despite the hype, a pretty amazing monument. Its architecture is based around Hindu mythology with the five towers representing the peaks of Mount Meru the center of the universe (think of Meru as the Mt. Olympus of Hindu cosmology). The walls surrounding the temple are meant to represent the mountains at the edge of the world and the moat symbolizes the oceans beyond. Naturally this sort of embedded architectural meaning extends down to the smallest levels as well. The Entire wall of the inner temple is lined with various bas-reliefs that tell the story of Hinduism which one archeologist called the greatest linear stone carvings in the world. It's no wonder that everywhere you go in Cambodia there's a picture of Angkor Wat, from the flag to a can of beer.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bengmeleaovergrowth.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Beng Melea, Outside Angkor, Cambodia\" />But that said, I think the best temple is actually outside the immediate area of Angkor. About sixty kilometers northeast of Angkor lies the temple of Beng Melea. Not only has it not been restored at all but the Khmer Rouge helped the forces of nature out a bit. What remains is a truly Indian Jones, buried in the jungle, sort of adventure that could awaken the amateur archeologist in even the most jaded of temple visitors. Beng Melea is also a sprawling large temple which covers over one square kilometer. As with Ta Prohm, Beng Melea is overrun by vegetation, giant piles of crumble stone are now buried beneath the descending roots of fig trees and the walls that still stand are spider webbed with roots and vines. There are very few carvings or bas-reliefs. Our guide claimed that when the temple was active it would have been covered in painted frescos and carvings, but the jungle and rain have claimed their own. Beng Melea was constructed before much of Angkor and may in fact have been a sort of prototype effort so it has a rough around the edges feel to it. At the time of its construction, Beng Melea sat on the crossroads of several major highways that ran to Angkor, Koh Ker, Preah Vihear (in northern Cambodia) and northern Vietnam. Now Beng Melea is quite removed from any crossroads and to get there required the longest tuk-tuk ride ever—something like two hours each way. I ended up thinking that perhaps a compromise is best, let Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom and the other temples be restored, but leave some, Ta Prohm and Beng Melea, the way they are, where they can continue to be slowly consumed by the jungle if only to remind us that while we made build epic monuments, the forces of decay always win in the end.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/angkorlastdaybayon.jpg\" width=\"224\" height=\"250\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Debi, Me and Bayon, Angkor Cambodia\" />Beng Melea took the better part of the day. We arrived back in Seam Reap around three and ate a bit of lunch and lounged for a few hours. Then we decided to utilize our full three days and catch another sunset. Matt opted to take a nap but Debi and I dragged our perennially grumpy driver out to the park to have one last sunset. We went to Bayon since it isn't a very good place to watch the sunset and there are few tourists there at that time of day. It was a nice quite way to end an experience that had begun rather full throttle, as if maybe Angkor still has a sort of hold over the world, can still make you slow down and be a bit humble in the face of it.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">A</span>t some point during the four days I was in Seam Reap I emailed on of my friends the following, which she found utterly hilarious: \"I can honestly say I have never been this hot or even close to this hot ever in my life. Right now it's about 8 pm and I'm sitting with a fan blowing on me and that does nothing to stop the sweat pouring off of me. It's hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot.\" Which, aside from Angkor itself remains my overwhelming impression of the place. \r\n\r\nI have since read in several places that mid March to mid April is the worst time to be in Seam Reap heat wise, but then again I never have been much for planning and that's what you get when you don't plan. So yes, it was hot. Really really hot. Think of Phoenix in the summer and then turn the humidity knob to the Spinal Tap favorite and you'll be in the neighborhood. \r\n<break>\r\nBut if it's going to be hot, well you might as well embrace it. We eschew air conditioning (why tease yourself?) and make it a point to do any walking in the heat of the day. Perverse though it may sound it's not without reason, particularly in tourist mecca's like Seam Reap where you can generally have the sites to yourself at those hours since no one else is crazy enough to go out at one in the afternoon. Including the Cambodians who, like the Laos and Thai, generally spend the hours of noon to two sitting in the shade under fans doing as little as humanly possible. The heat of the day is the way forward, trust me, but in Seam Reap we took it to another level by throwing in dehydration, hangovers and no sleep. It may not be the key to longevity if Benjamin Franklin is to be believed, but for Angkor Wat I firmly believe it's the way to do it. Or not.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/angkorcrowds.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"150\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Crowds at Phnom Bakheng, Angkor Cambodia\" />Three day passes to Angkor Wat can be purchased starting at 5pm in the evening and that evening does not count as one of the three days. I mentioned this to someone recently and they seemed a little surprised. \"You spent three days at a temple?\" Angkor Wat is, yes, a temple, but it's not the only temple. Angkor, as the general area is known, contains more than 100 stone temples in all, and is all that remains of the grand religious, social and cultural seat of the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Empire\" title=\"Wikipedia entry on The Khmer Empire\">Khmer Empire</a> whose other buildings — palaces, public buildings, and houses — were built of bamboo and are long since decayed and gone. Angkor Wat itself is the largest religious structure in the world (Though I suppose if you wanted to get technical, Animists, Transcendentalists, Pagans and any of the Goddess/Nature religions have the worlds largest religious site, since the whole world is a religious site in those religions). \r\n\r\nI have since read that roughly half a million people a year visit Angkor Wat. That first evening we decided to see just how tourist filled Angkor was by heading to the most popular sunset temple, Phnom Bakheng, to watch the sunset. There were a lot of tourists at Angkor Wat. Thousands of them. And that was just at one temple. Thus was hatched the plan. See Angkor in the heat of the day. Yes it will be hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot. But hopefully empty. What we were not counting on was the sudden appearance of Rob and Jules.\r\n\r\nAfter splashing out of a lovely dinner at a posh hotel, the three of us were innocently walking around Seam Reap looking for a spot to have a drink when all the sudden I looked up to see a strange man shaking hands and hugging Matt. After traveling for a while the appearance of random people you know is not all that odd, and in fact we had even heard Matt mention that some of his friends were in the area. We had even heard a few stories, particularly about Rob. Debi and I briefly discussed whether or not we ought to fade away and let friends from home catch up. It's one thing to run into people you have traveled with, that happens a good bit, but it's rare to have visitors from home. After conferring once or twice we decided that what we had here was a beautiful opportunity to hear hilarious stories about Matt from two of the people that knew him best. And Rob did not disappoint, he is a master storyteller, particularly the embarrassing sort of stories that we wanted to hear. And while I decided I would not repeat any of them here, I do have a couple questions for you Matt… what were you planning to do with the toilet? How did you get a large tree into the room? And why of all things a ski jacket?\r\n\r\nAnyway we stayed up far too late, drank far to many beer Lao and eventually decided that since sunrise was just around the corner anyway we might as well stay up all night and catch sunrise at Angkor Wat. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/angkorwatsunrise.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"165\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Angkor Wat Sunrise, Angkor Cambodia\" />We started at Angkor Wat, which in spite of the row after row of coaches parked out front, didn't feel as crowded as it was. I went in briefly, but did not spend too much time exploring. I went back outside and made a few quick photos and then lay down on a stone wall and watched the onslaught of temple goers heading inward.\r\n\r\nI was feeling a bit grumpy by the time we headed to Angkor Thom and Bayon. Our tuk-tuk driver had put me in a foul mood. Generally speaking the people of Southeast Asia are the nicest and warmest I've met; unless they happen to be tuk-tuk drivers, the majority of whom can choke on diesel fumes for all I care. Our tuk-tuk driver started out nice and friendly and then things went downhill when he found out we didn't want to spend two hours inside Angkor Wat. Apparently he had agreed to another fare thinking that we would be in the temple for the standard amount of time. Unfortunately for him, this was not part of our plan. And this is the thing I hate about guides and drivers, you never get your experience, you get theirs. Eventually after arguing a bit, I simply walked away and let Matt use his diplomatic touch. I was all for the plan I used frequently in India—smile, jump out without paying and move on to the next tuk-tuk. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/angkorwatmonk.jpg\" width=\"172\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"\" />I was going to skip Bayon and pass out in the tuk-tuk but since the driver was aggravating me, I decided to make a quick loop through the main courtyard. I did fall asleep in the tuk-tuk while Matt and Debi went to see a temple that didn't look like anymore than a crumbled wall of stones to me.\r\n\r\nI snapped to for Ta Prohm, which was the one temple I really wanted to see. Ta Prohm is the least restored, most overgrown of all the Angkor Temples and I was looking forward to seeing it. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/angkortaprohm.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"307\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Ta Prohm, Angkor, Cambodia\" />As I wandered about Ta Prohm I couldn't shake the feeling that it all seemed somehow familiar to me. I started half thinking maybe I was getting in touch with a former life as a 700 AD Khmer priest when I overheard someone saying that Ta Prohm is where they filmed the first Tomb Raider movie. I've never seen the movie, but I did once for about a month get highly addicted to the game. I must confess to Shirley, that I really wanted to do some crazy kicking back flip combination move that would unlock all the cool weapons and find myself suddenly in possession of the grenade launcher, which was, in the context of the game, my favorite and highly overkill means of getting rid of the pesky bats that drain your energy bars. \r\n\r\nThe real Ta Prohm has no bats, nor sadly, any sign of Angelina Jolie (though Cambodia is missing a small child; if anyone happens to run into her maybe mention it). It may not have been the religious experience it's builders envisioned but I felt strangely connected to it nevertheless, if only through a video game.\r\n\r\nThe Angkor Temples are difficult to describe. For one thing all the temples are different and while they have common threads, such as sandstone blocks, they vary quite a bit in styles and even religion. The temples were built by various rulers of the Khmer Empire between 800-1400 CE during which time the principle religion was Hinduism. Thus the temples bear some resemblance to those I've seen in India, with bas-reliefs depicting Hindu mythology as well as the various exploits of kings and armies, but the architecture is unique and utilizes massive sandstone blocks. They are also all in varying conditions. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/angkorcreeperfig.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Creeper Figs, Angkor Cambodia\" />Many have been or are being restored. Others are still overgrown to the extent that it's difficult to tell whether the creeper figs (remember creeper figs? They're back) are holding up the walls or the walls are holding up the fig trees. I actually enjoyed the temples that were in various states of disrepair as they had more of a sense of history about them. After all one doesn't really expect buildings over a thousand years old to be in that good of shape, especially in this climate.\r\n\r\nBut restoration seems to be the wave of the future. I for one hope they don't take it too far. However if they are going to take it too far, I have a suggestion. If they are going to restore the temples to \"former grandeur\" they may as well take the next step and improve upon them slightly. And what you may ask would I suggest as an improvement? Simple, the same thing I want every time I stand on top of something—zip lines. Think of it, you climb to the top of Angkor Thom or Angkor Wat, you don't want to climb down, the reward is in the uphill; the downhill is just a necessity, or in the in case of Angkor Wat, vaguely dangerous. Zip lines are the way forward. Clip on and away you go. Angkor Wat is only ten years from being Disneyland anyway, might as well get started with the rides.\r\n\r\nAfter falling asleep in the back of the tuk-tuk a second time we decided that perhaps skipping sleep, while adding a vaguely hallucinatory element to the temples, was maybe not the best way to see them. We went home and slept the remainder of the day. That evening over dinner we decided that tomorrow would be full on, none of this stopping at noon to get out of the heat crap. We set off just after dawn and did not return until after sunset. I climbed up and down so many temples I lost track of which were which, though truthfully I don't think it ever mattered to me. I am not a historian nor am I a temple connoisseur. Angkor Wat is a grand experience, but describing it seems tedious. There are a whole lot of limestone blocks, vines, moss and carvings. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/angkorfacecarving.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Carved Face Bayon, Angkor Cambodia\" />At its pinnacle it must have been quite a things to behold. But now it exists much like an echo, it gets inside you and bounces about in some way you can't quite figure out. We spent the entire day dragging our grumpy and very reluctant tuk-tuk driver all over the place, not in the usual order, we just glance at the map and went here, then there, then back to here then… it was great, I've never enjoyed temples so much as when we sat in the shade of a pillar atop, well I could look up the name I suppose, but it really doesn't matter. We sat in the shade of a pillar and looked down on the courtyard below and passed long periods of time in total silence praying for the occasional puff of wind the might make you temporarily feel like it was just hot, instead of hot hot hot. \r\n\r\nLater in the evening we went back to Angkor Wat proper to watch the sunset which was this time quite nice and not too many tourists about. I climbed up to the top and spent a good while dodging security guards who were trying to get everyone out before the sunset. I wanted to be up there to watch the sun actually set. Luckily the shadows deepen around then and with a bit of walking in carefully timed circles and sliding into darkened corners, I was able to pull it off. Eventually I wandered back out to the courtyard to find Matt and Debi passing a few surprised security guards on the way. If you planned ahead and brought a pillow you could probably spend the night up there. If you wanted to that is.\r\n\r\nLike the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat is, despite the hype, a pretty amazing monument. Its architecture is based around Hindu mythology with the five towers representing the peaks of Mount Meru the center of the universe (think of Meru as the Mt. Olympus of Hindu cosmology). The walls surrounding the temple are meant to represent the mountains at the edge of the world and the moat symbolizes the oceans beyond. Naturally this sort of embedded architectural meaning extends down to the smallest levels as well. The Entire wall of the inner temple is lined with various bas-reliefs that tell the story of Hinduism which one archeologist called the greatest linear stone carvings in the world. It's no wonder that everywhere you go in Cambodia there's a picture of Angkor Wat, from the flag to a can of beer.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/bengmeleaovergrowth.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Beng Melea, Outside Angkor, Cambodia\" />But that said, I think the best temple is actually outside the immediate area of Angkor. About sixty kilometers northeast of Angkor lies the temple of Beng Melea. Not only has it not been restored at all but the Khmer Rouge helped the forces of nature out a bit. What remains is a truly Indian Jones, buried in the jungle, sort of adventure that could awaken the amateur archeologist in even the most jaded of temple visitors. Beng Melea is also a sprawling large temple which covers over one square kilometer. As with Ta Prohm, Beng Melea is overrun by vegetation, giant piles of crumble stone are now buried beneath the descending roots of fig trees and the walls that still stand are spider webbed with roots and vines. There are very few carvings or bas-reliefs. Our guide claimed that when the temple was active it would have been covered in painted frescos and carvings, but the jungle and rain have claimed their own. Beng Melea was constructed before much of Angkor and may in fact have been a sort of prototype effort so it has a rough around the edges feel to it. At the time of its construction, Beng Melea sat on the crossroads of several major highways that ran to Angkor, Koh Ker, Preah Vihear (in northern Cambodia) and northern Vietnam. Now Beng Melea is quite removed from any crossroads and to get there required the longest tuk-tuk ride ever—something like two hours each way. I ended up thinking that perhaps a compromise is best, let Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom and the other temples be restored, but leave some, Ta Prohm and Beng Melea, the way they are, where they can continue to be slowly consumed by the jungle if only to remind us that while we made build epic monuments, the forces of decay always win in the end.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/angkorlastdaybayon.jpg\" width=\"224\" height=\"250\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Debi, Me and Bayon, Angkor Cambodia\" />Beng Melea took the better part of the day. We arrived back in Seam Reap around three and ate a bit of lunch and lounged for a few hours. Then we decided to utilize our full three days and catch another sunset. Matt opted to take a nap but Debi and I dragged our perennially grumpy driver out to the park to have one last sunset. We went to Bayon since it isn't a very good place to watch the sunset and there are few tourists there at that time of day. It was a nice quite way to end an experience that had begun rather full throttle, as if maybe Angkor still has a sort of hold over the world, can still make you slow down and be a bit humble in the face of it.", "dek": "Roughly half a million people a year visit Angkor Wat. The first evening we decided to see just how tourist-filled Angkor was by heading to the most popular sunset temple, Phnom Bakheng, to watch the sunset. And there were a lot of tourists. Thousands of them. And that was just at one temple. Thus was hatched the plan: see Angkor in the heat of the day. Yes it will be hot. Hot hot hot. Fucking hot. But hopefully empty.", "pub_date": "2006-03-21T23:55:50", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (103.8928985451080251 13.4978081267886445)", "location": 26, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/angkorwat.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/angkorwat.jpg", "meta_description": "Angkor Wat is crowded, but if you go out during in the heat of the day, you can almost have it to yourself.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 51, "fields": {"title": "Midnight in a Perfect World", "slug": "midnight-perfect-world", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span> lounged for a while in the shallows letting the small waves lapped over my back while I studied the rock and shell bed that lay just under the surface of the waves, watching the stones and bits of shells pitch back and forth to the rhythm of the sea. The undulation of water and light distorted and rippled the size of the stones such that after a while I decided they appeared to be a distant mirage in some watery desert. </p>\n<p>Up on the shore I could make out several hammocks, grass huts and some slatted bamboo platforms on which Debi and Jules were lying. Two ducks wandered about beneath the platforms scratching at the sandy dirt and making curious wheezing sounds I didn't know ducks could make. Up the beach to my left were three trees with dense spindly branches which harbored hundreds and hundreds of yellow butterflies that fluttered in and out of the green leaves. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/deathislandhammock.jpg\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Islands, Cambodia\" />Every so often a few would break off and began to drift down the beach toward me weaving about like little bits of clothe torn and floating on the breeze over the blue green water. Rob was down the beach somewhere looking for fisherman with something better than a squid jig and a million reasons to stay on shore. The lazy midday nothingness was briefly interrupted by the curious sight of villager driving a cow into the sea, whether for a bath or for his own amusement was hard to tell from our vantage point up the beach. The cow seemed less than thrilled with the operation. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/sunsetcambodiaislands.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Sunset, Cambodia\" />For some time I had noticed Debi alternate between staring out at the infiniteness of the horizon which was shrouded in grey thunderheads such that the boundary between sky and sea was obscured and indefinite, and scrutinizing me or Matt as if trying to memorize us, much the same as I was beginning to do to them, trying all the while not to think too much about our limited time left. I could occasionally hear the strains of The Rolling Stones <strong>Sympathy of the Devil</strong> drifting out of her headphones, a song that for me has long called up visions of Bulgakov, Dostoyevsky and a Russia that exists only in my mind and probably bears little resemblance to the Russia of today. The image in my head inhabits some boundary world between history and magic. \n<break>\nAfter three days of Templing in Angkor we were spent. We joined forces with Rob and Jules and headed back down to Phnom Penh for a day. The next morning, after a bowl of noodle soup at the local soup shop we negotiated a cab down to Kep on the coast. And guess what? Down on the coast things are much cooler. In Kep things dropped back down to just hot. We took a room in a nice hotel overlooking the meager, but ever so inviting beach. I for one parked myself in a hammock and proceeded to do a good three hours of absolutely nothing (unless you count writing as something). Eventually Rob and Jules came to find me and I met up with the rest at the local crab shack. A whole crab can had in Kep for one U.S. dollar. Not Alaskan King Crab by any means, but good size and extremely tasty. We ordered up about thirty crabs between the five of us and proceed to feast—crab in pepper sauce, crab curry, steamed crab, grilled crab, endless endless crab. Beautiful.</p>\n<p>There wasn't a whole lot to Kep; as seaside towns go it felt a bit like an appetizer, whereas we were ready for a main course. We decided that what we really needed was an island. Luckily for us there is an island or two off the coast of Kep. In fact there's at least twenty, but a lot of them are Vietnamese and off limits from this side. We settled on an island that shall for selfish reasons remain nameless. Or better yet we'll just give it the name Rob gave it—Death Island.</p>\n<p>Yes somehow in the midst of nearly deserted tropical paradise with gentle lapping waves, warm breezes, hammocks and grass huts, Rob managed to step on a sea urchin, bash his head on a bamboo roof, stub his toe on a nail, get bitten by red ants, step on another sea urchin…. Death Island it is.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/cambodiaislandsbeach.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"128\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Beach, islands, Cambodia\" />I found Death Island to be the best island I've been on in all my travels. Though that may not be much of a complement since it was also the only island I've been on. I knew Death Island was just what I needed the first day we arrived when we ordered crab and a boy in his underwear proceeded to run out of the kitchen and down to the water where he swam out and began unloading crabs from a trap into a bucket. It doesn't get much fresher than that. Throw in a nice beach, some cheap bungalows and you're away.</p>\n<p>The island consisted of a few scattered fishermen's huts on the leeward side and some long nets cast out over the rocky shores where the local gathered and dried vast amounts of seaweed. On the leeward side of the islands were three bungalow operations of more or less similar quality, one of which rented us two fairly large bamboo and grass huts, which we called home for three nights. The first day I walked around the island (not far really, only a two or three hour hike) to get a feel for it, see what the locals did all day and find a descent spot for snorkeling. The best spot as it turned out was just up the beach from where we were staying. After renting a snorkel mask that looked as if it had been left behind by a young Jacque Cousteau in the late fifties, but which functioned perfectly well, Rob and I did a bit of snorkeling. For the most part it was just rocks, though here and there were bits of coral and a few fish, but it wasn't much. The only notable thing we saw was a sea snake, a rather fat, ugly creature with black and red rings around his body. Otherwise, while a fun diversion for the morning, the snorkeling wasn't much.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/cambodiaislands.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Sunset Hammock, Islands, Cambodia\" />We generally went swimming in the mornings, lay on the sand and read or listened to music and then around lunchtime ordered up crab. I came close to eating nothing but crab for three days, lunch and dinner. The afternoons we spent under the shade of the trees playing cards or telling stories and flicking giant red ants off our legs until the sun began to sink down to the horizon and we moved back out to the beach to watch it set. The restaurant would then start up the generator for a few hours to provide light and allow us to take turns charging camera batteries and ipods and such.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/cardtablecambodia.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"156\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"restaurant, Islands, Cambodia\" />It turns out that Rob is a card player. I think it was about two hours between learning that tidbit and the start of the first hold ‘em game. It had been a while since I played any hold ‘em, not that it's a game you forget, but it was nice to play a few friendly hands. After a few beers and a few hands I once again had those fantasies of quiting my job to play cards full time. Luckily I know I'm not good enough to do that. And besides I don't have a job to quit so it just wouldn't work. But it was a nice change from the most popular travelers game—shithead. If you've never played shithead learn it before you travel. I for one love shithead even if I'm not that good at it. It seems to be one of the universal languages of traveling. Something miraculous happened one day on Death Island when we were playing shithead. But I'm not going to say what it was. Just that that was the one and only time it ever happened. You know how some people are evilly good at cards? Well even those people have their off days. </p>\n<p>We spent three days on Death Island. Late the second night, after the cards were put up, the generators shut down and everyone had headed off to bed, I decided to go for a midnight swim. As I waded into the water I noticed little bubbles glowing around my feet. At first I thought they were catching the faint glow of the moon which was poking through the sullen thunderheads and casting a bluish pallor over the water in front of me. But, as I got deeper, I noticed that bubbles at my feet continued to glow and were joined then by bubbles coming off my legs and stomach as well. I grew up by the ocean and have done plenty of nightswimming in nearly every ocean and sea, but I have never seen anything like this. I laid back floating looking up at the stars between clouds and watching the phosphorescence of the bubbles out of my peripheral vision. </p>\n<p>Off in the distance I could hear the faint mutter of a long tail engine coughing to life and dying and then coughing to life again as some wayward fisherman tried to get home. The mainland was faintly visible through the low clouds. I saw the flicker of lights and the long dance of high beams on the coastal road, which eventually rounded a bend and disappeared. The long tail engine came to life again with a steady puttering that gradually trailed off over some horizon of sound too distant to see in the increasingly cloud-obscured moonlight. I laid down once more, floating on my back and for a few minutes, as the water filled in my ears shutting out the sound of the sea, I felt as if I were actually floating amongst the stars in the sky, phosphorescent blue stars below me and more distant white and yellow ones in front of me.</p>\n<p>I had had <strong>Sympathy of the Devil</strong> in my head most of the afternoon and I noticed then, floating there in the water that the drum beat in my head matched almost perfectly with gentle lapping of the ocean on the shore. I got out of the water for a while and sat with my back to the ocean listening to the waves, watching the coconut palms and pineapple trees rattle in the wind and wondering whether we'll ever figure out the exact nature of the devil's game. If, as Bulgakov would have it, heaven is the dominion of god and earth that of a rather swanky and stylishly likeable devil, then, as Mick Jagger suggests, the nature of the devil's game is also the secret to living well. There are of course those that do not think life is a game, that it is dead serious business, but then perhaps that's just their manner of play, just as there are some that can sit at a hold ‘em table for hours without cracking a smile. I've realized lately that I haven't been playing very well myself, but for a moment or two there on Death Island if you had met me I think I would have had the courtesy, sympathy and taste that we're all looking for.</p>\n<p>After a while I waded back out into the water and they there floating under the stars. Directly overhead was a curious cluster of four stars forming a midsized square, a nearly perfect square, either a curious pattern formed by cloud and stars or perhaps part of some constellation I had never noticed before. Whatever the case it quickly disappeared behind a fast moving cloud and a slight drizzle began to fall creating endless ripples on the otherwise glassy surface of the water. The blue bubbles rising off my legs floated up and were pitched about in the rippling surface until they ruptured and disappeared, quickly replaced by new ones. Eventually the clouds covered the stars entirely and as my legs and arms grew still, the bubbles stopped, the water filled in my ears and a general blackness fell over the sky and sea and land until all was one.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span> lounged for a while in the shallows letting the small waves lapped over my back while I studied the rock and shell bed that lay just under the surface of the waves, watching the stones and bits of shells pitch back and forth to the rhythm of the sea. The undulation of water and light distorted and rippled the size of the stones such that after a while I decided they appeared to be a distant mirage in some watery desert. \r\n\r\nUp on the shore I could make out several hammocks, grass huts and some slatted bamboo platforms on which Debi and Jules were lying. Two ducks wandered about beneath the platforms scratching at the sandy dirt and making curious wheezing sounds I didn't know ducks could make. Up the beach to my left were three trees with dense spindly branches which harbored hundreds and hundreds of yellow butterflies that fluttered in and out of the green leaves. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/deathislandhammock.jpg\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Islands, Cambodia\" />Every so often a few would break off and began to drift down the beach toward me weaving about like little bits of clothe torn and floating on the breeze over the blue green water. Rob was down the beach somewhere looking for fisherman with something better than a squid jig and a million reasons to stay on shore. The lazy midday nothingness was briefly interrupted by the curious sight of villager driving a cow into the sea, whether for a bath or for his own amusement was hard to tell from our vantage point up the beach. The cow seemed less than thrilled with the operation. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/sunsetcambodiaislands.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Sunset, Cambodia\" />For some time I had noticed Debi alternate between staring out at the infiniteness of the horizon which was shrouded in grey thunderheads such that the boundary between sky and sea was obscured and indefinite, and scrutinizing me or Matt as if trying to memorize us, much the same as I was beginning to do to them, trying all the while not to think too much about our limited time left. I could occasionally hear the strains of The Rolling Stones **Sympathy of the Devil** drifting out of her headphones, a song that for me has long called up visions of Bulgakov, Dostoyevsky and a Russia that exists only in my mind and probably bears little resemblance to the Russia of today. The image in my head inhabits some boundary world between history and magic. \r\n<break>\r\nAfter three days of Templing in Angkor we were spent. We joined forces with Rob and Jules and headed back down to Phnom Penh for a day. The next morning, after a bowl of noodle soup at the local soup shop we negotiated a cab down to Kep on the coast. And guess what? Down on the coast things are much cooler. In Kep things dropped back down to just hot. We took a room in a nice hotel overlooking the meager, but ever so inviting beach. I for one parked myself in a hammock and proceeded to do a good three hours of absolutely nothing (unless you count writing as something). Eventually Rob and Jules came to find me and I met up with the rest at the local crab shack. A whole crab can had in Kep for one U.S. dollar. Not Alaskan King Crab by any means, but good size and extremely tasty. We ordered up about thirty crabs between the five of us and proceed to feast—crab in pepper sauce, crab curry, steamed crab, grilled crab, endless endless crab. Beautiful.\r\n\r\nThere wasn't a whole lot to Kep; as seaside towns go it felt a bit like an appetizer, whereas we were ready for a main course. We decided that what we really needed was an island. Luckily for us there is an island or two off the coast of Kep. In fact there's at least twenty, but a lot of them are Vietnamese and off limits from this side. We settled on an island that shall for selfish reasons remain nameless. Or better yet we'll just give it the name Rob gave it—Death Island.\r\n\r\nYes somehow in the midst of nearly deserted tropical paradise with gentle lapping waves, warm breezes, hammocks and grass huts, Rob managed to step on a sea urchin, bash his head on a bamboo roof, stub his toe on a nail, get bitten by red ants, step on another sea urchin…. Death Island it is.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/cambodiaislandsbeach.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"128\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Beach, islands, Cambodia\" />I found Death Island to be the best island I've been on in all my travels. Though that may not be much of a complement since it was also the only island I've been on. I knew Death Island was just what I needed the first day we arrived when we ordered crab and a boy in his underwear proceeded to run out of the kitchen and down to the water where he swam out and began unloading crabs from a trap into a bucket. It doesn't get much fresher than that. Throw in a nice beach, some cheap bungalows and you're away.\r\n\r\nThe island consisted of a few scattered fishermen's huts on the leeward side and some long nets cast out over the rocky shores where the local gathered and dried vast amounts of seaweed. On the leeward side of the islands were three bungalow operations of more or less similar quality, one of which rented us two fairly large bamboo and grass huts, which we called home for three nights. The first day I walked around the island (not far really, only a two or three hour hike) to get a feel for it, see what the locals did all day and find a descent spot for snorkeling. The best spot as it turned out was just up the beach from where we were staying. After renting a snorkel mask that looked as if it had been left behind by a young Jacque Cousteau in the late fifties, but which functioned perfectly well, Rob and I did a bit of snorkeling. For the most part it was just rocks, though here and there were bits of coral and a few fish, but it wasn't much. The only notable thing we saw was a sea snake, a rather fat, ugly creature with black and red rings around his body. Otherwise, while a fun diversion for the morning, the snorkeling wasn't much.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/cambodiaislands.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Sunset Hammock, Islands, Cambodia\" />We generally went swimming in the mornings, lay on the sand and read or listened to music and then around lunchtime ordered up crab. I came close to eating nothing but crab for three days, lunch and dinner. The afternoons we spent under the shade of the trees playing cards or telling stories and flicking giant red ants off our legs until the sun began to sink down to the horizon and we moved back out to the beach to watch it set. The restaurant would then start up the generator for a few hours to provide light and allow us to take turns charging camera batteries and ipods and such.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/cardtablecambodia.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"156\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"restaurant, Islands, Cambodia\" />It turns out that Rob is a card player. I think it was about two hours between learning that tidbit and the start of the first hold ‘em game. It had been a while since I played any hold ‘em, not that it's a game you forget, but it was nice to play a few friendly hands. After a few beers and a few hands I once again had those fantasies of quiting my job to play cards full time. Luckily I know I'm not good enough to do that. And besides I don't have a job to quit so it just wouldn't work. But it was a nice change from the most popular travelers game—shithead. If you've never played shithead learn it before you travel. I for one love shithead even if I'm not that good at it. It seems to be one of the universal languages of traveling. Something miraculous happened one day on Death Island when we were playing shithead. But I'm not going to say what it was. Just that that was the one and only time it ever happened. You know how some people are evilly good at cards? Well even those people have their off days. \r\n\r\nWe spent three days on Death Island. Late the second night, after the cards were put up, the generators shut down and everyone had headed off to bed, I decided to go for a midnight swim. As I waded into the water I noticed little bubbles glowing around my feet. At first I thought they were catching the faint glow of the moon which was poking through the sullen thunderheads and casting a bluish pallor over the water in front of me. But, as I got deeper, I noticed that bubbles at my feet continued to glow and were joined then by bubbles coming off my legs and stomach as well. I grew up by the ocean and have done plenty of nightswimming in nearly every ocean and sea, but I have never seen anything like this. I laid back floating looking up at the stars between clouds and watching the phosphorescence of the bubbles out of my peripheral vision. \r\n\r\nOff in the distance I could hear the faint mutter of a long tail engine coughing to life and dying and then coughing to life again as some wayward fisherman tried to get home. The mainland was faintly visible through the low clouds. I saw the flicker of lights and the long dance of high beams on the coastal road, which eventually rounded a bend and disappeared. The long tail engine came to life again with a steady puttering that gradually trailed off over some horizon of sound too distant to see in the increasingly cloud-obscured moonlight. I laid down once more, floating on my back and for a few minutes, as the water filled in my ears shutting out the sound of the sea, I felt as if I were actually floating amongst the stars in the sky, phosphorescent blue stars below me and more distant white and yellow ones in front of me.\r\n\r\nI had had **Sympathy of the Devil** in my head most of the afternoon and I noticed then, floating there in the water that the drum beat in my head matched almost perfectly with gentle lapping of the ocean on the shore. I got out of the water for a while and sat with my back to the ocean listening to the waves, watching the coconut palms and pineapple trees rattle in the wind and wondering whether we'll ever figure out the exact nature of the devil's game. If, as Bulgakov would have it, heaven is the dominion of god and earth that of a rather swanky and stylishly likeable devil, then, as Mick Jagger suggests, the nature of the devil's game is also the secret to living well. There are of course those that do not think life is a game, that it is dead serious business, but then perhaps that's just their manner of play, just as there are some that can sit at a hold ‘em table for hours without cracking a smile. I've realized lately that I haven't been playing very well myself, but for a moment or two there on Death Island if you had met me I think I would have had the courtesy, sympathy and taste that we're all looking for.\r\n\r\nAfter a while I waded back out into the water and they there floating under the stars. Directly overhead was a curious cluster of four stars forming a midsized square, a nearly perfect square, either a curious pattern formed by cloud and stars or perhaps part of some constellation I had never noticed before. Whatever the case it quickly disappeared behind a fast moving cloud and a slight drizzle began to fall creating endless ripples on the otherwise glassy surface of the water. The blue bubbles rising off my legs floated up and were pitched about in the rippling surface until they ruptured and disappeared, quickly replaced by new ones. Eventually the clouds covered the stars entirely and as my legs and arms grew still, the bubbles stopped, the water filled in my ears and a general blackness fell over the sky and sea and land until all was one.", "dek": "Death Island, as Rob nicknamed it, was just what I needed. The first day we sat down for lunch and ordered crab; a boy in his underwear proceeded to run out of the kitchen, swam out in the ocean and began unloading crabs from a trap into a bucket. It doesn't get much fresher than that. Throw in a nice beach, some cheap bungalows and you're away.", "pub_date": "2006-03-26T23:58:12", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (104.3232536170697387 10.4382670171379033)", "location": 25, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/deathisland.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/deathisland.jpg", "meta_description": "A lost island off the Cambodian coast where the crab is fresh and the bungalows cheap. A perfect world. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 52, "fields": {"title": "The Book of Right On", "slug": "book-right", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>he mountaintops were shrouded in clouds and what could have been a view of the ocean was instead a sea of swirling white, misty moisture on our faces. There was an abundance of purple flowers stretching out from the back patio of what was once the king's summer home. Behind us the summer home itself was in a state of disarray, or, actually, disarray is too mild, ruin would be the proper word. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bokorflowers.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"200\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Flowers, Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia\" />The clouds continued to blow up the valley at speeds that reminded me of scenes from Koyaanisqatsi, where sped up film makes clouds appear to break like waves over a mountain ridge. But this was no trick of cameras and film. These clouds were actually blowing up fast enough that it felt as if a misty white sea were breaking over us.\n<break>\nBetween the seaside town of Kep and Sinoukville lies the hill station Bokor Hill. Once a thriving community and summer home of the king of Cambodia, it now lies entirely in ruins. The king's former house (which I would not call a palace for it was rather small and even in full splendor still too small to be called a palace) is on one side of the mountain and then across<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bokorhillchurch.jpg\" width=\"175\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Church Bokor Hill, Cambodia\" /> a bumpy dirt road on the other side is the actual town which now consists of an abandoned Catholic church and a once lavish hotel and casino, both rumored to be haunted. The town was built by the French and then abandoned presumably when the French decided to do what they do best—retreat.</p>\n<p>We had arrived the night before in the coastal river town of Kampot and arranged a tour of Bokor Hill through a local guesthouse. We set out in the early morning with a few other tourists including an English couple named John and Linda who we ran into several times later in Sinoukville. Honest John was a used car salesman (and yes, Honest John's is the name of his lot) and he and his wife Linda were easily the sweetest people I've met on my trip. They were the sort of couple that have been together for forty years and still hold hands when they walk around. The kind of image Hallmark is trying to sell except that John and Linda were unaffectedly natural about it.</p>\n<p>We all rode in the back of a truck on hard wooden benches over a rough bumpy road which ought to sound familiar by now and I won't bore you with the details except to say that I have learned to bear the misery with a kind of stoicism I didn't know I had in me. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bokorhillcasino.jpg\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Burned Out Casino, Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia\" />One of the things travelers love to do is tell stories. eating dinner at night in a crowded restuarant is something akin to Masterpiece Theatre. And people have a natural tendency to retell a good story they've heard, but in the retelling they often put themselves at the center. Everyone does it, even me on occasion. I was sitting with our guide, waiting for the others to finish walking around the casino, half listening to what the guide was saying to another traveler, and half watching the fog blow in. At some point his words began to sound terribly familiar and I realized he was telling a different version of a story Matt had once overheard someone telling and retold to us (without putting himself at the center). In the version Matt heard the events happened to the traveler that told it. And it took place at a no name bar in a small Cambodian town, exactly the sort of embellishment your typical traveler would add. The guide's version took place at Chinese New Year at Bokor Hill Station among a crowd of thousands, not quite as glamorous but infinitely more likely. I have no idea who has the real version, but I suspect that whoever told the story to Matt heard it here first and then placed themselves at the center of it. Remember the telephone game you played as a child? Well stories among travelers often grow in the same way. The strange part was to actually get to hear the other version, usually you just suspect the made up parts, but I got to hear the actual difference between the first telling and the later. Kudos to Matt for not retelling the story with him at the center. So anyway, one night I was at this dumpy bar in this little backwater town in northeast Cambodia and these guys pull up in a Mercedes, windows all tinted, the cars looking hard you know what I mean? And bright, I mean interrogation room bright, fog lights shining right into the bar. So this one local guy who's at the bar gets up and says something in Cambodian and these guys get out of the car looking pretty heavy, Mafioso types you know? And then all the sudden….</p>\n<p>After wandering around the church and the casino, which are both burned out abandoned stone buildings that do have an eerie quality to them that would certainly lend itself to visions of ghost and ghouls, we headed back down the mountain for a swim in the local river.<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/kampotriverswimming.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"164\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Swimming, Near Kampot, Cambodia\" />With the kind of foresight that I demonstrate regularly I forgot to wear swim trunks and I already knew it takes days for my shorts to dry and they tend not to smell so good at the end of it. I skipped the swim. After a dunk in the water we took a half hour or so boat ride back to Kampot. I've seen sunsets over just about every possible terrain on this trip and sunsets from Southeast Asia rivers are still my favorite. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/kampotriverboat.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"River Journey, Kampot, Cambodia\" />I'm not sure what it is exactly but there is something so completely relaxing about cruising down a river on a boat as the sun sinks behind the hills. It just feels… natural, as if that is in fact what one ought to be doing as the sun disappears. </p>\n<p>The next day we continued on to Sinoukville which is Cambodia's attempt at a seaside resort. Combining the essential elements of Goa and Thailand, Sinoukville is a pleasant, if somewhat hippy oriented, travelers haven. The town itself is lovely, but the travelers tend to head for the beachfront bungalows (remember what I have said before, there is a time to head for the hills and a time to embrace and get crazy with the the cheese whiz). We managed to find a decent room about fifty meters from the shore and kicked back for a few days. We rented Honda Dreams and cruised down the coast to deserted white sand beaches, thatched huts serving noodles and rice, where we watched sunsets and dodged rain storms. And yes ate hamburgers and chips and even went to a late night beach bonfire/micro rave sort of thing where plenty of hippies were twirling stick and fire and other things that hippies tend to do.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/sinoukvillegroup.jpg\" width=\"260\" height=\"180\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Everyone, Sinoukville Cambodia\" />It was good fun, but for me there was the depressing thought that these were our last few days together. And while that didn't stop me from having a good time and cleaning up in a few hands of hold ‘em (I told you Rob, I'm no good at tournaments, but I can hold my own in limit and I'll take your salary in no limit), it did cast a sort of melancholy quality over the days. And strangely the weather seemed to feel the same way, continually providing sunsets that had a certain lingering sadness to them, something my friend Michael and I once termed \"the happy sad,\" which I can't precisely explain; it's something about the right minor chord phrases and and big drums. If you've listened to enough Springsteen, you know what I mean.</p>\n<p>And then there was that day. That day when everyone went there own way. We have reached the point where I have to say something, but I've lost the script, this was not in the original text, this was adlibbed. And now I have to capture some sort of meaning and summation, or at least I feel like I do, and yet I can't. I could talk about the bus station where Debi and Rob and Jules headed off back to Phnom Penh and on to Vietnam or Matt and I playing a few games of pool that last night after the others were gone. But none of that gets at what I mean. If they had words that could capture feelings there would be no need to write, I think here I'd go for verse, but I'm no good with it. I haven't got any minor chords on the laptop. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/sinoukvillebeachbike.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"169\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Matt and Debi on the Honda Dream, Sinoukville, Cambodia\" />Someone I was traveling with recently read me an article on the emotions of animals, and the author, in the course of making the point that animals most probably do have emotions but we will never understand them, used the example of human empathy. That is, I can try to understand how you may feel, but I can never actually <strong>feel</strong> what you feel nor you feel what I feel. It is therefore impossible to explain what it's like to spend nearly every waking minute of every day for three months with someone. Instead I'm having a DFW moment where the narrative thread breaks down and I have to step in and say that even now, writing this nearly a month later, I don't know what to say except… do you know, do you know what I mean…? Can you feel… no I can't do it. Jimmy, that bit just doesn't sound as good as when you said it. Anyway I'm going to give up and just cut and paste from an email from someone who's traveled more than I because this is better than I can do:</p>\n<blockquote>\n\n You meet the best people while traveling, get really close really quick, then the goodbyes come way too soon. Some of my best friends in the world are people I only spent a couple weeks with in some far flung country, haven't seen in years, but still keep in close contact with. Coming home is also a part of travel. People never want to hear all the stories ya have to tell. Life for them has been the same old shit and attention spans for tales of nasty bathrooms and chicken buses only last so long. It's the other travelers that want to hear your stories. It's kind of a club of sorts us travelers. You often have a very clear picture of where people have been before ya know their surnames or what they do back home. Home kind of fades. And yes, the goodbyes are tough, but paths once crossed have a funny way of doing so again.\n\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>So Jules and Rob, and especially Matt and Debi, wherever you are (oh yeah, I know where you are but forgive me while I go for a little drama) — cheers. I've never liked prolonged goodbyes so I will just go with the song. It was indeed right on and perhaps my friend is right, paths once crossed may cross again (the next rounds is on me). I miss you all.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>he mountaintops were shrouded in clouds and what could have been a view of the ocean was instead a sea of swirling white, misty moisture on our faces. There was an abundance of purple flowers stretching out from the back patio of what was once the king's summer home. Behind us the summer home itself was in a state of disarray, or, actually, disarray is too mild, ruin would be the proper word. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/bokorflowers.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"200\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Flowers, Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia\" />The clouds continued to blow up the valley at speeds that reminded me of scenes from Koyaanisqatsi, where sped up film makes clouds appear to break like waves over a mountain ridge. But this was no trick of cameras and film. These clouds were actually blowing up fast enough that it felt as if a misty white sea were breaking over us.\r\n<break>\r\nBetween the seaside town of Kep and Sinoukville lies the hill station Bokor Hill. Once a thriving community and summer home of the king of Cambodia, it now lies entirely in ruins. The king's former house (which I would not call a palace for it was rather small and even in full splendor still too small to be called a palace) is on one side of the mountain and then across<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/bokorhillchurch.jpg\" width=\"175\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Church Bokor Hill, Cambodia\" /> a bumpy dirt road on the other side is the actual town which now consists of an abandoned Catholic church and a once lavish hotel and casino, both rumored to be haunted. The town was built by the French and then abandoned presumably when the French decided to do what they do best—retreat.\r\n\r\nWe had arrived the night before in the coastal river town of Kampot and arranged a tour of Bokor Hill through a local guesthouse. We set out in the early morning with a few other tourists including an English couple named John and Linda who we ran into several times later in Sinoukville. Honest John was a used car salesman (and yes, Honest John's is the name of his lot) and he and his wife Linda were easily the sweetest people I've met on my trip. They were the sort of couple that have been together for forty years and still hold hands when they walk around. The kind of image Hallmark is trying to sell except that John and Linda were unaffectedly natural about it.\r\n\r\nWe all rode in the back of a truck on hard wooden benches over a rough bumpy road which ought to sound familiar by now and I won't bore you with the details except to say that I have learned to bear the misery with a kind of stoicism I didn't know I had in me. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/bokorhillcasino.jpg\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Burned Out Casino, Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia\" />One of the things travelers love to do is tell stories. eating dinner at night in a crowded restuarant is something akin to Masterpiece Theatre. And people have a natural tendency to retell a good story they've heard, but in the retelling they often put themselves at the center. Everyone does it, even me on occasion. I was sitting with our guide, waiting for the others to finish walking around the casino, half listening to what the guide was saying to another traveler, and half watching the fog blow in. At some point his words began to sound terribly familiar and I realized he was telling a different version of a story Matt had once overheard someone telling and retold to us (without putting himself at the center). In the version Matt heard the events happened to the traveler that told it. And it took place at a no name bar in a small Cambodian town, exactly the sort of embellishment your typical traveler would add. The guide's version took place at Chinese New Year at Bokor Hill Station among a crowd of thousands, not quite as glamorous but infinitely more likely. I have no idea who has the real version, but I suspect that whoever told the story to Matt heard it here first and then placed themselves at the center of it. Remember the telephone game you played as a child? Well stories among travelers often grow in the same way. The strange part was to actually get to hear the other version, usually you just suspect the made up parts, but I got to hear the actual difference between the first telling and the later. Kudos to Matt for not retelling the story with him at the center. So anyway, one night I was at this dumpy bar in this little backwater town in northeast Cambodia and these guys pull up in a Mercedes, windows all tinted, the cars looking hard you know what I mean? And bright, I mean interrogation room bright, fog lights shining right into the bar. So this one local guy who's at the bar gets up and says something in Cambodian and these guys get out of the car looking pretty heavy, Mafioso types you know? And then all the sudden….\r\n\r\nAfter wandering around the church and the casino, which are both burned out abandoned stone buildings that do have an eerie quality to them that would certainly lend itself to visions of ghost and ghouls, we headed back down the mountain for a swim in the local river.<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/kampotriverswimming.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"164\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Swimming, Near Kampot, Cambodia\" />With the kind of foresight that I demonstrate regularly I forgot to wear swim trunks and I already knew it takes days for my shorts to dry and they tend not to smell so good at the end of it. I skipped the swim. After a dunk in the water we took a half hour or so boat ride back to Kampot. I've seen sunsets over just about every possible terrain on this trip and sunsets from Southeast Asia rivers are still my favorite. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/kampotriverboat.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"River Journey, Kampot, Cambodia\" />I'm not sure what it is exactly but there is something so completely relaxing about cruising down a river on a boat as the sun sinks behind the hills. It just feels… natural, as if that is in fact what one ought to be doing as the sun disappears. \r\n\r\nThe next day we continued on to Sinoukville which is Cambodia's attempt at a seaside resort. Combining the essential elements of Goa and Thailand, Sinoukville is a pleasant, if somewhat hippy oriented, travelers haven. The town itself is lovely, but the travelers tend to head for the beachfront bungalows (remember what I have said before, there is a time to head for the hills and a time to embrace and get crazy with the the cheese whiz). We managed to find a decent room about fifty meters from the shore and kicked back for a few days. We rented Honda Dreams and cruised down the coast to deserted white sand beaches, thatched huts serving noodles and rice, where we watched sunsets and dodged rain storms. And yes ate hamburgers and chips and even went to a late night beach bonfire/micro rave sort of thing where plenty of hippies were twirling stick and fire and other things that hippies tend to do.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/sinoukvillegroup.jpg\" width=\"260\" height=\"180\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Everyone, Sinoukville Cambodia\" />It was good fun, but for me there was the depressing thought that these were our last few days together. And while that didn't stop me from having a good time and cleaning up in a few hands of hold ‘em (I told you Rob, I'm no good at tournaments, but I can hold my own in limit and I'll take your salary in no limit), it did cast a sort of melancholy quality over the days. And strangely the weather seemed to feel the same way, continually providing sunsets that had a certain lingering sadness to them, something my friend Michael and I once termed \"the happy sad,\" which I can't precisely explain; it's something about the right minor chord phrases and and big drums. If you've listened to enough Springsteen, you know what I mean.\r\n\r\nAnd then there was that day. That day when everyone went there own way. We have reached the point where I have to say something, but I've lost the script, this was not in the original text, this was adlibbed. And now I have to capture some sort of meaning and summation, or at least I feel like I do, and yet I can't. I could talk about the bus station where Debi and Rob and Jules headed off back to Phnom Penh and on to Vietnam or Matt and I playing a few games of pool that last night after the others were gone. But none of that gets at what I mean. If they had words that could capture feelings there would be no need to write, I think here I'd go for verse, but I'm no good with it. I haven't got any minor chords on the laptop. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/sinoukvillebeachbike.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"169\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Matt and Debi on the Honda Dream, Sinoukville, Cambodia\" />Someone I was traveling with recently read me an article on the emotions of animals, and the author, in the course of making the point that animals most probably do have emotions but we will never understand them, used the example of human empathy. That is, I can try to understand how you may feel, but I can never actually **feel** what you feel nor you feel what I feel. It is therefore impossible to explain what it's like to spend nearly every waking minute of every day for three months with someone. Instead I'm having a DFW moment where the narrative thread breaks down and I have to step in and say that even now, writing this nearly a month later, I don't know what to say except… do you know, do you know what I mean…? Can you feel… no I can't do it. Jimmy, that bit just doesn't sound as good as when you said it. Anyway I'm going to give up and just cut and paste from an email from someone who's traveled more than I because this is better than I can do:\r\n\r\n<blockquote>\r\n\r\n You meet the best people while traveling, get really close really quick, then the goodbyes come way too soon. Some of my best friends in the world are people I only spent a couple weeks with in some far flung country, haven't seen in years, but still keep in close contact with. Coming home is also a part of travel. People never want to hear all the stories ya have to tell. Life for them has been the same old shit and attention spans for tales of nasty bathrooms and chicken buses only last so long. It's the other travelers that want to hear your stories. It's kind of a club of sorts us travelers. You often have a very clear picture of where people have been before ya know their surnames or what they do back home. Home kind of fades. And yes, the goodbyes are tough, but paths once crossed have a funny way of doing so again.\r\n\r\n</blockquote>\r\n\r\nSo Jules and Rob, and especially Matt and Debi, wherever you are (oh yeah, I know where you are but forgive me while I go for a little drama) — cheers. I've never liked prolonged goodbyes so I will just go with the song. It was indeed right on and perhaps my friend is right, paths once crossed may cross again (the next rounds is on me). I miss you all.", "dek": "The next day we continued on to Sinoukville which is Cambodia's attempt at a seaside resort. Combining the essential elements of Goa and Thailand, Sinoukville is a pleasant, if somewhat hippy-oriented, travelers haven. We rented Honda Dreams and cruised down the coast to deserted white sand beaches, thatched huts serving noodles and rice, where we watched sunsets and dodged rain storms. ", "pub_date": "2006-03-31T00:01:02", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (103.4994506691863165 10.6262758655722269)", "location": 24, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/goodbyes.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/goodbyes.jpg", "meta_description": "Combining the essential elements of Goa and Thailand, Sinoukville, Cambodia is a pleasant, if somewhat cheesy, travelers haven. ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 53, "fields": {"title": "Going Down South", "slug": "going-down-south", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">M</span>att and I spent one day by ourselves in Sinoukville and though we never spoke of it I thought it was pretty appropriate that when we went back to the beach shack with the good food they were closed. When we tried to spend the afternoon in the sun, it poured. But then I write, so a bit of drama is never a bad thing. </p>\n<p>We had a good time anyway. And the next morning we headed back across the border into Thailand. Strange to think that I had gone to Laos for the sole purpose of renewing my Thai visa and here I was, three months later, finally returning to Thailand. If I've learned anything it's the truth of Woody Allen's phrase, \"if you want to make god laugh, have a plan.\"\n<break>\nBy a strange act of god (who must have been having himself a laugh at the time), both Matt and I were headed back to Bangkok to meet up with friends from home. But before that we made an honest effort at tracking down Ofir. I had kept up with Ofir via email ever since he left Laos, and, though I hadn't heard from him in a few days. I knew he should be in Bangkok at the same time as Matt and I. I also knew that he was flying out the next day to return home to Israel. I compulsively checked my email throughout the evening but never heard anything. Matt and I hatched a plan that must have split god's sides with laughter; we decided to set out into Bangkok in some vain hope of running into Ofir. A city of seven million, how hard could it be?</p>\n<p>Our best hope was the Khao San Rd. I don't believe I devoted any time to the Khao San Rd in my previous Bangkok posts which is largely because I avoided it like the plague. Khao San is everything I don't like about traveling, thousands and thousands of western tourists behaving badly. But, taking a tip from our experiences with heat, we thought why not? Why not embrace the cheesy touristy aspect of it? And we also thought Ofir, having his last night in Bangkok might think the same thing. So we hit the Khao San in full swing. As it turned out, Ofir had more taste than we did and was nowhere near the Khao San Rd on his last night in Bangkok, but we had fun nevertheless. We ate a bit of street food and parked ourselves in the cheesiest, most tourist saturated bar and watched the parade of humanity that is Khao San.</p>\n<p>And then we gave up. The next day we both had errands to run, I need a plane ticket to London among other things and so Matt and I split up for the day, which was a bit strange since all the time he and Debi and I traveled together we always stuck together. But the strangest part is, and this goes to show you the fallacy of plans, about six hours later Matt and I ran into each other at the central pier. Yes, in a city of seven million, I ran into the one person I knew. This is why planning never works. Things happen or they don't and there's nothing you can do about it.</p>\n<p>Traveling for as long as I have, one tends to lose track of time. It's been months since I could have told you with any confidence what day of the week it was or what day of the month, once I even got the month wrong. It just isn't something worth keeping track of; time exists to measure days that in reality aren't worth measuring. When I was managing a restaurant I could have told you not just day and date, but probably the hour and often right down to the minute because this is how we manage to do the things we have to do. It's been nearly a year since I've had to do anything.</p>\n<p>It should then have been no surprise when the phone rang a day earlier than I expected and familiar voice sank slowly into my still sleep-fogged brain. Oh crap. My friends aren't coming tomorrow, they're here today. Whoops. I said a hurried goodbye to Matt (yes that was always how it was going to end wasn't it? Cheers mate), and slipped into the next chapter as it were.</p>\n<p>Leah and Kate were staying at the Westin Sukhumvit which was shall we say a bit nicer than my lodgings. It was something akin to culture shock to step into the immaculateness of the Westin after spending the last six months in sleeping quarters where the old saying \"don't let the bed bugs bite\" isn't an antiquated joke, it's genuine advice. Not that I mind high class resorts nor look down my nose at them, so long as we all understand that high class resorts are for vacations; they don't qualify as traveling. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Change and adaptability are what got humanity this far and who am I to buck evolutionary trends? So I spent a minute in the lobby before I went up to their room, adjusting myself, adapting. It sounds stupid, but it does take you a minute to orient yourself in five star surroundings after so long in well, whatever. </p>\n<p>After adjusting myself to the idea of air conditioning and polished marble floors and cushioned chairs I hopped in the elevator (elevator, damn I forgot about those) thinking this was probably good since I would be back in the west in less than a month and I needed to get used to these things again. I have for some time been dreading returning to the west with all its stodgy formalities and laws and cleanliness. I don't necessarily have a problem with the west, though I do feel a greater sense of freedom in S.E Asia than I ever have in America, I've just forgot what these things are like. My plan is to head from Bangkok to London and then, after visiting a friend I met in India, continuing on to Budapest where I will meet up with my parents and travel central Europe for a month before returning to the States. When the elevator opened into the large luxuriously padded carpet of the Westin's seventh floor hallway, I realized that I was not mentally prepared to return. I've actually come to rather like dodgy food and grungy guesthouses.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bangkokriverboatview.jpg\" width=\"210\" height=\"132\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"River Taxi, Bangkok, Thailand\" />The girls were surprisingly bright-eyed and animated for people that should have been jet lagged and half asleep. My own grogginess was still wearing off, but we set off straight away since Bangkok is pretty warm by midday and the temples have little in the way of shade. Leah and Kate had only one day in Bangkok and wanted to see some temples and other touristy sights. I was planning to take them to Wat Phra Krew and Wat Pho via public transport since that way you get to see the river as well. We hopped on the sky train, caught the river taxi and walked for a bit around Wat Phra Krew. After about an hour it was too hot to think. Bangkok averages in the high 90s this time of year and humidity is around 80. If you look it up on Weatherunderground it has that, \"feel like…\" index which typically is about 116 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't know how they calculate it, but it sounds about right. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/watphrakaetwo.jpg\" width=\"168\" height=\"210\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Wat Phra Kae, Bangkok, Thailand\" />It's hotter than it ever gets in say Athens, GA in the summer, but not as hot as Seam Reap. It's bearable if you're used to it, but coming out of air conditioning into that kind of heat and humidity will quickly drain you. </p>\n<p>We decided to give up on the temples and head back to the hotel. The girls went up to the rooftop pool and I set out to buy a plane ticket to London and on to Budapest. After walking around in the heat for two hours and realizing that there is some sort of price fixing travel agent mafia in Bangkok, I gave up and went to the pool myself. After a few hours in the sun and a bit of snooze on the couch, we set out for dinner at Sciorocco. I hadn't been up to the towers before, but the view was roughly the same as the Baiyoke Sky hotel—stunning. Unfortunately, a few minutes after we were seated, it started to pour. Everyone scattered for cover and the restaurant struggled gamely to accommodate everyone that had been outside, inside. Curiously the only additional seating they seemed to have was a room two floors up which was half set for a wedding reception the next day. </p>\n<p>We tried to make ourselves comfortable but it was a bit peculiar, particularly the ceiling which looked like the inside of a massive telescope, white hexagonal tiles with metal bracings and exposed pipeworks, across which various colors of neon lights in cheesy floral patterns performed highly unnatural sweeping motions. For a minute I felt like I was at some really bad laser lights show back in Los Angeles. After sitting there for a few minutes in fits of laughter, half expecting Pink Floyd to come erupting out of some hidden speaker system, we decided that it just wasn't going to work. Normally I wouldn't complain about it, I even liked the campy aspect in some ways, but the girls were only going to have one fancy dinner in Bangkok and they understandably didn't want it to resemble a wedding reception at the Hollywood bowl. After speaking to the hostess, we decided to head down a few floors where there was an Italian restaurant. Not very Thai to be sure, but damn it was good.</p>\n<p>The next day the girls left for Phuket. I spent another day in Bangkok, finally bought my ticket to London and on to Budapest, and then caught an overnight bus to Krabia which is about half way down the peninsula of Thailand. The plan was to meet up with Kate and Leah again on Ko Phi Phi. On the bus ride down I met a very nice woman from Sweden and spent the day walking around Krabie with her and while I liked Krabie, I couldn't see any reason to stay. I caught the last ferry of the day out to Ko Phi Phi.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/phiphidonlongtail.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"176\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Phi Phi Don from longtail, Ko Phi Phi, Thailand\" />Koh Phi Phi is small island just south of Phuket, about an hour by ferry, and west of Krabie, about forty minutes by ferry. Actually Koh Phi Phi is two islands, Ko Phi Phi Don which is developed and Ko Phi Phi Leh which is not. Phi Phi Don is a long skinny island which at one point narrows to an isthmus less than a hundred meters across. On both sides of the sandy isthmus are towering limestone cliffs and to the west there is nothing but Andaman Sea. As a result, outside of Phuket, Koh Phi Phi Don was probably hit the hardest by last year's tsunami. The initial wave actually broke over the island at the isthmus, wiping out the entire area and killing over 1737 people.</p>\n<p>The truly strange thing is, aside from a gap in the otherwise omnipresent palm trees and a tsunami memorial, you'd never know the area was almost completely destroyed just over a year ago. Nearly everything has already been rebuilt and life seems to have returned to normal on the island. And for Phi Phi normal means tons of tourists and resorts catering to western cravings—burgers, Swedish meatballs and the ubiquitous traveler favorite, banana pancakes. The problem with Phi Phi is that in spite of its tourism and crowds it is a truly stunning island, one you ought not to miss if you ever find yourself in the area, just be aware of what you're getting into.</p>\n<p>I spent the first night on the isthmus at a small guesthouse slightly inland from the beach and then the next morning I chartered a long tail around the island to the resort on the eastern shore where the girls were staying. After spending most of the day crashing the resort, Leah and Kate finally showed up and I felt a bit more legitimate. The Phi Phi Island Resort where the girls stayed is nestled on the leeward shore of the island with a lovely private beach that slopes ever so slowly into the sea and about two hundred meters out gives way to a beautiful reef. I rented a snorkel and mask and spent the afternoon on the reef with Leah. Generally when people talk of Thailand's islands they talk of the scuba diving, but the snorkeling is also first rate. The water clarity is generally better than anywhere else I've been though evening storms did stir things up a bit while we were there. The best thing about the resort is that it provides an escape from the crowds concentrated around the isthmus. For the better part of the afternoon Leah and I had the reef to ourselves save for the occasional long tail passing off in the distance.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/cruiseshipphiphileh.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"120\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Cruise Ship, Phi Phi Don, Thailand\" />That evening after dinner we booked a boat trip to go around Phi Phi Leh with several stops for snorkeling and swimming. By nine the next morning we were onboard a large powerboat headed for Phi Phi Leh. As we came around the southern tip of Phi Phi Don where the island juts westward toward the isthmus I realized just how lucky we were to be in the relative isolation of the resort. Anchored just off the main harbor was a massive cruise ship which must have deposited several thousand additional people in the isthmus area. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/phiphilehnorthend.jpg\" width=\"186\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Cliffs Phi Phi Leh, Thailand\" />Luckily we breezed right by the isthmus and cruise ship booth bound for the reef on the east side of Phi Phi Leh. The underwater scenery was spectacular, loads of fish, not as much coral as some places I've been, but I don't know if that was from the tsunami or just the way the reefs are in Thailand. After snorkeling for an hour or so we hoped back on the boat and headed into a very narrow shallow bay surrounded on all sides by steep limestone cliffs. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/phiphibluewater.jpg\" width=\"188\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"turquoise waters, Ko Phi Phi Leh, Thailand\" />Though there was no reef below it was nevertheless amazingly beautiful. We anchored for half and hour and took turns jumping off the upper decks of the boat into the perfect, bathwater warm, cyan-colored bay. </p>\n<p>After swimming for a while in the bay we began to circle around the island to the west. Our next stop was a sheltered lagoon which holds the only real beach of Phi Phi Leh. We stopped for lunch and bit of swimming and sunbathing. </p>\n<p>I've never personally seen it, but supposedly the movie <em>The Beach</em> was filmed there. After lunch we continued around the backside of Phi Phi Leh which consisted mainly of imposing sheer cliffs that rise straight out of the sea. After rounding the northern point of the Island which conveys just how narrow Phi Phi Leh actually is, we headed back to the resort. As Phi Phi Leh shrunk in the distance I watched my fellow backpackers zoom by on speedboats packed together like sardines under the meager shade on cheap canvas canopies. Silly backpackers.</p>\n<p>That evening we watched the clouds glow pink and orange and bright red with the fading light of a sunset we couldn't directly see and I taught the girls how to play shithead, which <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/leahkatephiphileh.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"191\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Leah and Kate on the Boat, Ko Phi Phi Leh, Thailand\" />I proceeded to lose at. Rather badly. The results of which shall not be mentioned here. The next day I headed back to join my fellow silly backpackers on the isthmus (luckily the cruise ship had moved on by then). It was really nice to spend time with Kate and Leah, you meet many people when you're traveling but it's not often that you get to see people from home. Thank you girls for letting me crash your vacation and I hope you had as much fun as I did. I only wish we had more time. Oh and for those who were wondering… I charged the whole thing to the Underhill's credit card. You want the number?</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">M</span>att and I spent one day by ourselves in Sinoukville and though we never spoke of it I thought it was pretty appropriate that when we went back to the beach shack with the good food they were closed. When we tried to spend the afternoon in the sun, it poured. But then I write, so a bit of drama is never a bad thing. \r\n\r\nWe had a good time anyway. And the next morning we headed back across the border into Thailand. Strange to think that I had gone to Laos for the sole purpose of renewing my Thai visa and here I was, three months later, finally returning to Thailand. If I've learned anything it's the truth of Woody Allen's phrase, \"if you want to make god laugh, have a plan.\"\r\n<break>\r\nBy a strange act of god (who must have been having himself a laugh at the time), both Matt and I were headed back to Bangkok to meet up with friends from home. But before that we made an honest effort at tracking down Ofir. I had kept up with Ofir via email ever since he left Laos, and, though I hadn't heard from him in a few days. I knew he should be in Bangkok at the same time as Matt and I. I also knew that he was flying out the next day to return home to Israel. I compulsively checked my email throughout the evening but never heard anything. Matt and I hatched a plan that must have split god's sides with laughter; we decided to set out into Bangkok in some vain hope of running into Ofir. A city of seven million, how hard could it be?\r\n\r\nOur best hope was the Khao San Rd. I don't believe I devoted any time to the Khao San Rd in my previous Bangkok posts which is largely because I avoided it like the plague. Khao San is everything I don't like about traveling, thousands and thousands of western tourists behaving badly. But, taking a tip from our experiences with heat, we thought why not? Why not embrace the cheesy touristy aspect of it? And we also thought Ofir, having his last night in Bangkok might think the same thing. So we hit the Khao San in full swing. As it turned out, Ofir had more taste than we did and was nowhere near the Khao San Rd on his last night in Bangkok, but we had fun nevertheless. We ate a bit of street food and parked ourselves in the cheesiest, most tourist saturated bar and watched the parade of humanity that is Khao San.\r\n\r\nAnd then we gave up. The next day we both had errands to run, I need a plane ticket to London among other things and so Matt and I split up for the day, which was a bit strange since all the time he and Debi and I traveled together we always stuck together. But the strangest part is, and this goes to show you the fallacy of plans, about six hours later Matt and I ran into each other at the central pier. Yes, in a city of seven million, I ran into the one person I knew. This is why planning never works. Things happen or they don't and there's nothing you can do about it.\r\n\r\nTraveling for as long as I have, one tends to lose track of time. It's been months since I could have told you with any confidence what day of the week it was or what day of the month, once I even got the month wrong. It just isn't something worth keeping track of; time exists to measure days that in reality aren't worth measuring. When I was managing a restaurant I could have told you not just day and date, but probably the hour and often right down to the minute because this is how we manage to do the things we have to do. It's been nearly a year since I've had to do anything.\r\n\r\nIt should then have been no surprise when the phone rang a day earlier than I expected and familiar voice sank slowly into my still sleep-fogged brain. Oh crap. My friends aren't coming tomorrow, they're here today. Whoops. I said a hurried goodbye to Matt (yes that was always how it was going to end wasn't it? Cheers mate), and slipped into the next chapter as it were.\r\n\r\nLeah and Kate were staying at the Westin Sukhumvit which was shall we say a bit nicer than my lodgings. It was something akin to culture shock to step into the immaculateness of the Westin after spending the last six months in sleeping quarters where the old saying \"don't let the bed bugs bite\" isn't an antiquated joke, it's genuine advice. Not that I mind high class resorts nor look down my nose at them, so long as we all understand that high class resorts are for vacations; they don't qualify as traveling. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Change and adaptability are what got humanity this far and who am I to buck evolutionary trends? So I spent a minute in the lobby before I went up to their room, adjusting myself, adapting. It sounds stupid, but it does take you a minute to orient yourself in five star surroundings after so long in well, whatever. \r\n\r\nAfter adjusting myself to the idea of air conditioning and polished marble floors and cushioned chairs I hopped in the elevator (elevator, damn I forgot about those) thinking this was probably good since I would be back in the west in less than a month and I needed to get used to these things again. I have for some time been dreading returning to the west with all its stodgy formalities and laws and cleanliness. I don't necessarily have a problem with the west, though I do feel a greater sense of freedom in S.E Asia than I ever have in America, I've just forgot what these things are like. My plan is to head from Bangkok to London and then, after visiting a friend I met in India, continuing on to Budapest where I will meet up with my parents and travel central Europe for a month before returning to the States. When the elevator opened into the large luxuriously padded carpet of the Westin's seventh floor hallway, I realized that I was not mentally prepared to return. I've actually come to rather like dodgy food and grungy guesthouses.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/bangkokriverboatview.jpg\" width=\"210\" height=\"132\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"River Taxi, Bangkok, Thailand\" />The girls were surprisingly bright-eyed and animated for people that should have been jet lagged and half asleep. My own grogginess was still wearing off, but we set off straight away since Bangkok is pretty warm by midday and the temples have little in the way of shade. Leah and Kate had only one day in Bangkok and wanted to see some temples and other touristy sights. I was planning to take them to Wat Phra Krew and Wat Pho via public transport since that way you get to see the river as well. We hopped on the sky train, caught the river taxi and walked for a bit around Wat Phra Krew. After about an hour it was too hot to think. Bangkok averages in the high 90s this time of year and humidity is around 80. If you look it up on Weatherunderground it has that, \"feel like…\" index which typically is about 116 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't know how they calculate it, but it sounds about right. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/watphrakaetwo.jpg\" width=\"168\" height=\"210\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Wat Phra Kae, Bangkok, Thailand\" />It's hotter than it ever gets in say Athens, GA in the summer, but not as hot as Seam Reap. It's bearable if you're used to it, but coming out of air conditioning into that kind of heat and humidity will quickly drain you. \r\n\r\nWe decided to give up on the temples and head back to the hotel. The girls went up to the rooftop pool and I set out to buy a plane ticket to London and on to Budapest. After walking around in the heat for two hours and realizing that there is some sort of price fixing travel agent mafia in Bangkok, I gave up and went to the pool myself. After a few hours in the sun and a bit of snooze on the couch, we set out for dinner at Sciorocco. I hadn't been up to the towers before, but the view was roughly the same as the Baiyoke Sky hotel—stunning. Unfortunately, a few minutes after we were seated, it started to pour. Everyone scattered for cover and the restaurant struggled gamely to accommodate everyone that had been outside, inside. Curiously the only additional seating they seemed to have was a room two floors up which was half set for a wedding reception the next day. \r\n\r\nWe tried to make ourselves comfortable but it was a bit peculiar, particularly the ceiling which looked like the inside of a massive telescope, white hexagonal tiles with metal bracings and exposed pipeworks, across which various colors of neon lights in cheesy floral patterns performed highly unnatural sweeping motions. For a minute I felt like I was at some really bad laser lights show back in Los Angeles. After sitting there for a few minutes in fits of laughter, half expecting Pink Floyd to come erupting out of some hidden speaker system, we decided that it just wasn't going to work. Normally I wouldn't complain about it, I even liked the campy aspect in some ways, but the girls were only going to have one fancy dinner in Bangkok and they understandably didn't want it to resemble a wedding reception at the Hollywood bowl. After speaking to the hostess, we decided to head down a few floors where there was an Italian restaurant. Not very Thai to be sure, but damn it was good.\r\n\r\nThe next day the girls left for Phuket. I spent another day in Bangkok, finally bought my ticket to London and on to Budapest, and then caught an overnight bus to Krabia which is about half way down the peninsula of Thailand. The plan was to meet up with Kate and Leah again on Ko Phi Phi. On the bus ride down I met a very nice woman from Sweden and spent the day walking around Krabie with her and while I liked Krabie, I couldn't see any reason to stay. I caught the last ferry of the day out to Ko Phi Phi.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/phiphidonlongtail.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"176\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Phi Phi Don from longtail, Ko Phi Phi, Thailand\" />Koh Phi Phi is small island just south of Phuket, about an hour by ferry, and west of Krabie, about forty minutes by ferry. Actually Koh Phi Phi is two islands, Ko Phi Phi Don which is developed and Ko Phi Phi Leh which is not. Phi Phi Don is a long skinny island which at one point narrows to an isthmus less than a hundred meters across. On both sides of the sandy isthmus are towering limestone cliffs and to the west there is nothing but Andaman Sea. As a result, outside of Phuket, Koh Phi Phi Don was probably hit the hardest by last year's tsunami. The initial wave actually broke over the island at the isthmus, wiping out the entire area and killing over 1737 people.\r\n\r\nThe truly strange thing is, aside from a gap in the otherwise omnipresent palm trees and a tsunami memorial, you'd never know the area was almost completely destroyed just over a year ago. Nearly everything has already been rebuilt and life seems to have returned to normal on the island. And for Phi Phi normal means tons of tourists and resorts catering to western cravings—burgers, Swedish meatballs and the ubiquitous traveler favorite, banana pancakes. The problem with Phi Phi is that in spite of its tourism and crowds it is a truly stunning island, one you ought not to miss if you ever find yourself in the area, just be aware of what you're getting into.\r\n\r\nI spent the first night on the isthmus at a small guesthouse slightly inland from the beach and then the next morning I chartered a long tail around the island to the resort on the eastern shore where the girls were staying. After spending most of the day crashing the resort, Leah and Kate finally showed up and I felt a bit more legitimate. The Phi Phi Island Resort where the girls stayed is nestled on the leeward shore of the island with a lovely private beach that slopes ever so slowly into the sea and about two hundred meters out gives way to a beautiful reef. I rented a snorkel and mask and spent the afternoon on the reef with Leah. Generally when people talk of Thailand's islands they talk of the scuba diving, but the snorkeling is also first rate. The water clarity is generally better than anywhere else I've been though evening storms did stir things up a bit while we were there. The best thing about the resort is that it provides an escape from the crowds concentrated around the isthmus. For the better part of the afternoon Leah and I had the reef to ourselves save for the occasional long tail passing off in the distance.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/cruiseshipphiphileh.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"120\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Cruise Ship, Phi Phi Don, Thailand\" />That evening after dinner we booked a boat trip to go around Phi Phi Leh with several stops for snorkeling and swimming. By nine the next morning we were onboard a large powerboat headed for Phi Phi Leh. As we came around the southern tip of Phi Phi Don where the island juts westward toward the isthmus I realized just how lucky we were to be in the relative isolation of the resort. Anchored just off the main harbor was a massive cruise ship which must have deposited several thousand additional people in the isthmus area. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/phiphilehnorthend.jpg\" width=\"186\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Cliffs Phi Phi Leh, Thailand\" />Luckily we breezed right by the isthmus and cruise ship booth bound for the reef on the east side of Phi Phi Leh. The underwater scenery was spectacular, loads of fish, not as much coral as some places I've been, but I don't know if that was from the tsunami or just the way the reefs are in Thailand. After snorkeling for an hour or so we hoped back on the boat and headed into a very narrow shallow bay surrounded on all sides by steep limestone cliffs. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/phiphibluewater.jpg\" width=\"188\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"turquoise waters, Ko Phi Phi Leh, Thailand\" />Though there was no reef below it was nevertheless amazingly beautiful. We anchored for half and hour and took turns jumping off the upper decks of the boat into the perfect, bathwater warm, cyan-colored bay. \r\n\r\nAfter swimming for a while in the bay we began to circle around the island to the west. Our next stop was a sheltered lagoon which holds the only real beach of Phi Phi Leh. We stopped for lunch and bit of swimming and sunbathing. \r\n\r\nI've never personally seen it, but supposedly the movie <em>The Beach</em> was filmed there. After lunch we continued around the backside of Phi Phi Leh which consisted mainly of imposing sheer cliffs that rise straight out of the sea. After rounding the northern point of the Island which conveys just how narrow Phi Phi Leh actually is, we headed back to the resort. As Phi Phi Leh shrunk in the distance I watched my fellow backpackers zoom by on speedboats packed together like sardines under the meager shade on cheap canvas canopies. Silly backpackers.\r\n\r\nThat evening we watched the clouds glow pink and orange and bright red with the fading light of a sunset we couldn't directly see and I taught the girls how to play shithead, which <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/leahkatephiphileh.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"191\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Leah and Kate on the Boat, Ko Phi Phi Leh, Thailand\" />I proceeded to lose at. Rather badly. The results of which shall not be mentioned here. The next day I headed back to join my fellow silly backpackers on the isthmus (luckily the cruise ship had moved on by then). It was really nice to spend time with Kate and Leah, you meet many people when you're traveling but it's not often that you get to see people from home. Thank you girls for letting me crash your vacation and I hope you had as much fun as I did. I only wish we had more time. Oh and for those who were wondering… I charged the whole thing to the Underhill's credit card. You want the number?", "dek": "The Phi Phi Island Resort, where some friends were staying, is nestled on the leeward shore of Koh Phi Phi Island and posts a private beach, beautiful reef, fancy swimming pools and rooms with real sheets. Unheard of. I sauntered in a day early, acted like I owned the place, rented snorkel gear, charged it to a random room number and spent the afternoon on the reef. If only I could have put it on the Underhill's credit card.", "pub_date": "2006-04-11T00:10:50", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (98.7787628036332706 7.7358268570177557)", "location": 74, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/kophiphi.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/thailandleahkate.jpg", "meta_description": "Somehow I wound up at the Phi Phi Island Resort, a private beach, beautiful reef, fancy swimming pools and rooms with real sheets. Unheard of.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 54, "fields": {"title": "Beginning of the End", "slug": "beginning-end", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span> will confess to being a bit melancholy on the ferry from Ko Phi Phi to Ko Lanta. It was slowly beginning to sink in that my trip was nearly over, the money nearly gone and coming home no longer felt so far in the future. </p>\n<p>After leaving Leah and Kate at the resort I returned to the isthmus to find Thai New Year, or Sonkron as it's called, in full swing. I had planned to spend a quiet day writing and relaxing, but things took a different turn. It wasn't long before I was completely soaked (one of the traditions of Sonkron is to throw water) and covered in white paste. I stopped in for a drink and next thing I knew it was late at night and I was due to catch a ferry the next morning.\n<break>\nI wasn't expecting much from Ko Lanta; I was using it mainly as a jumping off point for some of the islands to the south. Regrettably Lanta was as touristy and underwhelming as I expected. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/landsendkolanta.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"165\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Lands End, Ko Lanta, Thailand\" />The majority of the big resorts are clustered at the north end of the island so naturally I headed south toward the marine park and stayed at the southern most bungalow operation I could find. The next thing south from where I stayed was the national part headquarters and the lighthouse at the southern terminus of the island. I spent the first day on the beach under overcast skies wondering just what it was that I was missing. The sunset was spectacular, probably the most spectacular I've seen in all my travels and yet it failed to move me.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/kolantasunset.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Sunset, Ko Lanta, Thailand\" />My overwhelming memory of Lanta is the smell of garbage. Trash piles at the side of the road, beside guesthouse, restaurants, dive shops, ferry docks, everywhere you turn there's another pile of trash. The way I figured it the best bet would be to rent a Honda Dream and try to move faster than the piling trash. For the most part all the development on Ko Lanta is along the western shore and it's heaviest at the north end of the island. The next day I rented a motorbike and drove down every single length of road on the island. It turned out that the eastern shore is largely undeveloped at least in the tourist sense. There is a very pleasant Muslim fishing village toward the southern end of eastern side. The local children were still celebrating Sonkron and stood by the side of the road chucking buckets of ice water on passing cars and motorbikes which was refreshing enough that I would slow down for a bit of dunk each time a passed. </p>\n<p>The next day I got on a ferry bound for islands to the south. I hopped off at the first stop, Ko Hai, about 20 km south of Ko Lanta. Ko Hai is small and most people visit <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/kohaisunset.jpg\" width=\"178\" height=\"237\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Sunset, Ko Hai, Thailand\" />it only as a snorkeling stop on island hopping day trips. Nevertheless there are two resorts and one small collection of bungalows around a restaurant. For once Lonely Planet was right about something, the bungalows, while pleasant enough, are staffed by Thais so grumpy and unfriendly as to ruin the experience (which is exactly what it said in the guide). Still I spent three nights on Ko Hai. A short walk from the bungalow area and there was a half a mile of deserted white sand beaches. I was finally able to catch up on some writing and reading and generally unwind.</p>\n<p>But after three days I was sick of the staff and sick of the annoying Swedish girls cluttering the main beach. I hopped on a four island tour boat that passed by in the morning headed for Ko Kradan. Though I only paid for the boat ride, the crew of the boat were kind enough to lone me a snorkel mask each time we stopped. I snorkeled on the backside of Ko Hai and swam through the spectacular Emerald cave to the hidden valley beyond it. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/outsideemeraldcavekomuk.jpg\" width=\"144\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Outside Emerald Cave, Ko Muk, Thailand\" />For eighty meters you swim in complete blackness and emerge out the other side to a valley that's about two hundred meters in diameter with cliff walls at least that high. Unfortunately, because it's such a small and dramatically high enclosure it's nearly impossible to photograph.</p>\n<p>Eventually the boat stopped for lunch on the windward side of Ko Kradan or what should have been the windward side, but at the particular moment, with an offshore wind blowing in from the east, was the calmest part of the island. The ferry dropped me off at a deserted beach and the captain pointed to what looked like just jungle and said that if I followed that path I'd get to the other side of the island. Ominous black clouds had been moving westward all day and were nearly overhead by the time I jumped off the boat so I quickly gathered up my things and headed inland. The path actually did exist when I got closer to the tree line and in the end wasn't that long. I emerged out of the jungle into a small clearing with a restaurant and a few bungalows. Paradise Lost Resort was not listed in most guidebooks so after chatting a moment with the American who owned it, I continued on to the other side of the island in search of where I had intended to stay. Just about the time I reached the eastern beach it began to pour. I took shelter under a few of pine trees that lined the back of the beach and met Zoë, who had been on the beach and also taken shelter from the storm. We chatted for a while and she recommended that I stay at Paradise Lost rather than continue up the beach to the other resort which she described as \"more of a refugee camp.\"</p>\n<p>So it was that I came to meet, Tony, Zoë's husband, and Inda, their three-year-old daughter, as well as Wally who runs Paradise Lost, Tong who cooks and looks after the resort and Ngu who also works at Paradise Lost.</p>\n<p>Up until I arrived on Ko Kradan I had been, were I too be honest, not too fond of Thailand. Despite its reputation as the land of smiles <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/southbeachkokradan.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Southern Beach, Ko Kradan, Thailand\" />I hadn't found the Thais to be nearly as friendly or welcoming as the Cambodians and Lao. I also generally found the travelers in Thailand to be a rather cold and often downright rude bunch. As a result I spent the month of January alone and ever since the girls left I'd hardly talked to anyone. But on Ko Kradan I discovered a slice of Thailand the way it's often describe by wistful hippies who first came here twenty years ago. Tong and Ngu and the rest of the Thais working at Paradise Lost were the nicest people I met in Thailand and Wally was by far the most laid back farang I've come across. I ended up staying on Ko Kradan for the remainder of my time in the south.</p>\n<p>Wally arrived on Ko Kradan six years ago having spent the twenty years before that sailing all over the South Pacific. How exactly he came to start a guesthouse operation I never did hear, but it was quite an operation. Tong was an excellent cook and had an especially tasty (and spicy) massaman curry which is a southern Thai specialty, but Wally also offered a full range of barbeque options from massive steaks to pork chops and chicken. And as I discovered one night, when you order the grilled chicken dinner you in fact get a grilled chicken, as in the whole damn chicken, which works out well for the six or seven dogs that live at Paradise Lost (all purebred Thai ridgebacks and probably the best cared for and most spoiled dogs in all of Southeast Asia). <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/tangkokradan.jpg\" width=\"210\" height=\"183\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Me and Tang, Ko Kradan, Thailand\" />One of the dogs, Tang, took a liking to me (or else he just liked company on the beach, who knows) and would follow me down the beach everyday, though he usually took off once I disappeared on the reef.</p>\n<p>The reef off the southern end of Ko Kradan was the best snorkeling I found in the Islands provided you made it out during high tide, as it could be tough to navigate at low tide. For the entire week I was there I spent nearly every morning on the reef swimming amongst the Moorish Idols, Parrot Fish, Trigger Fish, Cleaner Wrasses and Butterfly Fish as well as the ever present Sergeant Majors and Barracuda. Ko Kradan was barely touched by the tsunami so the reef was as it had always been. According to Wally there were a breeding pair of turtles somewhere out there, but regrettably I never came across them. So long as I got out there before noon when the day trip boats began to arrive, I had the reef to myself like some sort of private underwater playground.</p>\n<p>Afternoons were my favorite time on the island, after the day tripping long tails from nearby Ko Muk departed for home and the four island tour boats from Ko Lanta moved on to the next island, a peaceful silence and almost total stillness settled over the beaches of Ko Kradan. Often a westerly breeze would kick up around two providing a welcome relief from the midday heat and the tide would retreat to the point that when I went back out on the reef the coral fairly scrapped my nose as I floated about, listening to the sound of Parrot Fish munching on bits of lumpy coral or the broken antlers of staghorn coral already half eaten and partly covered in sand.</p>\n<p>I got in the habit of not using fins when I snorkeled so I tended to just drift with the currents moving rather slowly over great fields of coral, reddish brown staghorn with white tips and countless fish hiding in the numerous tangled shadows, including schools of smaller iridescent blue fish with yellow tails, fish whose bodies seemed to me the brightest and most intense blue I've ever seen. Other times I'd do a bit of swimming to follow one of the massive Parrot Fish who's front fins flapped not unlike the wings of their arboreal namesake. These huge riots of pastel hues, pinks and greens and blues and yellows often seemed, when viewed at very close range, to be so finely detailed and the colors so smoothly flowing in gradients of pastel that would have made any circa 1986 interior designer proud, that it was impossible to distinguish scales and after a while they seem to have been perhaps airbrushed or created by some Photoshop whiz. Moorish Idols too, which most often swim in pairs, have such fine scales that even up close with the water magnifying everything it's still impossible to make out the scales.</p>\n<p>Whenever I was on the reef a school of juvenile parrotfish, small wrasses and Sergeant Majors would follow behind me nipping at my knees and ankles hoping for a bit a bread which they are accustomed to getting from the tour boats. Despite the fact that I never had any food they persisted from one end of the reef to the other. Once I stopped to adjust my mask and stood on a large lump of coral. While I was fiddling with the mask I could feel, but not see, something nipping at a cut on my left foot. I put the mask back on and peered down to discover that I had stopped at a cleaner wrasse's station and though no doubt slightly confused by my foot, the fish was nevertheless gamely doing what it did best. I waited until the fish seemed satisfied with his work and then I swam off following a parrotfish so large it had a sucker fish attached to its gills.</p>\n<p>Sometimes I swam out past the reef, where the bottom turned sandy and dropped off rather quickly making it impossible to see, in hopes of finding the turtles or perhaps a black tipped reef shark (which are perfectly harmless for the most part), but neither ever showed their faces. Eventually I would give up and move back toward the reef which by then would be very shallow indeed and only passable by carefully swimming through the sandy gullies between the fields of coral, an experience somewhat like I imagine it would feel to fly low and fast through the canyon country of eastern Utah and northern Arizona.</p>\n<p>Closer into shore where the coral began to drop off, great fields of giant black sea urchins lay swaying in the currents and small waves in such a way that the spines looked like little fingers feeling about in the murky water, and at the center of each a great yellow and blue \"eye\" stared back up at you. Where the coral stopped and rocks began to be half covered in sand, the water visibility dropped and the fish became fewer limited to delicately colored yellow and blue striped fish with bodies and eyes that resembled squirrel fish and a few tiny Gobi fish that darted skittishly about as I floated over them. The reefs around Ko Kradan are known for their abundance of rock fish which sit here in the shallows, heavily camouflaged and difficult to see as they remain still, perched on their front flippers, as if patiently waiting for the fins to evolve into arms so that they can leave the sea behind once and for all.</p>\n<p>I never wanted to get out of the water, but inevitably some reminder of my terrestrial origins would come back, thirst, hunger or perhaps just exhaustion, and I would head back to Paradise Lost for a late lunch. Everyday around six I would take the trail back to the beach where I was originally dropped off and watch the sunset from the lookout on the bluff. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/sunsetbeachkokradan.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"\" />Eventually Tony, Zoë and Inda left for Malaysia and for two days it was just Wally and I. But then a few yachty friends of Wally's sailed in and I met, Brian, Dawn and CT, the crew of a fifty-two foot yacht sailing under the name Ten Large. While they slept on the boat, the three of them came ashore during the day and always ate dinner at Paradise Lost. Another yacht whose name I've forgotten also with a crew of three came ashore for two days and eventually an Australian named Peter escaped the other resort (refugee camp was a rather apt description I discovered when I finally made it down that way) to stay at Paradise Lost. Unfortunately for Wally, because he isn't listed in very many guidebooks, the other resort is able to waylay travelers in Trang with package deals paid for in advance. They simply meet the trains arriving from Bangkok and book an all-inclusive package, boat transfer, lodging, etc. and ask for the money up front. Eventually most of these folks find Paradise Lost and end up eating there, but because they've already paid for the lodging their stuck down at the refugee camp. It's too bad because Wally has a great place with friendly people, excellent food and nice bungalows. If you happen to be headed to Ko Kradan or any of the south Thai islands I encourage you to stop by. Wally <a href=\"http://www.kokradan.com\" title=\"Paradise Lost Resort Information\">has a website with contact info</a>, but beware that there is no internet on Ko Kradan and the cell phone reception isn't great so you may have to call a few times to get a decent connection. Although I just showed up and got a room it's worth calling ahead, especially in the high season since there aren't too many bungalows available (though Wally is building more every year).</p>\n<p>I spent the evening eating barbeque and chatting with CT, Dawn and Brian about our various travels and some of their sailing adventures (they recently became mini celebrities in the yachty world when they were boarded by pirates while passing through Malaysia). One day I took a break from snorkeling and made a return trip to emerald cave with the crew of the other yacht. It was a nice change and this time we had the cave to ourselves for quite some time.</p>\n<p>But like all things that begin, my time on Ko Kradan had to end. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/kokradansunset.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"136\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Sunset Ko Kradan, Thailand\" />I didn't want to leave, but I had a plane flight to London that couldn't be missed. So after seven brilliant days on Ko Kradan we all caught a long tail for shore as Ten Large needed to clear customs and Wally needed supplies for the island. After spending the day running errands with everyone, they dropped me off at the train station and I headed back up to Bangkok.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span> will confess to being a bit melancholy on the ferry from Ko Phi Phi to Ko Lanta. It was slowly beginning to sink in that my trip was nearly over, the money nearly gone and coming home no longer felt so far in the future. \r\n\r\n\r\nAfter leaving Leah and Kate at the resort I returned to the isthmus to find Thai New Year, or Sonkron as it's called, in full swing. I had planned to spend a quiet day writing and relaxing, but things took a different turn. It wasn't long before I was completely soaked (one of the traditions of Sonkron is to throw water) and covered in white paste. I stopped in for a drink and next thing I knew it was late at night and I was due to catch a ferry the next morning.\r\n<break>\r\nI wasn't expecting much from Ko Lanta; I was using it mainly as a jumping off point for some of the islands to the south. Regrettably Lanta was as touristy and underwhelming as I expected. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/landsendkolanta.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"165\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Lands End, Ko Lanta, Thailand\" />The majority of the big resorts are clustered at the north end of the island so naturally I headed south toward the marine park and stayed at the southern most bungalow operation I could find. The next thing south from where I stayed was the national part headquarters and the lighthouse at the southern terminus of the island. I spent the first day on the beach under overcast skies wondering just what it was that I was missing. The sunset was spectacular, probably the most spectacular I've seen in all my travels and yet it failed to move me.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/kolantasunset.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Sunset, Ko Lanta, Thailand\" />My overwhelming memory of Lanta is the smell of garbage. Trash piles at the side of the road, beside guesthouse, restaurants, dive shops, ferry docks, everywhere you turn there's another pile of trash. The way I figured it the best bet would be to rent a Honda Dream and try to move faster than the piling trash. For the most part all the development on Ko Lanta is along the western shore and it's heaviest at the north end of the island. The next day I rented a motorbike and drove down every single length of road on the island. It turned out that the eastern shore is largely undeveloped at least in the tourist sense. There is a very pleasant Muslim fishing village toward the southern end of eastern side. The local children were still celebrating Sonkron and stood by the side of the road chucking buckets of ice water on passing cars and motorbikes which was refreshing enough that I would slow down for a bit of dunk each time a passed. \r\n\r\nThe next day I got on a ferry bound for islands to the south. I hopped off at the first stop, Ko Hai, about 20 km south of Ko Lanta. Ko Hai is small and most people visit <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/kohaisunset.jpg\" width=\"178\" height=\"237\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Sunset, Ko Hai, Thailand\" />it only as a snorkeling stop on island hopping day trips. Nevertheless there are two resorts and one small collection of bungalows around a restaurant. For once Lonely Planet was right about something, the bungalows, while pleasant enough, are staffed by Thais so grumpy and unfriendly as to ruin the experience (which is exactly what it said in the guide). Still I spent three nights on Ko Hai. A short walk from the bungalow area and there was a half a mile of deserted white sand beaches. I was finally able to catch up on some writing and reading and generally unwind.\r\n\r\nBut after three days I was sick of the staff and sick of the annoying Swedish girls cluttering the main beach. I hopped on a four island tour boat that passed by in the morning headed for Ko Kradan. Though I only paid for the boat ride, the crew of the boat were kind enough to lone me a snorkel mask each time we stopped. I snorkeled on the backside of Ko Hai and swam through the spectacular Emerald cave to the hidden valley beyond it. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/outsideemeraldcavekomuk.jpg\" width=\"144\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Outside Emerald Cave, Ko Muk, Thailand\" />For eighty meters you swim in complete blackness and emerge out the other side to a valley that's about two hundred meters in diameter with cliff walls at least that high. Unfortunately, because it's such a small and dramatically high enclosure it's nearly impossible to photograph.\r\n\r\nEventually the boat stopped for lunch on the windward side of Ko Kradan or what should have been the windward side, but at the particular moment, with an offshore wind blowing in from the east, was the calmest part of the island. The ferry dropped me off at a deserted beach and the captain pointed to what looked like just jungle and said that if I followed that path I'd get to the other side of the island. Ominous black clouds had been moving westward all day and were nearly overhead by the time I jumped off the boat so I quickly gathered up my things and headed inland. The path actually did exist when I got closer to the tree line and in the end wasn't that long. I emerged out of the jungle into a small clearing with a restaurant and a few bungalows. Paradise Lost Resort was not listed in most guidebooks so after chatting a moment with the American who owned it, I continued on to the other side of the island in search of where I had intended to stay. Just about the time I reached the eastern beach it began to pour. I took shelter under a few of pine trees that lined the back of the beach and met Zoë, who had been on the beach and also taken shelter from the storm. We chatted for a while and she recommended that I stay at Paradise Lost rather than continue up the beach to the other resort which she described as \"more of a refugee camp.\"\r\n\r\nSo it was that I came to meet, Tony, Zoë's husband, and Inda, their three-year-old daughter, as well as Wally who runs Paradise Lost, Tong who cooks and looks after the resort and Ngu who also works at Paradise Lost.\r\n\r\nUp until I arrived on Ko Kradan I had been, were I too be honest, not too fond of Thailand. Despite its reputation as the land of smiles <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/southbeachkokradan.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Southern Beach, Ko Kradan, Thailand\" />I hadn't found the Thais to be nearly as friendly or welcoming as the Cambodians and Lao. I also generally found the travelers in Thailand to be a rather cold and often downright rude bunch. As a result I spent the month of January alone and ever since the girls left I'd hardly talked to anyone. But on Ko Kradan I discovered a slice of Thailand the way it's often describe by wistful hippies who first came here twenty years ago. Tong and Ngu and the rest of the Thais working at Paradise Lost were the nicest people I met in Thailand and Wally was by far the most laid back farang I've come across. I ended up staying on Ko Kradan for the remainder of my time in the south.\r\n\r\nWally arrived on Ko Kradan six years ago having spent the twenty years before that sailing all over the South Pacific. How exactly he came to start a guesthouse operation I never did hear, but it was quite an operation. Tong was an excellent cook and had an especially tasty (and spicy) massaman curry which is a southern Thai specialty, but Wally also offered a full range of barbeque options from massive steaks to pork chops and chicken. And as I discovered one night, when you order the grilled chicken dinner you in fact get a grilled chicken, as in the whole damn chicken, which works out well for the six or seven dogs that live at Paradise Lost (all purebred Thai ridgebacks and probably the best cared for and most spoiled dogs in all of Southeast Asia). <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/tangkokradan.jpg\" width=\"210\" height=\"183\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Me and Tang, Ko Kradan, Thailand\" />One of the dogs, Tang, took a liking to me (or else he just liked company on the beach, who knows) and would follow me down the beach everyday, though he usually took off once I disappeared on the reef.\r\n\r\nThe reef off the southern end of Ko Kradan was the best snorkeling I found in the Islands provided you made it out during high tide, as it could be tough to navigate at low tide. For the entire week I was there I spent nearly every morning on the reef swimming amongst the Moorish Idols, Parrot Fish, Trigger Fish, Cleaner Wrasses and Butterfly Fish as well as the ever present Sergeant Majors and Barracuda. Ko Kradan was barely touched by the tsunami so the reef was as it had always been. According to Wally there were a breeding pair of turtles somewhere out there, but regrettably I never came across them. So long as I got out there before noon when the day trip boats began to arrive, I had the reef to myself like some sort of private underwater playground.\r\n\r\nAfternoons were my favorite time on the island, after the day tripping long tails from nearby Ko Muk departed for home and the four island tour boats from Ko Lanta moved on to the next island, a peaceful silence and almost total stillness settled over the beaches of Ko Kradan. Often a westerly breeze would kick up around two providing a welcome relief from the midday heat and the tide would retreat to the point that when I went back out on the reef the coral fairly scrapped my nose as I floated about, listening to the sound of Parrot Fish munching on bits of lumpy coral or the broken antlers of staghorn coral already half eaten and partly covered in sand.\r\n\r\nI got in the habit of not using fins when I snorkeled so I tended to just drift with the currents moving rather slowly over great fields of coral, reddish brown staghorn with white tips and countless fish hiding in the numerous tangled shadows, including schools of smaller iridescent blue fish with yellow tails, fish whose bodies seemed to me the brightest and most intense blue I've ever seen. Other times I'd do a bit of swimming to follow one of the massive Parrot Fish who's front fins flapped not unlike the wings of their arboreal namesake. These huge riots of pastel hues, pinks and greens and blues and yellows often seemed, when viewed at very close range, to be so finely detailed and the colors so smoothly flowing in gradients of pastel that would have made any circa 1986 interior designer proud, that it was impossible to distinguish scales and after a while they seem to have been perhaps airbrushed or created by some Photoshop whiz. Moorish Idols too, which most often swim in pairs, have such fine scales that even up close with the water magnifying everything it's still impossible to make out the scales.\r\n\r\nWhenever I was on the reef a school of juvenile parrotfish, small wrasses and Sergeant Majors would follow behind me nipping at my knees and ankles hoping for a bit a bread which they are accustomed to getting from the tour boats. Despite the fact that I never had any food they persisted from one end of the reef to the other. Once I stopped to adjust my mask and stood on a large lump of coral. While I was fiddling with the mask I could feel, but not see, something nipping at a cut on my left foot. I put the mask back on and peered down to discover that I had stopped at a cleaner wrasse's station and though no doubt slightly confused by my foot, the fish was nevertheless gamely doing what it did best. I waited until the fish seemed satisfied with his work and then I swam off following a parrotfish so large it had a sucker fish attached to its gills.\r\n\r\nSometimes I swam out past the reef, where the bottom turned sandy and dropped off rather quickly making it impossible to see, in hopes of finding the turtles or perhaps a black tipped reef shark (which are perfectly harmless for the most part), but neither ever showed their faces. Eventually I would give up and move back toward the reef which by then would be very shallow indeed and only passable by carefully swimming through the sandy gullies between the fields of coral, an experience somewhat like I imagine it would feel to fly low and fast through the canyon country of eastern Utah and northern Arizona.\r\n\r\nCloser into shore where the coral began to drop off, great fields of giant black sea urchins lay swaying in the currents and small waves in such a way that the spines looked like little fingers feeling about in the murky water, and at the center of each a great yellow and blue \"eye\" stared back up at you. Where the coral stopped and rocks began to be half covered in sand, the water visibility dropped and the fish became fewer limited to delicately colored yellow and blue striped fish with bodies and eyes that resembled squirrel fish and a few tiny Gobi fish that darted skittishly about as I floated over them. The reefs around Ko Kradan are known for their abundance of rock fish which sit here in the shallows, heavily camouflaged and difficult to see as they remain still, perched on their front flippers, as if patiently waiting for the fins to evolve into arms so that they can leave the sea behind once and for all.\r\n\r\nI never wanted to get out of the water, but inevitably some reminder of my terrestrial origins would come back, thirst, hunger or perhaps just exhaustion, and I would head back to Paradise Lost for a late lunch. Everyday around six I would take the trail back to the beach where I was originally dropped off and watch the sunset from the lookout on the bluff. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/sunsetbeachkokradan.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"\" />Eventually Tony, Zoë and Inda left for Malaysia and for two days it was just Wally and I. But then a few yachty friends of Wally's sailed in and I met, Brian, Dawn and CT, the crew of a fifty-two foot yacht sailing under the name Ten Large. While they slept on the boat, the three of them came ashore during the day and always ate dinner at Paradise Lost. Another yacht whose name I've forgotten also with a crew of three came ashore for two days and eventually an Australian named Peter escaped the other resort (refugee camp was a rather apt description I discovered when I finally made it down that way) to stay at Paradise Lost. Unfortunately for Wally, because he isn't listed in very many guidebooks, the other resort is able to waylay travelers in Trang with package deals paid for in advance. They simply meet the trains arriving from Bangkok and book an all-inclusive package, boat transfer, lodging, etc. and ask for the money up front. Eventually most of these folks find Paradise Lost and end up eating there, but because they've already paid for the lodging their stuck down at the refugee camp. It's too bad because Wally has a great place with friendly people, excellent food and nice bungalows. If you happen to be headed to Ko Kradan or any of the south Thai islands I encourage you to stop by. Wally <a href=\"http://www.kokradan.com\" title=\"Paradise Lost Resort Information\">has a website with contact info</a>, but beware that there is no internet on Ko Kradan and the cell phone reception isn't great so you may have to call a few times to get a decent connection. Although I just showed up and got a room it's worth calling ahead, especially in the high season since there aren't too many bungalows available (though Wally is building more every year).\r\n\r\nI spent the evening eating barbeque and chatting with CT, Dawn and Brian about our various travels and some of their sailing adventures (they recently became mini celebrities in the yachty world when they were boarded by pirates while passing through Malaysia). One day I took a break from snorkeling and made a return trip to emerald cave with the crew of the other yacht. It was a nice change and this time we had the cave to ourselves for quite some time.\r\n\r\nBut like all things that begin, my time on Ko Kradan had to end. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/kokradansunset.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"136\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Sunset Ko Kradan, Thailand\" />I didn't want to leave, but I had a plane flight to London that couldn't be missed. So after seven brilliant days on Ko Kradan we all caught a long tail for shore as Ten Large needed to clear customs and Wally needed supplies for the island. After spending the day running errands with everyone, they dropped me off at the train station and I headed back up to Bangkok.", "dek": "I wasn't expecting much from Ko Kradan, but in the end I discovered a slice of Thailand the way it's often describe by wistful hippies who first came here twenty years ago. Tong and Ngu and the rest of the Thais working at Paradise Lost were the nicest people I met in Thailand and Wally was by far the most laid back farang I've come across. I ended up staying on Ko Kradan for the remainder of my time in the south.\r\n", "pub_date": "2006-04-22T00:11:20", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (99.2079162459869934 7.4090692758064645)", "location": 22, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/kokradan.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/kokradan.jpg", "meta_description": "Ko Kradan is a slice of Thailand the way it's often describe by wistful hippies who first came here forty years ago. ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 55, "fields": {"title": "Closing Time", "slug": "closing-time", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">A</span>fter spending the better part of the day running about Trang, from the customs house to immigration and then Tesco and other warehouse stores for Wally's supplies, I was dropped off near the train station. I had been feeling a bit drab, far too much celebration of ANZAC day the previous evening (which is an Australian holiday to remember a battle on the first world war and was technically only appropriate for Peter the only Australian at Lost Paradise, but we wouldn't have wanted him to celebrate alone).</p>\n<p><break>\nI spent the remainder of the afternoon wandering around downtown Trang, a pleasant little provincial riverside town. The train left just before sunset, sliding smoothly, far more smoothly than an India train, out of the station, through the suburbs of Trang and into the countryside with its banana trees and coconut palms and tamarind trees and bamboo thickets and jungly undergrowth of vines, some of which, if I'm not mistake, were Kudzu. The sky was a dull grey overcast with some strikingly dramatic cloud formations on the eastern horizon. I was lucky and had the two-person berth to myself for the majority of the journey. I sat by the window and watched the scenery slide by thinking about Wally and the rest probably motoring past Ko Muk or perhaps already back on Kradan unloading the weeks supplies into the cycle cart (Ko Kradan bus service) or maybe already back at the restaurant lounging under the thatched roofs telling stories over cold Chang. Barbeque orders would be placed and Ngu would be grilling or tinkering about with the one remaining generator. The dogs would be prowling about begging for scraps, the puppies wrestling in the yard, Tang and Blondie still off at the beach, lying in the shade, bellies full of chicken carcasses and pork scraps begged off the tourists that had lunch on the beach.</p>\n<p>Children in backyards leaned over the fence watching the train as it passed. I thought also of the fact that my time in Southeast Asia was nearly over. Four days in Bangkok to do a bit of last minute work, maybe buy some bootleg DVDs and then poof it disappears from me for now. But it's less the place I will miss that the people, both the locals I've met and the travelers. I'll miss you Southeast Asia, you've changed my whole outlook on the world and shown me things I never dreamed I'd see.</p>\n<p>Like the evening light now falling on the hillsides just north of Trang, a quiet, relaxed light that falls like one of Winslow Homer's washes over the green hills and white thunderheads turning them a golden orange against the distant blackness of a storm over the gulf of Thailand. Thailand in this light becomes a softer, subtler place, less dramatic and harsh than in the glare of the midday sun.</p>\n<p>I started to write a bit of reminiscence, try to remember the highlights of my time in this part of the world before I return to the west, but about halfway through I kept thinking of a popular Buddhist saying—be here now. Most of these dispatches are written in past tense, but this time I want to simply be here now. This moment, on this train. This is the last time I'll post something from Southeast Asia. There is no way I could sum anything up for you, no way I can convey what I've seen and done and even what I have written of is only about one tenth of what I've actually done. So I'm not going to try.</p>\n<p>I know it's hard to do when you're at home and working and everything is the same shit happening over and over again, but it really is true, that bit about tomorrow… that bit about yesterday… one is gone forever and the other will never arrive. There is only now. But I'm not very good at this sort of thing; instead I'll leave you with some thoughts from others:</p>\n<p class=\"quote\">\"To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.\" – <cite>Edward Abbey</cite></p>\n\n<p class=\"quote\">\"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.\" – <cite>e.e. cummings</cite></p>\n\n<p class=\"quote\">\"What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?\" – <cite>George Eliot</cite></p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">A</span>fter spending the better part of the day running about Trang, from the customs house to immigration and then Tesco and other warehouse stores for Wally's supplies, I was dropped off near the train station. I had been feeling a bit drab, far too much celebration of ANZAC day the previous evening (which is an Australian holiday to remember a battle on the first world war and was technically only appropriate for Peter the only Australian at Lost Paradise, but we wouldn't have wanted him to celebrate alone).\r\n\r\n<break>\r\nI spent the remainder of the afternoon wandering around downtown Trang, a pleasant little provincial riverside town. The train left just before sunset, sliding smoothly, far more smoothly than an India train, out of the station, through the suburbs of Trang and into the countryside with its banana trees and coconut palms and tamarind trees and bamboo thickets and jungly undergrowth of vines, some of which, if I'm not mistake, were Kudzu. The sky was a dull grey overcast with some strikingly dramatic cloud formations on the eastern horizon. I was lucky and had the two-person berth to myself for the majority of the journey. I sat by the window and watched the scenery slide by thinking about Wally and the rest probably motoring past Ko Muk or perhaps already back on Kradan unloading the weeks supplies into the cycle cart (Ko Kradan bus service) or maybe already back at the restaurant lounging under the thatched roofs telling stories over cold Chang. Barbeque orders would be placed and Ngu would be grilling or tinkering about with the one remaining generator. The dogs would be prowling about begging for scraps, the puppies wrestling in the yard, Tang and Blondie still off at the beach, lying in the shade, bellies full of chicken carcasses and pork scraps begged off the tourists that had lunch on the beach.\r\n\r\nChildren in backyards leaned over the fence watching the train as it passed. I thought also of the fact that my time in Southeast Asia was nearly over. Four days in Bangkok to do a bit of last minute work, maybe buy some bootleg DVDs and then poof it disappears from me for now. But it's less the place I will miss that the people, both the locals I've met and the travelers. I'll miss you Southeast Asia, you've changed my whole outlook on the world and shown me things I never dreamed I'd see.\r\n\r\nLike the evening light now falling on the hillsides just north of Trang, a quiet, relaxed light that falls like one of Winslow Homer's washes over the green hills and white thunderheads turning them a golden orange against the distant blackness of a storm over the gulf of Thailand. Thailand in this light becomes a softer, subtler place, less dramatic and harsh than in the glare of the midday sun.\r\n\r\nI started to write a bit of reminiscence, try to remember the highlights of my time in this part of the world before I return to the west, but about halfway through I kept thinking of a popular Buddhist saying—be here now. Most of these dispatches are written in past tense, but this time I want to simply be here now. This moment, on this train. This is the last time I'll post something from Southeast Asia. There is no way I could sum anything up for you, no way I can convey what I've seen and done and even what I have written of is only about one tenth of what I've actually done. So I'm not going to try.\r\n\r\nI know it's hard to do when you're at home and working and everything is the same shit happening over and over again, but it really is true, that bit about tomorrow… that bit about yesterday… one is gone forever and the other will never arrive. There is only now. But I'm not very good at this sort of thing; instead I'll leave you with some thoughts from others:\r\n\r\n<p class=\"quote\">\"To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.\" – <cite>Edward Abbey</cite></p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"quote\">\"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.\" – <cite>e.e. cummings</cite></p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"quote\">\"What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?\" – <cite>George Eliot</cite></p>", "dek": "Headed back to Europe: I started to write a bit of reminiscence, trying to remember the highlights of my time in Asia before I return to the west, but about halfway through I kept thinking of a popular Buddhist saying — be here now. Most of these dispatches are written in past tense, but this time I want to simply be here now. This moment, on this train. This is the last time I'll post something from Southeast Asia.", "pub_date": "2006-05-01T00:14:23", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (98.5398101669469213 7.0586452366957175)", "location": 22, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/thailandtrain.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/thailandtrain.jpg", "meta_description": "This moment, on this train. This is the last time I'll post something from Southeast Asia for a while. Sadness", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 56, "fields": {"title": "London Calling", "slug": "london-calling", "body_html": "<p>\"Why are you choosing to visit your friend now?\"<br />\n(shrug) (smile)<br />\n\"How much money are you bringing in?\"<br />\n\"Money? On me? None. I was planning to use that ATM behind you.\"<br />\n\"Do you have any bank statements showing how much money you have?\"<br />\n\"Uh, no, I didn't know that I needed…\"<br />\n\"You have onward tickets?\"<br />\n\"Yes.\"<br />\n\"May I see them?\"<br />\n\"Uh, no. I haven't printed the receipt yet.\"<br />\n\"When are you planning to do that?\"<br />\n\"Soon.\"<br />\n\"So you have no money, no proof of onward travel and no reason for coming to London?\"<br />\n\"Correct.\"<br />\n\"If I showed up in the States you would turn me around and send me back…\"<br />\n\"Well, <strong>I</strong> wouldn't… and besides why would you want to go to the States?\"<br /></p>\n<p>This last line elicits the faint traces of a smile and the otherwise very serious and prim border agent relents. She says something about a verbal warning but stamps my passport anyway letting me into the U.K. I try not to run but hurry just in case she changes her mind. I find it highly ironic that of all the borders I've crossed in countries that were only recently at war the one in Heathrow was by far the hardest. That's the west for you. Reasons and rules. Welcome home. You were right Wally; you do have a lot more freedom on Ko Kradan than anywhere else.\n<break>\nMy advice, when crossing borders and just generally when traveling, is to learn a bit of self-deprecation, or national deprecation, particularly if your American. By and large the world seems to like Americans, but that doesn't mean they don't enjoy making fun of us. We seem to be seen as sort of hapless idiots who don't really mean any harm, but just aren't very bright. Which is basically accurate I suppose. The nicest thing anyone's said to me on this trip was my friend Keith who looked at me one night and said, \"you're the least American American I've met.\" So it goes.</p>\n<p>I don't want to come off as being down on Americans, I'm not, but I do sympathize with the world's disdain for certain, er, character flaws we seem to have, such a tendency to be a bit squeamish and particular about sanitation. And our use of the English language is a bit um, primitive. But you don't need to travel to know that. The English for instance absolutely hate American slang and when you get down to words like, \"dude\" and \"awesome\" does make you sound a bit daft.</p>\n<p>But I didn't come to England to practice the Queen's English; I came to see Thet who I met way back in <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2005/dec/05/camel-no-name/\" title=\"Luxagraf Entry from Jaisalmer India\">Jaisalmer India on the camel trek</a>. Thet and I kept in touch periodically and since my Thai visa expired a week before I was due in Budapest, she kindly said I could spend a few layover days with her in London. Thet and her flatmate live a few blocks off Holloway road in what I believe qualifies as North London (if I'm wrong about that set me straight in the comments section).</p>\n<p>Compared to getting through customs, finding Thet's flat was ridiculously easy. After a lovely breakfast and some catch up travel stories, we set out to explore London. We took the bus down to Trafalgar square, walked through Chinatown and snacked on dim sum before making a brief walk through of the National Gallery. Then we ended up in SoHo where we managed to find a bar with £2 drinks at happy hour. Forgive me for interupting the narrative with pointless tangents, but I spent the last three months around Londoners so I had a fair number of expectations, er, misconceptions. The first thing I have to set straight is London's reputation as the most expensive place around. Now if you're coming in with dollars or euros or any currency other than pounds, yes London is expensive. But the expense is in the exchange rate. If you happen to live in London and earn pounds I think London is actually quite cheap. Drinks are rarely more than a fiver, a huge meal can be had for fewer than £10. I can't comment on rent, but in general living expenses in London are less than New York and certainly less than Paris. The key is to earn pounds. If you don't have sterling than yes London will drain your wallet in the time it takes you to work out the difference between pants and trousers.</p>\n<p>The next day we set out for the Tate Modern and were joined by Thet's friend Terese who's originally from Sweden (Another friend of Thet's, Joy is from Thailand and her flatmate is from China. I traveled extensively in SE Asia with Londoners and spent my time in London with emigrants, which is exactly how I'd want it). <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londonbridge.jpg\" width=\"205\" height=\"228\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"London Bridge, London, England\" />After taking the bus down to Bank and having a look at London Bridge, we walked in the sunshine along the Thames. We paused briefly to inspect the Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare's works were first brought to the stage. I didn't go in because I wasn't in the mood for an organized, narrated walk through. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londonglobetheatre.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"176\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Shakespeare Globe Theatre, London, England\" />Perhaps it's just the nerdy English major coming out in me, but it made me feel good to see that not only is Shakespeare still in print and still read, but the English have taken the time to reconstruct the Theatre as well (the original was destroyed by a fire and then The Globe V2 was destroyed by those pesky puritans). Art isn't dead. And people still read, pundits be damned. And the show always goes on.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.tate.org.uk/\" title=\"Tate Modern Online\">The Tate Modern</a> is an imposing, factory like building housing an impressive collection of Modern art. What's most impressive about the Tate Modern is that it's free (anyone been to the MOMA in New York lately? Decidedly not free), well you have to pay for the exhibitions, but the permanent collection is free. Unfortunately the Tate Modern was re-hanging much of their permanent collection (my museum timing has always been awful) so there was a limited amount of art on display. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londontatecytwombly.jpg\" width=\"161\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Cy Twombly, Tate Modern, London, England\" />There are a number of amazing pieces by Jean Miro and Max Ernst, as well as some Picassos and the usual suspects of 20th Century art. But for me the highlight was Cy Twombly's paintings and sculptures. I have a friend who loves Cy Twombly so I was familiar with his work through books and photos, but frankly it always seemed a bit jumbled and lacking to me. However when you get up close to the actual canvas the detail is amazing and something about the four paintings at the Tate (entitled Quattro Stagioni - a painting in four parts) were spellbinding to me. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londontatecytwomblytwo.jpg\" width=\"172\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Cy Twombly, Tate Modern, London, England\" />Its as if you can actually feel the swirling chaos begin to envelope you and then settle to produce a calm that wasn't there before you stepped in front of them. I must have spent twenty minutes staring at them. Long enough that Thet and Terese were already outside waiting for me. Eventually I tore myself away, though I honestly could have stood there for a couple of hours.</p>\n<p>We walked down the river toward another gallery I have never heard of but which Thet promised me was good. It turned out that the gallery had packed it in and moved to Chelsea but I did get to see the London eye and Big Ben and Parliament and such tourist sites. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londonparliament.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Parliament, Thames River, London England\" />Eventually Terese had to go home and Thet and I stopped in at a riverside pub and sat outside drinking a few glasses of bitter. Oh yes, I forgot the best part, it was twenty degrees, the warmest day of the year so far in London and hardly a cloud in the sky. The atmosphere on the streets was near jubilation everyone smiling and invested with that same strange energy that I used to see after the first true thaw in Northampton. There is something about a long dark winter that makes you appreciate spring so much more. We sat in the sunshine and chatted about future trips and the essential differences between Americans and the British and then we headed home for a bite to eat.</p>\n<p>The following day the thermometer climbed up to 25 Celsius and we scrapped our original plans in favor of a barbeque in Hampstead Heath. We stopped by the grocery store and picked up a disposable grill and a few pieces of chicken and sausage and headed for the park. After climbing up a hill that overlooked all of London we sat down in the high, unmowed spring grasses. Luckily said grasses were green and water logged or we would probably have burned down a good portion of Hampstead Heath with our portable grill. We did not, as is suggested in the instructions, elevate the grill on rocks or bricks. No, we just set it on the grass and lit it up. As the flames whipped in the wind and began to light the long strands of grass on fire we started to get a little nervous. I stayed by the grill trying to press the grass down on all sides so it wouldn't catch fire while Thet looked for some stones or something nonflammable to set the grill on. I was a little concerned that the heat from the bottom of the grill was going to ignite the hillside before she got back (we all know the temperature at which books burn thanks to Mr. Bradbury, but I haven't a clue what temperature grass begins to spontaneously combust). Fortunately Thet found a good size log and disaster was averted. I would like to have seen the look on that border agent's face if I had burned down Hampstead Heath. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londonmollyhampsteadheath.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Hampstead Heath, London, England\" />We grilled chicken and sausage and it wasn't long before every dog in the park was sniffing their way over to our little spot. For the most part they left when their owners called but one lab just stayed. Molly was her name and curiously she never went after the food. She simply sat in the grass in front of us and hung out. Perhaps she was just bored with her owner or maybe she was trying to escape the three poodles that she apparently lived with, whatever the case we had a dog for the afternoon. A friend of mine once suggested that there ought to be a dog rental service for those that wanted a dog, but not all the time. Well if you want a dog, get a grill and head for the park. Just be careful with the flames, London has a bad history of fires.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londonthetteresejoyme.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Thet, Terese, Joy and me, London, England\" />Later that night we met up with Terese and Joy and hit a few pubs on a street whose name I don't remember but which I gathered was well known for its bars and pubs. </p>\n<p>My last day we took it easy. I accompanied Thet on a few errands (by bizarre stroke of chance I have now been to the employment offices of both England and France, but still never made it to one in the States) and then we went to another park. That evening after having the requisite dinner of fish and chips we wandered about to a few pubs and called it an early night since I was leaving quite early in the morning.</p>\n<p>All in all I adjusted fairly quickly to being back in the west. Strangely the things that I thought might bother me didn't too much and things I hadn't considered became very noticeable. The most interesting change that I hadn't considered was the length of the day. For the last seven months I have been within a few hundred kilometers of the equator which means that the sun rises at about 6:30 and sets at about 6:30. In London however the sun doesn't set until well past eight at night, which completely messed up my sense of time. The best thing about the west though is that you can drink the tap water. I don't know why I enjoyed it so much, <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/londonnightbus.jpg\" width=\"193\" height=\"250\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"London at night from the bus\" />probably simply because you can. And true tap water rarely tastes very good, but you don't realize what a great thing it is to brush your teeth in tap water until you haven't for a long time. Wash machines were also a revolutionary idea, too revolutionary for me.</p>\n<p>I wish that I had been able to stay in London longer, it's by far my favorite city I've visited on this trip and the only other city I would rank with New York (Paris and Bangkok are both nice and I enjoyed them both, but neither of them is at the same level as New York and London). There is something about both New York and London that the minute I arrive, I feel at home, as if that is where I ought to be, have always been and may well be forever.</p>\n<p>Many thanks to Thet and her friends for their hospitality and kindness to strangers; should I ever actually have a place in the U.S. you are all welcome whenever you like (and I'll read up on Manhattan landmarks so I can figure out where they are). Cheers.</p>", "body_markdown": "\"Why are you choosing to visit your friend now?\"<br />\r\n(shrug) (smile)<br />\r\n\"How much money are you bringing in?\"<br />\r\n\"Money? On me? None. I was planning to use that ATM behind you.\"<br />\r\n\"Do you have any bank statements showing how much money you have?\"<br />\r\n\"Uh, no, I didn't know that I needed…\"<br />\r\n\"You have onward tickets?\"<br />\r\n\"Yes.\"<br />\r\n\"May I see them?\"<br />\r\n\"Uh, no. I haven't printed the receipt yet.\"<br />\r\n\"When are you planning to do that?\"<br />\r\n\"Soon.\"<br />\r\n\"So you have no money, no proof of onward travel and no reason for coming to London?\"<br />\r\n\"Correct.\"<br />\r\n\"If I showed up in the States you would turn me around and send me back…\"<br />\r\n\"Well, **I** wouldn't… and besides why would you want to go to the States?\"<br />\r\n\r\nThis last line elicits the faint traces of a smile and the otherwise very serious and prim border agent relents. She says something about a verbal warning but stamps my passport anyway letting me into the U.K. I try not to run but hurry just in case she changes her mind. I find it highly ironic that of all the borders I've crossed in countries that were only recently at war the one in Heathrow was by far the hardest. That's the west for you. Reasons and rules. Welcome home. You were right Wally; you do have a lot more freedom on Ko Kradan than anywhere else.\r\n<break>\r\nMy advice, when crossing borders and just generally when traveling, is to learn a bit of self-deprecation, or national deprecation, particularly if your American. By and large the world seems to like Americans, but that doesn't mean they don't enjoy making fun of us. We seem to be seen as sort of hapless idiots who don't really mean any harm, but just aren't very bright. Which is basically accurate I suppose. The nicest thing anyone's said to me on this trip was my friend Keith who looked at me one night and said, \"you're the least American American I've met.\" So it goes.\r\n\r\nI don't want to come off as being down on Americans, I'm not, but I do sympathize with the world's disdain for certain, er, character flaws we seem to have, such a tendency to be a bit squeamish and particular about sanitation. And our use of the English language is a bit um, primitive. But you don't need to travel to know that. The English for instance absolutely hate American slang and when you get down to words like, \"dude\" and \"awesome\" does make you sound a bit daft.\r\n\r\nBut I didn't come to England to practice the Queen's English; I came to see Thet who I met way back in <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2005/dec/05/camel-no-name/\" title=\"Luxagraf Entry from Jaisalmer India\">Jaisalmer India on the camel trek</a>. Thet and I kept in touch periodically and since my Thai visa expired a week before I was due in Budapest, she kindly said I could spend a few layover days with her in London. Thet and her flatmate live a few blocks off Holloway road in what I believe qualifies as North London (if I'm wrong about that set me straight in the comments section).\r\n\r\nCompared to getting through customs, finding Thet's flat was ridiculously easy. After a lovely breakfast and some catch up travel stories, we set out to explore London. We took the bus down to Trafalgar square, walked through Chinatown and snacked on dim sum before making a brief walk through of the National Gallery. Then we ended up in SoHo where we managed to find a bar with £2 drinks at happy hour. Forgive me for interupting the narrative with pointless tangents, but I spent the last three months around Londoners so I had a fair number of expectations, er, misconceptions. The first thing I have to set straight is London's reputation as the most expensive place around. Now if you're coming in with dollars or euros or any currency other than pounds, yes London is expensive. But the expense is in the exchange rate. If you happen to live in London and earn pounds I think London is actually quite cheap. Drinks are rarely more than a fiver, a huge meal can be had for fewer than £10. I can't comment on rent, but in general living expenses in London are less than New York and certainly less than Paris. The key is to earn pounds. If you don't have sterling than yes London will drain your wallet in the time it takes you to work out the difference between pants and trousers.\r\n\r\nThe next day we set out for the Tate Modern and were joined by Thet's friend Terese who's originally from Sweden (Another friend of Thet's, Joy is from Thailand and her flatmate is from China. I traveled extensively in SE Asia with Londoners and spent my time in London with emigrants, which is exactly how I'd want it). <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/londonbridge.jpg\" width=\"205\" height=\"228\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"London Bridge, London, England\" />After taking the bus down to Bank and having a look at London Bridge, we walked in the sunshine along the Thames. We paused briefly to inspect the Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare's works were first brought to the stage. I didn't go in because I wasn't in the mood for an organized, narrated walk through. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/londonglobetheatre.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"176\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Shakespeare Globe Theatre, London, England\" />Perhaps it's just the nerdy English major coming out in me, but it made me feel good to see that not only is Shakespeare still in print and still read, but the English have taken the time to reconstruct the Theatre as well (the original was destroyed by a fire and then The Globe V2 was destroyed by those pesky puritans). Art isn't dead. And people still read, pundits be damned. And the show always goes on.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://www.tate.org.uk/\" title=\"Tate Modern Online\">The Tate Modern</a> is an imposing, factory like building housing an impressive collection of Modern art. What's most impressive about the Tate Modern is that it's free (anyone been to the MOMA in New York lately? Decidedly not free), well you have to pay for the exhibitions, but the permanent collection is free. Unfortunately the Tate Modern was re-hanging much of their permanent collection (my museum timing has always been awful) so there was a limited amount of art on display. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/londontatecytwombly.jpg\" width=\"161\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Cy Twombly, Tate Modern, London, England\" />There are a number of amazing pieces by Jean Miro and Max Ernst, as well as some Picassos and the usual suspects of 20th Century art. But for me the highlight was Cy Twombly's paintings and sculptures. I have a friend who loves Cy Twombly so I was familiar with his work through books and photos, but frankly it always seemed a bit jumbled and lacking to me. However when you get up close to the actual canvas the detail is amazing and something about the four paintings at the Tate (entitled Quattro Stagioni - a painting in four parts) were spellbinding to me. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/londontatecytwomblytwo.jpg\" width=\"172\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Cy Twombly, Tate Modern, London, England\" />Its as if you can actually feel the swirling chaos begin to envelope you and then settle to produce a calm that wasn't there before you stepped in front of them. I must have spent twenty minutes staring at them. Long enough that Thet and Terese were already outside waiting for me. Eventually I tore myself away, though I honestly could have stood there for a couple of hours.\r\n\r\nWe walked down the river toward another gallery I have never heard of but which Thet promised me was good. It turned out that the gallery had packed it in and moved to Chelsea but I did get to see the London eye and Big Ben and Parliament and such tourist sites. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/londonparliament.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Parliament, Thames River, London England\" />Eventually Terese had to go home and Thet and I stopped in at a riverside pub and sat outside drinking a few glasses of bitter. Oh yes, I forgot the best part, it was twenty degrees, the warmest day of the year so far in London and hardly a cloud in the sky. The atmosphere on the streets was near jubilation everyone smiling and invested with that same strange energy that I used to see after the first true thaw in Northampton. There is something about a long dark winter that makes you appreciate spring so much more. We sat in the sunshine and chatted about future trips and the essential differences between Americans and the British and then we headed home for a bite to eat.\r\n\r\nThe following day the thermometer climbed up to 25 Celsius and we scrapped our original plans in favor of a barbeque in Hampstead Heath. We stopped by the grocery store and picked up a disposable grill and a few pieces of chicken and sausage and headed for the park. After climbing up a hill that overlooked all of London we sat down in the high, unmowed spring grasses. Luckily said grasses were green and water logged or we would probably have burned down a good portion of Hampstead Heath with our portable grill. We did not, as is suggested in the instructions, elevate the grill on rocks or bricks. No, we just set it on the grass and lit it up. As the flames whipped in the wind and began to light the long strands of grass on fire we started to get a little nervous. I stayed by the grill trying to press the grass down on all sides so it wouldn't catch fire while Thet looked for some stones or something nonflammable to set the grill on. I was a little concerned that the heat from the bottom of the grill was going to ignite the hillside before she got back (we all know the temperature at which books burn thanks to Mr. Bradbury, but I haven't a clue what temperature grass begins to spontaneously combust). Fortunately Thet found a good size log and disaster was averted. I would like to have seen the look on that border agent's face if I had burned down Hampstead Heath. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/londonmollyhampsteadheath.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Hampstead Heath, London, England\" />We grilled chicken and sausage and it wasn't long before every dog in the park was sniffing their way over to our little spot. For the most part they left when their owners called but one lab just stayed. Molly was her name and curiously she never went after the food. She simply sat in the grass in front of us and hung out. Perhaps she was just bored with her owner or maybe she was trying to escape the three poodles that she apparently lived with, whatever the case we had a dog for the afternoon. A friend of mine once suggested that there ought to be a dog rental service for those that wanted a dog, but not all the time. Well if you want a dog, get a grill and head for the park. Just be careful with the flames, London has a bad history of fires.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/londonthetteresejoyme.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Thet, Terese, Joy and me, London, England\" />Later that night we met up with Terese and Joy and hit a few pubs on a street whose name I don't remember but which I gathered was well known for its bars and pubs. \r\n\r\nMy last day we took it easy. I accompanied Thet on a few errands (by bizarre stroke of chance I have now been to the employment offices of both England and France, but still never made it to one in the States) and then we went to another park. That evening after having the requisite dinner of fish and chips we wandered about to a few pubs and called it an early night since I was leaving quite early in the morning.\r\n\r\nAll in all I adjusted fairly quickly to being back in the west. Strangely the things that I thought might bother me didn't too much and things I hadn't considered became very noticeable. The most interesting change that I hadn't considered was the length of the day. For the last seven months I have been within a few hundred kilometers of the equator which means that the sun rises at about 6:30 and sets at about 6:30. In London however the sun doesn't set until well past eight at night, which completely messed up my sense of time. The best thing about the west though is that you can drink the tap water. I don't know why I enjoyed it so much, <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/londonnightbus.jpg\" width=\"193\" height=\"250\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"London at night from the bus\" />probably simply because you can. And true tap water rarely tastes very good, but you don't realize what a great thing it is to brush your teeth in tap water until you haven't for a long time. Wash machines were also a revolutionary idea, too revolutionary for me.\r\n\r\nI wish that I had been able to stay in London longer, it's by far my favorite city I've visited on this trip and the only other city I would rank with New York (Paris and Bangkok are both nice and I enjoyed them both, but neither of them is at the same level as New York and London). There is something about both New York and London that the minute I arrive, I feel at home, as if that is where I ought to be, have always been and may well be forever.\r\n\r\nMany thanks to Thet and her friends for their hospitality and kindness to strangers; should I ever actually have a place in the U.S. you are all welcome whenever you like (and I'll read up on Manhattan landmarks so I can figure out where they are). Cheers.", "dek": "London: The British don't want me -- no money, no proof I'm leaving and no real reason for coming, good lord, I must be a vagabond, up to no good, surely. Eventually the customs agent relents and lets me in, a favor I repay by nearly burning down one of London's bigger parks. Seriously.", "pub_date": "2006-05-10T00:16:42", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-0.1495599746495864 51.5511920468215905)", "location": 20, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/londonthames.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/londonthames.jpg", "meta_description": "London called, but then it almost didn't answer. Or, how I got into Great Britain by making snide jokes about America. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 57, "fields": {"title": "Refracted Light and Grace", "slug": "refracted-light-and-grace", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">M</span>y first impressions of central Europe were from the plane coming in low over Budapest where I noted that the typical Soviet architectural blights. Every colonizing country seems to leave behind some token of itself, a scent, not unlike a dog pausing to lift a leg on every tree it passes. </p>\n<p>The French tend to leave behind Arc de Triomphes of varying sizes and a deep knowledge of bread making. With the Spanish it tends toward Stucco churches, the English a habit of afternoon tea and some distilleries. The Soviets version of leg lifting can be seen in the form of monstrous, boxy concrete high-rise apartment buildings as ugly, cheerless and cold as the former regime itself.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>From the air over a Budapest the most immediately striking feature are the Soviet style high-rises just outside the old town areas. Which is not so say Hungarian architecture is lacking, just perhaps not as conspicuous ugly as that of the Soviets. I'm sure in due time the Hungarians will tear down these architectural insults as they have all the statues of Party leaders and Communist heroes (which some entrepreneurial sort bought up and placed in a park where today for a modest fee you can see Lenin and Stalin immortalized in iron and carefully quarantined outside of the city which never wanted anything to do with them), but for the time being the dominate the view from the air.</p>\n<p>I spent a few minutes, maybe half an hour, at the airport studying the blocky structures from a distance, trying to get away from the immediately oppressive feeling they gave me. Eventually my shuttle bus arrived and pulled me out of the dismal stupor I had fallen into. The jostling of luggage and fellow passengers finding seats in the van provided a human inertia that slowly propelled me out of the gloomy mood that had crept over me. As we drove out of the suburbs toward the city I watched as the Soviet style apartment buildings slowly gave way to blocks of older vaguely Art Nouveau buildings until finally when we crossed the bridge into Pest I was confronted with the modern Budapest—the faceless glass of modern hotels juxtaposed against a background of striking Gothic-spired Churches and Baroque facades.</p>\n<p>Budapest actually consists of two cities, Buda and Pest separated by the Danube River. The hotel where we were staying was located on the Pest side of the river. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestriverwalk.gif\" width=\"194\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Danube banks Budapest Hungary\" />High on the fifth floor, where my suitably generic but comfortable room was located, my balcony afforded a view of the small riverside walkway below where several cafes had tables and umbrellas overlooking the Danube and then beyond where the river floated lazily by and in the background Buda's Castle Hill district rose up from the opposite bank. I also had a clear view of the so-called Chain Bridge a few hundred meters up the river, one of three or four bridges that span the Danube linking Buda and Pest. </p>\n<p>After getting settled in the hotel we decided to head out for a bit of an explore up the banks of the river. Walking along the Danube that night as the sun slowly sank behind the north end of Castle Hill and the shadows lengthened across the face of the old Parliament building, I came across a strange and vaguely disturbing monument of iron shoes sitting in pairs at the edge of the river. Most monuments, whether they commemorate misery or good fortune, exist as positive space, a statue in a square, a wall under some leafy trees, a cannon pointing out over a field, but a few, particularly those that commemorate loss, evoke emptiness and anguish through a sculptural negative space. </p>\n<p>The iron shoes scattered there beside the river seemed to me a kind of sculptural synecdoche, tiny parts chosen to represent a whole which was forcibly removed from time. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestshoes.gif\" width=\"188\" height=\"250\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Shoe Memorial, Budapest, Hungary\" />Approaching the shoes scattered on the concrete embankment one does not at first realize they are iron or even a sculpture as the iron is quite blackened and in the fading light of evening they looked as if a group of people simply left their shoes for an afternoon swim. But on closer examination one quickly notices that the styles and cuts of the shoes are outdated and harkened from some moment in the past. But it's a moment curiously suspended, as if the owners might at any moment climb back up out of the river into which they were cast and reclaim their lost footwear. </p>\n<p>None of the various guidebooks we were carrying mentioned the monument, but a small plague embedded in the concrete back away from the shoes themselves commemorates the deaths of thousands Jews who were forced into the Danube by the Arrow Cross (Hungarian Nazi Party). What's most striking about Sculptor Gyula Pauer's memorial is its quietude in the midst of so many rather loud, larger than life monuments and buildings like the towering pose of the nearby parliament buildings whose Gothic high arches and turrets seemed suddenly overwrought and desperate in their attempt to establish themselves. I thought of how sometimes the quietest statements are the most powerful, the way for instance Nick Drake's <em>Pink Moon</em>, though almost whispering at times, is one of the most formidable records I've heard.</p>\n<p>The shoes sitting quietly there on the embankment, very nearly in the shadow of the Margit Island Bridge and so still against the backdrop of the Danube waters reminded me of Newton's famous analogy comparing the concept of time to the Thames River. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestcastlehillsunset.gif\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Castle Hill Buda, Budapest, Hungary\" />If a substitution of rivers may be allowed, the shoes then seemed to me to perfectly capture a moment, a frozen piece of time which allowed one to circumventing the present through a sculptural trapdoor, to return to something that refused to be swept away by the river.</p>\n<p>I recalled one evening in Cambodia when Rob remarked with some surprise that neither Matt nor Debi nor I had any kind of timepiece between us. And in fact none of us ever had. I don't know about either of them but I don't wear a watch. Once some years ago I badly burned my arm with boiling water. Most of the skin on the back of my hand and part of my wrist sloughed off and was cut away by surgeons. By a strange trick of physics the leather band of the wristwatch I was wearing at the time, wicked the water away from my skin before it could be burned. Thus I had a thin band of flesh surrounded by two rather disgusting areas of boiled skin. Eventually of course the burned skin healed, but curiously, the skin where my watch had been remained several shades lighter than that of the burned areas. In spite of the fact that the watch ostensibly saved my skin, it was that protected portion that looked out of place in the end. I decided then that I would never wear a watch again.</p>\n<p>How I translated a burn and bit of discolored skin into an intense dislike of mechanical time is something I can't quite explain except to say that perhaps noticing what was not on my wrist suddenly made me keenly aware of other things that also were not there. Eventually the whole concept of time came to seem too arbitrary to me. Morning, evening, spring, fall these words evoke things, numbers require second hand translation and seem to me a wasted effort.</p>\n<p>Later that evening after dinner I sat for a while outside on the balcony smoking cigarettes and contemplating the nightscape of Castle Hill which rose up out of the shimmering Danube waters. The drone of car horns in the distance and the electric <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestcastlehillnight.gif\" width=\"230\" height=\"164\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Castle Hill, Buda, Budapest, Hungary\" />tram squealing out of the station filled the evening air. A riverboat slowly churned up river with a handful of tourists pointing cameras back toward the banks, capturing moments of time, moments they will likely playback later for family and loved ones who were not there. I sincerely doubt if any of them will ever say “this was taken at 7 pm on May 10th.” Instead they will likely say this was our first evening in Budapest, this was the night we sailed along a river, and this was where we walked, danced and swam.</p>\n<p>We set out early the next day to explore the Castle Hill area which is the oldest part of the city. The name Castle Hill fails to encapsulate the area. The left side of the hill is actually a palace where the kings once ruled and now stand several museums. The right side of the hill, still encircled by the castle walls contains Buda's old town quarter. All total the area is more than a kilometer long and encompasses a small city, referred to now as “old town” since like it or not time is our major marker of space.</p>\n<p>Castle hill is a sprawling affair that reminded me somewhat of the similarly sprawling City Palace in Udaipur India. Both occupy the top of reasonable sized hills and both encircle what were once functioning cities. And both were constructed over long periods of time according the changing whims of successive rulers until looking at them today they become a reflection of the changing architectural tastes of their respective cultures.</p>\n<p>Which is not to say that these two very different places have much in common beyond being large castles built on hills. When traveling for long periods of time it's easy to slip into the comfortable notion that one has seen and done certain things that need not be seen or done again. It is in other words easy to feel that if you've seen one tree you've seen them all. But if that were truly the case we could live the life of lightening bugs and be done with it by sunrise. A beech is not a maple is not an oak is certainly not a white fir, the differences in bark and leaves and roots and scent and shade and a million other things will leap out at you provided you pay attention. The notion that the part can be representative of the whole is popular in postmodernist circles, but take it outside the academic and it quickly shows itself as it is—a failure of the imagination.</p>\n<p>I believe that one could pick at random any one object and study it, look at it, feel it, breathe it, hear it and be with it every day for the rest of your life without ever really being able to say that you know it, that you understand it, that it has failed to move you, provoke you or challenge you in some way you weren't expecting. One of my favorite characters in film is Harvey Keitel's character in Wayne Wang's <em>Smoke</em>. Keitel's character, Aggie, takes the same photograph of the same scene from the same place at the same time every day for ten years and has all the prints in massive photo albums and explains to John Hurt's character the subtle differences between each. That's the sort of patience and dedication and love that we all ought to aspire to. </p>\n<p>We spent the better part of the morning wandering the castle grounds, the narrow streets of old town and a made brief visit to the Hungarian National Gallery. Eventually some clouds rolled in and after lunch a light drizzle began to fall. My parents decided to head back since they were still adjusting to the time change. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestcasthillstreet.gif\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Old Town Castle Hill, Budapest, Hungary\" />I set out to find the underground passageways that lace the hillside beneath the castle. Most of the area from Budapest south is largely comprised a very porous limestone known as Karst (which, if you've been reading this site for while, you may remember also formed the caves I visited in Laos). Over millions of years the water that seeps into the Karst eventually carves out caves and tunnels. The ones beneath Castle Hill in Buda have been slightly improved by man over the centuries and have served as everything from wine cellar to bomb shelter depending on the times.</p>\n<p>Today for a modest fee you can wander through a labyrinth of damp tunnels with dim lights and faux cave paintings in what I believe is supposed to give you taste of Neolithic religion and superstition or at least someone's idea of Neolithic caves, but unfortunately it comes off a little too campy to be all that interesting. It was a nice escape from the rain, but when I emerged out the far end of the tunnel I was craving something a little less Disneylandish.</p>\n<p>I set out alone to escape the crowds of Castle Hill and explore the more modern parts of the city. Something in a travel brochure on the airplane had caught my eye and I decided to see if I could find my way to the tomb of Gul Baba a Turkish Whirling dervish <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestgulbaba.gif\" width=\"165\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Gul Baba, Whirling Dervish, Budapest, Hungary\" />who died in Budapest in 1541. I don't know much about whirling dervishes aside from the fact that their Turkish in origin and a friend of mine is in a band of the same name (if you're curious you can visit <a href=\"http://www.myspace.com/thewhirlingdervish\" title=\"Info on Whirling Dervish the band\">whirling dervish's website for more info on the band</a>, but the rumor has it that Gul Baba brought the rose to Buda and the hill on which the tomb rests is known as Rose Hill.</p>\n<p>The truth is that while the Dervish tomb appealed to me I mostly wanted to walk through the streets of the real part of the city since the downside to four star travel is that you're typically sequestered in tourist ghettos, though in Budapest it was more of a business traveler ghetto. In either case you don't really get to see the everyday life of the locals. So I walked through the rain to the tomb, made a few photographs and ducked into a cafe on my way home for a cup of coffee and bite of Hungarian pastry. </p>\n<p>I sat in the back corner of the cafe waiting for the rain to let up thinking of the Hungarian Museum of Fine Art. For the most part there was little of note. The only highlight outside the Spanish gallery of El Grecco and Goya was a single piece from Gauguin's period in Tahiti. I don't recall the name of the painting, <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/budapestwindowwoman.gif\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Old Woman at Window, Hungary\" />it wasn't very large, but the vibrant colors and almost overwhelming sense of passion and life made it fairly leap off the wall next to more muted Monet's and Picassos. Gauguin paid attention and he loved what he saw. His fascination with color seems to have eclipsed nearly every other concern in his mind. Figures are vague as if transitory and chiefly memorable for the light they reflect, background and foreground blend, what matters is not the precise place, nor the precise time, but the color, the color of the world that distinguishes not between only shade and tone and hue and tint to reveal the kaleidoscope that is always all around us.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">M</span>y first impressions of central Europe were from the plane coming in low over Budapest where I noted that the typical Soviet architectural blights. Every colonizing country seems to leave behind some token of itself, a scent, not unlike a dog pausing to lift a leg on every tree it passes. \r\n\r\nThe French tend to leave behind Arc de Triomphes of varying sizes and a deep knowledge of bread making. With the Spanish it tends toward Stucco churches, the English a habit of afternoon tea and some distilleries. The Soviets version of leg lifting can be seen in the form of monstrous, boxy concrete high-rise apartment buildings as ugly, cheerless and cold as the former regime itself.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nFrom the air over a Budapest the most immediately striking feature are the Soviet style high-rises just outside the old town areas. Which is not so say Hungarian architecture is lacking, just perhaps not as conspicuous ugly as that of the Soviets. I'm sure in due time the Hungarians will tear down these architectural insults as they have all the statues of Party leaders and Communist heroes (which some entrepreneurial sort bought up and placed in a park where today for a modest fee you can see Lenin and Stalin immortalized in iron and carefully quarantined outside of the city which never wanted anything to do with them), but for the time being the dominate the view from the air.\r\n\r\nI spent a few minutes, maybe half an hour, at the airport studying the blocky structures from a distance, trying to get away from the immediately oppressive feeling they gave me. Eventually my shuttle bus arrived and pulled me out of the dismal stupor I had fallen into. The jostling of luggage and fellow passengers finding seats in the van provided a human inertia that slowly propelled me out of the gloomy mood that had crept over me. As we drove out of the suburbs toward the city I watched as the Soviet style apartment buildings slowly gave way to blocks of older vaguely Art Nouveau buildings until finally when we crossed the bridge into Pest I was confronted with the modern Budapest—the faceless glass of modern hotels juxtaposed against a background of striking Gothic-spired Churches and Baroque facades.\r\n\r\nBudapest actually consists of two cities, Buda and Pest separated by the Danube River. The hotel where we were staying was located on the Pest side of the river. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/budapestriverwalk.gif\" width=\"194\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Danube banks Budapest Hungary\" />High on the fifth floor, where my suitably generic but comfortable room was located, my balcony afforded a view of the small riverside walkway below where several cafes had tables and umbrellas overlooking the Danube and then beyond where the river floated lazily by and in the background Buda's Castle Hill district rose up from the opposite bank. I also had a clear view of the so-called Chain Bridge a few hundred meters up the river, one of three or four bridges that span the Danube linking Buda and Pest. \r\n\r\nAfter getting settled in the hotel we decided to head out for a bit of an explore up the banks of the river. Walking along the Danube that night as the sun slowly sank behind the north end of Castle Hill and the shadows lengthened across the face of the old Parliament building, I came across a strange and vaguely disturbing monument of iron shoes sitting in pairs at the edge of the river. Most monuments, whether they commemorate misery or good fortune, exist as positive space, a statue in a square, a wall under some leafy trees, a cannon pointing out over a field, but a few, particularly those that commemorate loss, evoke emptiness and anguish through a sculptural negative space. \r\n\r\nThe iron shoes scattered there beside the river seemed to me a kind of sculptural synecdoche, tiny parts chosen to represent a whole which was forcibly removed from time. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/budapestshoes.gif\" width=\"188\" height=\"250\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Shoe Memorial, Budapest, Hungary\" />Approaching the shoes scattered on the concrete embankment one does not at first realize they are iron or even a sculpture as the iron is quite blackened and in the fading light of evening they looked as if a group of people simply left their shoes for an afternoon swim. But on closer examination one quickly notices that the styles and cuts of the shoes are outdated and harkened from some moment in the past. But it's a moment curiously suspended, as if the owners might at any moment climb back up out of the river into which they were cast and reclaim their lost footwear. \r\n\r\nNone of the various guidebooks we were carrying mentioned the monument, but a small plague embedded in the concrete back away from the shoes themselves commemorates the deaths of thousands Jews who were forced into the Danube by the Arrow Cross (Hungarian Nazi Party). What's most striking about Sculptor Gyula Pauer's memorial is its quietude in the midst of so many rather loud, larger than life monuments and buildings like the towering pose of the nearby parliament buildings whose Gothic high arches and turrets seemed suddenly overwrought and desperate in their attempt to establish themselves. I thought of how sometimes the quietest statements are the most powerful, the way for instance Nick Drake's <em>Pink Moon</em>, though almost whispering at times, is one of the most formidable records I've heard.\r\n\r\nThe shoes sitting quietly there on the embankment, very nearly in the shadow of the Margit Island Bridge and so still against the backdrop of the Danube waters reminded me of Newton's famous analogy comparing the concept of time to the Thames River. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/budapestcastlehillsunset.gif\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Castle Hill Buda, Budapest, Hungary\" />If a substitution of rivers may be allowed, the shoes then seemed to me to perfectly capture a moment, a frozen piece of time which allowed one to circumventing the present through a sculptural trapdoor, to return to something that refused to be swept away by the river.\r\n\r\nI recalled one evening in Cambodia when Rob remarked with some surprise that neither Matt nor Debi nor I had any kind of timepiece between us. And in fact none of us ever had. I don't know about either of them but I don't wear a watch. Once some years ago I badly burned my arm with boiling water. Most of the skin on the back of my hand and part of my wrist sloughed off and was cut away by surgeons. By a strange trick of physics the leather band of the wristwatch I was wearing at the time, wicked the water away from my skin before it could be burned. Thus I had a thin band of flesh surrounded by two rather disgusting areas of boiled skin. Eventually of course the burned skin healed, but curiously, the skin where my watch had been remained several shades lighter than that of the burned areas. In spite of the fact that the watch ostensibly saved my skin, it was that protected portion that looked out of place in the end. I decided then that I would never wear a watch again.\r\n\r\nHow I translated a burn and bit of discolored skin into an intense dislike of mechanical time is something I can't quite explain except to say that perhaps noticing what was not on my wrist suddenly made me keenly aware of other things that also were not there. Eventually the whole concept of time came to seem too arbitrary to me. Morning, evening, spring, fall these words evoke things, numbers require second hand translation and seem to me a wasted effort.\r\n\r\nLater that evening after dinner I sat for a while outside on the balcony smoking cigarettes and contemplating the nightscape of Castle Hill which rose up out of the shimmering Danube waters. The drone of car horns in the distance and the electric <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/budapestcastlehillnight.gif\" width=\"230\" height=\"164\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Castle Hill, Buda, Budapest, Hungary\" />tram squealing out of the station filled the evening air. A riverboat slowly churned up river with a handful of tourists pointing cameras back toward the banks, capturing moments of time, moments they will likely playback later for family and loved ones who were not there. I sincerely doubt if any of them will ever say “this was taken at 7 pm on May 10th.” Instead they will likely say this was our first evening in Budapest, this was the night we sailed along a river, and this was where we walked, danced and swam.\r\n\r\nWe set out early the next day to explore the Castle Hill area which is the oldest part of the city. The name Castle Hill fails to encapsulate the area. The left side of the hill is actually a palace where the kings once ruled and now stand several museums. The right side of the hill, still encircled by the castle walls contains Buda's old town quarter. All total the area is more than a kilometer long and encompasses a small city, referred to now as “old town” since like it or not time is our major marker of space.\r\n\r\nCastle hill is a sprawling affair that reminded me somewhat of the similarly sprawling City Palace in Udaipur India. Both occupy the top of reasonable sized hills and both encircle what were once functioning cities. And both were constructed over long periods of time according the changing whims of successive rulers until looking at them today they become a reflection of the changing architectural tastes of their respective cultures.\r\n\r\nWhich is not to say that these two very different places have much in common beyond being large castles built on hills. When traveling for long periods of time it's easy to slip into the comfortable notion that one has seen and done certain things that need not be seen or done again. It is in other words easy to feel that if you've seen one tree you've seen them all. But if that were truly the case we could live the life of lightening bugs and be done with it by sunrise. A beech is not a maple is not an oak is certainly not a white fir, the differences in bark and leaves and roots and scent and shade and a million other things will leap out at you provided you pay attention. The notion that the part can be representative of the whole is popular in postmodernist circles, but take it outside the academic and it quickly shows itself as it is—a failure of the imagination.\r\n\r\nI believe that one could pick at random any one object and study it, look at it, feel it, breathe it, hear it and be with it every day for the rest of your life without ever really being able to say that you know it, that you understand it, that it has failed to move you, provoke you or challenge you in some way you weren't expecting. One of my favorite characters in film is Harvey Keitel's character in Wayne Wang's <em>Smoke</em>. Keitel's character, Aggie, takes the same photograph of the same scene from the same place at the same time every day for ten years and has all the prints in massive photo albums and explains to John Hurt's character the subtle differences between each. That's the sort of patience and dedication and love that we all ought to aspire to. \r\n\r\nWe spent the better part of the morning wandering the castle grounds, the narrow streets of old town and a made brief visit to the Hungarian National Gallery. Eventually some clouds rolled in and after lunch a light drizzle began to fall. My parents decided to head back since they were still adjusting to the time change. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/budapestcasthillstreet.gif\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Old Town Castle Hill, Budapest, Hungary\" />I set out to find the underground passageways that lace the hillside beneath the castle. Most of the area from Budapest south is largely comprised a very porous limestone known as Karst (which, if you've been reading this site for while, you may remember also formed the caves I visited in Laos). Over millions of years the water that seeps into the Karst eventually carves out caves and tunnels. The ones beneath Castle Hill in Buda have been slightly improved by man over the centuries and have served as everything from wine cellar to bomb shelter depending on the times.\r\n\r\nToday for a modest fee you can wander through a labyrinth of damp tunnels with dim lights and faux cave paintings in what I believe is supposed to give you taste of Neolithic religion and superstition or at least someone's idea of Neolithic caves, but unfortunately it comes off a little too campy to be all that interesting. It was a nice escape from the rain, but when I emerged out the far end of the tunnel I was craving something a little less Disneylandish.\r\n\r\nI set out alone to escape the crowds of Castle Hill and explore the more modern parts of the city. Something in a travel brochure on the airplane had caught my eye and I decided to see if I could find my way to the tomb of Gul Baba a Turkish Whirling dervish <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/budapestgulbaba.gif\" width=\"165\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Gul Baba, Whirling Dervish, Budapest, Hungary\" />who died in Budapest in 1541. I don't know much about whirling dervishes aside from the fact that their Turkish in origin and a friend of mine is in a band of the same name (if you're curious you can visit <a href=\"http://www.myspace.com/thewhirlingdervish\" title=\"Info on Whirling Dervish the band\">whirling dervish's website for more info on the band</a>, but the rumor has it that Gul Baba brought the rose to Buda and the hill on which the tomb rests is known as Rose Hill.\r\n\r\nThe truth is that while the Dervish tomb appealed to me I mostly wanted to walk through the streets of the real part of the city since the downside to four star travel is that you're typically sequestered in tourist ghettos, though in Budapest it was more of a business traveler ghetto. In either case you don't really get to see the everyday life of the locals. So I walked through the rain to the tomb, made a few photographs and ducked into a cafe on my way home for a cup of coffee and bite of Hungarian pastry. \r\n\r\nI sat in the back corner of the cafe waiting for the rain to let up thinking of the Hungarian Museum of Fine Art. For the most part there was little of note. The only highlight outside the Spanish gallery of El Grecco and Goya was a single piece from Gauguin's period in Tahiti. I don't recall the name of the painting, <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/budapestwindowwoman.gif\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Old Woman at Window, Hungary\" />it wasn't very large, but the vibrant colors and almost overwhelming sense of passion and life made it fairly leap off the wall next to more muted Monet's and Picassos. Gauguin paid attention and he loved what he saw. His fascination with color seems to have eclipsed nearly every other concern in his mind. Figures are vague as if transitory and chiefly memorable for the light they reflect, background and foreground blend, what matters is not the precise place, nor the precise time, but the color, the color of the world that distinguishes not between only shade and tone and hue and tint to reveal the kaleidoscope that is always all around us.", "dek": "Evening, after dinner, outside on the balcony, smoking cigarettes and contemplating the nightscape of Buda's Castle Hill rising up out of its own golden reflection in the shimmering Danube waters. The drone of car horns in the distance and the electric tram squealing as it pulls out of the station below on the river a boat slowly churns upstream...", "pub_date": "2006-05-11T00:26:59", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (19.0621376011062864 47.4838008622894847)", "location": 19, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/castlehillbuda.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/castlehillbuda.jpg", "meta_description": "Going upscale in Budapest: watching the Danube from my balcony, smoking cigarettes and enjoying the nightscape of Buda's Castle Hill. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 58, "fields": {"title": "Blue Milk", "slug": "blue-milk", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span>t's hard to understand, standing on the banks of such crystalline, cerulean lakes, whose dazzling colors come from the mineral rich silt runoff of glaciers, that the largest European conflict since world war two began here, at Like Plitvice Croatia. But indeed this is where the first shots were fired on Easter Sunday in 1991 and the first casualty was a park policeman. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicebluewater.gif\" width=\"230\" height=\"195\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Azure Waters, Lake Plitvice, Croatia\" /> The Serbs held the area for the duration of the conflict, though it's difficult to imagine why they wanted it. Lake Plitvice is chiefly notable for its natural beauty and as a gateway to the mountains, hardly a militarily strategic spot since no roads actually run up into, let alone over, the mountains. Nevertheless, here is where it began, though as with all beginnings, it did not really start here, it started with the leaders whose poisoned, greedy hearts and minds dragged the former Yugoslavia into a war no one wanted.\n<break>\nMy parents rented a car in Budapest and we drove south through Hungary toward the Croatian border. The Hungarian countryside was unremarkable but pleasantly so; the same sort of scenery one might pass from Philadelphia to Pittsburg or London to Bath. Around lunch time we crossed over into Croatia, a country that had previously existed for me simply as a place where bad things happen — war, ethnic cleansing, etc — not a place at all actually, just a word. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicetreereflection.gif\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Mossy Tree reflection, Lake Plitvice, Croatia\" />Like most Americans, I never had a real handle on the Bosnia/Croatia/Serbia war. I was dimly aware that The U.S. at some point, with the backing of U.N. (remember when we played by the rules?) launched a campaign of air strikes in Kosovo. For those that like me could never get it sorted, here's a quick rundown (taken half from guidebooks and half from some Croatians and Serbs I met). The former republic of Yugoslavia was an artificially created state that grew out of the end of world war two and a man named Tito. Tito is an interesting historical figure; he managed with some success to keep one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse countries in the world together for thirty-five years. Naturally there were some iron-fisted clampdowns and not everyone seems to have been fond of him, but in spite of his occasionally brutal tactics he did keep the peace (if at the expense of some). And his tactics were certainly no more brutal than the war that followed his death. Shortly after Tito died in 1980 Yugoslavia was hit by heavy inflation which resulted from Tito's habit of borrowing foreign money and Yugoslavia's inability to pay it back. </p>\n<p>Slovenia was the first the break away and is the most ethnically and religiously coherent of the various Balkan states. For the most part Slovenia managed to stay out of the fighting that would soon engulf the area. The Croatians were the next to go, declaring independence in 1991 and finally getting U.N. recognition in 1992. That left Serbia, Bosnia and tiny Kosovo. The trouble was there were a lot of Serbians in Croatia, Croatians in Serbia, Bosnians in Croatia, etc. It's tough to say there was a good side and bad side in the war that followed, but isn't it always? The Serbians started the war; the first shot were fired at Lake Plitvice National Park where my parents and I were staying. And yes the Serbians are guilty of ethnic cleansing, rounding up and killing thousands of Croatians. But then the Croatians drove the Serbs out and turned around and engaged in more or less the same ethnic cleansing. War. Everybody loses. Everybody dies. </p>\n<p>And so today there are four nations Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Bosnia Herzegovina, where Yugoslavia once existed. [Except, before I was able to get this to press, Montenegro has voted to break away from Serbia, so now there are five. I must publish this before Kosovo does the same.] For the most part the war and its effects are gone. Like Cambodia there is a landmine problem that will continue to exist and kill and main for some time to come, but the tensions seems to have passed and aside from a few bullet riddled buildings and bombed out, caved in roofs, you'd never guess that the largest European war since WWII ended just ten years ago.</p>\n<p>Lake Plitvice National Park is a unique geological phenomena formed by two factors: porous karst limestone which absorbs water and erodes quickly, and mineral deposits from since departed glaciers. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicewalkway.gif\" width=\"188\" height=\"250\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Walkway, Upper Lake, Lake Plitvice, Croatia\" />As lake water seeped into the Karst, the rock decayed forming a series of lakes and interconnecting waterfalls that cascade through the forests. The national park service has created some trails which pass along the edges of the waterfalls and lakes as they wind their way downhill (or if you're masochistic and/or not that bright—uphill). </p>\n<p>The waters are both the clearest water I've ever seen and yet somehow manage to reflect a color close to bright teal and look a bit like photographs of Banff Canada where similar minerals create the same effect on Lake Louise.</p>\n<p>But where Lake Louise is so dramatic as to be almost overwhelming, the natural beauty of Plitvice is quieter and less imposing. There is no overlook or scenic viewpoint with flash popping tourists and calendar worthy photographs, to experience Plitvice you have to get out of the car, <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitviceforest.gif\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Forest Floor, Lake Plitvice, Croatia\" />off the road and simply wander the forests in the cool of the morning or evening when the light filtering through the forest is softened by the subtle bending forces of the atmosphere and the forest floor becomes a leaf padded wonderland.</p>\n<p>We started at the highest lake and walked downward through cascades of water and reed lined lakeshores, passing at times through the forests where the moss-covered old growth creates a canopy through which sunlight trickles in to form pools of light and shadow forever shifting about as you walk. Strangely there was very little in the way of wildlife. The lakes were choked full of fish, but the forests curiously empty, though I did see a frog lazing in the sunshine near the lakeshore. </p>\n<p>As with any Karst area there are a number of caves in Lake Plitvice one of which forms a near vertical chasm through the hillside and can be climbed by means of a series of slippery switch-backing stone staircases. At the right time of day beams of sunlight fall in from above, <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicecave.gif\" width=\"165\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Cave, Lake Plitvice, Croatia\" />illuminating the darker passageways and side tunnels which presumably, with a proper torch could be explored. But I neglected to bring any sort of torch and had to content myself with the main cavern.</p>\n<p>The hillsides were covered in the green of spring, the dark shades of firs and the lighter, brighter leaves of beeches and maples. The most remarkable of these trees were the white firs whose branches had nearly florescent tips, the result of fresh spring growth. I spent the first evening in Lake Plitvice studying the white firs around our lodge, trying to make sense of how something so bright could eventually fade to the dark, almost black, green of the inner branches. The newly formed tips were such a striking viridescent contrast to the inner tangle that I couldn't help but wonder what lay within that nearly impenetrable jumble of darkness nearer to the trunk.</p>\n<p>Near the inner tree where the evening light does not penetrate, some hidden gesture of nature as if to remind us that not everything is so easily seen, not everything is in grand sweeping gestures or romantic vistas, sure the highlights capture our attention, but what lies beneath in that dark tangle near the origins? Does the truth perhaps lie in there amongst the dense and inaccessible darkness? Or do I here sound too much like Joseph Conrad obsessed by the darkness of his river and the human heart he saw beating at the end of it?</p>\n<p>It occurred to me that my thinking was mistaken, that in fact due to the physics of light, <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicepinetreetips.gif\" width=\"330\" height=\"169\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"New Growth Pine Trees, Lake Plitvice, Croatia\" />the inner branches were in fact actually lighter, they appear darker because they reflect less light back to my eye, but without my eye and its entrapments what you might observe is actually a dense forest of light, all that light not given up by the world and therefore seen by us as darkness. Perhaps that's the reason a number of artists have chosen to start with a completely black canvas and add color on top of it, as if to transcend the limitations of the human eye.</p>\n<p>But perhaps I am too technical since there is no way to <em>see</em> the world as we could say it really is, because the only means we have to see it are our own eyes, our poor senses cannot reveal this impenetrable universe in which not all is illuminated, not everything makes a sound and much carries the scent of nothing on some solar wind which none of us will ever perceive let alone understand.</p>\n<p>I have read that in pure darkness the human eye is sensitive enough to detect a candle at a distance of forty kilometers. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/plitvicerainbow.gif\" width=\"196\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Rainbow, Lake Plitvice, Croatia\" />And yet in spite of this remarkable attunement to light, light is our limitation, without it nothing exists for us. Perhaps the inner branches of the firs and pines are merely the unyielding tangle of dead needles and cobwebs and beetles that I imagine and there is no metaphor, no truth which is what drives us out of bed in the vague hint of predawn to stand facing east at the shore of some body of water and wait with such anxious anticipations for the coming of the morning light on the water where, as Flaubert once wrote, “the mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal.”</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span>t's hard to understand, standing on the banks of such crystalline, cerulean lakes, whose dazzling colors come from the mineral rich silt runoff of glaciers, that the largest European conflict since world war two began here, at Like Plitvice Croatia. But indeed this is where the first shots were fired on Easter Sunday in 1991 and the first casualty was a park policeman. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/plitvicebluewater.gif\" width=\"230\" height=\"195\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Azure Waters, Lake Plitvice, Croatia\" /> The Serbs held the area for the duration of the conflict, though it's difficult to imagine why they wanted it. Lake Plitvice is chiefly notable for its natural beauty and as a gateway to the mountains, hardly a militarily strategic spot since no roads actually run up into, let alone over, the mountains. Nevertheless, here is where it began, though as with all beginnings, it did not really start here, it started with the leaders whose poisoned, greedy hearts and minds dragged the former Yugoslavia into a war no one wanted.\r\n<break>\r\nMy parents rented a car in Budapest and we drove south through Hungary toward the Croatian border. The Hungarian countryside was unremarkable but pleasantly so; the same sort of scenery one might pass from Philadelphia to Pittsburg or London to Bath. Around lunch time we crossed over into Croatia, a country that had previously existed for me simply as a place where bad things happen — war, ethnic cleansing, etc — not a place at all actually, just a word. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/plitvicetreereflection.gif\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Mossy Tree reflection, Lake Plitvice, Croatia\" />Like most Americans, I never had a real handle on the Bosnia/Croatia/Serbia war. I was dimly aware that The U.S. at some point, with the backing of U.N. (remember when we played by the rules?) launched a campaign of air strikes in Kosovo. For those that like me could never get it sorted, here's a quick rundown (taken half from guidebooks and half from some Croatians and Serbs I met). The former republic of Yugoslavia was an artificially created state that grew out of the end of world war two and a man named Tito. Tito is an interesting historical figure; he managed with some success to keep one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse countries in the world together for thirty-five years. Naturally there were some iron-fisted clampdowns and not everyone seems to have been fond of him, but in spite of his occasionally brutal tactics he did keep the peace (if at the expense of some). And his tactics were certainly no more brutal than the war that followed his death. Shortly after Tito died in 1980 Yugoslavia was hit by heavy inflation which resulted from Tito's habit of borrowing foreign money and Yugoslavia's inability to pay it back. \r\n\r\nSlovenia was the first the break away and is the most ethnically and religiously coherent of the various Balkan states. For the most part Slovenia managed to stay out of the fighting that would soon engulf the area. The Croatians were the next to go, declaring independence in 1991 and finally getting U.N. recognition in 1992. That left Serbia, Bosnia and tiny Kosovo. The trouble was there were a lot of Serbians in Croatia, Croatians in Serbia, Bosnians in Croatia, etc. It's tough to say there was a good side and bad side in the war that followed, but isn't it always? The Serbians started the war; the first shot were fired at Lake Plitvice National Park where my parents and I were staying. And yes the Serbians are guilty of ethnic cleansing, rounding up and killing thousands of Croatians. But then the Croatians drove the Serbs out and turned around and engaged in more or less the same ethnic cleansing. War. Everybody loses. Everybody dies. \r\n\r\nAnd so today there are four nations Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Bosnia Herzegovina, where Yugoslavia once existed. [Except, before I was able to get this to press, Montenegro has voted to break away from Serbia, so now there are five. I must publish this before Kosovo does the same.] For the most part the war and its effects are gone. Like Cambodia there is a landmine problem that will continue to exist and kill and main for some time to come, but the tensions seems to have passed and aside from a few bullet riddled buildings and bombed out, caved in roofs, you'd never guess that the largest European war since WWII ended just ten years ago.\r\n\r\nLake Plitvice National Park is a unique geological phenomena formed by two factors: porous karst limestone which absorbs water and erodes quickly, and mineral deposits from since departed glaciers. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/plitvicewalkway.gif\" width=\"188\" height=\"250\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Walkway, Upper Lake, Lake Plitvice, Croatia\" />As lake water seeped into the Karst, the rock decayed forming a series of lakes and interconnecting waterfalls that cascade through the forests. The national park service has created some trails which pass along the edges of the waterfalls and lakes as they wind their way downhill (or if you're masochistic and/or not that bright—uphill). \r\n\r\nThe waters are both the clearest water I've ever seen and yet somehow manage to reflect a color close to bright teal and look a bit like photographs of Banff Canada where similar minerals create the same effect on Lake Louise.\r\n\r\nBut where Lake Louise is so dramatic as to be almost overwhelming, the natural beauty of Plitvice is quieter and less imposing. There is no overlook or scenic viewpoint with flash popping tourists and calendar worthy photographs, to experience Plitvice you have to get out of the car, <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/plitviceforest.gif\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Forest Floor, Lake Plitvice, Croatia\" />off the road and simply wander the forests in the cool of the morning or evening when the light filtering through the forest is softened by the subtle bending forces of the atmosphere and the forest floor becomes a leaf padded wonderland.\r\n\r\nWe started at the highest lake and walked downward through cascades of water and reed lined lakeshores, passing at times through the forests where the moss-covered old growth creates a canopy through which sunlight trickles in to form pools of light and shadow forever shifting about as you walk. Strangely there was very little in the way of wildlife. The lakes were choked full of fish, but the forests curiously empty, though I did see a frog lazing in the sunshine near the lakeshore. \r\n\r\nAs with any Karst area there are a number of caves in Lake Plitvice one of which forms a near vertical chasm through the hillside and can be climbed by means of a series of slippery switch-backing stone staircases. At the right time of day beams of sunlight fall in from above, <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/plitvicecave.gif\" width=\"165\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Cave, Lake Plitvice, Croatia\" />illuminating the darker passageways and side tunnels which presumably, with a proper torch could be explored. But I neglected to bring any sort of torch and had to content myself with the main cavern.\r\n\r\nThe hillsides were covered in the green of spring, the dark shades of firs and the lighter, brighter leaves of beeches and maples. The most remarkable of these trees were the white firs whose branches had nearly florescent tips, the result of fresh spring growth. I spent the first evening in Lake Plitvice studying the white firs around our lodge, trying to make sense of how something so bright could eventually fade to the dark, almost black, green of the inner branches. The newly formed tips were such a striking viridescent contrast to the inner tangle that I couldn't help but wonder what lay within that nearly impenetrable jumble of darkness nearer to the trunk.\r\n\r\nNear the inner tree where the evening light does not penetrate, some hidden gesture of nature as if to remind us that not everything is so easily seen, not everything is in grand sweeping gestures or romantic vistas, sure the highlights capture our attention, but what lies beneath in that dark tangle near the origins? Does the truth perhaps lie in there amongst the dense and inaccessible darkness? Or do I here sound too much like Joseph Conrad obsessed by the darkness of his river and the human heart he saw beating at the end of it?\r\n\r\nIt occurred to me that my thinking was mistaken, that in fact due to the physics of light, <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/plitvicepinetreetips.gif\" width=\"330\" height=\"169\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"New Growth Pine Trees, Lake Plitvice, Croatia\" />the inner branches were in fact actually lighter, they appear darker because they reflect less light back to my eye, but without my eye and its entrapments what you might observe is actually a dense forest of light, all that light not given up by the world and therefore seen by us as darkness. Perhaps that's the reason a number of artists have chosen to start with a completely black canvas and add color on top of it, as if to transcend the limitations of the human eye.\r\n\r\nBut perhaps I am too technical since there is no way to <em>see</em> the world as we could say it really is, because the only means we have to see it are our own eyes, our poor senses cannot reveal this impenetrable universe in which not all is illuminated, not everything makes a sound and much carries the scent of nothing on some solar wind which none of us will ever perceive let alone understand.\r\n\r\nI have read that in pure darkness the human eye is sensitive enough to detect a candle at a distance of forty kilometers. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/plitvicerainbow.gif\" width=\"196\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Rainbow, Lake Plitvice, Croatia\" />And yet in spite of this remarkable attunement to light, light is our limitation, without it nothing exists for us. Perhaps the inner branches of the firs and pines are merely the unyielding tangle of dead needles and cobwebs and beetles that I imagine and there is no metaphor, no truth which is what drives us out of bed in the vague hint of predawn to stand facing east at the shore of some body of water and wait with such anxious anticipations for the coming of the morning light on the water where, as Flaubert once wrote, “the mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal.”", "dek": "It's hard to understand, standing on the banks of such crystalline, cerulean lakes, whose dazzling colors come from the mineral rich silt runoff of glaciers, that the largest European conflict since world war two began here, at Like Plitvice Croatia. But indeed this is where the first shots were fired on Easter Sunday in 1991 and the first casualty was a park policeman.", "pub_date": "2006-05-16T00:32:27", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (18.1090521787230507 42.6413383842917781)", "location": 17, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/plitvice.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/plitvice.jpg", "meta_description": "Looking down at the milky blue waters of Like Plitvice it's hard to believe that the largest European conflict since WWII began here. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 59, "fields": {"title": "Feel Good Lost", "slug": "feel-good-lost", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">F</span>rom Lake Plivtice we drove west over the coastal mountains and down to the Dalmatian seaside where the highway hugs the shore and fantastic views of the Adriatic Sea and nearby islands come rolling around with every point and harbor of the shoreline. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovnikcoastline.gif\" width=\"223\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Coastline Near Dubrovnik, Croatia\" />From the road I watched the cobalt seas specked occasionally with a yacht or fishing boat and forming a stark contrast with the red roof tiles of small villages and seaside hamlets such that, after a while, I had the sensation of having played too long with a color wheel, much the same way that staring at a word for too long can make one question the spelling. Eventually, after a four or five hour drive, we arrived at the seaside village of Dubrovnik. </p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>A walled trading city whose origins can be traced as far back as the 7th century and variously controlled by the Byzantines, Venetians and Turks, Dubrovnik is encircled by high walls and filled with narrow cobblestones streets and looks from above like an endless sea of mottled red and orange roof tiles. </p>\n<p>Owing to a curious set of circumstances our original hotel was overbooked and we were forced to go to a nicer one which also gave me a private room (I hate it when that happens). <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovniksunset.gif\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Sunset from my Hotel Window, Dubrovnik, Croatia\" />The Argentinean was very typically European, small rooms heavy draperies and most importantly an old and heavy cherry wood desk, the sort of desk where you could say sit down and get a bit of writing done. I am picky about only two things when it comes to writing, the desk my laptop sits on and/or, as the case may be, the pen I use. The wrong equipment often produces the wrong words, these things are important. Trust me.</p>\n<p>The downside to the Argentinean was its location, a bit of a walk from the old walled city, but after getting settled we set out for a stroll through old town. Dubrovnik's old town area feels a bit like stepping back in time several centuries. </p>\n<p>Most of the still standing buildings date from about 1468, though some were destroyed in the great earthquake of 1667, which leveled nearly everything on the Adriatic Sea. There are the remains of a monastery and nunnery, now merely crumbling walls and piled stones, which date from much early than the rest of the city, but by and large the city looks as it did in the fifteenth century. Long known as the Pearl of the Adriatic, many people think Dubrovnik is the most beautiful city in Europe and from what I've seen I believe them. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovniknightmainstreet.gif\" width=\"250\" height=\"188\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Main Street Nightscape, Dubrovnik, Croatia\" />The downside of course is the resulting crowds, but most tourists seemed to be a bit older than me and for the most part headed home around ten. Insomniacs can have the place to themselves late at night and that's when the city looks its best anyway, the polished stone streets reflect the glittering lamplight and no one is around.</p>\n<p>Dubrovnik is famous for its red tiled roofs. Apparently the tiles were unique, or perhaps just older than the other towns in the area, whatever the case nearly every photograph you're likely to see of the city is from above looking out over the roofs. Regrettably Dubrovnik was heavily shelled during the Bosnian conflict and roughly 65 percent of its buildings were hit, thus Dubrovnik's roofscape is not quite what it used to be. But to my eye it looked better with the new and slightly different tiles mottled together with older slightly yellower tiles. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovnikrooftops.gif\" width=\"220\" height=\"165\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Dubrovnik Rooftops, Croatia\" />The contrast between the colors made the roofs look less a postcard perfect vision and more of an actual city. After all fairy tales are myth, reality looks a little more like someone parked a howitzer on the nearby hilltop and started lobbing injustice down on the world.</p>\n<p>The next day we paid the rather exorbitant admission and set out to walk to walls. Dubrovnik's walls range from a thickness of about four meters to as much as ten in some spots and comprise a distance of roughly two kilometers as they zigzag around the city. Walking the walls seemed a bit surreal to me. It would be more proper to say I staggered about the walls in a sort of trance owing to the fact that I had never actually seen a fairy tale city. As with most things that overwhelm me I found myself staring at the often mundane details instead, stockings hanging from a clothesline, a row of potted plants on a windowsill, an olive tree growing over a crumbling stone wall, a garden of lupines and morningbells growing out of an old tile roof. Perhaps the most surreal thing about Dubrovnik is that it still a functioning city and even as we tourists walked about the walls staring down at the narrow streets running off in all directions, <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovnikstockings.gif\" width=\"191\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Stockings on the Clothesline, Dubrovnik, Croatia\" />the people of Dubrovnik were tending their gardens and hanging out the days laundry or heading off to work. The sights from the walls looked like something out of a European children's story and any given window may well have contained a princess I simply overlooked.</p>\n<p>To the best of my knowledge she was not a princess, but I did meet a lovely Croatia woman one night who, along with a couple of her friends attempted to explain the Bosnia-Croatia-Serbian conflict to me. However, about half way through both Martina and her friend Marco seemed to lose track of the thread. It may have been the beer, it may have been simply that there are better things to do, but halfway through Marco kind of shrugged and said roughly ‘I don't know, a bunch of assholes shot at us and we shot at them and then it stopped and now it's history,' which more or less covers it I believe.<break></p>\n<p>I promised I would here mention that Marco and Martina had both recently moved to Dubrovnik to work at a lovely little ultra modern bar named <a href=\"http://www.igotfresh.com\" title=\"Fresh.com\">Fresh</a> which also serves various wraps and sandwiches by day. I only went out two nights in Dubrovnik (I had to make use of the lovely desk one night), but Fresh was by far the most fun. It's the sort of spot that aimed both at travelers and locals though on the particular night I was there there were only three of us there and two were new employees which I think made the owner nervous. So I have done my part, if you're in Dubrovnik, <a href=\"http:/www.igotfresh.com\" title=\"Fresh.com\">stop by Fresh</a> and have a drink or two.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovnikroofgarden.gif\" width=\"230\" height=\"169\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Rooftop Garden, Dubrovnik, Croatia\" />Dubrovnik was something out of a fairy tale, or at least that's the only way I can contextualize it. I was thinking just the other day about American's fascination with Europe (the number of Americans in Europe is staggering compared to what I saw in Asia. If only 6% of Americans have passports and therefore can leave the country, 5.99% of them come to Europe). I think part of what compels Americans in Europe is simply the idea that there is some history beyond the eighteen-century. Things as simple as that existence of buildings older than the 19th century is somewhat magical to those of us that come from a country whose history is so short. There may be a few old buildings in New York, but by and large American buildings are recent, which is something I don't think Europeans can fully appreciate, surrounded as they are by everyday reminders of the past. We are new. We barely have a past. </p>\n<p>When the majority of European cities were being designed and built America was as yet unknown. Thus for an American to be in a city like Dubrovnik is something akin to stepping into a history book. For instance, near where I grew up one of the oldest areas is a city called Orange. Orange has an \"old town\" circle area whose buildings date from the early 1920s. This is about as far back as Southern California history goes. When I lived in Athens, GA there were a handful of antebellum mansions that date from more like the late 1700s, but nothing goes back further. To see anything that existed before 1700 is I think, for many Americans, a shocking revelation. Sure we <strong>know</strong> that Europe is there and it has all this old architecture, just like I know central America exists, but it won't mean anything to me until I get there.</p>\n<p>I've never really been one to dig too deep into the history of places, but something about Dubrovnik compelled me to. I spent the first evening digging around in a local bookshop and discovered that Dubrovnik can trace its history all the way back to the seventh century or so. But what I thought about later was not the actual history of Dubrovnik, but rather the realization that the longer I travel the more estranged I am from my own past and yet the more compelled I feel by history. Not that my past doesn't matter to me, in fact it matters immensely since I see the present as a collision between yesterday and tomorrow, but my own history seems to me now more of something I read in a book than events that actually happened. I could not for instance tell you much about what I was thinking before I felt on this trip, but I could talk for hours about Jim Thompson and the silk trade of Thailand. I don't remember what I did in Los Angeles last summer, but I know exactly when the Khmer Dynasty began construction on Angkor Wat.</p>\n<p>When home fades, as it does when you travel, and your past begins to seem more like a secondhand memory, perhaps it's only natural that you feel a bit lost and maybe my fascination with history is merely a grasping at straws to recover something I've lost. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/dubrovniknightstreet.gif\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Narrow Streets, Dubrovnik, Croatia\" />Perhaps this is the reason that expats gravitate toward each other, not because they feel some connection with home, but because they seek others who have lost that connection and the connection to the loss becomes their new home.</p>\n<p>A friend of mine used to tell me that, owing to a childhood spent moving from town to town, she never felt like she really had a home. Someone recently wrote me in an email saying, much as Tom Wolfe's novel <em>You Can Never Go Home Again</em> implies, once you've left you will forever feel like a foreigner no matter where you may go. It's a difficult feeling to explain except to say that the further you go, through both time and space, the less you feel connected to anything that happened before you left.</p>\n<p>But that's not to say I've forgotten you my friends, people remain every bit as real, it's the events that fade, the mindset that changes. And it isn't a bad thing, on the contrary I find it quite liberating. I am without a doubt happier traveling than I ever have been at home. For the first time in my life, on this trip, I feel like I'm doing what I am supposed to be doing. And it feels good.</p>\n<p>Many people have written to ask what I plan to do when I get home. My quick answer is always, leave again. It may seem like I've been all over the place on this trip, but from my point of view I've merely revealed how little I've seen. The past, something called home, seems at this point unreal. There is so much of my own past that no longer fits in the present and I fear, as my friend said, that I will forever be a stranger in my own land.</p>\n<p>And yet if anything becomes more real without a past, it's a connection to the present. It has become trite, that Buddhist saying, be here now, but now is where we live and no matter what you do you can't live in the past or the future, so indeed you may as well be here now and learn, as I am trying to do, how to feel good lost.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">F</span>rom Lake Plivtice we drove west over the coastal mountains and down to the Dalmatian seaside where the highway hugs the shore and fantastic views of the Adriatic Sea and nearby islands come rolling around with every point and harbor of the shoreline. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/dubrovnikcoastline.gif\" width=\"223\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Coastline Near Dubrovnik, Croatia\" />From the road I watched the cobalt seas specked occasionally with a yacht or fishing boat and forming a stark contrast with the red roof tiles of small villages and seaside hamlets such that, after a while, I had the sensation of having played too long with a color wheel, much the same way that staring at a word for too long can make one question the spelling. Eventually, after a four or five hour drive, we arrived at the seaside village of Dubrovnik. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nA walled trading city whose origins can be traced as far back as the 7th century and variously controlled by the Byzantines, Venetians and Turks, Dubrovnik is encircled by high walls and filled with narrow cobblestones streets and looks from above like an endless sea of mottled red and orange roof tiles. \r\n\r\nOwing to a curious set of circumstances our original hotel was overbooked and we were forced to go to a nicer one which also gave me a private room (I hate it when that happens). <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/dubrovniksunset.gif\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Sunset from my Hotel Window, Dubrovnik, Croatia\" />The Argentinean was very typically European, small rooms heavy draperies and most importantly an old and heavy cherry wood desk, the sort of desk where you could say sit down and get a bit of writing done. I am picky about only two things when it comes to writing, the desk my laptop sits on and/or, as the case may be, the pen I use. The wrong equipment often produces the wrong words, these things are important. Trust me.\r\n\r\nThe downside to the Argentinean was its location, a bit of a walk from the old walled city, but after getting settled we set out for a stroll through old town. Dubrovnik's old town area feels a bit like stepping back in time several centuries. \r\n\r\nMost of the still standing buildings date from about 1468, though some were destroyed in the great earthquake of 1667, which leveled nearly everything on the Adriatic Sea. There are the remains of a monastery and nunnery, now merely crumbling walls and piled stones, which date from much early than the rest of the city, but by and large the city looks as it did in the fifteenth century. Long known as the Pearl of the Adriatic, many people think Dubrovnik is the most beautiful city in Europe and from what I've seen I believe them. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/dubrovniknightmainstreet.gif\" width=\"250\" height=\"188\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Main Street Nightscape, Dubrovnik, Croatia\" />The downside of course is the resulting crowds, but most tourists seemed to be a bit older than me and for the most part headed home around ten. Insomniacs can have the place to themselves late at night and that's when the city looks its best anyway, the polished stone streets reflect the glittering lamplight and no one is around.\r\n\r\nDubrovnik is famous for its red tiled roofs. Apparently the tiles were unique, or perhaps just older than the other towns in the area, whatever the case nearly every photograph you're likely to see of the city is from above looking out over the roofs. Regrettably Dubrovnik was heavily shelled during the Bosnian conflict and roughly 65 percent of its buildings were hit, thus Dubrovnik's roofscape is not quite what it used to be. But to my eye it looked better with the new and slightly different tiles mottled together with older slightly yellower tiles. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/dubrovnikrooftops.gif\" width=\"220\" height=\"165\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Dubrovnik Rooftops, Croatia\" />The contrast between the colors made the roofs look less a postcard perfect vision and more of an actual city. After all fairy tales are myth, reality looks a little more like someone parked a howitzer on the nearby hilltop and started lobbing injustice down on the world.\r\n\r\nThe next day we paid the rather exorbitant admission and set out to walk to walls. Dubrovnik's walls range from a thickness of about four meters to as much as ten in some spots and comprise a distance of roughly two kilometers as they zigzag around the city. Walking the walls seemed a bit surreal to me. It would be more proper to say I staggered about the walls in a sort of trance owing to the fact that I had never actually seen a fairy tale city. As with most things that overwhelm me I found myself staring at the often mundane details instead, stockings hanging from a clothesline, a row of potted plants on a windowsill, an olive tree growing over a crumbling stone wall, a garden of lupines and morningbells growing out of an old tile roof. Perhaps the most surreal thing about Dubrovnik is that it still a functioning city and even as we tourists walked about the walls staring down at the narrow streets running off in all directions, <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/dubrovnikstockings.gif\" width=\"191\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Stockings on the Clothesline, Dubrovnik, Croatia\" />the people of Dubrovnik were tending their gardens and hanging out the days laundry or heading off to work. The sights from the walls looked like something out of a European children's story and any given window may well have contained a princess I simply overlooked.\r\n\r\nTo the best of my knowledge she was not a princess, but I did meet a lovely Croatia woman one night who, along with a couple of her friends attempted to explain the Bosnia-Croatia-Serbian conflict to me. However, about half way through both Martina and her friend Marco seemed to lose track of the thread. It may have been the beer, it may have been simply that there are better things to do, but halfway through Marco kind of shrugged and said roughly ‘I don't know, a bunch of assholes shot at us and we shot at them and then it stopped and now it's history,' which more or less covers it I believe.<break>\r\n\r\nI promised I would here mention that Marco and Martina had both recently moved to Dubrovnik to work at a lovely little ultra modern bar named <a href=\"http://www.igotfresh.com\" title=\"Fresh.com\">Fresh</a> which also serves various wraps and sandwiches by day. I only went out two nights in Dubrovnik (I had to make use of the lovely desk one night), but Fresh was by far the most fun. It's the sort of spot that aimed both at travelers and locals though on the particular night I was there there were only three of us there and two were new employees which I think made the owner nervous. So I have done my part, if you're in Dubrovnik, <a href=\"http:/www.igotfresh.com\" title=\"Fresh.com\">stop by Fresh</a> and have a drink or two.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/dubrovnikroofgarden.gif\" width=\"230\" height=\"169\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Rooftop Garden, Dubrovnik, Croatia\" />Dubrovnik was something out of a fairy tale, or at least that's the only way I can contextualize it. I was thinking just the other day about American's fascination with Europe (the number of Americans in Europe is staggering compared to what I saw in Asia. If only 6% of Americans have passports and therefore can leave the country, 5.99% of them come to Europe). I think part of what compels Americans in Europe is simply the idea that there is some history beyond the eighteen-century. Things as simple as that existence of buildings older than the 19th century is somewhat magical to those of us that come from a country whose history is so short. There may be a few old buildings in New York, but by and large American buildings are recent, which is something I don't think Europeans can fully appreciate, surrounded as they are by everyday reminders of the past. We are new. We barely have a past. \r\n\r\nWhen the majority of European cities were being designed and built America was as yet unknown. Thus for an American to be in a city like Dubrovnik is something akin to stepping into a history book. For instance, near where I grew up one of the oldest areas is a city called Orange. Orange has an \"old town\" circle area whose buildings date from the early 1920s. This is about as far back as Southern California history goes. When I lived in Athens, GA there were a handful of antebellum mansions that date from more like the late 1700s, but nothing goes back further. To see anything that existed before 1700 is I think, for many Americans, a shocking revelation. Sure we **know** that Europe is there and it has all this old architecture, just like I know central America exists, but it won't mean anything to me until I get there.\r\n\r\nI've never really been one to dig too deep into the history of places, but something about Dubrovnik compelled me to. I spent the first evening digging around in a local bookshop and discovered that Dubrovnik can trace its history all the way back to the seventh century or so. But what I thought about later was not the actual history of Dubrovnik, but rather the realization that the longer I travel the more estranged I am from my own past and yet the more compelled I feel by history. Not that my past doesn't matter to me, in fact it matters immensely since I see the present as a collision between yesterday and tomorrow, but my own history seems to me now more of something I read in a book than events that actually happened. I could not for instance tell you much about what I was thinking before I felt on this trip, but I could talk for hours about Jim Thompson and the silk trade of Thailand. I don't remember what I did in Los Angeles last summer, but I know exactly when the Khmer Dynasty began construction on Angkor Wat.\r\n\r\nWhen home fades, as it does when you travel, and your past begins to seem more like a secondhand memory, perhaps it's only natural that you feel a bit lost and maybe my fascination with history is merely a grasping at straws to recover something I've lost. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/dubrovniknightstreet.gif\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Narrow Streets, Dubrovnik, Croatia\" />Perhaps this is the reason that expats gravitate toward each other, not because they feel some connection with home, but because they seek others who have lost that connection and the connection to the loss becomes their new home.\r\n\r\nA friend of mine used to tell me that, owing to a childhood spent moving from town to town, she never felt like she really had a home. Someone recently wrote me in an email saying, much as Tom Wolfe's novel *You Can Never Go Home Again* implies, once you've left you will forever feel like a foreigner no matter where you may go. It's a difficult feeling to explain except to say that the further you go, through both time and space, the less you feel connected to anything that happened before you left.\r\n\r\nBut that's not to say I've forgotten you my friends, people remain every bit as real, it's the events that fade, the mindset that changes. And it isn't a bad thing, on the contrary I find it quite liberating. I am without a doubt happier traveling than I ever have been at home. For the first time in my life, on this trip, I feel like I'm doing what I am supposed to be doing. And it feels good.\r\n\r\nMany people have written to ask what I plan to do when I get home. My quick answer is always, leave again. It may seem like I've been all over the place on this trip, but from my point of view I've merely revealed how little I've seen. The past, something called home, seems at this point unreal. There is so much of my own past that no longer fits in the present and I fear, as my friend said, that I will forever be a stranger in my own land.\r\n\r\nAnd yet if anything becomes more real without a past, it's a connection to the present. It has become trite, that Buddhist saying, be here now, but now is where we live and no matter what you do you can't live in the past or the future, so indeed you may as well be here now and learn, as I am trying to do, how to feel good lost.\r\n", "dek": "Dubrovnik, Croatia was heavily shelled during the Bosnian conflict and roughly 65 percent of its buildings were hit, built for the most part you'd never know it. Most of the buildings date from about 1468, though some were destroyed in the great earthquake of 1667, still, by and large, the city looks as it did in the fifteenth century.", "pub_date": "2006-05-18T00:38:37", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (18.1090521787230507 42.6413383842917781)", "location": 17, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/dubrovnik.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/dubrovnik.jpg", "meta_description": "Down to the Dalmatian seaside where the highway hugs the Adriatic Sea and leads, eventually, to the fairy tale city of Dubrovnik. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 60, "fields": {"title": "Ghost", "slug": "ghost", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">F</span>rom Dubrovnik we returned north toward Slovenia, stopping along the way to spend one night in the peaceful, almost backwater, Croatia fishing village of Trogir. Like Dubrovnik, Trogir was a walled city of roughly Venetian vintage, but Trogir's wall has largely crumbled away or been removed, though I know not how or why. Still it had the gorgeous narrow cobblestone streets, arched doorways and high towering forts that give all these Dalmatian towns their Rapunzel-like fairly tale quality. </p>\n<p>Trogir was notably different from Dubrovnik chiefly in that it was not inundated with tourists. There were tourists to be sure, but most of them were yachters who contented themselves by sitting in the waterfront cafes just in front of their moorings, admiring each other's yachts and telling sea tales. </p>\n<p>The rest of the town was given over to a handful of tourists who disappeared among the narrow winding streets such that I often found myself walking for long periods of time undisturbed by a soul. We wandered into the main church,<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/trogirchurchalter.jpg\" width=\"210\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"sunlight on alter, Trogir, Croatia\" /> a large stone block affair just off the central square and only recently restored, just before sundown. The church was small and unremarkable save for its old tombstones or at least headstones, embedded right in the floor next to the pews. I had recently finished reading an essay by W.G. Sebald in which he argues, among other things, that our use of tombstones and crypts is really spurred by an urge to lock the dead in the earth, which we cleverly disguise to ourselves as commemorative memorials. </p>\n<p>I stood for a minute in the church watching the last sunbeams fall in through the windows near the roofline wondering if in fact just beneath me, buried in the fourteenth century, was some man or woman desperate to get out and wander the earth, slightly smaller than in life, as the dead are said to be, but larger in understanding and memory. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/trogirchurchgrave.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Grave, Trogir, Croatia\" />I think it was Nabakov who said in one of his novel that writers and the dead travel in the same thing—the past. Indeed I have found, not just through sloth, that I prefer to write these anecdotes as past tense and see what remains with me a few days after I have left. </p>\n<p>This is why perhaps I may seem to have missed some fairly key things, like for instance the oldest pharmacy in the world which I saw in Dubrovnik, because the truth is, I simply don't have time to record everything. I remember the pharmacy now with its a collection of shelves full of dusty bottles and curios who use has long been forgotten, but when <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/trogirbell.jpg\" width=\"163\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Church Bell, Trogir, Croatia\" />I came to write of Dubrovnik it was not there. Memories come and go, pass through us like the ghosts that live in them. Sometimes they are there when we want them, sometimes they are not, and sometimes they are there when we don't want them as well. </p>\n<p>So if I say in Trogir that I remember little more than the peculiar quality of the light as the sun set and electric lanterns began to come on, you will forgive me I hope for my inability to say more. Certain memories passed through me walking the streets of Trogir in the fading twilight, that are too old to speak of here, too far gone to retrace, it is enough for them to merely pass through, a bit of warmth and then they move on. I can say of Trogir though, <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/trogirstreetnight.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Streets at Night, Trogir, Croatia\" />if you don't believe in ghosts, have a late night walk in the old city and tell me how you feel about ghosts when you're done. I have never doubted that the dead move among us, and never been so sure of it as standing in that church staring down at the tombstones from the thirteenth century.</p>\n<p>The following morning after watching the fisherman board their craft and motor out to sea, we climbed back in the car and drove on north to Ljubljana, Slovenia. Some of you may know that I have for some years (though not recently) published a literary journal under the name castagraf (which is currently being held ransom by some asshole domain squatters, so no link at the moment). To come to the point, in the course of several issues castagraf <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ljubljanariver.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Ljubljana, Slovenia\" />I published a number of Slovenian authors, most notably the highly esteemed Tomaz Salamun, Slovenia's national poet, or whatever title they have for the same idea. But along with Tomaz we published to two younger poets whom I would have liked to meet in Ljubljana, but I did not, owing in part to my own incompetence and in part to the estranged relationship I have with my former co-editor who processes their email address.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ljubljanasunlight.jpg\" width=\"210\" height=\"158\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Evening light, Ljubljana, Slovenia\" />So I was unable to look you up Primoz and Gregor for which I am sorry. I should liked to have met you both. But I did enjoy Ljubljana for the two says I spent there, a truly lovely city to call home. Ljubljana is one part old European city and one part college town owing to its relatively small size and large university. The center of town is two streets running parallel on opposite sides of the river, each street lined with cafes and restaurants frequented by locals and tourists alike. </p>\n<p>Though we spent a very short time in Ljubljana it remains one if my favorite European cities and it was fun to wander the streets where so many of my friends have previously been and which I had heard no shortage of stories about. It was nice as well to see the hometown of Tomaz Salamun whose poetry has had no small influence on my own.</p>\n<p>I spent the evening walking the streets trying to get a feel for the city. As the sun set and it began to grow cooler I stopped to put on a sweater and noticed a singularly striking and a little bit frightening piece of graffiti. What struck me about it was the contrast between <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ljubljanagraffiti.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"188\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Graffiti, Ljubljana, Slovenia\" />the gleaming, blood dripping eyes of the bat-like creature above a bed of blooming flowers which seemed for a moment to perfectly encapsulate the contrast between pain and joy that makes up our world. Later that night I dreamed about the strange bat creature, something about it got the better of my imagination, already overrun as it was with ghosts and memories of the dead, but at the end of the dream, of which I recall very little, the flowers were just coming up out of the soil, and the bat was no longer anywhere to be found.\n<break></p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">F</span>rom Dubrovnik we returned north toward Slovenia, stopping along the way to spend one night in the peaceful, almost backwater, Croatia fishing village of Trogir. Like Dubrovnik, Trogir was a walled city of roughly Venetian vintage, but Trogir's wall has largely crumbled away or been removed, though I know not how or why. Still it had the gorgeous narrow cobblestone streets, arched doorways and high towering forts that give all these Dalmatian towns their Rapunzel-like fairly tale quality. \r\n\r\nTrogir was notably different from Dubrovnik chiefly in that it was not inundated with tourists. There were tourists to be sure, but most of them were yachters who contented themselves by sitting in the waterfront cafes just in front of their moorings, admiring each other's yachts and telling sea tales. \r\n\r\nThe rest of the town was given over to a handful of tourists who disappeared among the narrow winding streets such that I often found myself walking for long periods of time undisturbed by a soul. We wandered into the main church,<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/trogirchurchalter.jpg\" width=\"210\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"sunlight on alter, Trogir, Croatia\" /> a large stone block affair just off the central square and only recently restored, just before sundown. The church was small and unremarkable save for its old tombstones or at least headstones, embedded right in the floor next to the pews. I had recently finished reading an essay by W.G. Sebald in which he argues, among other things, that our use of tombstones and crypts is really spurred by an urge to lock the dead in the earth, which we cleverly disguise to ourselves as commemorative memorials. \r\n\r\nI stood for a minute in the church watching the last sunbeams fall in through the windows near the roofline wondering if in fact just beneath me, buried in the fourteenth century, was some man or woman desperate to get out and wander the earth, slightly smaller than in life, as the dead are said to be, but larger in understanding and memory. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/trogirchurchgrave.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Grave, Trogir, Croatia\" />I think it was Nabakov who said in one of his novel that writers and the dead travel in the same thing—the past. Indeed I have found, not just through sloth, that I prefer to write these anecdotes as past tense and see what remains with me a few days after I have left. \r\n\r\nThis is why perhaps I may seem to have missed some fairly key things, like for instance the oldest pharmacy in the world which I saw in Dubrovnik, because the truth is, I simply don't have time to record everything. I remember the pharmacy now with its a collection of shelves full of dusty bottles and curios who use has long been forgotten, but when <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/trogirbell.jpg\" width=\"163\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Church Bell, Trogir, Croatia\" />I came to write of Dubrovnik it was not there. Memories come and go, pass through us like the ghosts that live in them. Sometimes they are there when we want them, sometimes they are not, and sometimes they are there when we don't want them as well. \r\n\r\nSo if I say in Trogir that I remember little more than the peculiar quality of the light as the sun set and electric lanterns began to come on, you will forgive me I hope for my inability to say more. Certain memories passed through me walking the streets of Trogir in the fading twilight, that are too old to speak of here, too far gone to retrace, it is enough for them to merely pass through, a bit of warmth and then they move on. I can say of Trogir though, <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/trogirstreetnight.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Streets at Night, Trogir, Croatia\" />if you don't believe in ghosts, have a late night walk in the old city and tell me how you feel about ghosts when you're done. I have never doubted that the dead move among us, and never been so sure of it as standing in that church staring down at the tombstones from the thirteenth century.\r\n\r\nThe following morning after watching the fisherman board their craft and motor out to sea, we climbed back in the car and drove on north to Ljubljana, Slovenia. Some of you may know that I have for some years (though not recently) published a literary journal under the name castagraf (which is currently being held ransom by some asshole domain squatters, so no link at the moment). To come to the point, in the course of several issues castagraf <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/ljubljanariver.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"173\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Ljubljana, Slovenia\" />I published a number of Slovenian authors, most notably the highly esteemed Tomaz Salamun, Slovenia's national poet, or whatever title they have for the same idea. But along with Tomaz we published to two younger poets whom I would have liked to meet in Ljubljana, but I did not, owing in part to my own incompetence and in part to the estranged relationship I have with my former co-editor who processes their email address.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/ljubljanasunlight.jpg\" width=\"210\" height=\"158\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Evening light, Ljubljana, Slovenia\" />So I was unable to look you up Primoz and Gregor for which I am sorry. I should liked to have met you both. But I did enjoy Ljubljana for the two says I spent there, a truly lovely city to call home. Ljubljana is one part old European city and one part college town owing to its relatively small size and large university. The center of town is two streets running parallel on opposite sides of the river, each street lined with cafes and restaurants frequented by locals and tourists alike. \r\n\r\nThough we spent a very short time in Ljubljana it remains one if my favorite European cities and it was fun to wander the streets where so many of my friends have previously been and which I had heard no shortage of stories about. It was nice as well to see the hometown of Tomaz Salamun whose poetry has had no small influence on my own.\r\n\r\nI spent the evening walking the streets trying to get a feel for the city. As the sun set and it began to grow cooler I stopped to put on a sweater and noticed a singularly striking and a little bit frightening piece of graffiti. What struck me about it was the contrast between <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/ljubljanagraffiti.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"188\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Graffiti, Ljubljana, Slovenia\" />the gleaming, blood dripping eyes of the bat-like creature above a bed of blooming flowers which seemed for a moment to perfectly encapsulate the contrast between pain and joy that makes up our world. Later that night I dreamed about the strange bat creature, something about it got the better of my imagination, already overrun as it was with ghosts and memories of the dead, but at the end of the dream, of which I recall very little, the flowers were just coming up out of the soil, and the bat was no longer anywhere to be found.\r\n<break>", "dek": "Like Dubrovnik, Trogir is a walled city of roughly Venetian vintage, but Trogir's wall has largely crumbled away or been removed. Still, it has the gorgeous narrow cobblestone streets, arched doorways and towering forts that give all Dalmatian towns their Rapunzel-like fairly tale quality.", "pub_date": "2006-05-19T19:37:07", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (14.5067489126992601 46.0508598563245712)", "location": 16, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/trogirnight.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/trogirnight.jpg", "meta_description": "From the cobblestone alleys and arched doorways of Trogir, Croatia to Ljubljana, Slovenia, home of Europe's greatest graffiti. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 61, "fields": {"title": "The King of Carrot Flowers Part Two", "slug": "king-carrot-flowers-part-two", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>he chief attraction of Bled Slovenia is the sweeping panorama of the Julian Alps which lie just beyond its doorstep, which in this case is a lake ringed with castles, monasteries atop crags and palatial hotels that once played host to kings and queens. But owing to a change in the weather which turned from the perfect sunshine of the Dalmatian Coast to rather stormy skies, I did not see much of the sweeping panorama but instead found myself drawn to tiny little scenes in miniature which when examined closely held the same sweeping views but on a different scale. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledmonastery.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"192\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"monastery, Bled Slovenia\" />There is a roughly 200km loop of road that leads northwest out of Bled, through a pass in the Julian Alps and then down the other side, twisting and winding back toward Bled by way of craggy canyons, small hamlets and crystalline rivers. We set out sometime after breakfast and first stopped about halfway up to the pass to see a memorial to the prisoners of war who died building the road during the First World War. My parents walked uphill to the monument, but I elected to take a short walk through the forest. The hidden sun cast a fine even light, as if filtered through a veil of ash, over the forest such that there were few shadows and even the deepest reaches of the woods were visible. I stopped near the road to examine for a while the lichen clinging to the side of a tree, which first caught my eye as a grey-green confusion against otherwise dark brown bark, but, on looking closer, I noticed the confusion gave way to an organization. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledlichens.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Lichens, Near Bled, Slovenia\" />The lichen grew in clumps and rows, much as a forest does and in the valleys and hallows between the pale green strands of lichen, dozens of tiny insects wandered in the midst of what, for them, must be towering fronds. Beetles and ants treaded up and down the rows of lichen, while tiny green insects hovered pensively just above, as if trying to decided whether to duck into the forest of pale silvery branches below. </p>\n<p>Lichen are a composite plant consisting of a fungus which contains photosynthetic algae cells. I remember reading once that lichen grow very slowly and that these growths, which often appear on rocks and trees as a crustlike expansion, slowly covering over their surroundings, can live as long and sometimes longer than many of the trees to which they cling. I couldn't help but notice that lichen bears an uncanny resemblance to coral, which also hosts green algae in their tissues to draw nutrients from the sunlight. Coral is one of the smallest creatures in the world and yet it is the only animal whose architecture is visible from space. Only tiny coral joining together into colonies as it does is capable of making something so massive it's visible from well beyond our world. </p>\n<p>Lichen may not be as spectacular in architectural achievement as coral, but then again, neither are we. I continued on into the forest lost in the strangeness of the thought that the largest things should come from the smallest sources. I walked aimlessly and rather slow, letting the forest step by step reveal a path, <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledforest.jpg\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Forest, near Bled, Slovenia\" />which it did; tree by tree, bush by bush it moved me to the only direction I could go. After walking maybe a hundred meters I came to a small clearing where the trees stood apart in a ring and forest floor turned to brilliant green grass and a kaleidoscope of colorful wildflowers—wild mustard, blue-eyed mary, woodruff, dandelions and many more whose names I do not know. I stood in the middle of the clearing and began, for no reason at all to turn in circles with my head tipped back, staring up at the branches and leaves of the white firs and pines swollen with yellow clumps of pollen. When I think of it now I see something a bit like the long panoramic sweeps through the forest that filmmaker Terrance Malik is so fond of, panning up into the canopy of trees and leaves with flashes of sunlight peaking through from behind the milky white low hanging clouds. I continued to spin slowly in a circle, stumbling at times but keeping my head up high until I began to feel as if I were floating up into the air, almost able to touch the top leaves of a nearby beech tree before slowly spiraling back down the earth.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bleddandelion.jpg\" width=\"244\" height=\"163\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"dandelions, near Bled, Slovenia\" />Eventually I was overcomes with dizziness and had to sit down in the middle of the clearing while the world still turned slowly around me. I lay back in the grass so I was eyelevel with the dandelion puffs and watched them shudder in the stray currents of air floating down from the pass which shook the beeches as well making their leaves flutter and quake. I would have been quite happy to have died in that moment, or to have suddenly flown off up into the heavens. There is a peace in mountains, forests, by the sea, in middle of Central Park, Jardin des Plantes, the Garmond in Vienna, a train station in Munich, that does, as the man said, passeth all understanding. Or perhaps, as I have come to believe, the place is entirely irrelevant, it is in fact a place within us that creates the peace, as place as Marc Bolan once sang, \"deep in my heart that's big enough to hold, just about all of you.\" I lay there wondering with smile who exactly wouldn't fit in Marc Bolan's heart and with less of the smile who wouldn't fit in mine. I would like to think that there isn't anyone who wouldn't fit. In fact I decided that the folding chairs in my soul would well be carried down to my heart and used to hold the overflow. Eventually when I had worked out this oversight to my satisfaction, I sat up and lit a cigarette.</p>\n<p>Through the trees behind me, if I craned my neck I could just make out the roof of the memorial. I began to wonder about the soldiers who died here from exhaustion and cold. I wondered if they found the mountains beautiful even in the midst of their forced labor. I wondered what they dreamed of at night as the slept in the tiny shelters which could scarcely have afforded them much comfort. After a while I could almost see them around me, ghostly figures shrunken slightly with death, still wearing the tattered uniforms and worn wool overcoats they were buried in <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledbluebells.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"214\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Blue Flowers, near Bled, Slovenia\" />standing in a half circle on the edge of the clearing, smiling, having found a place beyond the cold, beyond hatred, war and cynicism, happy to be free in some place where we will all one day go to return to the children we once were, to laugh and dance and sing and most of all be silly again. I raised myself on one elbow and looked behind me at the trees and between them the soldiers and smiled to salute them, and they smiled back as if to say it's okay, all is forgiven, you and me and they slowly turned to walk back through the woods. I followed their footsteps retracing my path in the forest back to the road, the car and world of the living.</p>\n<p>By the time we reached the pass the clouds had descended over the upper reaches of the peaks and continued to spill down the hill like milk poured from heaven. We walked for a few minutes around the sandy soils of the high alpine tundra where only the hardiest of plants can grow, the tall trees absent, only stunted white firs and few beds of heather <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledpassclouds.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"164\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Mountains and clouds, near Bled, Slovenia\" />stretching up the sloping scree and talus peaks. At a small stand beside the park headquarters a little girl and her father were buying postcards from a souvenir stand, the girl repeating over and over to her dad, \"look at my beautiful picture, look at my beautiful picture\" as she clutched the small piece of paper to her overcoat. She then turned to her mother and began again, \"mummy, look at my beautiful picture,\" as her parents ushered her back in the car.</p>\n<p>As we made our way down the mountain the road joined up with a river and began to wind its way alongside it. We noticed a rickety suspension bridge at one point and felt compelled to stop and walk across it. My father and I walked to the other side, stopping to make some photographs and look at the strange milky blue water of Slovenian rivers, which seem to me the clearest most beautiful waters I've ever seen. I suppose the blue tinge is from the glacial silt, but that doesn't really make sense because it seems to me silt would be washed downstream by the force of the river. Whatever the case, the water is turquoise and standing beside it there is a smell I've never noticed before, a smell of clarity, if such a thing may be said to exist. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledriverme.jpg\" width=\"179\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"suspension bridge, near Bled, slovenia\" />Little tuffs of cotton-like spores floated downwind in the breeze and I noticed one particular tree which seemed to be milking itself. A strange foamy liquid seeped out of every joint in its branches, bubbling in the sunlight until it settled to clear liquid and fell from the trees to land on our arms. It was not sticky and had no taste. If it was sap it had spent to long near the clear river water until it too had come to possess the same lucid transparency that seems to seep out of everything in Slovenia.</p>\n<p>Down the far side of the pass we turned off onto a very narrow road and passed through several small towns consisting of stone farm houses, wooden sheds and barns and rocky walls dividing up the valley, which was a veritable explosion of spring wildflowers, so dense and colorful as to nearly hide the green grass beneath them. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledwood.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"172\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Cord wood, near Bled, Slovenia\" />Beside nearly every house whether solitary on a plot of farmland or clustered in the number of small villages, was a stack of cordwood covered by a small lean-to or roof of some kind. I watched as these piles of firewood floated past my window reflecting on the almost eerie sense of pattern and order visible in them. It seemed to me rather like an architect had planned to intricate combination and balance of angles and light and shadow and positive and negative space, until in the end it more closely resembled a carefully thought out mosaic than a haphazard stack of split wood.</p>\n<p>We stopped in one of the towns to visit an old church lying rather sleepily, nestled in a curve of the road under the shade of an elm which towered majestically above the church bell tower. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/bledchurch.jpg\" width=\"174\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Church, near Bled, Slovenia\" />I waited across the road while a German couple loitered around the front yard wanting for once to be alone in a church. The church was not remarkable architecturally, not listed in any guidebook, it was simply a village church, humble, but yet standing out from the other buildings by virtue of its tower. Eventually I walked up the steps and into the cool darkness of the foyer, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim light before I could continue. As my pupils widened and the darkness took form and shape I made my way forward toward the altar where I stopped to study a small figurine of the Virgin Mary. Her face seemed peaceful looking down at the baby in her arms. I said a brief prayer for the soldiers and, as I looked at Mary and child, I began to think of the girl up at the pass with her beautiful pictures postcards, I thought of a Jeff Tweedy lyric, \"my fangs have been pulled\" and realized with great sigh that indeed, in the last eight months, my fangs have been pulled and all I want to do is show you my picture, my beautiful, but tragically incomplete picture.\n<break></p>\n<p>As I walked out of the church and back toward the car I remember something I believe Picasso said, that we are all trying to remember how to be children.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>he chief attraction of Bled Slovenia is the sweeping panorama of the Julian Alps which lie just beyond its doorstep, which in this case is a lake ringed with castles, monasteries atop crags and palatial hotels that once played host to kings and queens. But owing to a change in the weather which turned from the perfect sunshine of the Dalmatian Coast to rather stormy skies, I did not see much of the sweeping panorama but instead found myself drawn to tiny little scenes in miniature which when examined closely held the same sweeping views but on a different scale. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/bledmonastery.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"192\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"monastery, Bled Slovenia\" />There is a roughly 200km loop of road that leads northwest out of Bled, through a pass in the Julian Alps and then down the other side, twisting and winding back toward Bled by way of craggy canyons, small hamlets and crystalline rivers. We set out sometime after breakfast and first stopped about halfway up to the pass to see a memorial to the prisoners of war who died building the road during the First World War. My parents walked uphill to the monument, but I elected to take a short walk through the forest. The hidden sun cast a fine even light, as if filtered through a veil of ash, over the forest such that there were few shadows and even the deepest reaches of the woods were visible. I stopped near the road to examine for a while the lichen clinging to the side of a tree, which first caught my eye as a grey-green confusion against otherwise dark brown bark, but, on looking closer, I noticed the confusion gave way to an organization. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/bledlichens.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Lichens, Near Bled, Slovenia\" />The lichen grew in clumps and rows, much as a forest does and in the valleys and hallows between the pale green strands of lichen, dozens of tiny insects wandered in the midst of what, for them, must be towering fronds. Beetles and ants treaded up and down the rows of lichen, while tiny green insects hovered pensively just above, as if trying to decided whether to duck into the forest of pale silvery branches below. \r\n\r\nLichen are a composite plant consisting of a fungus which contains photosynthetic algae cells. I remember reading once that lichen grow very slowly and that these growths, which often appear on rocks and trees as a crustlike expansion, slowly covering over their surroundings, can live as long and sometimes longer than many of the trees to which they cling. I couldn't help but notice that lichen bears an uncanny resemblance to coral, which also hosts green algae in their tissues to draw nutrients from the sunlight. Coral is one of the smallest creatures in the world and yet it is the only animal whose architecture is visible from space. Only tiny coral joining together into colonies as it does is capable of making something so massive it's visible from well beyond our world. \r\n\r\nLichen may not be as spectacular in architectural achievement as coral, but then again, neither are we. I continued on into the forest lost in the strangeness of the thought that the largest things should come from the smallest sources. I walked aimlessly and rather slow, letting the forest step by step reveal a path, <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/bledforest.jpg\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Forest, near Bled, Slovenia\" />which it did; tree by tree, bush by bush it moved me to the only direction I could go. After walking maybe a hundred meters I came to a small clearing where the trees stood apart in a ring and forest floor turned to brilliant green grass and a kaleidoscope of colorful wildflowers—wild mustard, blue-eyed mary, woodruff, dandelions and many more whose names I do not know. I stood in the middle of the clearing and began, for no reason at all to turn in circles with my head tipped back, staring up at the branches and leaves of the white firs and pines swollen with yellow clumps of pollen. When I think of it now I see something a bit like the long panoramic sweeps through the forest that filmmaker Terrance Malik is so fond of, panning up into the canopy of trees and leaves with flashes of sunlight peaking through from behind the milky white low hanging clouds. I continued to spin slowly in a circle, stumbling at times but keeping my head up high until I began to feel as if I were floating up into the air, almost able to touch the top leaves of a nearby beech tree before slowly spiraling back down the earth.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/bleddandelion.jpg\" width=\"244\" height=\"163\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"dandelions, near Bled, Slovenia\" />Eventually I was overcomes with dizziness and had to sit down in the middle of the clearing while the world still turned slowly around me. I lay back in the grass so I was eyelevel with the dandelion puffs and watched them shudder in the stray currents of air floating down from the pass which shook the beeches as well making their leaves flutter and quake. I would have been quite happy to have died in that moment, or to have suddenly flown off up into the heavens. There is a peace in mountains, forests, by the sea, in middle of Central Park, Jardin des Plantes, the Garmond in Vienna, a train station in Munich, that does, as the man said, passeth all understanding. Or perhaps, as I have come to believe, the place is entirely irrelevant, it is in fact a place within us that creates the peace, as place as Marc Bolan once sang, \"deep in my heart that's big enough to hold, just about all of you.\" I lay there wondering with smile who exactly wouldn't fit in Marc Bolan's heart and with less of the smile who wouldn't fit in mine. I would like to think that there isn't anyone who wouldn't fit. In fact I decided that the folding chairs in my soul would well be carried down to my heart and used to hold the overflow. Eventually when I had worked out this oversight to my satisfaction, I sat up and lit a cigarette.\r\n\r\nThrough the trees behind me, if I craned my neck I could just make out the roof of the memorial. I began to wonder about the soldiers who died here from exhaustion and cold. I wondered if they found the mountains beautiful even in the midst of their forced labor. I wondered what they dreamed of at night as the slept in the tiny shelters which could scarcely have afforded them much comfort. After a while I could almost see them around me, ghostly figures shrunken slightly with death, still wearing the tattered uniforms and worn wool overcoats they were buried in <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/bledbluebells.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"214\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Blue Flowers, near Bled, Slovenia\" />standing in a half circle on the edge of the clearing, smiling, having found a place beyond the cold, beyond hatred, war and cynicism, happy to be free in some place where we will all one day go to return to the children we once were, to laugh and dance and sing and most of all be silly again. I raised myself on one elbow and looked behind me at the trees and between them the soldiers and smiled to salute them, and they smiled back as if to say it's okay, all is forgiven, you and me and they slowly turned to walk back through the woods. I followed their footsteps retracing my path in the forest back to the road, the car and world of the living.\r\n\r\nBy the time we reached the pass the clouds had descended over the upper reaches of the peaks and continued to spill down the hill like milk poured from heaven. We walked for a few minutes around the sandy soils of the high alpine tundra where only the hardiest of plants can grow, the tall trees absent, only stunted white firs and few beds of heather <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/bledpassclouds.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"164\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Mountains and clouds, near Bled, Slovenia\" />stretching up the sloping scree and talus peaks. At a small stand beside the park headquarters a little girl and her father were buying postcards from a souvenir stand, the girl repeating over and over to her dad, \"look at my beautiful picture, look at my beautiful picture\" as she clutched the small piece of paper to her overcoat. She then turned to her mother and began again, \"mummy, look at my beautiful picture,\" as her parents ushered her back in the car.\r\n\r\nAs we made our way down the mountain the road joined up with a river and began to wind its way alongside it. We noticed a rickety suspension bridge at one point and felt compelled to stop and walk across it. My father and I walked to the other side, stopping to make some photographs and look at the strange milky blue water of Slovenian rivers, which seem to me the clearest most beautiful waters I've ever seen. I suppose the blue tinge is from the glacial silt, but that doesn't really make sense because it seems to me silt would be washed downstream by the force of the river. Whatever the case, the water is turquoise and standing beside it there is a smell I've never noticed before, a smell of clarity, if such a thing may be said to exist. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/bledriverme.jpg\" width=\"179\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"suspension bridge, near Bled, slovenia\" />Little tuffs of cotton-like spores floated downwind in the breeze and I noticed one particular tree which seemed to be milking itself. A strange foamy liquid seeped out of every joint in its branches, bubbling in the sunlight until it settled to clear liquid and fell from the trees to land on our arms. It was not sticky and had no taste. If it was sap it had spent to long near the clear river water until it too had come to possess the same lucid transparency that seems to seep out of everything in Slovenia.\r\n\r\nDown the far side of the pass we turned off onto a very narrow road and passed through several small towns consisting of stone farm houses, wooden sheds and barns and rocky walls dividing up the valley, which was a veritable explosion of spring wildflowers, so dense and colorful as to nearly hide the green grass beneath them. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/bledwood.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"172\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Cord wood, near Bled, Slovenia\" />Beside nearly every house whether solitary on a plot of farmland or clustered in the number of small villages, was a stack of cordwood covered by a small lean-to or roof of some kind. I watched as these piles of firewood floated past my window reflecting on the almost eerie sense of pattern and order visible in them. It seemed to me rather like an architect had planned to intricate combination and balance of angles and light and shadow and positive and negative space, until in the end it more closely resembled a carefully thought out mosaic than a haphazard stack of split wood.\r\n\r\nWe stopped in one of the towns to visit an old church lying rather sleepily, nestled in a curve of the road under the shade of an elm which towered majestically above the church bell tower. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/bledchurch.jpg\" width=\"174\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Church, near Bled, Slovenia\" />I waited across the road while a German couple loitered around the front yard wanting for once to be alone in a church. The church was not remarkable architecturally, not listed in any guidebook, it was simply a village church, humble, but yet standing out from the other buildings by virtue of its tower. Eventually I walked up the steps and into the cool darkness of the foyer, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim light before I could continue. As my pupils widened and the darkness took form and shape I made my way forward toward the altar where I stopped to study a small figurine of the Virgin Mary. Her face seemed peaceful looking down at the baby in her arms. I said a brief prayer for the soldiers and, as I looked at Mary and child, I began to think of the girl up at the pass with her beautiful pictures postcards, I thought of a Jeff Tweedy lyric, \"my fangs have been pulled\" and realized with great sigh that indeed, in the last eight months, my fangs have been pulled and all I want to do is show you my picture, my beautiful, but tragically incomplete picture.\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nAs I walked out of the church and back toward the car I remember something I believe Picasso said, that we are all trying to remember how to be children.", "dek": "There is a roughly 200km loop of road that leads northwest out of Bled, through a pass in the Julian Alps and then down the other side, twisting and winding back toward Bled by way of craggy canyons, small hamlets and crystalline rivers. We set out sometime after breakfast.", "pub_date": "2006-05-22T20:44:33", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (14.1099429110912826 46.3652099826155748)", "location": 15, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/sloveniachurch.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/sloveniachurch.jpg", "meta_description": "Neutral Milk Hotel, the mountains of Bled Slovenia and just how many people can you fit in your heart? By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 62, "fields": {"title": "Inside and Out", "slug": "inside-and-out", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">C</span>esky Krumlov is a small Czech town nestled on a dramatic bend in the Vltava River. Like any European city worth its salt, it has a dramatic castle on a hill and all the trappings of the once glorious feudal age, but with only one day to spend, a stopover on the way to Prague, I decided, rather than try to run around seeing a bunch of stuff in a hurry, to simply pick a place and spend the day there. </p>\n<p>As it happened, Cesky Krumlov was home to the magnificent Egon Schiele museum, just the sort of place I could while away an afternoon relaxing and wandering aimlessly through an art gallery, for it was indeed more of gallery than a museum. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovcastle.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"170\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Castle Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic\" />Schiele's mother was born in Cesky Krumlov and the artist was drawn here by some compulsion of scenery and setting several times during his life, painting the narrow cobblestone streets and wonderful mixture of Gothic and art nouveau architecture (which what was actually new in his day). One of the most beautiful things about European towns is the rich array of vibrant color schemes you see on even the most ordinary of buildings. The attention to detail that makes the difference between a building and work of art was everywhere in Cesky Krumlov, from the delicate pink and red complements of a fine dovetailed corner, to the white plaster and oak beams of the Egon Schiele museum, which, despite geometric differences, looked not unlike the Globe Theatre in London.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovschiele1.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"159\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Egon Schiele Sketch, Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic\" />The first time Schiele came to Cesky Krumlov he lived here for several years. It's entirely possible he would have lived here forever were it not that the otherwise conservative town more or less ran him out for what the history books loosely refer to has his “lifestyle.” I don't propose to know exactly what Schiele's lifestyle entailed, but it probably didn't help that his primary work at the time was a series of oils and sketches of nude pubescent girls. Europe, for all its supposed open-mindedness on art, has had its moments of prudishness. Walking the streets just adjacent the town square it wasn't hard to image Schiele being out of place here and from what I know of his life, he probably made little attempt to hide anything, for he seemed to live as he painted, openly, not provoking, but perhaps confused and somewhat dismayed that not everyone found the same joys in life that he had discovered. \n<break>\nI spent most of the afternoon wandering through the various rooms and the oversized attic of the building which made the most fascinating museums I've ever been in. Heavy, low-hanging oak beams with cracked white plaster ceiling between them and raw unvarnished floorboards that creaked and groaned with every footstep, as if reminding you constantly of your own presence, some subliminal mnemonic of temporal space, made the museum unlike any other I have been too here in Europe or anywhere else.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovmuseum1.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"188\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Attic, Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic\" />I've never been one to pay to much attentions to the details of curation, everything from the work selected to the way it's lit and hung, but for the first time I realized how important all those tiny little decisions are to the experience we the viewers come away with and the curation at the Egon Schiele museum was nothing short of genius (for an example of terrible curation stop by the pompous and ill-conceived J. Paul Getty museum in Los Angeles).</p>\n<p>In addition to the permanent Schiele collection, the museum has several exhibitions as well which during the time of my visit were sketches and paintings by Alberto Giacometti and Eva Prokopcova. Giacometti's work was a mixed bag, some of his paintings weren't worth the cost of the oils he bought to make them, but one remarkable series of sketches redeemed him. A “graphic cycle” as the museum called it, entitled <strong>Paris Without End</strong>, featured the charcoal sketches Giacometti made toward the end of his life (most of which he spent in Paris). Displayed as the facing pages of a large sketchbook, the works were intended to become lithographs but that never happened and apparently the whole sequence had never been displayed together in its original form. Giacometti's <strong>Paris Without End</strong> formed a kind of walking tour of the city in sketch form, marvelously detailed and yet extraordinarily minimalist as well. I've developed a fascination with negative space and Giacometti was a marvelous study in what can be created by a few simple lines organizing an otherwise blank page to reveal a small scene of a Parisian side street, an awning in three strokes of pen, a lamppost in the brief blur of charcoal. Walking around the display, which was laid out side by side around a massive white walled room, I had the feeling of having accompanied Giacometti on a walk around Paris during which he might have paused to note something, trace out an outline, remark on a scene. As one continuous experience, that is, all the sketches taken as a whole, the sketches felt like an intensely personal look into another person's soul, to see for a moment how they view the world. Though I knew nothing of him when I arrived at the museum, I couldn't shake the feeling on leaving that we had known each other well and can see myself at some point strolling down an alley in Montparnesse and thinking to myself, oh yes, this is where Alberto stopped to sketch the girl stepping off the train, where he huddled under the cafe awning in the rain to trace out the splash of auto tires on uneven cobblestones. But in spite of the intimate nature of the works, or perhaps because of it, the sketches are not off putting or insular, but have an openness rather like a fun filled confession to which all were invited.</p>\n<p>The other artist on display was a local Czech artist named Eva Prokopcova whose abstract sketches filled the one odd and out of place room in the museum, on the ground floor, a strangely modern industrial feeling room with bare walls and floor to ceiling windows which unfortunately created a good bit of glare. Upstairs was another room of her oil paintings <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovprokopcova1.jpg\" width=\"165\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Eva Prokopcova Ink Drawing, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic\" />which displayed chronologically around the room and gave a fascinating glimpse into the progression of the artist, both what changed and what remains the same. On first glance it was easy to see that Prokopcova had been moving away from realistic forms for some time and by the time I reached the far side of the room the canvases bore a stamp of abstraction and fascination with form that owed no small debt to Jackson Pollock, if not in style at least in underlying assumptions and conceptualization of those assumptions. And yet her work is nothing like Pollack's, where he swirled into increasingly muddy tones she seemed to be moving toward brighter and brighter colors and more contrasting tones, colors that exploded to reveal forms you might say.</p>\n<p>The silence of the massive attic hall began to feel slightly oppressive to me after a while and so I wandered through low arched doorway to a smaller room which had one final, separate collection of works by Prokopova, a number of small eight by ten charcoals mounted one after the other, frame touching frame, and encircling the entire room at roughly chest height. Many of these had the most warmth and joy of anything in the museum, Schiele included, and I spent considerable time, circling the room twice to study the exquisite, chaotic stabs and blotches of ink that looked somehow contented in the afternoon light which streamed in through the attic window behind me. It was not unlike the inside of a ring I thought at one point. I sat down in a solitary chair in the middle of the room and tried to imagine myself sitting in the middle of a ring, as if the room were a transparent finger and I inside it. I spent some time considering whether this observation was purely my imagination or perhaps an intension of the artist to transport us, like Sun Ra perhaps, to some ringed planet where the senses spin and mingle more freely.</p>\n<p>I sat for a while in an oversized armchair alone in the center of the small attic room watching the single beam of sunlight slowly move across the floorboards while I scribbled a few notes and listened to some music on my headphones. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovmuseum2.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic\" />I had recently become obsessed with the ambient work of Nobukazu Takemura, or in the convention of Japanese names, Takemura Nobukazu, which somehow seemed to perfectly fit the room, the solitary finger of light dragging across the floor to the quiet chant of children's voices mingled with warbles and bleats of strings and electronic instruments, piano lines that faded to trumpet blasts, the hollow whisper of air over half full bottles, the chime of bells, the tinkling of a jack-in-the-box, and so many sounds which I cannot conjure sources for, sounds which come from a space somewhere in the imagination, as if Takemura had reached behind the curtain of life, some back door to Saturn's outer rings, and retrieved a few moments of musical clarity which he played with until arriving at the xylophonic children's symphony that I could hear in my headphones. Eventually I found I had stopped writing altogether and was simply staring into space thinking about what it would feel like to touch sound. Takemura's compositions seem to wrap themselves around you like blanket on a wintry morning or the sun at the beach, they, not unlike I might add, many of Schiele's paintings, inhabit a space that once entered reminds you immediately why you're happy to be alive, why just being is sometimes enough, no traveling, no movement and very little thought of anything other than the scene laid out before you and perhaps a lingering desire to touch the sound, the wrap your own arms around some sonic wave as it breaks over you. Perhaps you can feel the structure of time disintegrating pleasantly about you, as if a giant hand were pulling apart a pomegranate to reveal a forest of stars and the quiet clouds of light between then, whole nebulae that at once envelope and carry you out over the shadowy afternoon light drenching the forested hills, the trees warbling with birdcalls, and then you slowly spiral down again. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovschiele2.jpg\" width=\"222\" height=\"174\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Egon Schiele Painting, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic\" />I thought of Kindinsky and his synesthesia, the man whose paintbrush sang to him, who painted in cello blue and trumpet reds. I've never heard a color, though I do think colors smell differently. The room with red walls has a scent far removed from the cool afternoon creams and peaches of the dining room in the house where I once lived. I was too old for the house as it turned out, but I remember the sunlight reflection off the stainless steel kitchen sink sang to me some mornings. </p>\n<p>So far as I know Schiele did not hear color either and perhaps that's why he had to make it sing on the canvas, a cool dark sound you can almost hear drifting in the window from Cesky Krumlov's streets below.</p>\n<p>It was the mingling sausage scents and hunger that finally drew me back downstairs and out into the streets where a synesthetic wonderland was dressed in evening light and sounded like a river running over… <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/ceskykrumlovriver.jpg\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Vltava River, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic\" />I decided as I left the Schiele museum behind that we are all synthesists in a way, there are not those clear lines between our sense that we imagine, one cannot see without hearing and tasting and touching and smelling, the sun now before me visible between the narrow slices of buildings the reflection of orange light in the waters of the river, is inseparable from the taste of Budvar, the smell of mustard and shoe polish, the sound of bells, the flapping of pigeon wings, the taste of sausage, the cool damp of the evening air, the gurgle of the river, the voices drifting out of windows, the fine inlay work on the tile floor, the shape of my chair, the yellow brown walls, the schoolgirls laughing, the waitress's perfume, the man in the corner singing softly with a cigar between his lips; everything is always happening everywhere.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">C</span>esky Krumlov is a small Czech town nestled on a dramatic bend in the Vltava River. Like any European city worth its salt, it has a dramatic castle on a hill and all the trappings of the once glorious feudal age, but with only one day to spend, a stopover on the way to Prague, I decided, rather than try to run around seeing a bunch of stuff in a hurry, to simply pick a place and spend the day there. \r\n\r\nAs it happened, Cesky Krumlov was home to the magnificent Egon Schiele museum, just the sort of place I could while away an afternoon relaxing and wandering aimlessly through an art gallery, for it was indeed more of gallery than a museum. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/ceskykrumlovcastle.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"170\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Castle Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic\" />Schiele's mother was born in Cesky Krumlov and the artist was drawn here by some compulsion of scenery and setting several times during his life, painting the narrow cobblestone streets and wonderful mixture of Gothic and art nouveau architecture (which what was actually new in his day). One of the most beautiful things about European towns is the rich array of vibrant color schemes you see on even the most ordinary of buildings. The attention to detail that makes the difference between a building and work of art was everywhere in Cesky Krumlov, from the delicate pink and red complements of a fine dovetailed corner, to the white plaster and oak beams of the Egon Schiele museum, which, despite geometric differences, looked not unlike the Globe Theatre in London.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/ceskykrumlovschiele1.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"159\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Egon Schiele Sketch, Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic\" />The first time Schiele came to Cesky Krumlov he lived here for several years. It's entirely possible he would have lived here forever were it not that the otherwise conservative town more or less ran him out for what the history books loosely refer to has his “lifestyle.” I don't propose to know exactly what Schiele's lifestyle entailed, but it probably didn't help that his primary work at the time was a series of oils and sketches of nude pubescent girls. Europe, for all its supposed open-mindedness on art, has had its moments of prudishness. Walking the streets just adjacent the town square it wasn't hard to image Schiele being out of place here and from what I know of his life, he probably made little attempt to hide anything, for he seemed to live as he painted, openly, not provoking, but perhaps confused and somewhat dismayed that not everyone found the same joys in life that he had discovered. \r\n<break>\r\nI spent most of the afternoon wandering through the various rooms and the oversized attic of the building which made the most fascinating museums I've ever been in. Heavy, low-hanging oak beams with cracked white plaster ceiling between them and raw unvarnished floorboards that creaked and groaned with every footstep, as if reminding you constantly of your own presence, some subliminal mnemonic of temporal space, made the museum unlike any other I have been too here in Europe or anywhere else.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/ceskykrumlovmuseum1.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"188\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Attic, Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic\" />I've never been one to pay to much attentions to the details of curation, everything from the work selected to the way it's lit and hung, but for the first time I realized how important all those tiny little decisions are to the experience we the viewers come away with and the curation at the Egon Schiele museum was nothing short of genius (for an example of terrible curation stop by the pompous and ill-conceived J. Paul Getty museum in Los Angeles).\r\n\r\nIn addition to the permanent Schiele collection, the museum has several exhibitions as well which during the time of my visit were sketches and paintings by Alberto Giacometti and Eva Prokopcova. Giacometti's work was a mixed bag, some of his paintings weren't worth the cost of the oils he bought to make them, but one remarkable series of sketches redeemed him. A “graphic cycle” as the museum called it, entitled **Paris Without End**, featured the charcoal sketches Giacometti made toward the end of his life (most of which he spent in Paris). Displayed as the facing pages of a large sketchbook, the works were intended to become lithographs but that never happened and apparently the whole sequence had never been displayed together in its original form. Giacometti's **Paris Without End** formed a kind of walking tour of the city in sketch form, marvelously detailed and yet extraordinarily minimalist as well. I've developed a fascination with negative space and Giacometti was a marvelous study in what can be created by a few simple lines organizing an otherwise blank page to reveal a small scene of a Parisian side street, an awning in three strokes of pen, a lamppost in the brief blur of charcoal. Walking around the display, which was laid out side by side around a massive white walled room, I had the feeling of having accompanied Giacometti on a walk around Paris during which he might have paused to note something, trace out an outline, remark on a scene. As one continuous experience, that is, all the sketches taken as a whole, the sketches felt like an intensely personal look into another person's soul, to see for a moment how they view the world. Though I knew nothing of him when I arrived at the museum, I couldn't shake the feeling on leaving that we had known each other well and can see myself at some point strolling down an alley in Montparnesse and thinking to myself, oh yes, this is where Alberto stopped to sketch the girl stepping off the train, where he huddled under the cafe awning in the rain to trace out the splash of auto tires on uneven cobblestones. But in spite of the intimate nature of the works, or perhaps because of it, the sketches are not off putting or insular, but have an openness rather like a fun filled confession to which all were invited.\r\n\r\nThe other artist on display was a local Czech artist named Eva Prokopcova whose abstract sketches filled the one odd and out of place room in the museum, on the ground floor, a strangely modern industrial feeling room with bare walls and floor to ceiling windows which unfortunately created a good bit of glare. Upstairs was another room of her oil paintings <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/ceskykrumlovprokopcova1.jpg\" width=\"165\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Eva Prokopcova Ink Drawing, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic\" />which displayed chronologically around the room and gave a fascinating glimpse into the progression of the artist, both what changed and what remains the same. On first glance it was easy to see that Prokopcova had been moving away from realistic forms for some time and by the time I reached the far side of the room the canvases bore a stamp of abstraction and fascination with form that owed no small debt to Jackson Pollock, if not in style at least in underlying assumptions and conceptualization of those assumptions. And yet her work is nothing like Pollack's, where he swirled into increasingly muddy tones she seemed to be moving toward brighter and brighter colors and more contrasting tones, colors that exploded to reveal forms you might say.\r\n\r\nThe silence of the massive attic hall began to feel slightly oppressive to me after a while and so I wandered through low arched doorway to a smaller room which had one final, separate collection of works by Prokopova, a number of small eight by ten charcoals mounted one after the other, frame touching frame, and encircling the entire room at roughly chest height. Many of these had the most warmth and joy of anything in the museum, Schiele included, and I spent considerable time, circling the room twice to study the exquisite, chaotic stabs and blotches of ink that looked somehow contented in the afternoon light which streamed in through the attic window behind me. It was not unlike the inside of a ring I thought at one point. I sat down in a solitary chair in the middle of the room and tried to imagine myself sitting in the middle of a ring, as if the room were a transparent finger and I inside it. I spent some time considering whether this observation was purely my imagination or perhaps an intension of the artist to transport us, like Sun Ra perhaps, to some ringed planet where the senses spin and mingle more freely.\r\n\r\nI sat for a while in an oversized armchair alone in the center of the small attic room watching the single beam of sunlight slowly move across the floorboards while I scribbled a few notes and listened to some music on my headphones. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/ceskykrumlovmuseum2.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Egon Schiele Museum, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic\" />I had recently become obsessed with the ambient work of Nobukazu Takemura, or in the convention of Japanese names, Takemura Nobukazu, which somehow seemed to perfectly fit the room, the solitary finger of light dragging across the floor to the quiet chant of children's voices mingled with warbles and bleats of strings and electronic instruments, piano lines that faded to trumpet blasts, the hollow whisper of air over half full bottles, the chime of bells, the tinkling of a jack-in-the-box, and so many sounds which I cannot conjure sources for, sounds which come from a space somewhere in the imagination, as if Takemura had reached behind the curtain of life, some back door to Saturn's outer rings, and retrieved a few moments of musical clarity which he played with until arriving at the xylophonic children's symphony that I could hear in my headphones. Eventually I found I had stopped writing altogether and was simply staring into space thinking about what it would feel like to touch sound. Takemura's compositions seem to wrap themselves around you like blanket on a wintry morning or the sun at the beach, they, not unlike I might add, many of Schiele's paintings, inhabit a space that once entered reminds you immediately why you're happy to be alive, why just being is sometimes enough, no traveling, no movement and very little thought of anything other than the scene laid out before you and perhaps a lingering desire to touch the sound, the wrap your own arms around some sonic wave as it breaks over you. Perhaps you can feel the structure of time disintegrating pleasantly about you, as if a giant hand were pulling apart a pomegranate to reveal a forest of stars and the quiet clouds of light between then, whole nebulae that at once envelope and carry you out over the shadowy afternoon light drenching the forested hills, the trees warbling with birdcalls, and then you slowly spiral down again. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/ceskykrumlovschiele2.jpg\" width=\"222\" height=\"174\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Egon Schiele Painting, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic\" />I thought of Kindinsky and his synesthesia, the man whose paintbrush sang to him, who painted in cello blue and trumpet reds. I've never heard a color, though I do think colors smell differently. The room with red walls has a scent far removed from the cool afternoon creams and peaches of the dining room in the house where I once lived. I was too old for the house as it turned out, but I remember the sunlight reflection off the stainless steel kitchen sink sang to me some mornings. \r\n\r\nSo far as I know Schiele did not hear color either and perhaps that's why he had to make it sing on the canvas, a cool dark sound you can almost hear drifting in the window from Cesky Krumlov's streets below.\r\n\r\nIt was the mingling sausage scents and hunger that finally drew me back downstairs and out into the streets where a synesthetic wonderland was dressed in evening light and sounded like a river running over… <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/ceskykrumlovriver.jpg\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Vltava River, Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic\" />I decided as I left the Schiele museum behind that we are all synthesists in a way, there are not those clear lines between our sense that we imagine, one cannot see without hearing and tasting and touching and smelling, the sun now before me visible between the narrow slices of buildings the reflection of orange light in the waters of the river, is inseparable from the taste of Budvar, the smell of mustard and shoe polish, the sound of bells, the flapping of pigeon wings, the taste of sausage, the cool damp of the evening air, the gurgle of the river, the voices drifting out of windows, the fine inlay work on the tile floor, the shape of my chair, the yellow brown walls, the schoolgirls laughing, the waitress's perfume, the man in the corner singing softly with a cigar between his lips; everything is always happening everywhere.", "dek": "Chasing Egon Schiele: The attention to detail that makes the difference between a building and work of art was everywhere in Cesky Krumlov, from the delicate pink and red complements of a fine dovetailed corner, to the white plaster and oak beams of the Egon Schiele museum, which, despite geometric differences, looked not unlike the Globe Theatre in London.", "pub_date": "2006-05-25T17:45:12", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (14.3173527697660088 48.8105305780154879)", "location": 14, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/krumlovcastleatnight.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/krumlovcastleatnight.jpg", "meta_description": "I've never heard a color, but I do think they smell differently. Pondering synesthesia at the Egon Schiele Museum in Cesky Krumlov. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 63, "fields": {"title": "Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds", "slug": "four-minutes-thirty-three-seconds", "body_html": "<p class=\"pull-quote\">“He tried to gather up and hold the phrase or harmony… that was passing by him and that opened his soul so much wider, the way the smells of certain roses circulating in the damp evening air have the property of dilating our nostrils.”<span class=\"credit\">— <cite>Marcel Proust</cite>, <em>Swann's Way</em></span></p>\n\n<p><span class=\"drop\">P</span>laces have signature colors, they inscribe themselves onto you in liquid strokes of a pen you never quite see until the ink rolls down your forehead and covers your eyes with a thin veil, the mist through which you come to see a place. A place, a scene on a street, a city, a whole country, colors your memory like a child's crayon scribbling across your pupils. Jaisalmer India looks reddish brown and pink in my memory, Laos a dusty beige mist, Ko Kradan Thailand a green and blue cloak… and Prague was a pale yellow just this side of ochre. </p>\n<p><break>\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/praguetowernight.jpg\" width=\"165\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Prague, Czech Republic, night\" />It started from the moment we drove into town. Mildly lost, displaced and confused by road construction, we passed by a yellow building several times. I cannot say exactly why I noticed this yellow building over a thousand other, and perhaps more striking details, but it is the yellow building I remember. </p>\n<p>And once the building lodged itself in my mind I seemed to develop some heightened observational acuity for the color yellow — stale champagne flat in its flute, crushed threads of saffron in little tins at the market, primrose blooms in a window planter, lotus in a pond, cough syrup for a child, ecru linen on the laundry line, tarnished gold lamps languishing unused in the dark corners of a hotel room, gilded Torah scrolls, the jaundiced skin of a Golem, faded magazines at the newsstand, sunflowers in a store window, chicken skin on the chopping block and a thousand other snapshots tinted yellow.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/praguekafkastatue.jpg\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Kafka Statue, Prague, Czech Republic\" />I read somewhere that yellow daffodils are a symbol of unrequited love. An agreed upon meaning for yellow buildings has thus far remained elusive in my research. Which is to say I never looked into it; I am content with the simplicity of memory unencumbered by meaning. Memory is a strange and mysterious thing, not to be fully trusted. For instance I can't say for sure, but I feel like I saw yellow daffodils in the New Jewish Cemetery near the grave of Franz Kafka, but it's entirely possible I invented this detail on reflection.</p>\n<p>Whatever the case I do know that Prague was home to Franz Kafka, a man who has in death assumed a life so large his last name is an adjective in common parlance, Kafkaesque—an adjective I'm pretty sure I've used somewhere in these very pages.</p>\n<p>I made a cursory visit to Kafka's tomb, just as I did to Proust's in Pere Lechaise, compelled by some sense of validation, as if standing in front of these slabs of granite one can finally feel like one has reached the end of the literary journey and yet knowing that in fact not only is that not true, but just the opposite is true. As with any journey made mainly in the mental space of books and stories, the infringement of the real into the world of the imagination was wholly disappointing. Kafka's grave is unremarkable in every way, a stone monument <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/praguekafkagrave.jpg\" width=\"158\" height=\"210\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Franz Kafka's Grave, Prague\" />standing over a patch of grass beneath which lies what at this point probably little more than dust and teeth, not unlike the dusty yellowing pages of Kafka's books mingling with the old stained-ivory smell of dust mites and dry rot in the musty air of libraries.</p>\n<p>I have spent and still do spend, a fair amount of my time lost in books, stories and poems. One of my favorite lines from Kafka addresses literature as “a hatchet with which we chop at the frozen seas inside us.”</p>\n<p>Someone recently wrote me an email asking me to spend more time talking about places and less time in these abstractions, talking about perhaps nothing at all. A Hemingway fan no doubt. I hate to disappoint, but I seem to feel the need to wield a hatchet against my own icy seas. It is tempting to extend Kafka's analogy in this day and age when there actually is a northwest passage and the literal ice of our seas melts with every passing day, but what I personally find compelling about Kafka's words is the absolute futility they imply. He could for instance have said a hatchet which chops at the frozen blocks of ice inside us, certainly that would imply some chance of success, but he did not. He wrote “frozen seas,” against which a hatchet is most certainly futile.</p>\n<p>Futile but important, for without the hatchet there is no hope at all. And I think Kafka would agree with the notion that while literature may be a hatchet, there are other tools available, the important thing is to chop at the frozen seas, lest they overwhelm us and freeze our souls. And by soul I mean something akin to what I believe James Brown probably meant, something that is at once within us and outside us, something that does not seem to yellow with the passing of time, but as many believe, shall even outlast our teeth, our bones, our history far past the time when we are only a name in someone else's memory. </p>\n<p>Just north of Prague's old town square and east of the River Vltava is Josefov, the old Jewish quarter of Prague. The Pinkas Synagogue on Siroka Street in Josefov is an unassuming pale, sand-colored building with a slightly sunken entrance. Inside is a small alter and little else. The floor is bare; there are no places for worshipers to sit. The synagogue is little more than walls. And on the walls inscribed in extremely small print are the names of the 77,297 Jewish citizens of Bohemia and Moravia who died in the Holocaust.</p>\n<p>It is a stark place and yet not cold. It has a calmative warmth beneath the monstrousness of what it bears witness to that seems somehow hopeful in spite of the past. Some might believe that it is time to move beyond the Holocaust, time to forget, but they are wrong. It is important that we do not forget the Holocaust of World War Two nor any of the many that have happened since. It is important to remember these atrocities not because that might prevent another, which as we surely must realize by now is wishful thinking, <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/praguepinkascloseup.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Pinkas Synagogue, Josefov, Prague\" />but because those who died ought to be remembered as everyone who has died ought to be remembered, not for how they died, but for who they were. The Pinkas synagogue reminds us not of the deaths of the victims, but of the lives they once had, reduced here to their essence, their names. </p>\n<p>Upstairs in the Pinkas Synagogue there is an exhibit of paintings done by the children in Theresienstadt (originally named Terezin), paintings that resemble the ones on your refrigerator if you have children or the ones your parents once hung on their refrigerator, except that these were painted by children awaiting transportation to the gas chamber. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/praguepinkas.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"165\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Pinkas Synagogue, Josefov, Prague\" />It's easy to get rather angry at humanity when confronted with such things, but I stood there thinking instead that those children, young as they were and headed to a fate none of us can imagine, nevertheless managed to produce beautiful finger and brush paintings. Perhaps they were too young to realize what was happening to them, perhaps they were too innocent to conceive of such a thing happening, but what if they did know? What if they knew full well that they were going to die and yet they went on anyway, painting and being children because there was nothing else they could do? Because there is nothing else any of us can do.</p>\n<p>Chopping. Chopping. Chopping.</p>\n<p>[Today's title comes from a composition by John Cage. For those that aren't familiar with Cage or the piece, 4'33\" is a piece of music in which the pianist comes on stage, opens the lid of the piano and sits down to play. For 4 minutes and thirty-three seconds he plays nothing. He then closes the piano, bows and walks offstage.</p>\n<p>You can see where it would be tempting to see this as a somewhat pretentious intellectual exercise, but as with Duchamp's Fountain, I think to see this as <em>only</em> as some challenge to our accepted notions is simple minded. Of course it flies in the face of convention, but it also does much more.</p>\n<p>Music, rhythm, harmony, melody and all its other components are capable of inducing all sorts of amazing things in us, both beautiful and terrifying which as Proust says in the quote that started this piece, widens our soul. So what happens when the music is not music, but an absence of music? What Cage has done is handed us Kafka's hatchet, in 4'33\" the chopping of the frozen seas is left to the individual.</p>\n<p>I've never actually seen 4'33\" performed, but I would venture to say that it isn't silent. While the performer may not make any noise, there will likely be plenty of noise, traffic outside the theatre, a airplane passing overhead, perhaps the wail of an ambulance siren, and even inside—the ruffling of programs and papers of fellow concert goers shifting in their seats, the creaks and groans of humanity sitting still, perhaps even the sound of blood rushing through your veins and throbbing in your eardrums.</p>\n<p>Unlike most public performances, 4'33\" is intensely personal. There is no hatchet save the one in your own hand and perhaps 4'33\"'s poor reception in some quarters comes from the fact that confronting the frozen seas alone is a desolate and intimidating experience, one we often shrink from in fear. But if the children of Terezin were capable of joy in the face of such a monstrosity, surely we can find a similar kind of hope.</p>\n<p>I can't explain what it's like to stand in a place like Pinkas Synagogue or the killing fields or S21 or any other memorial of mass slaughter, but I can say this, there was no music and yet nor was there silence.] </p>", "body_markdown": "<p class=\"pull-quote\">“He tried to gather up and hold the phrase or harmony… that was passing by him and that opened his soul so much wider, the way the smells of certain roses circulating in the damp evening air have the property of dilating our nostrils.”<span class=\"credit\">— <cite>Marcel Proust</cite>, <em>Swann's Way</em></span></p>\r\n\r\n<span class=\"drop\">P</span>laces have signature colors, they inscribe themselves onto you in liquid strokes of a pen you never quite see until the ink rolls down your forehead and covers your eyes with a thin veil, the mist through which you come to see a place. A place, a scene on a street, a city, a whole country, colors your memory like a child's crayon scribbling across your pupils. Jaisalmer India looks reddish brown and pink in my memory, Laos a dusty beige mist, Ko Kradan Thailand a green and blue cloak… and Prague was a pale yellow just this side of ochre. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/praguetowernight.jpg\" width=\"165\" height=\"220\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Prague, Czech Republic, night\" />It started from the moment we drove into town. Mildly lost, displaced and confused by road construction, we passed by a yellow building several times. I cannot say exactly why I noticed this yellow building over a thousand other, and perhaps more striking details, but it is the yellow building I remember. \r\n\r\nAnd once the building lodged itself in my mind I seemed to develop some heightened observational acuity for the color yellow — stale champagne flat in its flute, crushed threads of saffron in little tins at the market, primrose blooms in a window planter, lotus in a pond, cough syrup for a child, ecru linen on the laundry line, tarnished gold lamps languishing unused in the dark corners of a hotel room, gilded Torah scrolls, the jaundiced skin of a Golem, faded magazines at the newsstand, sunflowers in a store window, chicken skin on the chopping block and a thousand other snapshots tinted yellow.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/praguekafkastatue.jpg\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Kafka Statue, Prague, Czech Republic\" />I read somewhere that yellow daffodils are a symbol of unrequited love. An agreed upon meaning for yellow buildings has thus far remained elusive in my research. Which is to say I never looked into it; I am content with the simplicity of memory unencumbered by meaning. Memory is a strange and mysterious thing, not to be fully trusted. For instance I can't say for sure, but I feel like I saw yellow daffodils in the New Jewish Cemetery near the grave of Franz Kafka, but it's entirely possible I invented this detail on reflection.\r\n\r\nWhatever the case I do know that Prague was home to Franz Kafka, a man who has in death assumed a life so large his last name is an adjective in common parlance, Kafkaesque—an adjective I'm pretty sure I've used somewhere in these very pages.\r\n\r\nI made a cursory visit to Kafka's tomb, just as I did to Proust's in Pere Lechaise, compelled by some sense of validation, as if standing in front of these slabs of granite one can finally feel like one has reached the end of the literary journey and yet knowing that in fact not only is that not true, but just the opposite is true. As with any journey made mainly in the mental space of books and stories, the infringement of the real into the world of the imagination was wholly disappointing. Kafka's grave is unremarkable in every way, a stone monument <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/praguekafkagrave.jpg\" width=\"158\" height=\"210\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Franz Kafka's Grave, Prague\" />standing over a patch of grass beneath which lies what at this point probably little more than dust and teeth, not unlike the dusty yellowing pages of Kafka's books mingling with the old stained-ivory smell of dust mites and dry rot in the musty air of libraries.\r\n\r\nI have spent and still do spend, a fair amount of my time lost in books, stories and poems. One of my favorite lines from Kafka addresses literature as “a hatchet with which we chop at the frozen seas inside us.”\r\n\r\nSomeone recently wrote me an email asking me to spend more time talking about places and less time in these abstractions, talking about perhaps nothing at all. A Hemingway fan no doubt. I hate to disappoint, but I seem to feel the need to wield a hatchet against my own icy seas. It is tempting to extend Kafka's analogy in this day and age when there actually is a northwest passage and the literal ice of our seas melts with every passing day, but what I personally find compelling about Kafka's words is the absolute futility they imply. He could for instance have said a hatchet which chops at the frozen blocks of ice inside us, certainly that would imply some chance of success, but he did not. He wrote “frozen seas,” against which a hatchet is most certainly futile.\r\n\r\nFutile but important, for without the hatchet there is no hope at all. And I think Kafka would agree with the notion that while literature may be a hatchet, there are other tools available, the important thing is to chop at the frozen seas, lest they overwhelm us and freeze our souls. And by soul I mean something akin to what I believe James Brown probably meant, something that is at once within us and outside us, something that does not seem to yellow with the passing of time, but as many believe, shall even outlast our teeth, our bones, our history far past the time when we are only a name in someone else's memory. \r\n\r\nJust north of Prague's old town square and east of the River Vltava is Josefov, the old Jewish quarter of Prague. The Pinkas Synagogue on Siroka Street in Josefov is an unassuming pale, sand-colored building with a slightly sunken entrance. Inside is a small alter and little else. The floor is bare; there are no places for worshipers to sit. The synagogue is little more than walls. And on the walls inscribed in extremely small print are the names of the 77,297 Jewish citizens of Bohemia and Moravia who died in the Holocaust.\r\n\r\nIt is a stark place and yet not cold. It has a calmative warmth beneath the monstrousness of what it bears witness to that seems somehow hopeful in spite of the past. Some might believe that it is time to move beyond the Holocaust, time to forget, but they are wrong. It is important that we do not forget the Holocaust of World War Two nor any of the many that have happened since. It is important to remember these atrocities not because that might prevent another, which as we surely must realize by now is wishful thinking, <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/praguepinkascloseup.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Pinkas Synagogue, Josefov, Prague\" />but because those who died ought to be remembered as everyone who has died ought to be remembered, not for how they died, but for who they were. The Pinkas synagogue reminds us not of the deaths of the victims, but of the lives they once had, reduced here to their essence, their names. \r\n\r\nUpstairs in the Pinkas Synagogue there is an exhibit of paintings done by the children in Theresienstadt (originally named Terezin), paintings that resemble the ones on your refrigerator if you have children or the ones your parents once hung on their refrigerator, except that these were painted by children awaiting transportation to the gas chamber. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/praguepinkas.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"165\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Pinkas Synagogue, Josefov, Prague\" />It's easy to get rather angry at humanity when confronted with such things, but I stood there thinking instead that those children, young as they were and headed to a fate none of us can imagine, nevertheless managed to produce beautiful finger and brush paintings. Perhaps they were too young to realize what was happening to them, perhaps they were too innocent to conceive of such a thing happening, but what if they did know? What if they knew full well that they were going to die and yet they went on anyway, painting and being children because there was nothing else they could do? Because there is nothing else any of us can do.\r\n\r\nChopping. Chopping. Chopping.\r\n\r\n[Today's title comes from a composition by John Cage. For those that aren't familiar with Cage or the piece, 4'33\" is a piece of music in which the pianist comes on stage, opens the lid of the piano and sits down to play. For 4 minutes and thirty-three seconds he plays nothing. He then closes the piano, bows and walks offstage.\r\n\r\nYou can see where it would be tempting to see this as a somewhat pretentious intellectual exercise, but as with Duchamp's Fountain, I think to see this as <em>only</em> as some challenge to our accepted notions is simple minded. Of course it flies in the face of convention, but it also does much more.\r\n\r\nMusic, rhythm, harmony, melody and all its other components are capable of inducing all sorts of amazing things in us, both beautiful and terrifying which as Proust says in the quote that started this piece, widens our soul. So what happens when the music is not music, but an absence of music? What Cage has done is handed us Kafka's hatchet, in 4'33\" the chopping of the frozen seas is left to the individual.\r\n\r\nI've never actually seen 4'33\" performed, but I would venture to say that it isn't silent. While the performer may not make any noise, there will likely be plenty of noise, traffic outside the theatre, a airplane passing overhead, perhaps the wail of an ambulance siren, and even inside—the ruffling of programs and papers of fellow concert goers shifting in their seats, the creaks and groans of humanity sitting still, perhaps even the sound of blood rushing through your veins and throbbing in your eardrums.\r\n\r\nUnlike most public performances, 4'33\" is intensely personal. There is no hatchet save the one in your own hand and perhaps 4'33\"'s poor reception in some quarters comes from the fact that confronting the frozen seas alone is a desolate and intimidating experience, one we often shrink from in fear. But if the children of Terezin were capable of joy in the face of such a monstrosity, surely we can find a similar kind of hope.\r\n\r\nI can't explain what it's like to stand in a place like Pinkas Synagogue or the killing fields or S21 or any other memorial of mass slaughter, but I can say this, there was no music and yet nor was there silence.] ", "dek": "Just north of Prague's old town square and east of the River Vltava is Josefov, the old Jewish quarter of Prague. The Pinkas Synagogue in Josefov is an unassuming pale, sand-colored building with a slightly sunken entrance. Inside is a small alter and little else. The floor is bare; there are no places for worshipers to sit. The synagogue is little more than walls. And on the walls inscribed in extremely small print are the names of the 77,297 Jewish citizens of Bohemia and Moravia who died in the Holocaust.\r\n", "pub_date": "2006-05-26T14:50:24", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (14.4181179980234937 50.0898463908477254)", "location": 13, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/wallofnames.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/wallofnames.jpg", "meta_description": "What happens when your last name becomes an adjective? Thinking of Kafka in the strange, yellow and yes, Kafkaesque city of Prague. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 64, "fields": {"title": "Unreflected", "slug": "unreflected", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span> haven't written much about the actual traveling lately, chiefly because it's been by automobile which just isn't very interesting and for some reason seems to put me to sleep, which it never used to do. Before this trip I was a dedicated driver, I've driven coast to coast across the U.S. six times and countless trips through the west, new England and the south (I once did LA to Atlanta in 26 hours straight through), but for some reason I've lost my taste for driving. So I was actually elated when we ditched the car in Prague and hopped a train for Vienna. Public transportation is much much better, you can relax, have a beer and meet strangers with funny hats.</p>\n<p><break>\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/mantrain.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"216\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"\" />Of course sometimes public transportation breaks and you find yourself in Slovakia instead of Austria, but these things are temporary. Usually. Or at least in this case it was. We spent a few hours loitering on Slovakian tracks waiting for another train to pass and then continued on in a roundabout way to Vienna during which time I was regretfully reminded of the inanity involved in conversing with Young American Males.</p>\n<p>Vienna is a strange city; one I had trouble wrapping my head around at first. The old town area lies inside the Ringstraße (hereafter referred to as Ringstrasse because writing out that entity in html is a pain)<sup id=\"fnr-001\"><a href=\"#fn-001\">[1]</a></sup>. The Ringstrasse is a wide circular boulevard that runs, as its name implies, in a circle around the old city center. Inside the Ringstrasse are the fantastically massive Hapsburg Palace, several large churches and the upscale tourist destinations, hotels, shops and that sort of thing. The old city is ostensibly closed to traffic, though that doesn't see to stop the taxis, and consequently it's the tourist hub of Vienna.</p>\n<p>Though I'm sure it was a carefully studied urban planning venture, which on paper sounds like a beautiful idea, a vehicleless downtown full of street markets, cafes, cobblestones and coffeehouses, in practice the Ringstrasse effectively isolates the center of Vienna and it left me feeling a bit trapped. Though I was excited to leave the car behind in Prague, I found myself once again seemingly wedged and isolated by vehicles as I watched a dizzying circle entrapping downtown visitors like corralled cattle. One afternoon I sat on a bench beside the Ringstrasse, smoking cigarettes under the still dripping leaves of an elm tree, watching the traffic ferry past like a scene in Koyaanisqatsi, and started to wonder if Frogger was by chance designed by an Austrian.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennaststephens.jpg\" width=\"161\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"St Stephens Cathedral, Vienna, Austria\" />After a day or two wandering among the Baroque facade of St. Stephens Cathedral, snacking of vast arrays of sausage and cabbage, learning to love oversize pints of hefeweizen, and generally avoiding all things castle or palace-like, I finally ventured out to the Kunsthistorisches Museum (which is admittedly not actually outside the Ringstrasse, but something about just seeing the vast open space just beyond the boulevard made me feel like I was again part of a city rather than stuck in a hole, cut off in the middle of a city).</p>\n<p>The Kunsthistorisches Museum contains probably the best collection of art outside of France — Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Raphael, Velazquez, Bruegel and a certain Italian for whom I have a festering personal obsession, which shall be addressed shortly — and what's remarkable about this magnificent assemblage is that the vast majority of it was once the Hapsburg's private collection. The history of European ruling families is soaked in money, petty squabbles, the occasional inbreeding and plenty of sordid underbellies, but some of these families did have remarkable aesthetic vision in spite of their various handicaps. Yes I do think that wealth and power are handicaps to understanding the world around you because they remove you from the intricate struggles of everyday life and that in turn is a handicap to anything that might be called the development of an aesthetic sense based on something more than whim, fancy or cultural popularity, but let's be clear that handicaps are not insurmountable as the Hapsburg collection attests, which is to say that occasionally rich people are able to grasp greatness.</p>\n<p>It had just stopped raining when I made my way from our penzion over to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, rivulets of water ran between the cobblestone cracks and seeped through the long since worn-through soles of my shoes which caused my socks to make disturbing squishing sounds as I walked. The sky was a heavy leaden grey and looked as if it might start again the chilly drizzling rain that had been hanging around ever since we arrived. After paying the requisite fees and obtaining an audio guide (which I generally never bother with but for some reason on that day I felt the need to hear a voice), I wandered about the foyer for a minute absorbing the heavy baroque ceilings three stories overhead and the dark wood floors scuffed by the feet of the millions who passed through before me.</p>\n<p>I had come mainly to see the works of Hieronymus Bosch, or at least out the painters mentioned in the brochure at our penzion, Bosch was the only one I found exciting. If you've never seen a Hieronymus Bosch painting they can be a bit shocking, especially considering he was painting around the turn of the 16<sup>th</sup> century. Bosch mixed mysticism, realism, religious symbolism, highly cerebral sense of irony, and magical iconography into a phantasmagoric stew that puts to shame the later so-called surrealists. Though I don't know that much about either of them Bosch and William Blake always come together in my mind. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennabosch.jpg\" width=\"179\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Paradise, or Allegory of Vanity, Hieronymus Bosch\" />Carl Jung called Bosch \"The master of the monstrous… the discoverer of the unconscious,\" which could just as easily be applied to Blake. Philip II of Spain bought up the vast majority of Bosch's work long ago, and I probably shouldn't have expected to find much at the Kunsthistorisches Museum since I already knew most of his work is in the Prado Museum in Madrid, but I was a bit disappointed to find there were only two paintings in the Kunsthistorisches (<strong>The Adoration of the Kings</strong> is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for those looking for something closer to home). </p>\n<p>Having rushed impatiently through the museum to find the Bosch, which, was every bit as gorgeous as I had hoped, though I was disappointed that the one I liked, <strong>Paradise, or Allegory of Vanity</strong>, didn't have an audio tour entry, I retraced my steps and wandered about the maze-like floor plan absorbing Dutch and Flemish painters whose names rang like a distant telephone you can hear, one you have in fact been hearing for years, but have never bothered to answer; maybe you didn't know it was a telephone, perhaps it just sounded like a murmur, that far off tone of the alarm clock before the world resolves itself out of sleep and becomes an actual object, a thing, an alarm, a phone, a Vermeer. But as semanticists are always pointing out, objects are not actually things, they are events, molecules arriving simultaneously at a lavish ballroom party, spinning, coalescing and collapsing in time to become what we <strong>call</strong> an object. And I don't mean that to be some overwrought analytical deconstruction, but rather as a beautiful thing, an object, whether it be a Vermeer or a Nokia, is an event happening, one which we can participate in, can join in, in fact can not avoid since the event happens solely so that we may see it. And from that perspective there is no historical burden to carry about, no cultural/political/social constructs to worry about, simply a painting coming together in the moment as our eyes sweep across it, which isn't to say that history, context and culture are irrelevant, rather they are optional, they are the gowns and tuxedos of the arriving molecules, the historical costumes of events which sometimes enrich our experience and sometimes stifle it with their gaudiness.</p>\n<p>Off in the side corridor of the Italian wing I rounded a corner still listening to my audio guide rattle on about Rembrant and rather abruptly came face to face with a painting I had been wanting to see for years — <strong>Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror</strong> (my photograph is less than stellar, for a much better image see the <a href=\"http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/p/parmigia/convex.html\" title=\"Web Gallery of Art, image collection, virtual museum, searchable database of European fine arts (1100-1850)\">Web Gallery of Art version</a> which allows for zooming and enlarging). </p>\n<p>I originally came across Parmigianino through the title of John Ashbery's<sup id=\"fnr-002\"><a href=\"#fn-002\">[2]</a></sup> noted collection of poems, <strong>Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror</strong>. Parmigianino's painting of the same title was the inspiration and graces the cover of Ashbery's book. There is that old adage about judgment and books and covers and things you ought not to do and yet I have often found that in fact sometimes you can judge a book by its cover and Ashbery's collection is, to my mind, such an example. I spent hours of class time studying that painting while others wrestled with the intentions and slippery meanings of the words inside. </p>\n<p>What I never realized until I walked up to it in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, is that the actual painting is convex. Parmigianino had a ball of wood milled and them he sliced off the face of it to have convex surface on which to work. And that's just the beginning of the complexities of <strong>Self Portrait</strong>.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennaselfportrait.jpg\" width=\"260\" height=\"247\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, Parmigianino\" />What drew Ashbery and countless other critics to the painting are the subtle layers within it. Painted as a testament of personal skill, Parmigianino presented the canvas along with two others to Pope Clement VII hoping for a commission. Some have suggested that the enlarged forearm and hand are meant to suggest the artists skills, a sort of mildly disguised bit of self promotion, which sounds fine until you remember that if this is indeed what Parmigianino saw in a convex mirror, then the arm thrust forward is the left arm, not the right, which is traditionally associated with the painter's skills. This is perhaps one of the more trivial points in the painting, but it hints at the kind of layers of meaning and mystery which Parmigianino managed, whether intentional or not, to work into the painting. </p>\n<p>There is within this small (just under 10 inches in diameter) painting so much to dwell on that I spent several hours studying it (Luckily for me there was a chair against the wall just opposite).</p>\n<p>I am not an art critic nor am I a fan of the open-ended scholarly interpretation crap I just indulged in, but I do like to be able to say with some clarity, why I like something rather than simply leave it as self evident or begging the question, and yet it is very hard to say why I like this painting. After spending so much time with it, which I can assure is about one hour and fifty minutes longer than I've ever spent looking at any other painting, I realized it's the distortion within the distortion that compels me, the reflection of what isn't, reflected again in pigment, it's an opening of worlds, a stabbing at understanding which underlies all our endeavors in some way, a recognition of the complexities within complexities. I would like to see another painting of someone looking between two convex mirrors such that an infinite series of outwardly telescoping reflections was created.</p>\n<p>When I was younger I travelled a good deal with my parents mainly camping in the southwestern US. My parents had a 1969 Ford truck with a camper on top. The size and shape of the camper necessitated large mirrors that extended out quite a ways from the door. The main mirror was rectangular and flat, a one to one reflection, but in the lower right corner of the large mirror a small convex mirror had be glued on to provide a wide angle view. Since I generally rode in the passenger's seat of the truck I spent most of the time staring at my distorted reflection, moving my hand in and out with the rush of wind watching it grow larger and more unnaturally arched and warped the closer I brought it to the mirror.</p>\n<p>The first time I saw Parmigianino's <strong>Self Portrait</strong> on the cover of Ashbery's book I thought of the truck mirror and the millions of associations that came with those memories. <strong>Self Portrait</strong> came over time to amalgamate a collection of previously forgotten or overlooked memories until it attached itself and in many way became an inseparable part of the memories themselves. Rather than bandying about under the weight of historical context or canonical scholarship, it collapses now as an event in my own life.</p>\n<p>My friend Mike said something to me the other day about realizing that it's fairly easy to find your way through a house of mirrors if you simply stare at your feet, but then, what's the fun in that? He's right and similarly, life can be fairly simple if you stare at the ground and don't worry to much about what's going on a round you, but the point of the house of mirrors maze isn't to solve it, to get to the end and leave, the point is stumble about, bump into walls, into other people, into your own distorted reflection and have fun while you do it. And in some way that's the pleasure I find in Parmigianino's <strong>Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror</strong>, a reminder that the distortions are the real adventure, the real enjoyment and also the real truth.</p>\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\n<li id=\"fn-001\">\n<p class=\"note1\">1. For language nerds (because I know some of you are): That entity, the ß, or Eszett as it's known, is a ligature of a long s dating from before the middle ages when ss was a separate letter of the alphabet (in English as well). The Eszett is fading out in modern German (officially dropped by the Swiss years ago and as anecdotally told to me by my friend Jackie, not all that common in modern Germany either), but its usage is still quite popular in Austria. According to the <a href=\"http://www.answers.com/topic/german-spelling-reform-of-1996\" title=\"Ubernerdy: Read about the German Spelling Reform of 1996\">German Spelling Reform of 1996</a> the letter \"ß\" is to appear only after long vowels and diphthongs. <a href=\"#fnr-001\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n<li id=\"fn-002\">\n<p class=\"note1\">2. As with anyone who has studied 20<sup>th</sup> century literature I passed through a certain period in which I became semi-obsessed with John Ashbery. Lots of post grad poetry students (I used to hang around with a lot of post grad poetry students) seem to think it's passé to extol someone as popular and widely established as John Ashbery, but that's just silly. I still, along with Wallace Stevens, Bernadette Mayer, Frank Stanford and Alice Notley consider him to be one of the truly great writers of our times. <a href=\"#fnr-002\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span> haven't written much about the actual traveling lately, chiefly because it's been by automobile which just isn't very interesting and for some reason seems to put me to sleep, which it never used to do. Before this trip I was a dedicated driver, I've driven coast to coast across the U.S. six times and countless trips through the west, new England and the south (I once did LA to Atlanta in 26 hours straight through), but for some reason I've lost my taste for driving. So I was actually elated when we ditched the car in Prague and hopped a train for Vienna. Public transportation is much much better, you can relax, have a beer and meet strangers with funny hats.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/mantrain.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"216\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"\" />Of course sometimes public transportation breaks and you find yourself in Slovakia instead of Austria, but these things are temporary. Usually. Or at least in this case it was. We spent a few hours loitering on Slovakian tracks waiting for another train to pass and then continued on in a roundabout way to Vienna during which time I was regretfully reminded of the inanity involved in conversing with Young American Males.\r\n\r\nVienna is a strange city; one I had trouble wrapping my head around at first. The old town area lies inside the Ringstraße (hereafter referred to as Ringstrasse because writing out that entity in html is a pain)<sup id=\"fnr-001\"><a href=\"#fn-001\">[1]</a></sup>. The Ringstrasse is a wide circular boulevard that runs, as its name implies, in a circle around the old city center. Inside the Ringstrasse are the fantastically massive Hapsburg Palace, several large churches and the upscale tourist destinations, hotels, shops and that sort of thing. The old city is ostensibly closed to traffic, though that doesn't see to stop the taxis, and consequently it's the tourist hub of Vienna.\r\n\r\nThough I'm sure it was a carefully studied urban planning venture, which on paper sounds like a beautiful idea, a vehicleless downtown full of street markets, cafes, cobblestones and coffeehouses, in practice the Ringstrasse effectively isolates the center of Vienna and it left me feeling a bit trapped. Though I was excited to leave the car behind in Prague, I found myself once again seemingly wedged and isolated by vehicles as I watched a dizzying circle entrapping downtown visitors like corralled cattle. One afternoon I sat on a bench beside the Ringstrasse, smoking cigarettes under the still dripping leaves of an elm tree, watching the traffic ferry past like a scene in Koyaanisqatsi, and started to wonder if Frogger was by chance designed by an Austrian.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/viennaststephens.jpg\" width=\"161\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"St Stephens Cathedral, Vienna, Austria\" />After a day or two wandering among the Baroque facade of St. Stephens Cathedral, snacking of vast arrays of sausage and cabbage, learning to love oversize pints of hefeweizen, and generally avoiding all things castle or palace-like, I finally ventured out to the Kunsthistorisches Museum (which is admittedly not actually outside the Ringstrasse, but something about just seeing the vast open space just beyond the boulevard made me feel like I was again part of a city rather than stuck in a hole, cut off in the middle of a city).\r\n\r\nThe Kunsthistorisches Museum contains probably the best collection of art outside of France — Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Raphael, Velazquez, Bruegel and a certain Italian for whom I have a festering personal obsession, which shall be addressed shortly — and what's remarkable about this magnificent assemblage is that the vast majority of it was once the Hapsburg's private collection. The history of European ruling families is soaked in money, petty squabbles, the occasional inbreeding and plenty of sordid underbellies, but some of these families did have remarkable aesthetic vision in spite of their various handicaps. Yes I do think that wealth and power are handicaps to understanding the world around you because they remove you from the intricate struggles of everyday life and that in turn is a handicap to anything that might be called the development of an aesthetic sense based on something more than whim, fancy or cultural popularity, but let's be clear that handicaps are not insurmountable as the Hapsburg collection attests, which is to say that occasionally rich people are able to grasp greatness.\r\n\r\nIt had just stopped raining when I made my way from our penzion over to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, rivulets of water ran between the cobblestone cracks and seeped through the long since worn-through soles of my shoes which caused my socks to make disturbing squishing sounds as I walked. The sky was a heavy leaden grey and looked as if it might start again the chilly drizzling rain that had been hanging around ever since we arrived. After paying the requisite fees and obtaining an audio guide (which I generally never bother with but for some reason on that day I felt the need to hear a voice), I wandered about the foyer for a minute absorbing the heavy baroque ceilings three stories overhead and the dark wood floors scuffed by the feet of the millions who passed through before me.\r\n\r\nI had come mainly to see the works of Hieronymus Bosch, or at least out the painters mentioned in the brochure at our penzion, Bosch was the only one I found exciting. If you've never seen a Hieronymus Bosch painting they can be a bit shocking, especially considering he was painting around the turn of the 16<sup>th</sup> century. Bosch mixed mysticism, realism, religious symbolism, highly cerebral sense of irony, and magical iconography into a phantasmagoric stew that puts to shame the later so-called surrealists. Though I don't know that much about either of them Bosch and William Blake always come together in my mind. <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/viennabosch.jpg\" width=\"179\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Paradise, or Allegory of Vanity, Hieronymus Bosch\" />Carl Jung called Bosch \"The master of the monstrous… the discoverer of the unconscious,\" which could just as easily be applied to Blake. Philip II of Spain bought up the vast majority of Bosch's work long ago, and I probably shouldn't have expected to find much at the Kunsthistorisches Museum since I already knew most of his work is in the Prado Museum in Madrid, but I was a bit disappointed to find there were only two paintings in the Kunsthistorisches (**The Adoration of the Kings** is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for those looking for something closer to home). \r\n\r\nHaving rushed impatiently through the museum to find the Bosch, which, was every bit as gorgeous as I had hoped, though I was disappointed that the one I liked, **Paradise, or Allegory of Vanity**, didn't have an audio tour entry, I retraced my steps and wandered about the maze-like floor plan absorbing Dutch and Flemish painters whose names rang like a distant telephone you can hear, one you have in fact been hearing for years, but have never bothered to answer; maybe you didn't know it was a telephone, perhaps it just sounded like a murmur, that far off tone of the alarm clock before the world resolves itself out of sleep and becomes an actual object, a thing, an alarm, a phone, a Vermeer. But as semanticists are always pointing out, objects are not actually things, they are events, molecules arriving simultaneously at a lavish ballroom party, spinning, coalescing and collapsing in time to become what we **call** an object. And I don't mean that to be some overwrought analytical deconstruction, but rather as a beautiful thing, an object, whether it be a Vermeer or a Nokia, is an event happening, one which we can participate in, can join in, in fact can not avoid since the event happens solely so that we may see it. And from that perspective there is no historical burden to carry about, no cultural/political/social constructs to worry about, simply a painting coming together in the moment as our eyes sweep across it, which isn't to say that history, context and culture are irrelevant, rather they are optional, they are the gowns and tuxedos of the arriving molecules, the historical costumes of events which sometimes enrich our experience and sometimes stifle it with their gaudiness.\r\n\r\nOff in the side corridor of the Italian wing I rounded a corner still listening to my audio guide rattle on about Rembrant and rather abruptly came face to face with a painting I had been wanting to see for years — **Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror** (my photograph is less than stellar, for a much better image see the <a href=\"http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/p/parmigia/convex.html\" title=\"Web Gallery of Art, image collection, virtual museum, searchable database of European fine arts (1100-1850)\">Web Gallery of Art version</a> which allows for zooming and enlarging). \r\n\r\nI originally came across Parmigianino through the title of John Ashbery's<sup id=\"fnr-002\"><a href=\"#fn-002\">[2]</a></sup> noted collection of poems, **Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror**. Parmigianino's painting of the same title was the inspiration and graces the cover of Ashbery's book. There is that old adage about judgment and books and covers and things you ought not to do and yet I have often found that in fact sometimes you can judge a book by its cover and Ashbery's collection is, to my mind, such an example. I spent hours of class time studying that painting while others wrestled with the intentions and slippery meanings of the words inside. \r\n\r\nWhat I never realized until I walked up to it in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, is that the actual painting is convex. Parmigianino had a ball of wood milled and them he sliced off the face of it to have convex surface on which to work. And that's just the beginning of the complexities of **Self Portrait**.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/viennaselfportrait.jpg\" width=\"260\" height=\"247\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, Parmigianino\" />What drew Ashbery and countless other critics to the painting are the subtle layers within it. Painted as a testament of personal skill, Parmigianino presented the canvas along with two others to Pope Clement VII hoping for a commission. Some have suggested that the enlarged forearm and hand are meant to suggest the artists skills, a sort of mildly disguised bit of self promotion, which sounds fine until you remember that if this is indeed what Parmigianino saw in a convex mirror, then the arm thrust forward is the left arm, not the right, which is traditionally associated with the painter's skills. This is perhaps one of the more trivial points in the painting, but it hints at the kind of layers of meaning and mystery which Parmigianino managed, whether intentional or not, to work into the painting. \r\n\r\nThere is within this small (just under 10 inches in diameter) painting so much to dwell on that I spent several hours studying it (Luckily for me there was a chair against the wall just opposite).\r\n\r\nI am not an art critic nor am I a fan of the open-ended scholarly interpretation crap I just indulged in, but I do like to be able to say with some clarity, why I like something rather than simply leave it as self evident or begging the question, and yet it is very hard to say why I like this painting. After spending so much time with it, which I can assure is about one hour and fifty minutes longer than I've ever spent looking at any other painting, I realized it's the distortion within the distortion that compels me, the reflection of what isn't, reflected again in pigment, it's an opening of worlds, a stabbing at understanding which underlies all our endeavors in some way, a recognition of the complexities within complexities. I would like to see another painting of someone looking between two convex mirrors such that an infinite series of outwardly telescoping reflections was created.\r\n\r\nWhen I was younger I travelled a good deal with my parents mainly camping in the southwestern US. My parents had a 1969 Ford truck with a camper on top. The size and shape of the camper necessitated large mirrors that extended out quite a ways from the door. The main mirror was rectangular and flat, a one to one reflection, but in the lower right corner of the large mirror a small convex mirror had be glued on to provide a wide angle view. Since I generally rode in the passenger's seat of the truck I spent most of the time staring at my distorted reflection, moving my hand in and out with the rush of wind watching it grow larger and more unnaturally arched and warped the closer I brought it to the mirror.\r\n\r\nThe first time I saw Parmigianino's **Self Portrait** on the cover of Ashbery's book I thought of the truck mirror and the millions of associations that came with those memories. **Self Portrait** came over time to amalgamate a collection of previously forgotten or overlooked memories until it attached itself and in many way became an inseparable part of the memories themselves. Rather than bandying about under the weight of historical context or canonical scholarship, it collapses now as an event in my own life.\r\n\r\nMy friend Mike said something to me the other day about realizing that it's fairly easy to find your way through a house of mirrors if you simply stare at your feet, but then, what's the fun in that? He's right and similarly, life can be fairly simple if you stare at the ground and don't worry to much about what's going on a round you, but the point of the house of mirrors maze isn't to solve it, to get to the end and leave, the point is stumble about, bump into walls, into other people, into your own distorted reflection and have fun while you do it. And in some way that's the pleasure I find in Parmigianino's **Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror**, a reminder that the distortions are the real adventure, the real enjoyment and also the real truth.\r\n\r\n\r\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\r\n<li id=\"fn-001\">\r\n<p class=\"note1\">1. For language nerds (because I know some of you are): That entity, the ß, or Eszett as it's known, is a ligature of a long s dating from before the middle ages when ss was a separate letter of the alphabet (in English as well). The Eszett is fading out in modern German (officially dropped by the Swiss years ago and as anecdotally told to me by my friend Jackie, not all that common in modern Germany either), but its usage is still quite popular in Austria. According to the <a href=\"http://www.answers.com/topic/german-spelling-reform-of-1996\" title=\"Ubernerdy: Read about the German Spelling Reform of 1996\">German Spelling Reform of 1996</a> the letter \"ß\" is to appear only after long vowels and diphthongs. <a href=\"#fnr-001\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\r\n</li>\r\n<li id=\"fn-002\">\r\n<p class=\"note1\">2. As with anyone who has studied 20<sup>th</sup> century literature I passed through a certain period in which I became semi-obsessed with John Ashbery. Lots of post grad poetry students (I used to hang around with a lot of post grad poetry students) seem to think it's passé to extol someone as popular and widely established as John Ashbery, but that's just silly. I still, along with Wallace Stevens, Bernadette Mayer, Frank Stanford and Alice Notley consider him to be one of the truly great writers of our times. <a href=\"#fnr-002\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\r\n</li>\r\n</ol>", "dek": "The Kunsthistorisches Museum contains probably the best collection of art outside of France — Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Raphael, Velazquez, Bruegel and a certain Italian for whom I have a festering personal obsession, which shall be addressed shortly — and what's remarkable about this magnificent assemblage is that the vast majority of it was once the Hapsburg's private collection.", "pub_date": "2006-05-27T23:55:46", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (16.3706481433968136 48.2099677697279958)", "location": 12, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/selfportraitconvex.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/selfportraitconvex.jpg", "meta_description": "Finding Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and learning to play Frogger on the Ringstra\u00dfe. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 65, "fields": {"title": "I Don't Sleep I Dream", "slug": "i-dont-sleep-i-dream", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">O</span>nce you pass through the odd and oversized foyer, which feels like a half finished storefront for H&M or the like, stairs lead up to the first floor. There are essentially only two rooms that bear any resemblance to what the place looked like in his day. In glass cases are a few knickknacks, figurines, actually it's a rather impressive collection with pieces from the Sumerian, India, Polynesia and other exotic locales. Another room is full of photographs and explanatory notation in German and English.</p>\n<p><break>\nThe rest of the apartment is given over to something between an exhibition room and an art gallery. But what everyone came here for then is absent now. No word on where the couch might have gone or why some duplicate hasn't been made. Plenty of other sofas, divans and other reclining furniture are on display in one of the gallery rooms, but the original is nowhere to be found.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennafreudoffice.jpg\" width=\"212\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Waiting Room, Frued's office, Vienna Austria\" /></p>\n<p>The closest thing is up against the wall, behind a small writing desk in what was then the waiting room. There were no ropes saying you couldn't so I did what everyone used to come here for, to lie down on the divan and stare at the patternless ceiling until the patterns emerge as it were.</p>\n<p>I lay down. I stared at the ceiling.</p>\n<p>\"Tell me about it.\"</p>\n<p>\"About what?\"</p>\n<p>\"What did you come here for?\"</p>\n<p>\"I'm not sure. I think I wanted to see it. To maybe have something to attach the abstractions too, maybe to know, rather than wonder — what did it look like? What sort of trees were on the street? What did the air taste like? How did the concrete and asphalt smell when it rained? What was the view from the window? How hot was the upstairs room where you worked? All the mundane details of life in places where I don't live... And I know I can't <em>know</em> these things in any real way without actually being there at the time. I know all I will find are half truths and suggestions, but the more I know the freer my imagination seems to become, the more it builds things out of the details, things which often bear no resemblance to reality but to me are more real.\"</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennafreudwindow.jpg\" width=\"172\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Window, Freud's Office, Vienna Austria\" /></p>\n<p>\"Interesting.\"</p>\n<p>\"Yeah it is. It totally contradicts an old quote from somebody named Suzuki that I used to like.\"</p>\n<p>\"Which is?\"</p>\n<p>\"‘For the beginner an infinite range of possibilities exist, for the expert few options remain.' Or something along those lines. And I don't by any means consider myself an expert. In fact the more I know and see the more I feel like a beginner. I don't even know what an expert is.\"</p>\n<p>\"Perhaps that's the veiled significance of this Suzuki's words, that we are all beginners, that there are no experts so we are free, as you say, with our imaginations. But remember that imagination is not all daydreams and pretty flowers; there are monsters and demons in us too. There seems to be in us all a struggle between light and dark...\"</p>\n<p>\"Like the Robert Mitchum movie? Or Spike Lee's version? A friend of mine claims that there are equal proportions of light and dark in the world, or good and evil or whatever metaphor you want to use, anyway her point is, I think, that these dualities are struggling for balance and that's where we find ourselves -- caught in that struggle. I think it's actually an idea she borrowed from Jewish Scripture, and it's a good metaphor so long as we consider the fact that which is which -- good/bad etc -- is wholly dependent on our judgments. That is, what you or I call dark or evil is actually neither, that is simple our interpretation of it. Not to be relativistic, which I don't like, in fact I think relativism misses out on the subtle undercurrents of life in favor of simplistic rationalism to offer an easy to grok interpretation of life's essential mysteries. But that said, there is some relativism in our interpretations of good and evil etc. Any given event, no matter how good it seems, is itself the result of all sorts of other events, some may have been good, some bad, but without them we wouldn't be doing that \"good\" thing now. And so with the future. If I give you some money to pay a debt that may be a good thing, but down the road it's possible that you will find yourself in a bad situation not just in spite of my good act, but perhaps because of it.\"</p>\n<p>\"Mmmhmm. Tell me about your dreams...\"</p>\n<p>\"No.\"</p>\n<p>\"...\"</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennamonster.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"painting\" /></p>\n<p>\"Okay. Just yesterday I dreamed a friend of mine was in trouble. So today I called her. Turns out she's not in trouble. She's doing just fine. So what the hell does that mean?\"</p>\n<p>\"Perhaps you feel a certain helplessness at not being able to know whether your friend is in trouble or not. Your subconscious feels helpless and seeks to create a situation in which it can help someone else so that it alleviates the feelings of helplessness.\"</p>\n<p>\"...\"</p>\n<p>\"The imagination can ruin and cripple as much as it can heal and give hope.\"</p>\n<p>\"Well don't you sort of have a vested interest in promoting that idea since your life's work hinges on it being true, on the notion that there is something wrong with me that I can not directly get to, but with assistance it can be drawn out...\"</p>\n<p>\"My vested interest was in helping people for whom there was no help at the time.\"</p>\n<p>\"Okay. Fair enough. Sorry. There is just so much baggage around you. I want to believe, I really do.\"</p>\n<p>\"It's possible I was wrong, I did make some mistakes.\"</p>\n<p>\"Yeah you did. Turns out cocaine <em>is</em> addictive.\"</p>\n<p>\"I made bigger ones than that.\"</p>\n<p>\"I know, but I saw that quote over there on the wall by that picture of Dora.\"</p>\n<p>\"Ah yes. Dora.\" </p>\n<p>\"The one that got away huh? So, why was all of your early work focused on women?\"</p>\n<p>\"...\"</p>\n<p>\"Okay. Well.... Do you like what they've done with the place?\"</p>\n<p>\"Well. It was just a place you know. This room we are sitting in was originally the waiting room, the consultations were in there. But it is just a place, one room is as good as another.\"</p>\n<p>\"Yeah. But weren't you the one who always directed attention toward trivialities like \"methodological principle,\" which in some ways is influenced by the room, the mood it creates. I mean if you had disco lighting and Al Green playing when patients came over things would've been different no?\"</p>\n<p>\"Yes I did say that. And methodology, set and setting as that American doctor put it, are important. But I also said sometimes a cigar...\"</p>\n<p>\"Yeah and we all wish you hadn't. That undercuts almost everything else you said because it highlights the subjective — dare I say arbitrary? — interpretations in your theories. I mean what if Newton has said ‘well gravity exists, but it doesn't always exist, it certain doesn't exist for <em>me</em>? That's a bit elitist don't you think? In the end we'd have to conclude that either gravity doesn't exist or that a cigar is never just a cigar, neither of which are particularly helpful.\"</p>\n<p>\"You seem hostile toward me.\"</p>\n<p>\"I'm not hostile, I'm just saying that psychology and this therapy bit is, in the end, no different than the kind of insight you can get from a book or a night out with friends or just sitting on the toilet contemplating life. But you invested the whole process with a pseudo-scientific framework that makes some people think they can't find their own answers.\"</p>\n<p>\"People can't find their own answers. And even those that can find some can't find others. We cannot see our own subconscious, we can only see the effects of it, the manifestations of it.\"</p>\n<p>\"Look I'm not saying I have it all sussed out. Far from it. But what you're talking about seems to me like a rewritten metaphor for god. And I think your metaphors were wrong about some key stuff. Like Oedipus for example. First off mythology is probably not a good base to draw from if your goal is to make sweeping ‘scientific' generalizations about human development. And secondly the stages Oedipus passes through, well you skipped a fairly key one, he was abandoned by his parents as a baby, which is tantamount to child abuse and hardly seems archetypical to the way most children are raised. I think you were a brilliant literary critic centuries ahead of his time, but I think your science was, well, to be blunt, nonexistent. Which would have been fine except...\"</p>\n<p>\"Hmmm. Yes. Perhaps. But I could argue that birth itself is abandonment\"</p>\n<p>\"Please don't.\"</p>\n<p>\"I wasn't going to, I was just saying I <em>could</em>.\"</p>\n<p>\"And yet that Oedipal theory, while professional psychologists may not pay much attention to it, holds a powerful sway over how we perceive ourselves today. And it carries that weight because it passed and continues to pass as science. See science is our god now so anything that gets you the title doctor is perceived as having some authority that overrides even common sense.\"</p>\n<p>\"Well, in my defense, it isn't really all that different than the story of the fall in the Jewish and Christian mythologies which also influences how you see yourself. And I did have a degree in medicine.\"</p>\n<p>\"I know you did. I'm not debating your training or skills I'm saying that psychology is not was not and never will be a science.\"</p>\n<p>\"...\"</p>\n<p>\"I'm sorry. It just isn't.\"</p>\n<p>\"Have you read The Interpre...\"<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennawar.jpg\" width=\"190\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"'Fire' by Giuseppe Arcimboldo\" /></p>\n<p>\"Yes. But to be honest I don't see why our dreams need to be interpreted. Isn't it possible that they have no meaning at all? That we really <em>really</em> want them to have meaning because this is what we do, we find connections, metaphors to link things, and we can find threads in our dreams that seem to connect them to this world, but in the end what if they are just dreams? Something outside meaning and interpretation because the world which they inhabit is guided by rules and schema that bear no resemblance to the ones that guide this world? What if there is no common language by which we can make interpretations, metaphors or any meaning at all out of our dreams?</p>\n<p>\"...\"</p>\n<p>\"I'll tell you what does interest me though — the differences in the way we conduct ourselves in our dream lives and real lives and those people who seem to break down the differences.\"</p>\n<p>\"Such as?\"</p>\n<p>\"Well on the positive side you have someone like Antonio Gaudí or Frank Stanford. But of course there's the negative side as well, Jeffrey Dahmer, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, etc.\"</p>\n<p>\"It's interesting that you choose artists and writers as representative of the positive and serial killers, despots and murderers as the negative... perhaps neither is really accurate. It's possible you know that Gaudí was inspired by imagination and Pol Pot by greed and lust for power and that neither of them is representative of someone bringing dreams to life.\"</p>\n<p>\"Yes but don't dreams underlie imagination and greed and lust and everything else? We act out our dreams in realities. In fact I would say nearly everything we do is an act of externalizing our dreams — the hopes, fears and strangeness that they contain. We bring them forth into the world of struggling forces and they are bandied and battered about by circumstances which are often beyond our control.\"</p>\n<p>\"Didn't you just say the opposite?\"</p>\n<p>\"No I said it was possible that our dreams have no meaning in this world that we can ever understand, but that doesn't mean we don't spend our lives externalizing them and <em>trying</em> to understand them.</p>\n<p>\"Exactly. Sometimes you get art, other times murder, such is the nature of dreams and the world in which we find ourselves.\"</p>\n<p>\"...\"</p>\n<p>\"...\"</p>\n<p>\"What do you think of these art exhibits in the other room...?\"</p>\n<p>\"That's the sort of rhetorical question you pose so you can skip over whatever my answer may be and delve into what you really wanted to talk about — what <em>you</em> think of the art in the other room. Why don't we skip what I think and you tell me what it is you must get off your chest?\"</p>\n<p>\"You just can't put one over on you can you? I think the art's crap. In execution anyway. But I think the idea of the couch is very significant. I think the fact that you chose to have patients on a couch, or divan, or sofa or whatever you want to call it was genius, possibly your only moment of genius. I mean you could have had then in bed, but that's too close to actual sleep you could easily lose them in their unconscious worlds. You could have had them sit in a chair, but that's too formal, too far removed from dreams. The couch is perfect, reclined, perhaps close to sleep, but not all the way there, still able to pull back from the brink so to speak. It's like that sign over there says: ‘In a prone position, the clear certainties of thought can be diverted from their course into a twilight state of drowsiness and further into the anesthetized state of sleep or into the depths of illegitimate sexuality'\"</p>\n<p>\"And I've noticed that this thing, this couch, which was fairly arbitrary by the way, has become the symbol of choice...\"</p>\n<p>\"Yeah if I needed to create one of those universal language airport ideograms for psychology the couch would get the idea across. In the west anyway.\"</p>\n<p>\"But why do you think the art is ‘crap'?\"</p>\n<p>\"I've come to think painting peaked in the 16th century or so. These modern things just don't have any soul, their narcissistic, self-absorbed, lacking depth... Though some of the painters around your day were good, Egon Schiele, Hannah Höch, Paul Klee, Max Ernst, others. I sound like a grumpy old man don't I?\"</p>\n<p>\"Well. Yes. But there are great painters in every age, great writers, great musicians, great everything, you just have to know where to look and how to look.\"</p>\n<p>\"I know. I didn't mean it. I got carried away with my tendency toward hyperbole. I do that a lot, but I never really mean it, I just like to string the words together... I try you know. I try to find the good stuff. But sometimes I feel like I'm always trying and rarely succeeding.\"</p>\n<p>\"Trying is all that matters\"</p>\n<p>\"Just yesterday I was thinking of an old cover from a new York literary magazine... It was a drawing of a pigeon or a dove or some sort of bird, a bird with one wing and one arm. The caption read: trying trying trying.\"</p>\n<p>\"Mmmm. Yes. About like that.\"</p>\n<p>\"Yeah I thought so too, that's why it's stuck with me. Everything seems to stick with me. And yet sometimes I deny remembering things which I remember better and more clearly than the person telling me about them just so I can see what they remember. I don't know why I do that.\"</p>\n<p>\"You're avoiding something.\"</p>\n<p>\"Maybe. Maybe I just enjoy hearing things retold by other people. Maybe I don't like to think too much about the past, my history, the world's history, our history. It can get pretty ugly at times. There is a whole lot of violence and bloodshed and war and famine in the past, sometimes I think that this whole notion of trying is waste of time. I mean we've yet to succeed. Big business runs the world, people die, wars are fought so certain people can gain access to certain things. It seems so totally pointless and stupid and yet we keep doing it. The forces keep struggling and we keep twisting and turning some riding atop and some crushed beneath.\"</p>\n<p>\"Yes the world is a mess. But if we stop trying then there isn't even the hope of anything getting better.\"</p>\n<p>\"Isn't that a tad bit delusional though? I mean if it's always going to be a mess than what's the difference? Why is hope necessary?\"</p>\n<p>\"Because without hope there is no love. And without love there is nothing, because whoever loves becomes humble; those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.\"</p>\n<p>\"And it's our narcissism that has us in the situation we find ourselves?\"</p>\n<p>\"Among other things yes. Naturally nothing is reducible to any one factor, but I would say, did say in fact, that most of our problems, whether personal or geopolitical or anywhere in between, stem from our narcissism.\"</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2006/viennaharvest.jpg\" width=\"175\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"'Winter' by Giuseppe Arcimboldo\" /></p>\n<p>\"See you were a much better writer than scientist.\"</p>\n<p>\"Well I once wrote, ‘Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me'\"</p>\n<p>\"Well just about anybody could say that.\"</p>\n<p>\"...\"</p>\n<p>\"A lot of people I know say they feel lost.\"</p>\n<p>\"They should read more poetry.\"</p>\n<p>\"Sometimes I feel lost too. I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing. Other times I feel like I am in the place where I should be. Lately I've been feeling more confident, but I worry about my friends.\"</p>\n<p>\"Love and work... Work and love, that's all there is.\"</p>\n<p>\"...\"</p>\n<p>[Note that some of this faux dialogue is actual quotes and some are more summaries and some I just made up. None of it is in any way intended to represent the opinions in the writings, lectures and other works of Sigmund Freud. More or less if something sounds like it's too smart for me to have come up, that's an actual Freud quote.]</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">O</span>nce you pass through the odd and oversized foyer, which feels like a half finished storefront for H&M or the like, stairs lead up to the first floor. There are essentially only two rooms that bear any resemblance to what the place looked like in his day. In glass cases are a few knickknacks, figurines, actually it's a rather impressive collection with pieces from the Sumerian, India, Polynesia and other exotic locales. Another room is full of photographs and explanatory notation in German and English.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\nThe rest of the apartment is given over to something between an exhibition room and an art gallery. But what everyone came here for then is absent now. No word on where the couch might have gone or why some duplicate hasn't been made. Plenty of other sofas, divans and other reclining furniture are on display in one of the gallery rooms, but the original is nowhere to be found.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/viennafreudoffice.jpg\" width=\"212\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Waiting Room, Frued's office, Vienna Austria\" />\r\n\r\nThe closest thing is up against the wall, behind a small writing desk in what was then the waiting room. There were no ropes saying you couldn't so I did what everyone used to come here for, to lie down on the divan and stare at the patternless ceiling until the patterns emerge as it were.\r\n\r\nI lay down. I stared at the ceiling.\r\n\r\n\"Tell me about it.\"\r\n\r\n\"About what?\"\r\n\r\n\"What did you come here for?\"\r\n\r\n\"I'm not sure. I think I wanted to see it. To maybe have something to attach the abstractions too, maybe to know, rather than wonder — what did it look like? What sort of trees were on the street? What did the air taste like? How did the concrete and asphalt smell when it rained? What was the view from the window? How hot was the upstairs room where you worked? All the mundane details of life in places where I don't live... And I know I can't <em>know</em> these things in any real way without actually being there at the time. I know all I will find are half truths and suggestions, but the more I know the freer my imagination seems to become, the more it builds things out of the details, things which often bear no resemblance to reality but to me are more real.\"\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/viennafreudwindow.jpg\" width=\"172\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Window, Freud's Office, Vienna Austria\" />\r\n\r\n\"Interesting.\"\r\n\r\n\"Yeah it is. It totally contradicts an old quote from somebody named Suzuki that I used to like.\"\r\n\r\n\"Which is?\"\r\n\r\n\"‘For the beginner an infinite range of possibilities exist, for the expert few options remain.' Or something along those lines. And I don't by any means consider myself an expert. In fact the more I know and see the more I feel like a beginner. I don't even know what an expert is.\"\r\n\r\n\"Perhaps that's the veiled significance of this Suzuki's words, that we are all beginners, that there are no experts so we are free, as you say, with our imaginations. But remember that imagination is not all daydreams and pretty flowers; there are monsters and demons in us too. There seems to be in us all a struggle between light and dark...\"\r\n\r\n\"Like the Robert Mitchum movie? Or Spike Lee's version? A friend of mine claims that there are equal proportions of light and dark in the world, or good and evil or whatever metaphor you want to use, anyway her point is, I think, that these dualities are struggling for balance and that's where we find ourselves -- caught in that struggle. I think it's actually an idea she borrowed from Jewish Scripture, and it's a good metaphor so long as we consider the fact that which is which -- good/bad etc -- is wholly dependent on our judgments. That is, what you or I call dark or evil is actually neither, that is simple our interpretation of it. Not to be relativistic, which I don't like, in fact I think relativism misses out on the subtle undercurrents of life in favor of simplistic rationalism to offer an easy to grok interpretation of life's essential mysteries. But that said, there is some relativism in our interpretations of good and evil etc. Any given event, no matter how good it seems, is itself the result of all sorts of other events, some may have been good, some bad, but without them we wouldn't be doing that \"good\" thing now. And so with the future. If I give you some money to pay a debt that may be a good thing, but down the road it's possible that you will find yourself in a bad situation not just in spite of my good act, but perhaps because of it.\"\r\n\r\n\"Mmmhmm. Tell me about your dreams...\"\r\n\r\n\"No.\"\r\n\r\n\"...\"\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/viennamonster.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"painting\" />\r\n\r\n\"Okay. Just yesterday I dreamed a friend of mine was in trouble. So today I called her. Turns out she's not in trouble. She's doing just fine. So what the hell does that mean?\"\r\n\r\n\"Perhaps you feel a certain helplessness at not being able to know whether your friend is in trouble or not. Your subconscious feels helpless and seeks to create a situation in which it can help someone else so that it alleviates the feelings of helplessness.\"\r\n\r\n\"...\"\r\n\r\n\"The imagination can ruin and cripple as much as it can heal and give hope.\"\r\n\r\n\"Well don't you sort of have a vested interest in promoting that idea since your life's work hinges on it being true, on the notion that there is something wrong with me that I can not directly get to, but with assistance it can be drawn out...\"\r\n\r\n\"My vested interest was in helping people for whom there was no help at the time.\"\r\n\r\n\"Okay. Fair enough. Sorry. There is just so much baggage around you. I want to believe, I really do.\"\r\n\r\n\"It's possible I was wrong, I did make some mistakes.\"\r\n\r\n\"Yeah you did. Turns out cocaine <em>is</em> addictive.\"\r\n\r\n\"I made bigger ones than that.\"\r\n\r\n\"I know, but I saw that quote over there on the wall by that picture of Dora.\"\r\n\r\n\"Ah yes. Dora.\" \r\n\r\n\"The one that got away huh? So, why was all of your early work focused on women?\"\r\n\r\n\"...\"\r\n\r\n\"Okay. Well.... Do you like what they've done with the place?\"\r\n\r\n\"Well. It was just a place you know. This room we are sitting in was originally the waiting room, the consultations were in there. But it is just a place, one room is as good as another.\"\r\n\r\n\"Yeah. But weren't you the one who always directed attention toward trivialities like \"methodological principle,\" which in some ways is influenced by the room, the mood it creates. I mean if you had disco lighting and Al Green playing when patients came over things would've been different no?\"\r\n\r\n\"Yes I did say that. And methodology, set and setting as that American doctor put it, are important. But I also said sometimes a cigar...\"\r\n\r\n\"Yeah and we all wish you hadn't. That undercuts almost everything else you said because it highlights the subjective — dare I say arbitrary? — interpretations in your theories. I mean what if Newton has said ‘well gravity exists, but it doesn't always exist, it certain doesn't exist for <em>me</em>? That's a bit elitist don't you think? In the end we'd have to conclude that either gravity doesn't exist or that a cigar is never just a cigar, neither of which are particularly helpful.\"\r\n\r\n\"You seem hostile toward me.\"\r\n\r\n\"I'm not hostile, I'm just saying that psychology and this therapy bit is, in the end, no different than the kind of insight you can get from a book or a night out with friends or just sitting on the toilet contemplating life. But you invested the whole process with a pseudo-scientific framework that makes some people think they can't find their own answers.\"\r\n\r\n\"People can't find their own answers. And even those that can find some can't find others. We cannot see our own subconscious, we can only see the effects of it, the manifestations of it.\"\r\n\r\n\"Look I'm not saying I have it all sussed out. Far from it. But what you're talking about seems to me like a rewritten metaphor for god. And I think your metaphors were wrong about some key stuff. Like Oedipus for example. First off mythology is probably not a good base to draw from if your goal is to make sweeping ‘scientific' generalizations about human development. And secondly the stages Oedipus passes through, well you skipped a fairly key one, he was abandoned by his parents as a baby, which is tantamount to child abuse and hardly seems archetypical to the way most children are raised. I think you were a brilliant literary critic centuries ahead of his time, but I think your science was, well, to be blunt, nonexistent. Which would have been fine except...\"\r\n\r\n\"Hmmm. Yes. Perhaps. But I could argue that birth itself is abandonment\"\r\n\r\n\"Please don't.\"\r\n\r\n\"I wasn't going to, I was just saying I <em>could</em>.\"\r\n\r\n\"And yet that Oedipal theory, while professional psychologists may not pay much attention to it, holds a powerful sway over how we perceive ourselves today. And it carries that weight because it passed and continues to pass as science. See science is our god now so anything that gets you the title doctor is perceived as having some authority that overrides even common sense.\"\r\n\r\n\"Well, in my defense, it isn't really all that different than the story of the fall in the Jewish and Christian mythologies which also influences how you see yourself. And I did have a degree in medicine.\"\r\n\r\n\"I know you did. I'm not debating your training or skills I'm saying that psychology is not was not and never will be a science.\"\r\n\r\n\"...\"\r\n\r\n\"I'm sorry. It just isn't.\"\r\n\r\n\"Have you read The Interpre...\"<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/viennawar.jpg\" width=\"190\" height=\"240\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"'Fire' by Giuseppe Arcimboldo\" />\r\n\r\n\"Yes. But to be honest I don't see why our dreams need to be interpreted. Isn't it possible that they have no meaning at all? That we really <em>really</em> want them to have meaning because this is what we do, we find connections, metaphors to link things, and we can find threads in our dreams that seem to connect them to this world, but in the end what if they are just dreams? Something outside meaning and interpretation because the world which they inhabit is guided by rules and schema that bear no resemblance to the ones that guide this world? What if there is no common language by which we can make interpretations, metaphors or any meaning at all out of our dreams?\r\n\r\n\"...\"\r\n\r\n\"I'll tell you what does interest me though — the differences in the way we conduct ourselves in our dream lives and real lives and those people who seem to break down the differences.\"\r\n\r\n\"Such as?\"\r\n\r\n\"Well on the positive side you have someone like Antonio Gaudí or Frank Stanford. But of course there's the negative side as well, Jeffrey Dahmer, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, etc.\"\r\n\r\n\"It's interesting that you choose artists and writers as representative of the positive and serial killers, despots and murderers as the negative... perhaps neither is really accurate. It's possible you know that Gaudí was inspired by imagination and Pol Pot by greed and lust for power and that neither of them is representative of someone bringing dreams to life.\"\r\n\r\n\"Yes but don't dreams underlie imagination and greed and lust and everything else? We act out our dreams in realities. In fact I would say nearly everything we do is an act of externalizing our dreams — the hopes, fears and strangeness that they contain. We bring them forth into the world of struggling forces and they are bandied and battered about by circumstances which are often beyond our control.\"\r\n\r\n\"Didn't you just say the opposite?\"\r\n\r\n\"No I said it was possible that our dreams have no meaning in this world that we can ever understand, but that doesn't mean we don't spend our lives externalizing them and <em>trying</em> to understand them.\r\n\r\n\"Exactly. Sometimes you get art, other times murder, such is the nature of dreams and the world in which we find ourselves.\"\r\n\r\n\"...\"\r\n\r\n\"...\"\r\n\r\n\"What do you think of these art exhibits in the other room...?\"\r\n\r\n\"That's the sort of rhetorical question you pose so you can skip over whatever my answer may be and delve into what you really wanted to talk about — what <em>you</em> think of the art in the other room. Why don't we skip what I think and you tell me what it is you must get off your chest?\"\r\n\r\n\"You just can't put one over on you can you? I think the art's crap. In execution anyway. But I think the idea of the couch is very significant. I think the fact that you chose to have patients on a couch, or divan, or sofa or whatever you want to call it was genius, possibly your only moment of genius. I mean you could have had then in bed, but that's too close to actual sleep you could easily lose them in their unconscious worlds. You could have had them sit in a chair, but that's too formal, too far removed from dreams. The couch is perfect, reclined, perhaps close to sleep, but not all the way there, still able to pull back from the brink so to speak. It's like that sign over there says: ‘In a prone position, the clear certainties of thought can be diverted from their course into a twilight state of drowsiness and further into the anesthetized state of sleep or into the depths of illegitimate sexuality'\"\r\n\r\n\"And I've noticed that this thing, this couch, which was fairly arbitrary by the way, has become the symbol of choice...\"\r\n\r\n\"Yeah if I needed to create one of those universal language airport ideograms for psychology the couch would get the idea across. In the west anyway.\"\r\n\r\n\"But why do you think the art is ‘crap'?\"\r\n\r\n\"I've come to think painting peaked in the 16th century or so. These modern things just don't have any soul, their narcissistic, self-absorbed, lacking depth... Though some of the painters around your day were good, Egon Schiele, Hannah Höch, Paul Klee, Max Ernst, others. I sound like a grumpy old man don't I?\"\r\n\r\n\"Well. Yes. But there are great painters in every age, great writers, great musicians, great everything, you just have to know where to look and how to look.\"\r\n\r\n\"I know. I didn't mean it. I got carried away with my tendency toward hyperbole. I do that a lot, but I never really mean it, I just like to string the words together... I try you know. I try to find the good stuff. But sometimes I feel like I'm always trying and rarely succeeding.\"\r\n\r\n\"Trying is all that matters\"\r\n\r\n\"Just yesterday I was thinking of an old cover from a new York literary magazine... It was a drawing of a pigeon or a dove or some sort of bird, a bird with one wing and one arm. The caption read: trying trying trying.\"\r\n\r\n\"Mmmm. Yes. About like that.\"\r\n\r\n\"Yeah I thought so too, that's why it's stuck with me. Everything seems to stick with me. And yet sometimes I deny remembering things which I remember better and more clearly than the person telling me about them just so I can see what they remember. I don't know why I do that.\"\r\n\r\n\"You're avoiding something.\"\r\n\r\n\"Maybe. Maybe I just enjoy hearing things retold by other people. Maybe I don't like to think too much about the past, my history, the world's history, our history. It can get pretty ugly at times. There is a whole lot of violence and bloodshed and war and famine in the past, sometimes I think that this whole notion of trying is waste of time. I mean we've yet to succeed. Big business runs the world, people die, wars are fought so certain people can gain access to certain things. It seems so totally pointless and stupid and yet we keep doing it. The forces keep struggling and we keep twisting and turning some riding atop and some crushed beneath.\"\r\n\r\n\"Yes the world is a mess. But if we stop trying then there isn't even the hope of anything getting better.\"\r\n\r\n\"Isn't that a tad bit delusional though? I mean if it's always going to be a mess than what's the difference? Why is hope necessary?\"\r\n\r\n\"Because without hope there is no love. And without love there is nothing, because whoever loves becomes humble; those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.\"\r\n\r\n\"And it's our narcissism that has us in the situation we find ourselves?\"\r\n\r\n\"Among other things yes. Naturally nothing is reducible to any one factor, but I would say, did say in fact, that most of our problems, whether personal or geopolitical or anywhere in between, stem from our narcissism.\"\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2006/viennaharvest.jpg\" width=\"175\" height=\"230\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"'Winter' by Giuseppe Arcimboldo\" />\r\n\r\n\"See you were a much better writer than scientist.\"\r\n\r\n\"Well I once wrote, ‘Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me'\"\r\n\r\n\"Well just about anybody could say that.\"\r\n\r\n\"...\"\r\n\r\n\"A lot of people I know say they feel lost.\"\r\n\r\n\"They should read more poetry.\"\r\n\r\n\"Sometimes I feel lost too. I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing. Other times I feel like I am in the place where I should be. Lately I've been feeling more confident, but I worry about my friends.\"\r\n\r\n\"Love and work... Work and love, that's all there is.\"\r\n\r\n\"...\"\r\n\r\n[Note that some of this faux dialogue is actual quotes and some are more summaries and some I just made up. None of it is in any way intended to represent the opinions in the writings, lectures and other works of Sigmund Freud. More or less if something sounds like it's too smart for me to have come up, that's an actual Freud quote.]", "dek": "How can Freud's former residence in Vienna lack a couch? The closest thing is up against the wall, behind a small writing desk in what was then the waiting room — a small divan where one might stare at the patternless ceiling until the patterns emerge as it were. \u201cTell me about it,\u201d he began.", "pub_date": "2006-05-28T15:00:32", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (16.3706481433968136 48.2099677697279958)", "location": 12, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/freudsoffice.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/freudsoffice.jpg", "meta_description": "A mock interview with Sigmund Freud Vienna, composed in what was once the waiting room of Frued's office in Vienna, Austria. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 66, "fields": {"title": "Cadenza", "slug": "cadenza", "body_html": "<p class=\"pull-quote\">“On the meridian of time there is no justice, only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and justice”<span class=\"credit\">— <cite>H. Miller</cite></span>\n\n<span class=\"drop\">O</span>utside it's raining. Beads of water form on the window in front of me. The glow of the unseen sun is fading behind midnight blue clouds and darkening sky. An old man in a butcher apron selling oysters under an awning smokes a cigarette and watches the mothers and children walking home with bags of groceries, the young man with the blue umbrella crosses the street with his head down. The hiss of tires on the pavement comes softly between Satie's piano notes; the wet greens leaves flap against the dark bark of maples trees; the headlights reflect in red and white streaks in the puddles. The digital sign across the street prints out events in red dot matrix letters, concerts, plays, museum openings, things happen in the Marais. Things happen most everywhere.\n\n<break>\n\nFor me this thing began happening when I left Paris.\n\nAnd now. Now I can see my reflection slighted in the window. I am haggard, tired, my cheeks slightly sunken. My pen is dry, my notebook full, my laptop out of juice and my iPod drained. I have no money, nowhere to stay. My girlfriend tells me she's in love with the Italian deli boy (natch) and the soles of my shoes are worn through so I can feel the cold of the cobblestones when I walk. \n\nTo be honest this isn't how I wanted to return to Paris.\n\nAnd yet. And yet. I haven't been this happy in years. \n\nWhen I left it was autumn, the leaves were falling. We all wondered aloud if the trees would ever fall from the leaves but knew better and so did not answer. Instead we walked. When the trees fall they take the whole game with them.\n\nParis in spring stifles. The leaves uniform monochrome. Except for the Japanese maples which make me hungry for something I've never tasted with their burgundy leaves hinting at autumn before it has come. Another summer to sweat through. Or maybe they are a reminder of an autumn past, some constant by which to trace our elliptical paths through these winding cobblestone alleys. \n\nParis is much like New York in that both were designed with autumn in mind. Though New York is a bit short on cobblestones.\n\nLast night, having nothing to do after I parted ways with someone I met on the train from Vienna, I wandered down to the Latin Quarter, an arrondissement I never really spent much time in. I bought a copy of Lydia Davis' translation of <em>The Way by Swann's</em> and then strolled up away from the Seine.\n\nIt began to drizzle lightly, just enough to mottle the lens of my eyeglasses which made the lights in store windows glitter and blur as I walked past. At some point I found myself under a small awning and I paused to wipe my glasses on my shirt. When I put them back on I noticed that the darkened and grated shop window next to me was full of old cameras — 1960's Pentax and Contax, Kodak Brownings, Leica bodies, rows of Carl Zeiss lens and even a few small collapsible bellows cameras. I thought about an article I had read several days before which covered the recent announcements from both Canon and Nikon that they will cease still film camera production this year.\n\nFilm is already a curiosity. Even small children in out-of-the-way countries expect to see instant results in a small digital screen and are visibly disappointed when they cannot. Silver haloid preserved the twentieth century but now its service is ended. \n\nJust across the street was well-lit display of digital camera's, cd and mp3 players, plasma televisions.\n\nFor a long time Kodak used the slogan “preserving your memories.” \n\nI have a lot of pictures. Over 2000 as a matter of fact. Only about twenty are any good, which is roughly the ratio of good to bad that convinced me to give up on being a professional photographer back in college, but strangely it's the really bad ones that are the most compelling to me. Compelling because they look nothing like what I remember and thus do not interfere with the memories.\n\nI am sitting at the same cafe sipping, but not really enjoying all that much, a chocolate chaud much like the ones I wrote about eight months ago. It isn't as good, there is something missing. Okay let's be honest, someone, but you'll have to do better than that to earn your junior detective badge. \n\nYou know what you learn traveling? After all this time what do I understand now that I did not then? What makes this chocolate chaud less fulfilling than that last?\n\nSimple. \n\nYou cannot go backwards. \n\nYou will want to go backwards.\n\nYou will want to hang on to things when they are perfect.\n\nYou will want to stay in Vang Veing, a floating village, on an island lost at sea.\n\nYou will want to return even after you have left. \n\nYou will want things to be the same when you return.\n\nBut they will not be the same. The people will be gone.\n\nAnd the people were the only reason you stayed.\n\nYou will want to go backwards.\n\nYou cannot go backwards.\n\nAnd now I am home.\n\n<em>for Lilli. Because. Someday you will be the only one left.</em>", "body_markdown": "<p class=\"pull-quote\">“On the meridian of time there is no justice, only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and justice”<span class=\"credit\">— <cite>H. Miller</cite></span>\r\n\r\n<span class=\"drop\">O</span>utside it's raining. Beads of water form on the window in front of me. The glow of the unseen sun is fading behind midnight blue clouds and darkening sky. An old man in a butcher apron selling oysters under an awning smokes a cigarette and watches the mothers and children walking home with bags of groceries, the young man with the blue umbrella crosses the street with his head down. The hiss of tires on the pavement comes softly between Satie's piano notes; the wet greens leaves flap against the dark bark of maples trees; the headlights reflect in red and white streaks in the puddles. The digital sign across the street prints out events in red dot matrix letters, concerts, plays, museum openings, things happen in the Marais. Things happen most everywhere.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nFor me this thing began happening when I left Paris.\r\n\r\nAnd now. Now I can see my reflection slighted in the window. I am haggard, tired, my cheeks slightly sunken. My pen is dry, my notebook full, my laptop out of juice and my iPod drained. I have no money, nowhere to stay. My girlfriend tells me she's in love with the Italian deli boy (natch) and the soles of my shoes are worn through so I can feel the cold of the cobblestones when I walk. \r\n\r\nTo be honest this isn't how I wanted to return to Paris.\r\n\r\nAnd yet. And yet. I haven't been this happy in years. \r\n\r\nWhen I left it was autumn, the leaves were falling. We all wondered aloud if the trees would ever fall from the leaves but knew better and so did not answer. Instead we walked. When the trees fall they take the whole game with them.\r\n\r\nParis in spring stifles. The leaves uniform monochrome. Except for the Japanese maples which make me hungry for something I've never tasted with their burgundy leaves hinting at autumn before it has come. Another summer to sweat through. Or maybe they are a reminder of an autumn past, some constant by which to trace our elliptical paths through these winding cobblestone alleys. \r\n\r\nParis is much like New York in that both were designed with autumn in mind. Though New York is a bit short on cobblestones.\r\n\r\nLast night, having nothing to do after I parted ways with someone I met on the train from Vienna, I wandered down to the Latin Quarter, an arrondissement I never really spent much time in. I bought a copy of Lydia Davis' translation of <em>The Way by Swann's</em> and then strolled up away from the Seine.\r\n\r\nIt began to drizzle lightly, just enough to mottle the lens of my eyeglasses which made the lights in store windows glitter and blur as I walked past. At some point I found myself under a small awning and I paused to wipe my glasses on my shirt. When I put them back on I noticed that the darkened and grated shop window next to me was full of old cameras — 1960's Pentax and Contax, Kodak Brownings, Leica bodies, rows of Carl Zeiss lens and even a few small collapsible bellows cameras. I thought about an article I had read several days before which covered the recent announcements from both Canon and Nikon that they will cease still film camera production this year.\r\n\r\nFilm is already a curiosity. Even small children in out-of-the-way countries expect to see instant results in a small digital screen and are visibly disappointed when they cannot. Silver haloid preserved the twentieth century but now its service is ended. \r\n\r\nJust across the street was well-lit display of digital camera's, cd and mp3 players, plasma televisions.\r\n\r\nFor a long time Kodak used the slogan “preserving your memories.” \r\n\r\nI have a lot of pictures. Over 2000 as a matter of fact. Only about twenty are any good, which is roughly the ratio of good to bad that convinced me to give up on being a professional photographer back in college, but strangely it's the really bad ones that are the most compelling to me. Compelling because they look nothing like what I remember and thus do not interfere with the memories.\r\n\r\nI am sitting at the same cafe sipping, but not really enjoying all that much, a chocolate chaud much like the ones I wrote about eight months ago. It isn't as good, there is something missing. Okay let's be honest, someone, but you'll have to do better than that to earn your junior detective badge. \r\n\r\nYou know what you learn traveling? After all this time what do I understand now that I did not then? What makes this chocolate chaud less fulfilling than that last?\r\n\r\nSimple. \r\n\r\nYou cannot go backwards. \r\n\r\nYou will want to go backwards.\r\n\r\nYou will want to hang on to things when they are perfect.\r\n\r\nYou will want to stay in Vang Veing, a floating village, on an island lost at sea.\r\n\r\nYou will want to return even after you have left. \r\n\r\nYou will want things to be the same when you return.\r\n\r\nBut they will not be the same. The people will be gone.\r\n\r\nAnd the people were the only reason you stayed.\r\n\r\nYou will want to go backwards.\r\n\r\nYou cannot go backwards.\r\n\r\nAnd now I am home.\r\n\r\n<em>for Lilli. Because. Someday you will be the only one left.</em>", "dek": "Paris - Outside it's raining. Beads of water form on the window in front of me. The glow of the unseen sun is fading behind midnight blue clouds and darkening sky. An old man in a butcher apron selling oysters under an awning smokes a cigarette and watches the mothers and children walking home with bags of groceries.", "pub_date": "2006-06-06T11:01:26", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (2.3610842224649087 48.8634584437846797)", "location": 11, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/parisglow.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/parisglow.jpg", "meta_description": "Paris in the rain; the glow of the unseen sun is fading behind midnight blue clouds and darkening sky. This is where it all began. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 67, "fields": {"title": "Homeward", "slug": "homeward", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">N</span>ew York, New York. John F Kennedy airport 1 am date unknown, sleepy looking customs guard stamps a passport without hardly looking at, without even checking to see where I had been. A light drizzle is falling outside and the subways extension to the terminal never looked so good. Concrete hiss of tires, parabolic freeway ramps, a moth trapped inside an airport bus, the sodium yellow glow of subway lights, the gentle rocking of a train car, the green boarded fronts of a sixth avenue newsstand, shoes still leaking, still tired and still not looking back.</p>\n<p>Just off Bleeker, around the corner from Minetta where I once lived for a few weeks, there is a small coffee shop totally unremarkable in nearly every way save one distinguishing characteristic that drew me to it initially and draws me to it still — it doesn't close. Faced with a thirty six hour layover and nowhere near the cash to pay for a hotel (don't even ask about the credit cards) I figured good old Esperanta cafe was the ideal sort of place to spend the night.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>I would like to say that I got off the plane ready to kiss the ground and mumble something about home at last, thank god home at last, but that isn't how I felt and isn't what I did. soon after I arrived in Los Angeles to see my family, friends started to email and call, which was wonderful, except that nearly everyone asked what it was like to be back. </p>\n<p>I've had three months to ponder that question now and I still don't have a definitive answer, which is at least partly my own fault because I've never asked exactly what you mean when you ask that question. Sometimes people ask that as a sort of loaded question, some people seemed to be waiting for me to bad mouth America. </p>\n<p>So let's start there. I could say a million bad things about America, but the truth is people, things are no better anywhere else, like Tom Wait's said “I know I know, things is tough all over.” There are things America does better than the rest of the world and there are things we could do so much better. </p>\n<p>I could be critical of America's corrupt, inept and lying politicians, but I could just as easily be critical of France's politicians, Cambodia's politicians, India's politicians, Laos, Thailand ad nauseam. We are no better and no worse. </p>\n<p>Then there's the other side of that coin, some seem to expect that I would be overjoyed to finally be back in the U.S., but the truth is I didn't miss it. I missed a lot of people here in the States, but the country itself never much crossed my mind. </p>\n<p>So what is it like to be home? I don't know, I'll tell you when I get there.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">N</span>ew York, New York. John F Kennedy airport 1 am date unknown, sleepy looking customs guard stamps a passport without hardly looking at, without even checking to see where I had been. A light drizzle is falling outside and the subways extension to the terminal never looked so good. Concrete hiss of tires, parabolic freeway ramps, a moth trapped inside an airport bus, the sodium yellow glow of subway lights, the gentle rocking of a train car, the green boarded fronts of a sixth avenue newsstand, shoes still leaking, still tired and still not looking back.\r\n\r\nJust off Bleeker, around the corner from Minetta where I once lived for a few weeks, there is a small coffee shop totally unremarkable in nearly every way save one distinguishing characteristic that drew me to it initially and draws me to it still — it doesn't close. Faced with a thirty six hour layover and nowhere near the cash to pay for a hotel (don't even ask about the credit cards) I figured good old Esperanta cafe was the ideal sort of place to spend the night.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nI would like to say that I got off the plane ready to kiss the ground and mumble something about home at last, thank god home at last, but that isn't how I felt and isn't what I did. soon after I arrived in Los Angeles to see my family, friends started to email and call, which was wonderful, except that nearly everyone asked what it was like to be back. \r\n\r\nI've had three months to ponder that question now and I still don't have a definitive answer, which is at least partly my own fault because I've never asked exactly what you mean when you ask that question. Sometimes people ask that as a sort of loaded question, some people seemed to be waiting for me to bad mouth America. \r\n\r\nSo let's start there. I could say a million bad things about America, but the truth is people, things are no better anywhere else, like Tom Wait's said “I know I know, things is tough all over.” There are things America does better than the rest of the world and there are things we could do so much better. \r\n\r\nI could be critical of America's corrupt, inept and lying politicians, but I could just as easily be critical of France's politicians, Cambodia's politicians, India's politicians, Laos, Thailand ad nauseam. We are no better and no worse. \r\n\r\nThen there's the other side of that coin, some seem to expect that I would be overjoyed to finally be back in the U.S., but the truth is I didn't miss it. I missed a lot of people here in the States, but the country itself never much crossed my mind. \r\n\r\nSo what is it like to be home? I don't know, I'll tell you when I get there.", "dek": "New York, New York. John F Kennedy airport 1 am date unknown, sleepy looking customs guard stamps a passport without hardly looking at, without even checking to see where I had been. A light drizzle is falling outside and the subways extension to the terminal never looked so good. What is it like to be home? I don't know, I'll tell you when I get there.", "pub_date": "2006-06-09T11:05:34", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-118.4290337397704462 33.9751600602648338)", "location": 10, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/trappedmoth.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/trappedmoth.jpg", "meta_description": "How do you come home after traveling the world? You don't. So what's it like to be home? I don't know, I'll tell you when I get there. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 70, "fields": {"title": "Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose", "slug": "give-it-or-turnit-loose", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">A</span>s I'm sure everyone has heard by now, James Brown died on Christmas day. Normally I'm not one to dwell too much on celebrity deaths, after all it's not like I knew the man, but some people have an impact that goes far beyond their person or their life. Johnny Cash was such a person and for me, so was James Brown.</p>\n<p>My first encounter with James Brown's music is lost on me. In many ways James Brown was just always there, background music at the Little Knight, something you tapped a foot to while shooting pool. I knew the hits and not much else.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>Then Jimmy played me the <em>Funk Power</em> compilation of Brown's short lived version of the JBs that included a then unknown Bootsy Collins. It would be a slight exaggeration to say the CD changed my life, but not an outright lie. We happened to be driving from Athens GA to New York at the time and we listened to that and Stevie Wonder's <em>Innervisions</em> pretty much the whole way.</p>\n<p>The twelve minute rendition of Soul Power on that record is still probably the hardest funk music I've ever heard and lyrically that record transcends most of the rest of Brown's career. Maceo Parker and the rest of the old band had just quit, Bootsy and the new band would quit inside of a year, but for this one moment the raw unpolished perfection of the JBs comes screaming though.</p>\n<p>I don't particularly like religion, but I think I do believe in the soul. And I realized at some point that when I say soul I mean something very similar to what I think James Brown meant — a mixture of the secular and the spiritual, the profane and the sublime. Soul is not something out there or in you, it's the place where you meet the out there.</p>\n<p>James Brown was not a perfect man, perhaps not even a great man if we are to consider his personal life in detail, but there were moments when he channeled something very few people ever get to touch and that is the real soul power.</p>\n<p>So long Mr. Brown and say hello to Mr. Cash and Sun the one when you get wherever it is you're headed.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">A</span>s I'm sure everyone has heard by now, James Brown died on Christmas day. Normally I'm not one to dwell too much on celebrity deaths, after all it's not like I knew the man, but some people have an impact that goes far beyond their person or their life. Johnny Cash was such a person and for me, so was James Brown.\r\n\r\nMy first encounter with James Brown's music is lost on me. In many ways James Brown was just always there, background music at the Little Knight, something you tapped a foot to while shooting pool. I knew the hits and not much else.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nThen Jimmy played me the <em>Funk Power</em> compilation of Brown's short lived version of the JBs that included a then unknown Bootsy Collins. It would be a slight exaggeration to say the CD changed my life, but not an outright lie. We happened to be driving from Athens GA to New York at the time and we listened to that and Stevie Wonder's <em>Innervisions</em> pretty much the whole way.\r\n\r\nThe twelve minute rendition of Soul Power on that record is still probably the hardest funk music I've ever heard and lyrically that record transcends most of the rest of Brown's career. Maceo Parker and the rest of the old band had just quit, Bootsy and the new band would quit inside of a year, but for this one moment the raw unpolished perfection of the JBs comes screaming though.\r\n\r\nI don't particularly like religion, but I think I do believe in the soul. And I realized at some point that when I say soul I mean something very similar to what I think James Brown meant — a mixture of the secular and the spiritual, the profane and the sublime. Soul is not something out there or in you, it's the place where you meet the out there.\r\n\r\nJames Brown was not a perfect man, perhaps not even a great man if we are to consider his personal life in detail, but there were moments when he channeled something very few people ever get to touch and that is the real soul power.\r\n\r\nSo long Mr. Brown and say hello to Mr. Cash and Sun the one when you get wherever it is you're headed.", "dek": "Traveling soul. Soul is not something out there or in you, it's the place where you meet the out there; something very similar to what I think James Brown meant — a mixture of the secular and the spiritual, the profane and the sublime. ", "pub_date": "2006-12-25T19:10:49", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-118.4289371802460238 33.9751956490909066)", "location": 10, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/jamesbrown.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/jamesbrown.jpg", "meta_description": "James Brown was not a perfect man, but there were moments when he channeled what very few people ever get to feel: true soul power. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 71, "fields": {"title": "The Sun Came Up With No Conclusions", "slug": "sun-came-no-conclusions", "body_html": "<p class=\"pull-quote\">“And so it is that we, as men, do not exist until we do; and then it is that we play with our world of existent things, and order and disorder them, and so it shall be that non-existence shall take us back from existence and that nameless spirituality shall return to Void, like a tired child home from a very wild circus.”<span class=\"credit\">—Principia Discordia by <cite>Malaclypse the Younger, Robert Anton Wilson and Kerry Thornley</cite></span></p>\n\n<p><break></p>\n<p><span class=\"drop\">R</span>obert Anton Wilson</span>, philosopher, visionary, Discordian, author of the Illuminatus! epic and hacker of the mind, passed away earlier today. I'm rather tired of eulogies, will the people I admire kindly stop dying.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/raw.jpg\" alt=\"Robert Anton Wilson\" width=\"260\" height=\"181\" class=\"postpic\" />Wilson had a profound impact on me when I was younger and I'm not exaggerating when I say his book Prometheus Rising completely changed the way I look at the world — in good way — but I haven't read anything by him in some time.</p>\n<p>When I read on <a href=\"http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/11/robert_anton_wilson_.html\" title=\"Robert Anton Wilson (RIP)\">BoingBoing</a> this afternoon that he had died, I started digging around the internet, <a href=\"http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/01/12/a-selection-of-obscure-robert-anton-wilson-essays/\" title=\"A Selection of Obscure Robert Anton Wilson Essays\">reading</a> and <a href=\"http://www.rinf.com/articles/robert-anton-wilson.html\" title=\"RAW: Robert Anton Wilson Video & Audio Multimedia\">listening</a> to some of Wilson's various audio and video archives. I was struck by the fact that the world just lost one of its great humanizers. </p>\n<p>Wilson is often pigeon-holed by the same cultural reputations of his friends, namely Timothy Leary and William Burroughs, but Wilson always seemed to me less concerned with edification and more interested in humanization, which is something the world will miss.</p>\n<p>And I started thinking about how a man who wrote some of the most paranoid, conspiracy-oriented novels I've ever read could remain, at the end of day, and even the end of his life, eternally an optimist.</p>\n<p>Wilson's <a href=\"http://robertantonwilson.blogspot.com/2007/01/do-not-go-gently-into-that-good-night.html\" title=\"Do not go gently into that good night\">final entry on his blog</a>, written five days before his death, reads:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.</p>\n<p>Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Wilson didn't take much of anything very seriously and that's one of the things I acquired from reading him. I've discovered over the years that many people in my life are somewhat put off by my refusal to take things seriously and I have at times perhaps taken that too far, but by and large I remain convinced that that levity and a lack of certitude are important.</p>\n<p>How do you stay optimistic in a world which is increasing bent on fostering global insanity? I think the first step is to realize that the last sentence is an abstraction and doesn't really mean anything. Which isn't to say we should all stick out heads in the ground and ignore things that upset us, but simply that we recognize that the things that upset us need not define us.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/illuminatus-cover.jpg\" alt=\"Illuminatus Cover\" width=\"195\" height=\"300\" class=\"postpicright\" />When you read something like Illuminatus, with characters like, Fission Chips, the world's first quintuple compromised secret agent, you can't help but come away laughing. The focus in Wilson's work was never to make you paranoid. “My business,” Wilson once told the LA Weekly, “is not to expose but to collect comparative exposes so that the readers can see that conspiracy is normal behavior and that there's no one big conspiracy that runs everything.”</p>\n<p>One thing Wilson said over and over in the audio I listened to earlier stood out — perhaps we should try using “seems” more often and “is” a whole lot less. Now maybe that only sounds like a good idea to someone who's obsessed with linguistics in the first place, but maybe it isn't that limited. </p>\n<p>At the end of the day there may well be no “is.” I'd be the last person to embrace any sort of relativistic notion of ethics or morality, but I also try to keep in mind that I am a colossal idiot and I have long, tragically long, history of being wrong. Wrong about where the car keys are and wrong about what the world needs, what I need and what those around me need. In short I've come to distrust the certitude of statements involving is.</p>\n<p>Most of the conflicts in this world involve conflicts of is-es — my is is better/bigger/more correct/morally superior/more logical/ad nauseam than your is. </p>\n<p>The saddest irony being of course that in the end all we create are additional problems by arguing about problems (never mind that abstract problems are generally self-invented anyway, probably have no practical solution, and even if they did most of us are powerless to implement a real solution outside ourselves and our own narrow lives).</p>\n<p>Perhaps if we spent more time talking about how the world <em>seems</em>, rather than how the world <em>is</em> we'd construct a more kind-hearted and enjoyable world.</p>\n<p>Happy trails Mr. Wilson, may you finally escape the <a href=\"http://www.totse.com/en/conspiracy/institutional_analysis/fnord.html\" title=\"I Can See the fnords!\">fnords</a>, we'll keep the lasagna airborne, or as a line from the eponymous song says — let's fuck it up boys (and girls)/make some noise.</p>\n<p>[Update: A bunch of people have emailed me asking for more links to RAW's writings and such. Rather than compile everything again, I'll offer this <a href=\"http://reason.com/news/show/117878.html\" title=\"The legacy of Robert Anton Wilson\">Reason Magazine article</a>, which is chock full of links.]</p>\n<p class=\"note\">This Essay is for my friend Hilary who introduced me to the writings of Robert Anton Wilson", "body_markdown": "<p class=\"pull-quote\">“And so it is that we, as men, do not exist until we do; and then it is that we play with our world of existent things, and order and disorder them, and so it shall be that non-existence shall take us back from existence and that nameless spirituality shall return to Void, like a tired child home from a very wild circus.”<span class=\"credit\">—Principia Discordia by <cite>Malaclypse the Younger, Robert Anton Wilson and Kerry Thornley</cite></span></p>\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\n<span class=\"drop\">R</span>obert Anton Wilson</span>, philosopher, visionary, Discordian, author of the Illuminatus! epic and hacker of the mind, passed away earlier today. I'm rather tired of eulogies, will the people I admire kindly stop dying.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/raw.jpg\" alt=\"Robert Anton Wilson\" width=\"260\" height=\"181\" class=\"postpic\" />Wilson had a profound impact on me when I was younger and I'm not exaggerating when I say his book Prometheus Rising completely changed the way I look at the world — in good way — but I haven't read anything by him in some time.\r\n\r\nWhen I read on <a href=\"http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/11/robert_anton_wilson_.html\" title=\"Robert Anton Wilson (RIP)\">BoingBoing</a> this afternoon that he had died, I started digging around the internet, <a href=\"http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/01/12/a-selection-of-obscure-robert-anton-wilson-essays/\" title=\"A Selection of Obscure Robert Anton Wilson Essays\">reading</a> and <a href=\"http://www.rinf.com/articles/robert-anton-wilson.html\" title=\"RAW: Robert Anton Wilson Video & Audio Multimedia\">listening</a> to some of Wilson's various audio and video archives. I was struck by the fact that the world just lost one of its great humanizers. \r\n\r\nWilson is often pigeon-holed by the same cultural reputations of his friends, namely Timothy Leary and William Burroughs, but Wilson always seemed to me less concerned with edification and more interested in humanization, which is something the world will miss.\r\n\r\nAnd I started thinking about how a man who wrote some of the most paranoid, conspiracy-oriented novels I've ever read could remain, at the end of day, and even the end of his life, eternally an optimist.\r\n\r\nWilson's <a href=\"http://robertantonwilson.blogspot.com/2007/01/do-not-go-gently-into-that-good-night.html\" title=\"Do not go gently into that good night\">final entry on his blog</a>, written five days before his death, reads:\r\n\r\n> Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.\r\n\r\n> Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd. \r\n\r\nWilson didn't take much of anything very seriously and that's one of the things I acquired from reading him. I've discovered over the years that many people in my life are somewhat put off by my refusal to take things seriously and I have at times perhaps taken that too far, but by and large I remain convinced that that levity and a lack of certitude are important.\r\n\r\nHow do you stay optimistic in a world which is increasing bent on fostering global insanity? I think the first step is to realize that the last sentence is an abstraction and doesn't really mean anything. Which isn't to say we should all stick out heads in the ground and ignore things that upset us, but simply that we recognize that the things that upset us need not define us.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/illuminatus-cover.jpg\" alt=\"Illuminatus Cover\" width=\"195\" height=\"300\" class=\"postpicright\" />When you read something like Illuminatus, with characters like, Fission Chips, the world's first quintuple compromised secret agent, you can't help but come away laughing. The focus in Wilson's work was never to make you paranoid. “My business,” Wilson once told the LA Weekly, “is not to expose but to collect comparative exposes so that the readers can see that conspiracy is normal behavior and that there's no one big conspiracy that runs everything.”\r\n\r\nOne thing Wilson said over and over in the audio I listened to earlier stood out — perhaps we should try using “seems” more often and “is” a whole lot less. Now maybe that only sounds like a good idea to someone who's obsessed with linguistics in the first place, but maybe it isn't that limited. \r\n\r\nAt the end of the day there may well be no “is.” I'd be the last person to embrace any sort of relativistic notion of ethics or morality, but I also try to keep in mind that I am a colossal idiot and I have long, tragically long, history of being wrong. Wrong about where the car keys are and wrong about what the world needs, what I need and what those around me need. In short I've come to distrust the certitude of statements involving is.\r\n\r\nMost of the conflicts in this world involve conflicts of is-es — my is is better/bigger/more correct/morally superior/more logical/ad nauseam than your is. \r\n\r\nThe saddest irony being of course that in the end all we create are additional problems by arguing about problems (never mind that abstract problems are generally self-invented anyway, probably have no practical solution, and even if they did most of us are powerless to implement a real solution outside ourselves and our own narrow lives).\r\n\r\nPerhaps if we spent more time talking about how the world <em>seems</em>, rather than how the world <em>is</em> we'd construct a more kind-hearted and enjoyable world.\r\n\r\nHappy trails Mr. Wilson, may you finally escape the <a href=\"http://www.totse.com/en/conspiracy/institutional_analysis/fnord.html\" title=\"I Can See the fnords!\">fnords</a>, we'll keep the lasagna airborne, or as a line from the eponymous song says — let's fuck it up boys (and girls)/make some noise.\r\n\r\n[Update: A bunch of people have emailed me asking for more links to RAW's writings and such. Rather than compile everything again, I'll offer this <a href=\"http://reason.com/news/show/117878.html\" title=\"The legacy of Robert Anton Wilson\">Reason Magazine article</a>, which is chock full of links.]\r\n\r\n<p class=\"note\">This Essay is for my friend Hilary who introduced me to the writings of Robert Anton Wilson", "dek": "\"And so it is that we, as men, do not exist until we do; and then it is that we play with our world of existent things, and order and disorder them, and so it shall be that non-existence shall take us back from existence and that nameless spirituality shall return to Void, like a tired child home from a very wild circus.\" -- Robert Anton Wilson and Kerry Thornley. Good luck and Godspeed Mr. Wilson.", "pub_date": "2007-01-11T18:11:30", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-118.4288728072294106 33.9751734060763226)", "location": 10, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/illuminatus.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/illuminatus.jpg", "meta_description": "Robert Anton Wilson, philosopher, visionary, Discordian, author of the Illuminatus! Trilogy and more, passed away earlier today. By Scott Gilbertso", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 73, "fields": {"title": "Catologue Raisonne", "slug": "catologue-raisonne", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">J</span>effrey Toobin, a legal columnist over at the New Yorker, has <a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/070205fa_fact_toobin\" title=\"Google's Moon Shot\">written a piece</a> about Google's <a href=\"http://books.google.com/\" title=\"Google Book Search\">book scanning project</a> and the legal challenges it faces. In a nutshell, two lawsuits are threatening the Google Book Search project, one is from a consortium of big name publishers who, curiously, are also Google's partners in the project, and the other is from the Author's Guild, which I've <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2005/oct/08/new-luddites/\" title=\"The New Luddites\">written about before</a>. Both lawsuits allege that Google Book Search infringes on the publisher's copyrights, which may well be true, but that isn't the problem.\n<break>\nThe problem, according to <a href=\"http://www.lessig.org/blog/\" title=\"Lawrence Lessig's Blog\">Lawrence Lessig</a>, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School —and I tend to agree with him— is that if this case get's settled out of court, in other words Google pays up, it sets a precedent for other projects like Google Books. If Google pays why shouldn't everyone else? The thing is, Google can afford to pay but not everyone is steering a 150 billion dollar ship.</p>\n<p>What Google wants to do is quite staggering when you think about it. There are roughly 32 million books in the world and Google wants to scan them all. But it doesn't stop there, Google is also working hard on some projects involving borderline AI translation projects which could someday yield translations to and from any language. </p>\n<p>Giant brain trust sort of projects to bring the world's knowledge together and make it accessible have thus far in history not faired all that well, e.g. the library at Alexandria, but Google seems intent on seeing this through. In all likelihood Google will settle these cases, the precedent will be set and the Google Book Search project will soldier on.</p>\n<p>There was a saying among early and perhaps slightly optimistic proponents of the internet that “information wants to be free.” And by free, we here mean free as in freedom. The problem it seems is that the people who bring the information to the market don't see it that way. They feel that holding knowledge in chains is the only way to make it profitable.</p>\n<p>While I applaud Google's efforts to scan books, it's important to keep in mind that Google may have some high-minded intentions, but Google is also in it for the money. Google Book Search isn't going to set knowledge free, it may make it more accessible, but it won't make it free as in freedom.</p>\n<p>But with the rise of so-called social media, I can't help wondering if maybe there's a better way. Statistics say there are 32 million books in the world, but they also say there are about <a href=\"http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html\" title=\"US census bureau\">300 million people in the United States</a> alone. Throw in Europe and the UK and you have a sizable multitude of potential book scanners. What if every person who owned a scanner went out and selected one book and scanned it? A lot of work sure, but not unthinkable (just don't get stuck with <em>War and Peace</em>).</p>\n<p>It might sound far fetched, but ten years ago Wikipedia would have sounded absurd as well. The landscape keeps changing, sometimes what sounds crazy is exactly what the world needs.</p>\n<p>I don't know, what do you think?</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">J</span>effrey Toobin, a legal columnist over at the New Yorker, has <a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/070205fa_fact_toobin\" title=\"Google's Moon Shot\">written a piece</a> about Google's <a href=\"http://books.google.com/\" title=\"Google Book Search\">book scanning project</a> and the legal challenges it faces. In a nutshell, two lawsuits are threatening the Google Book Search project, one is from a consortium of big name publishers who, curiously, are also Google's partners in the project, and the other is from the Author's Guild, which I've <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2005/oct/08/new-luddites/\" title=\"The New Luddites\">written about before</a>. Both lawsuits allege that Google Book Search infringes on the publisher's copyrights, which may well be true, but that isn't the problem.\r\n<break>\r\nThe problem, according to <a href=\"http://www.lessig.org/blog/\" title=\"Lawrence Lessig's Blog\">Lawrence Lessig</a>, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School —and I tend to agree with him— is that if this case get's settled out of court, in other words Google pays up, it sets a precedent for other projects like Google Books. If Google pays why shouldn't everyone else? The thing is, Google can afford to pay but not everyone is steering a 150 billion dollar ship.\r\n\r\nWhat Google wants to do is quite staggering when you think about it. There are roughly 32 million books in the world and Google wants to scan them all. But it doesn't stop there, Google is also working hard on some projects involving borderline AI translation projects which could someday yield translations to and from any language. \r\n\r\nGiant brain trust sort of projects to bring the world's knowledge together and make it accessible have thus far in history not faired all that well, e.g. the library at Alexandria, but Google seems intent on seeing this through. In all likelihood Google will settle these cases, the precedent will be set and the Google Book Search project will soldier on.\r\n\r\nThere was a saying among early and perhaps slightly optimistic proponents of the internet that “information wants to be free.” And by free, we here mean free as in freedom. The problem it seems is that the people who bring the information to the market don't see it that way. They feel that holding knowledge in chains is the only way to make it profitable.\r\n\r\nWhile I applaud Google's efforts to scan books, it's important to keep in mind that Google may have some high-minded intentions, but Google is also in it for the money. Google Book Search isn't going to set knowledge free, it may make it more accessible, but it won't make it free as in freedom.\r\n\r\nBut with the rise of so-called social media, I can't help wondering if maybe there's a better way. Statistics say there are 32 million books in the world, but they also say there are about <a href=\"http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html\" title=\"US census bureau\">300 million people in the United States</a> alone. Throw in Europe and the UK and you have a sizable multitude of potential book scanners. What if every person who owned a scanner went out and selected one book and scanned it? A lot of work sure, but not unthinkable (just don't get stuck with <em>War and Peace</em>).\r\n\r\nIt might sound far fetched, but ten years ago Wikipedia would have sounded absurd as well. The landscape keeps changing, sometimes what sounds crazy is exactly what the world needs.\r\n\r\nI don't know, what do you think?", "dek": "Google wants to index all the world's books. I know that doesn't have too much to do with traveling, but in a way it does — most travelers I know do quite a bit of reading. Since searchable books means a better chance to find something you like, who would oppose such a plan? Publishers of course. Fucking luddites.", "pub_date": "2007-01-31T17:13:12", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-118.4290551974425512 33.9752534809014364)", "location": 10, "status": 0, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/indexbooks.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/indexbooks.jpg", "meta_description": null, "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 74, "fields": {"title": "Everything All The Time", "slug": "everything-all-time", "body_html": "<blockquote>We'll collect the moments one by one<br />I guess that's how the future's done — <cite>Leslie Fiest</cite></blockquote>\n\n<p><span class=\"drop\">A</span> while back a friend of mine who I hadn’t spoken to in quite a while rang me up. At some point we got to talking of age and memory and time. We were speaking of time passing, of the curious moment we both find ourselves in now — trying to adjust to what I at least can safely call the middle of my life — certainly no longer the beginning. And then my friend said, “remember me as I was when you met me.” </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/end.jpg\" alt=\"Window\" width=\"173\" height=\"260\" class=\"postpic\" /> I laughed. Now the time my friend refers to, when we met, I would have been twenty-five or twenty-six. Personally I would just as soon forget nearly anything and everything I did when I was twenty-five as I’m sure it was largely ridiculous and immature. For that matter I should probably forget what I did yesterday as I’m fairly certain it wasn’t a whole lot better. </p>\n<p>I don’t know if I’m just overly paranoid but when I call up memories in the dark hours of the Beaujolais-soaked pre-dawn, I get mainly a collection of mildly amusing, occasionally painful series of embarrassments, misunderstandings and general wrong-place wrong-time sort of moments. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/old.jpg\" width=\"268\" height=\"137\"alt=\"Five and Ten\" class=\"postpicright\" />Which isn’t to imply that my life is a British sitcom, just that I’m not in a hurry to re-live any of it. And I don’t think my friend is either. No my friend was not expressing a desire to rewind as it were, but rather acknowledging that since we rarely see each other these days we must necessarily exist mainly as memories.</p>\n<p>There’s an inevitable sadness to that realization.</p>\n<p>A few days later I was testing a piece of photo software for my day job at Wired and I happened to run across an image from roughly that time of my life. I don’t know for sure if it’s the oldest picture I have, but I’ve always thought of it as the first picture I took of my friend.</p>\n<p>There was a strange disconnect though, as I stared at my friend’s image and my own frozen in pixels. For all we like to think that photograph’s record, they don’t. Kodak was wrong, photographs don’t capture memories they just provide thin little links to them; time passes and memory continues to add impressions and in the end what you have is just one piece of a collage of memories which, taken out of context, as a photograph must be, becomes a distortion, something you no longer recognize as your friend. </p>\n<p>The image in question has a strange yellow glow, distorted toward orange by the blunt sensor of the old Canon, I know the lamb’s wool sweater my friend is wearing is pale minty green but in the picture it looks almost ochre, the walls seem to have been lifted from some smoke stained Parisian bar, my friend and I are slightly out of focus, my jittery arm extends away from my side, but our smiles are not forced. </p>\n<p>Slowly, after staring at the picture for a while, my attention drifted away and other un-photographed moments arose, my own green sweater, darker than my friend’s, wet from dripping awnings as I walked in the rain one night in Vienna, the crystal chandelier in the cafe, sausage and purple cabbage on white china plates. And then to another memory driving across central Utah, the roads winding on narrow fluted mesa tops, the rough hewn wood planks of a tiny general store where I once bought steak and potatoes, the forest campground where the smell of steak sizzled over flames filled my lungs and in the fading light of a sun disappearing over the Wasatch mountains I took another photograph, which is on this very page, the eyeball in the tree that continues to haunt me. </p>\n<p>At perhaps the simplest level remembering is merely reconstructing the past in the present, but there is no continuous motion of memory through time as there is in the present, we do not recall events in the order they happened, but rather by the things that link them. Memories stack up at crazy angles like a card house that topples before the pinnacle is reached, the final card laid, the final card lies forever out of reach, beyond tomorrow. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/shadow-me.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"161\"alt=\"Me\" class=\"postpic\" />In many ways time has nothing to do with memory, save to act as a marker. Time is the space between memories, it lives in the shadows, runs down between and fills the cracks.</p>\n<p>When we do try to introduce time into our memories we often have to stop and think — now when did that happen? The memory, the reconstruction of the past in the present happens unaided but it often bounces here and there joining with other memories linked by smell, taste, sound and more, but almost never by time. Placing a memory at a specific moment in time rarely comes as easily, we rely on context, the shirt you’re wearing, the hat your friend has on or maybe the length of your hair.</p>\n<p>Perhaps we let time slip from memory because it isn’t necessary, perhaps time only matters in the present. But even then we do our best to ignore it. Our escape from time, the trick we use to ignore its passage on the average day is that it moves just slow enough that we don’t notice it except in larger chunks. </p>\n<p>I recently came across someone who subverted that though. Imagine your life displayed in a time lapse film. The very thought of it is intimidating, almost unimaginable. Well have a look at <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B26asyGKDo&mode=related&search=\" title=\"Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years\">Noah Kalina’s YouTube montage</a> (embedded below). For six years Noah took a picture of himself every day. Personally I find Noah’s video collage to be one of the most beautiful and truly frightening things I’ve ever seen, which probably explains why it’s one of the most watched movies on YouTube.</p>\n<p>Each photograph on its own is mundane, hardly worth comment, but in rapid succession they stitch together and form a thread of time moving through life, and even though we watch Noah pass through six years in three minutes, as you watch his face becomes after a while only a thin veil between our own reflection in the screen and time screaming past.</p>\n<style>.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; height: auto; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }</style>\n\n<div class='embed-container'><iframe src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/6B26asyGKDo' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe></div>", "body_markdown": "<blockquote>We'll collect the moments one by one<br />I guess that's how the future's done — <cite>Leslie Fiest</cite></blockquote>\r\n\r\n<span class=\"drop\">A</span> while back a friend of mine who I hadn’t spoken to in quite a while rang me up. At some point we got to talking of age and memory and time. We were speaking of time passing, of the curious moment we both find ourselves in now — trying to adjust to what I at least can safely call the middle of my life — certainly no longer the beginning. And then my friend said, “remember me as I was when you met me.” \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/end.jpg\" alt=\"Window\" width=\"173\" height=\"260\" class=\"postpic\" /> I laughed. Now the time my friend refers to, when we met, I would have been twenty-five or twenty-six. Personally I would just as soon forget nearly anything and everything I did when I was twenty-five as I’m sure it was largely ridiculous and immature. For that matter I should probably forget what I did yesterday as I’m fairly certain it wasn’t a whole lot better. \r\n\r\nI don’t know if I’m just overly paranoid but when I call up memories in the dark hours of the Beaujolais-soaked pre-dawn, I get mainly a collection of mildly amusing, occasionally painful series of embarrassments, misunderstandings and general wrong-place wrong-time sort of moments. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/old.jpg\" width=\"268\" height=\"137\"alt=\"Five and Ten\" class=\"postpicright\" />Which isn’t to imply that my life is a British sitcom, just that I’m not in a hurry to re-live any of it. And I don’t think my friend is either. No my friend was not expressing a desire to rewind as it were, but rather acknowledging that since we rarely see each other these days we must necessarily exist mainly as memories.\r\n\r\nThere’s an inevitable sadness to that realization.\r\n\r\nA few days later I was testing a piece of photo software for my day job at Wired and I happened to run across an image from roughly that time of my life. I don’t know for sure if it’s the oldest picture I have, but I’ve always thought of it as the first picture I took of my friend.\r\n\r\nThere was a strange disconnect though, as I stared at my friend’s image and my own frozen in pixels. For all we like to think that photograph’s record, they don’t. Kodak was wrong, photographs don’t capture memories they just provide thin little links to them; time passes and memory continues to add impressions and in the end what you have is just one piece of a collage of memories which, taken out of context, as a photograph must be, becomes a distortion, something you no longer recognize as your friend. \r\n\r\nThe image in question has a strange yellow glow, distorted toward orange by the blunt sensor of the old Canon, I know the lamb’s wool sweater my friend is wearing is pale minty green but in the picture it looks almost ochre, the walls seem to have been lifted from some smoke stained Parisian bar, my friend and I are slightly out of focus, my jittery arm extends away from my side, but our smiles are not forced. \r\n\r\nSlowly, after staring at the picture for a while, my attention drifted away and other un-photographed moments arose, my own green sweater, darker than my friend’s, wet from dripping awnings as I walked in the rain one night in Vienna, the crystal chandelier in the cafe, sausage and purple cabbage on white china plates. And then to another memory driving across central Utah, the roads winding on narrow fluted mesa tops, the rough hewn wood planks of a tiny general store where I once bought steak and potatoes, the forest campground where the smell of steak sizzled over flames filled my lungs and in the fading light of a sun disappearing over the Wasatch mountains I took another photograph, which is on this very page, the eyeball in the tree that continues to haunt me. \r\n\r\nAt perhaps the simplest level remembering is merely reconstructing the past in the present, but there is no continuous motion of memory through time as there is in the present, we do not recall events in the order they happened, but rather by the things that link them. Memories stack up at crazy angles like a card house that topples before the pinnacle is reached, the final card laid, the final card lies forever out of reach, beyond tomorrow. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/shadow-me.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"161\"alt=\"Me\" class=\"postpic\" />In many ways time has nothing to do with memory, save to act as a marker. Time is the space between memories, it lives in the shadows, runs down between and fills the cracks.\r\n\r\nWhen we do try to introduce time into our memories we often have to stop and think — now when did that happen? The memory, the reconstruction of the past in the present happens unaided but it often bounces here and there joining with other memories linked by smell, taste, sound and more, but almost never by time. Placing a memory at a specific moment in time rarely comes as easily, we rely on context, the shirt you’re wearing, the hat your friend has on or maybe the length of your hair.\r\n\r\nPerhaps we let time slip from memory because it isn’t necessary, perhaps time only matters in the present. But even then we do our best to ignore it. Our escape from time, the trick we use to ignore its passage on the average day is that it moves just slow enough that we don’t notice it except in larger chunks. \r\n\r\nI recently came across someone who subverted that though. Imagine your life displayed in a time lapse film. The very thought of it is intimidating, almost unimaginable. Well have a look at <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B26asyGKDo&mode=related&search=\" title=\"Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years\">Noah Kalina’s YouTube montage</a> (embedded below). For six years Noah took a picture of himself every day. Personally I find Noah’s video collage to be one of the most beautiful and truly frightening things I’ve ever seen, which probably explains why it’s one of the most watched movies on YouTube.\r\n\r\nEach photograph on its own is mundane, hardly worth comment, but in rapid succession they stitch together and form a thread of time moving through life, and even though we watch Noah pass through six years in three minutes, as you watch his face becomes after a while only a thin veil between our own reflection in the screen and time screaming past.\r\n\r\n<style>.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; height: auto; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }</style><div class='embed-container'><iframe src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/6B26asyGKDo' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe></div>", "dek": "I don't know if I'm just overly paranoid but when I call up memories in the dark hours of the Beaujolais-soaked pre-dawn, I see a collection of mildly amusing, occasionally painful series of embarrassments, misunderstandings and general wrong-place, wrong-time sort of moments. Which isn't to imply that my life is a British sitcom, just that I'm not in a hurry to re-live any of it.", "pub_date": "2007-02-03T11:14:13", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-118.4289049937378451 33.9753068640763516)", "location": 10, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/end.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/end.jpg", "meta_description": "Memory is a card house that topples before the pinnacle is reached... the final card lies forever out of reach, beyond tomorrow. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 75, "fields": {"title": "Goodbye to the Mother and the Cove", "slug": "goodbye-mother-and-cove", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">E</span>arlier today I was driving up Santa Monica Blvd, stuck in traffic actually, more like parked on Santa Monica Blvd, staring up a very strange cloud that had been hanging over the west side all afternoon looking a bit like the clouds in Independence Day that show up just before the alien ships emerge from behind them, when it occurred to me that I was leaving Los Angeles again.</p>\n<p><break>\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/cloud.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"clouds over Santa Monica\" /> It's strange how you can plan something, go through all the motions of making it happen without ever really understanding what you're doing. I've been doing this for the better part of three years now. I realized recently that I have no real idea how I came to be here. </p>\n<p>All I can do is trace the timeline like a boring history professor: my girlfriend dumped me, which in turn inspired me to quit the job I had at the time (which I hated anyway) and then I drove to Athens GA because it was the last sane moment I could think of, but I ran into a friend who was recently back from Asia so I decided to go to Asia. I didn't have much money and I didn't want to work. So I came out here to Los Angeles and started building websites for a friend of a friend. By the end of summer I had enough money to go on my trip. So I left, traveled around Asia for nine months and returned here to Los Angeles. Then I got a job writing for Wired from a friend. </p>\n<p>I will never exactly understand how getting dumped and quitting what was arguably a good job in spite of the fact that I hated it, somehow managed to get me to a better place, but it did. I don't even know why I bother to tell you these things, except perhaps as a way of expressing my gratitude to all my friends because if we back up and look at all the key plot points in the last three years of my life, none of them are the result of my talents or skills, they were all gifts handed to me by friends, very good friends, friends I wish I could do more for, friends I will miss very much now that I am leaving.</p>\n<p>I don't really know where I am going, but I'll be sure to send some postcards along the way and when I raise a glass it will be, as Bukowski wrote -- to all my friends.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">E</span>arlier today I was driving up Santa Monica Blvd, stuck in traffic actually, more like parked on Santa Monica Blvd, staring up a very strange cloud that had been hanging over the west side all afternoon looking a bit like the clouds in Independence Day that show up just before the alien ships emerge from behind them, when it occurred to me that I was leaving Los Angeles again.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/cloud.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"clouds over Santa Monica\" /> It's strange how you can plan something, go through all the motions of making it happen without ever really understanding what you're doing. I've been doing this for the better part of three years now. I realized recently that I have no real idea how I came to be here. \r\n\r\nAll I can do is trace the timeline like a boring history professor: my girlfriend dumped me, which in turn inspired me to quit the job I had at the time (which I hated anyway) and then I drove to Athens GA because it was the last sane moment I could think of, but I ran into a friend who was recently back from Asia so I decided to go to Asia. I didn't have much money and I didn't want to work. So I came out here to Los Angeles and started building websites for a friend of a friend. By the end of summer I had enough money to go on my trip. So I left, traveled around Asia for nine months and returned here to Los Angeles. Then I got a job writing for Wired from a friend. \r\n\r\nI will never exactly understand how getting dumped and quitting what was arguably a good job in spite of the fact that I hated it, somehow managed to get me to a better place, but it did. I don't even know why I bother to tell you these things, except perhaps as a way of expressing my gratitude to all my friends because if we back up and look at all the key plot points in the last three years of my life, none of them are the result of my talents or skills, they were all gifts handed to me by friends, very good friends, friends I wish I could do more for, friends I will miss very much now that I am leaving.\r\n\r\nI don't really know where I am going, but I'll be sure to send some postcards along the way and when I raise a glass it will be, as Bukowski wrote -- to all my friends.", "dek": "It's strange how you can plan something, go through all the motions of making it happen without ever really understanding what you're doing. I've been doing this for the better part of three years now. I realized recently that I have no real idea how I came to be here. \r\n", "pub_date": "2007-03-01T11:15:10", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-118.4720778300355732 34.0409072252188736)", "location": 10, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/lacloud.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/lacloud.jpg", "meta_description": "Los Angeles I'm yours. But I have to go. So, like Bukowski wrote, To all my friends! By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 76, "fields": {"title": "Sailing Through", "slug": "sailing-through", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span>t was the middle of the afternoon, we having settled in to watch a bit of the Blues Brothers -- afternoon films being my favorite form of procrastination -- when, just after Belushi remarks that the modern American mall \"has everything\", the screen blacked out to the sound of bleating sirens and a message began to scroll across the screen in a dull white Arial-derived font -- something about severe thunderstorms. </p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p><img class=\"postpic\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/marshsunset.jpg\" />We decide to go for a walk. The sun feels like a curse that's been hanging over you since birth. Not a cloud in the sky.</p>\n<p>And so it goes. Here in Charleston, SC. The rumors are true. I moved back to the south, Athens GA to be exact -- more on that later. But I hate staying in one place for too long, so after a month or two in Athens I headed up to Charleston to visit a friend. </p>\n<p>The south is curious place. If you've never been here I couldn't hope to explain it, but it's not so much a place as an approach. A way of getting somewhere more than anywhere specific. Perhaps even a wrong turn. </p>\n<p>Here's what we know for sure: Californian is not the south. Texas is also not the south. Charleston throws seersucker suits in the mix, but hey, nothing's perfect.</p>\n<p><img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/dukes.jpg\" />There was a piece in the New York Times a while back that argued that the South begins not at the Mason-Dixon line, as history would have us believe, but where the restaurants switch over to sweetened tea. But most Times writers have never left Manhattan and won't recognize the South even when they're dipped in tar and run out of it. The truth is the South begins and ends wherever you can find Duke's Mayonnaise on the shelves of your local grocer.</p>\n<p>There's mayonnaise. And then there's Duke's. Even at the baseball game there's Duke's. </p>\n<p>But it was the heat that started it. Thunderstorms and heat.</p>\n<p>Apparently the Charleston emergency broadcast system has never heard the story on the boy who cried wolf. Or they just didn't walk away with much. Not only is there not a cloud in the sky, there was a tropical depression big enough to have a name that didn't warrant any alerts when it blew through yesterday. </p>\n<p>It seems safe to assume that the local elements of FEMA are run by the same type of highly qualified individuals that staff the higher government offices of this strange, confused land.</p>\n<p>I first came to Charleston about a month ago, I've come and gone twice since then. The weather was mild when I first arrived, an onshore breeze to rattle the Palmetto leaves, tufts of cloud hanging over the sea. We lay on our backs floating in the brine and watching the sun arc the sky.</p>\n<p>One weekend we wandered the shipping yards ogling the tall ships, a festival of them, blown in on favorable winds you might say. We failed, despite our best efforts, to be shanghaied off into the ocean, pressed into five months before the mast on our way back to Italy. </p>\n<p><img class=\"postpic\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/tallships.jpg\" />A kind of wanderlust seizes me whenever I am near boats -- the world was, after all, discovered by men and women of the sea. And I don't mean those Spaniards with their metal helmets, I mean the much older explorers departing from east on dugout canoes with spears for fishing and courage of a sort that they took with them to their graves. They reached the islands -- Hawaii, Tahiti, Fiji and so many more -- before their European counterparts had even consider the mast, let alone pressed anyone into service before it.</p>\n<p>Failing kidnapping, we turned to tequila and night-swimming, always a heady and dangerous mix, but we pulled through in spite of the hiccups.</p>\n<p>It took me nine years to get here. I enjoyed them. Every bit of them. Stay tuned. </p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span>t was the middle of the afternoon, we having settled in to watch a bit of the Blues Brothers -- afternoon films being my favorite form of procrastination -- when, just after Belushi remarks that the modern American mall \"has everything\", the screen blacked out to the sound of bleating sirens and a message began to scroll across the screen in a dull white Arial-derived font -- something about severe thunderstorms. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpic\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/marshsunset.jpg\" />We decide to go for a walk. The sun feels like a curse that's been hanging over you since birth. Not a cloud in the sky.\r\n\r\nAnd so it goes. Here in Charleston, SC. The rumors are true. I moved back to the south, Athens GA to be exact -- more on that later. But I hate staying in one place for too long, so after a month or two in Athens I headed up to Charleston to visit a friend. \r\n\r\nThe south is curious place. If you've never been here I couldn't hope to explain it, but it's not so much a place as an approach. A way of getting somewhere more than anywhere specific. Perhaps even a wrong turn. \r\n\r\nHere's what we know for sure: Californian is not the south. Texas is also not the south. Charleston throws seersucker suits in the mix, but hey, nothing's perfect.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/dukes.jpg\" />There was a piece in the New York Times a while back that argued that the South begins not at the Mason-Dixon line, as history would have us believe, but where the restaurants switch over to sweetened tea. But most Times writers have never left Manhattan and won't recognize the South even when they're dipped in tar and run out of it. The truth is the South begins and ends wherever you can find Duke's Mayonnaise on the shelves of your local grocer.\r\n\r\nThere's mayonnaise. And then there's Duke's. Even at the baseball game there's Duke's. \r\n\r\nBut it was the heat that started it. Thunderstorms and heat.\r\n\r\nApparently the Charleston emergency broadcast system has never heard the story on the boy who cried wolf. Or they just didn't walk away with much. Not only is there not a cloud in the sky, there was a tropical depression big enough to have a name that didn't warrant any alerts when it blew through yesterday. \r\n\r\nIt seems safe to assume that the local elements of FEMA are run by the same type of highly qualified individuals that staff the higher government offices of this strange, confused land.\r\n\r\nI first came to Charleston about a month ago, I've come and gone twice since then. The weather was mild when I first arrived, an onshore breeze to rattle the Palmetto leaves, tufts of cloud hanging over the sea. We lay on our backs floating in the brine and watching the sun arc the sky.\r\n\r\nOne weekend we wandered the shipping yards ogling the tall ships, a festival of them, blown in on favorable winds you might say. We failed, despite our best efforts, to be shanghaied off into the ocean, pressed into five months before the mast on our way back to Italy. \r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpic\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/tallships.jpg\" />A kind of wanderlust seizes me whenever I am near boats -- the world was, after all, discovered by men and women of the sea. And I don't mean those Spaniards with their metal helmets, I mean the much older explorers departing from east on dugout canoes with spears for fishing and courage of a sort that they took with them to their graves. They reached the islands -- Hawaii, Tahiti, Fiji and so many more -- before their European counterparts had even consider the mast, let alone pressed anyone into service before it.\r\n\r\nFailing kidnapping, we turned to tequila and night-swimming, always a heady and dangerous mix, but we pulled through in spite of the hiccups.\r\n\r\nIt took me nine years to get here. I enjoyed them. Every bit of them. Stay tuned. ", "dek": "The rumors are true. I moved back to the south; Athens GA to be exact. But I hate staying in one place for too long, so after a month or two in Athens I headed up to Charleston to visit a friend. The south is curious place. If you've never been here I couldn't hope to explain it, but it's not so much a place as an approach. A way of getting somewhere more than anywhere specific. Perhaps even a wrong turn. \r\n", "pub_date": "2007-06-15T00:15:43", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-79.8225617297637200 32.8355703352409947)", "location": 9, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/charlestonships.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/charlestonships.jpg", "meta_description": "The American South is curious place. I couldn't hope to explain it, except to say it isn't so much a place as an approach to life. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 77, "fields": {"title": "Being There", "slug": "being-there", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">M</span>yrtle Beach does not exist. </p>\n<p>Myrtle Beach is in fact a copy of a place that does not exist.</p>\n<p>Nearly everything in Myrtle Beach is a paltry derivative of some original form. For instance, most of the country has golf courses, in Myrtle Beach there are endless rows of putt-putt courses complete with sewage treatment blue waterfalls and variety of kitschy themes.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/curtis-and-eric/461513916/\"><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/myrtlebeach.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" /></a>And where most towns attempt to draw in big name musical acts for their tourist venues, Myrtle Beach is content with impersonators, which can be found on any given night at any number of lounge venues hacking through pastiches of everything from Prince and Justin Timberlake, to a mock Grand Ol' Opry.\n<break>\n<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/44165698@N00/11410462/\"><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/bluewaterfall.jpg\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Myrtle Beach, SC putt putt\" /></a>But I refer to Myrtle Beach as a copy of a place that doesn't exist because on some level Myrtle Beach is just an imitation Vegas. But Las Vegas has already begun its transformation from imitator of itself to imitator of the world. Just consider the themed hotel resorts -- The Venetian with its canals, The Luxor with its Egyptian theme and of course New York-New York -- all of which are geared toward recreating aspects of other places together in one easy to reach spot.</p>\n<p>Call it real-world virtual tourism.</p>\n<p>The cynical take, for those of us that enjoy traveling to the actual destinations, is \"hey, it keeps the annoying tourists out of the real locations.\" And while I refuse to wholly give in to that notion, I nevertheless admit its appeal.</p>\n<p>It is tempting for travelers to sit back and criticize your typical American, British or German on holiday<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/bren/9688470/\"><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/venetian.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Gondola at the Venetian - Las Vegas\" /></a> (since those are in my experience the greatest offenders in this category) as if the traveler had somehow earned the right to be there -- by virtue of, let's face it, our own invented self-superiority -- which simply isn't true.</p>\n<p>When I was younger I saw a movie, <cite>The Man From Snowy River</cite> which is set in Australia and involves a sort of feud between high country and low country dwellers (among other things). Both sides are snobs toward the other, the low country folk are rich and land holding while the inhabitants of the high country are mainly poor, but work the actual land -- a fairly typical dichotomy in the western world circa 1900.</p>\n<p>In the film Kirk Douglas plays an old wizened high country dweller who at one point tells the young protagonist, who is caught between the two worlds, \"you have to earn the right to live up here.\"</p>\n<p>And that's a tempting philosophy to cling to, but it has some problems. For one thing, at what point have you earned the right to live there? Who decides what is necessary to earn the right to live there? And the list goes on.</p>\n<p>Still, anyone who's been up to the top of an Angkor Wat temple to watch the sun set knows the appeal of the notion that perhaps, just to cut down on the crowds you understand, perhaps there ought to be some sort of trial in which you have to earn the right to be there. Everyone but you and I of course.</p>\n<p>However, despite recognizing the inherent hypocrisy in the notion of earning the right to be anywhere, there is, I believe, a fundamental difference between a tourist for whom Myrtle Beach is an appealing destination, and, well, the rest of us.</p>\n<p>\"Traveler\" is the suitably generic term I use to distinguish those who are not simply tourists passing through in air-con comfort. But the real difference between a tourist and traveler is philosophical. </p>\n<p>A tourist attempts to see a destination much in the way we watch an enjoyable television program -- peacefully and without too great of discomfort. Their philosophy (as I understand it from observing them) is to actually <em>see</em> a destination with their own eyes, rather than simply watch or read of it.</p>\n<p>These individuals recognize that just watching Rick Steves' thirty minute tours on PBS is not the same as actually walking through the Piazza San Marco in Venice -- but that's as far as they are willing to go. God forbid the air-con fail or the drinks lack ice.\n<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/jesst7/222338678/\"><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/sanmarco.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Piazza San Marco\" /></a>For this sort of approach to travel (and let me just say that I don't think everyone on a package tour is necessarily that shallow) the imitation destinations like Myrtle Beach or Las Vegas are ideal. </p>\n<p>The images dancing before your eyes are after all, at least on some level, virtual.</p>\n<p>Thus the tourist's expectations are largely met in a virtual destination -- very little danger, the water is drinkable, the sights damn near the same and there's ice in the drinks.</p>\n<p>On the other hand, travelers don't generally seem to be content with just seeing. There is a more full frontal approach if you will.</p>\n<p>And for those that enjoy small children throwing up on them on crowded buses, accept dysentery as part of price to be paid for the joy of the foreign and who welcome the dodgy food, the suspect ice, the insects, the garbage, the poverty and all the other experiences which, for better or worse make up world travel, there still remains, well, the world.Which is why there's an international airport near you -- even in Myrtle Beach.</p>\n<p>[None of the above photos are mine, click individual images for details]</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">M</span>yrtle Beach does not exist. \r\n\r\nMyrtle Beach is in fact a copy of a place that does not exist.\r\n\r\nNearly everything in Myrtle Beach is a paltry derivative of some original form. For instance, most of the country has golf courses, in Myrtle Beach there are endless rows of putt-putt courses complete with sewage treatment blue waterfalls and variety of kitschy themes.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/curtis-and-eric/461513916/\"><img src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/myrtlebeach.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" /></a>And where most towns attempt to draw in big name musical acts for their tourist venues, Myrtle Beach is content with impersonators, which can be found on any given night at any number of lounge venues hacking through pastiches of everything from Prince and Justin Timberlake, to a mock Grand Ol' Opry.\r\n<break>\r\n<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/44165698@N00/11410462/\"><img src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/bluewaterfall.jpg\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Myrtle Beach, SC putt putt\" /></a>But I refer to Myrtle Beach as a copy of a place that doesn't exist because on some level Myrtle Beach is just an imitation Vegas. But Las Vegas has already begun its transformation from imitator of itself to imitator of the world. Just consider the themed hotel resorts -- The Venetian with its canals, The Luxor with its Egyptian theme and of course New York-New York -- all of which are geared toward recreating aspects of other places together in one easy to reach spot.\r\n\r\nCall it real-world virtual tourism.\r\n\r\nThe cynical take, for those of us that enjoy traveling to the actual destinations, is \"hey, it keeps the annoying tourists out of the real locations.\" And while I refuse to wholly give in to that notion, I nevertheless admit its appeal.\r\n\r\nIt is tempting for travelers to sit back and criticize your typical American, British or German on holiday<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/bren/9688470/\"><img src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/venetian.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Gondola at the Venetian - Las Vegas\" /></a> (since those are in my experience the greatest offenders in this category) as if the traveler had somehow earned the right to be there -- by virtue of, let's face it, our own invented self-superiority -- which simply isn't true.\r\n\r\nWhen I was younger I saw a movie, <cite>The Man From Snowy River</cite> which is set in Australia and involves a sort of feud between high country and low country dwellers (among other things). Both sides are snobs toward the other, the low country folk are rich and land holding while the inhabitants of the high country are mainly poor, but work the actual land -- a fairly typical dichotomy in the western world circa 1900.\r\n\r\nIn the film Kirk Douglas plays an old wizened high country dweller who at one point tells the young protagonist, who is caught between the two worlds, \"you have to earn the right to live up here.\"\r\n\r\nAnd that's a tempting philosophy to cling to, but it has some problems. For one thing, at what point have you earned the right to live there? Who decides what is necessary to earn the right to live there? And the list goes on.\r\n\r\nStill, anyone who's been up to the top of an Angkor Wat temple to watch the sun set knows the appeal of the notion that perhaps, just to cut down on the crowds you understand, perhaps there ought to be some sort of trial in which you have to earn the right to be there. Everyone but you and I of course.\r\n\r\nHowever, despite recognizing the inherent hypocrisy in the notion of earning the right to be anywhere, there is, I believe, a fundamental difference between a tourist for whom Myrtle Beach is an appealing destination, and, well, the rest of us.\r\n\r\n\"Traveler\" is the suitably generic term I use to distinguish those who are not simply tourists passing through in air-con comfort. But the real difference between a tourist and traveler is philosophical. \r\n\r\nA tourist attempts to see a destination much in the way we watch an enjoyable television program -- peacefully and without too great of discomfort. Their philosophy (as I understand it from observing them) is to actually *see* a destination with their own eyes, rather than simply watch or read of it.\r\n\r\nThese individuals recognize that just watching Rick Steves' thirty minute tours on PBS is not the same as actually walking through the Piazza San Marco in Venice -- but that's as far as they are willing to go. God forbid the air-con fail or the drinks lack ice.\r\n<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/jesst7/222338678/\"><img src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/sanmarco.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Piazza San Marco\" /></a>For this sort of approach to travel (and let me just say that I don't think everyone on a package tour is necessarily that shallow) the imitation destinations like Myrtle Beach or Las Vegas are ideal. \r\n\r\nThe images dancing before your eyes are after all, at least on some level, virtual.\r\n\r\nThus the tourist's expectations are largely met in a virtual destination -- very little danger, the water is drinkable, the sights damn near the same and there's ice in the drinks.\r\n\r\nOn the other hand, travelers don't generally seem to be content with just seeing. There is a more full frontal approach if you will.\r\n\r\nAnd for those that enjoy small children throwing up on them on crowded buses, accept dysentery as part of price to be paid for the joy of the foreign and who welcome the dodgy food, the suspect ice, the insects, the garbage, the poverty and all the other experiences which, for better or worse make up world travel, there still remains, well, the world.Which is why there's an international airport near you -- even in Myrtle Beach.\r\n\r\n[None of the above photos are mine, click individual images for details]", "dek": "Myrtle Beach does not exist. Nearly everything in Myrtle Beach is a paltry derivative of some original form. For instance, most of the country has golf courses, in Myrtle Beach there are endless rows of putt-putt courses, where most towns attempt to draw in big name musical acts for their tourist venues, Myrtle Beach is content with impersonators.", "pub_date": "2007-06-17T02:18:54", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-78.9283561596672456 33.6839251309314562)", "location": 8, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/myrtlebeachcrap.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/myrtlebeachcrap.jpg", "meta_description": "From north of the Mason-Dixon or west of the Mississippi, Myrtle Beach looks like everything that's wrong with America. And it is. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 78, "fields": {"title": "On The Other Ocean", "slug": "other-ocean", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">C</span>onsider for a moment if your house were tilted 30 degrees to the left. Imagine how this would complicate seemingly ordinary activities -- like say walking. Now throw in a bouncing motion that lifts the floor five or six feet up and down in a seesaw-like motion on a perpendicular axis to the 30 degree tilt -- if you're lucky, if you're not it's somewhat more like riding a seesaw that's attached to a merry-go-round which is missing a few bolts. Now Imagine it's night and throw in a healthy downpour for good measure -- that's sailing.</p>\n<p><break>\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/sailingsky.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Clouds, Santa Catalina Island\" />For many this results in vomiting, tears and some cribbed lines about horror from Joseph Conrad's <cite>Heart Of Darkness</cite>. For others though, like for instance, my uncle, this is the sort of thing that brings out the famous Cheshire Cat grin. Some might attribute this to the general belief that if you're a bit unhinged in the first place, then you aren't going to really hit your stride until the world around you starts to come a bit unglued.</p>\n<p>I'll be the first to admit that I've never really sailed in conditions like that, but I hope to someday and perhaps that makes me unhinged a bit myself.</p>\n<p>But let's back up a minute. Make it daylight and get rid of the rain. That's more akin to the conditions on a windy day off the California coastline, which is where I am at the moment. Which is a good thing because my uncle isn't on this boat and while my father is good sailor, I don't know that he would relish the above scenario with the same sort of gusto it holds in abstract for me.</p>\n<p>And I'm no ace sailor. I understand the basic mechanisms of a boat -- anyone who's sat on a plane contemplating the wind-induced lift of the wing understands, whether they realize it or not, the basic physics of the modern sail, which is essentially a wing turned on its side. </p>\n<p>I can tie knots and I know most the terms the nautical world insists on using like port, starboard, fore, aft, stern, bow, mainsheet, traveler and whatnot.</p>\n<p>More important though, I seem to have an instinctive feel for that point of sail which maximizes the available wind (at least that what the more skilled sailors I've been out with tell me, for all I know they're just flattering my ego).</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/bluewhale.jpg\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"blue whale\" title=\"Blue Whale off California Coast\" />However, it's this last tidbit that means I rarely get the wheel on these week-long trips my family has been taking for the last decade or so. I rarely get the wheel because when I do I frequently fall off whatever course we happen to be on in favor of the best wind.</p>\n<p>If you're looking to go somewhere specific in a boat, I'm not really your man. If on the other hand you just want to lean the boat over as far as possible and try to exceed the designated hull speed without flipping it, I might be able to help.</p>\n<p>Regular readers will know I'm not all that good at reaching specific destinations on land either, I tend to get lured off course by all manner of fascinating distractions. I don't really travel -- despite what it might say at the top of this site, -- I just kind of wander about.</p>\n<p>Which is why it's typically my father who gets us from Newport Harbor to Santa Catalina Island -- if, as occasionally happens, we have a favorable wind that coincides with our course, then I sail, but most of the time I lie on deck in the sun contemplating the sea — watching the occasional blue whale meander by.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/twilightatsea.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"twilight at sea\" title=\"Twilight off Santa Catalina Island\" />But my favorite time on the water is twilight. It may just be something that happens in California, but twilight on the sea produces a much deeper red, warm light that hangs around for much longer than its land-loving counterpart.</p>\n<p>Unless you're trying to get somewhere in a hurry, you're typically either moored or anchored come night and while the sea does calm somewhat, depending on the night you might find yourself bobbing about a good bit. And there is very little I know of that will reinforce your own speck-like insignificance quicker than lying here up the bobbing V-berth staring out the companionway hatch at the mast pitching about the stars.</p>\n<p>At the end of the day our tiny cork existences float, bouncing and dancing in an ocean so colossal it's nearly impossible to fathom. </p>\n<p>And yet as I lie here with a thousand thought racing through my head, it also seems that our lives contain immense significance as well -- we contain so much within us as to outstrip even the vastness of the universe we inhabit.</p>\n<p>The largest thing is contained within the smallest thing as the Tao says, we are tiny corks with giant hopes and dreams. Sometimes they play out as we wish and sometimes they do not. As Kurt Vonnegutt was fond of writing, -- And so it goes.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">C</span>onsider for a moment if your house were tilted 30 degrees to the left. Imagine how this would complicate seemingly ordinary activities -- like say walking. Now throw in a bouncing motion that lifts the floor five or six feet up and down in a seesaw-like motion on a perpendicular axis to the 30 degree tilt -- if you're lucky, if you're not it's somewhat more like riding a seesaw that's attached to a merry-go-round which is missing a few bolts. Now Imagine it's night and throw in a healthy downpour for good measure -- that's sailing.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/sailingsky.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Clouds, Santa Catalina Island\" />For many this results in vomiting, tears and some cribbed lines about horror from Joseph Conrad's <cite>Heart Of Darkness</cite>. For others though, like for instance, my uncle, this is the sort of thing that brings out the famous Cheshire Cat grin. Some might attribute this to the general belief that if you're a bit unhinged in the first place, then you aren't going to really hit your stride until the world around you starts to come a bit unglued.\r\n\r\nI'll be the first to admit that I've never really sailed in conditions like that, but I hope to someday and perhaps that makes me unhinged a bit myself.\r\n\r\nBut let's back up a minute. Make it daylight and get rid of the rain. That's more akin to the conditions on a windy day off the California coastline, which is where I am at the moment. Which is a good thing because my uncle isn't on this boat and while my father is good sailor, I don't know that he would relish the above scenario with the same sort of gusto it holds in abstract for me.\r\n\r\nAnd I'm no ace sailor. I understand the basic mechanisms of a boat -- anyone who's sat on a plane contemplating the wind-induced lift of the wing understands, whether they realize it or not, the basic physics of the modern sail, which is essentially a wing turned on its side. \r\n\r\nI can tie knots and I know most the terms the nautical world insists on using like port, starboard, fore, aft, stern, bow, mainsheet, traveler and whatnot.\r\n\r\nMore important though, I seem to have an instinctive feel for that point of sail which maximizes the available wind (at least that what the more skilled sailors I've been out with tell me, for all I know they're just flattering my ego).\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/bluewhale.jpg\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"blue whale\" title=\"Blue Whale off California Coast\" />However, it's this last tidbit that means I rarely get the wheel on these week-long trips my family has been taking for the last decade or so. I rarely get the wheel because when I do I frequently fall off whatever course we happen to be on in favor of the best wind.\r\n\r\nIf you're looking to go somewhere specific in a boat, I'm not really your man. If on the other hand you just want to lean the boat over as far as possible and try to exceed the designated hull speed without flipping it, I might be able to help.\r\n\r\nRegular readers will know I'm not all that good at reaching specific destinations on land either, I tend to get lured off course by all manner of fascinating distractions. I don't really travel -- despite what it might say at the top of this site, -- I just kind of wander about.\r\n\r\nWhich is why it's typically my father who gets us from Newport Harbor to Santa Catalina Island -- if, as occasionally happens, we have a favorable wind that coincides with our course, then I sail, but most of the time I lie on deck in the sun contemplating the sea — watching the occasional blue whale meander by.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/twilightatsea.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"twilight at sea\" title=\"Twilight off Santa Catalina Island\" />But my favorite time on the water is twilight. It may just be something that happens in California, but twilight on the sea produces a much deeper red, warm light that hangs around for much longer than its land-loving counterpart.\r\n\r\nUnless you're trying to get somewhere in a hurry, you're typically either moored or anchored come night and while the sea does calm somewhat, depending on the night you might find yourself bobbing about a good bit. And there is very little I know of that will reinforce your own speck-like insignificance quicker than lying here up the bobbing V-berth staring out the companionway hatch at the mast pitching about the stars.\r\n\r\nAt the end of the day our tiny cork existences float, bouncing and dancing in an ocean so colossal it's nearly impossible to fathom. \r\n\r\nAnd yet as I lie here with a thousand thought racing through my head, it also seems that our lives contain immense significance as well -- we contain so much within us as to outstrip even the vastness of the universe we inhabit.\r\n\r\nThe largest thing is contained within the smallest thing as the Tao says, we are tiny corks with giant hopes and dreams. Sometimes they play out as we wish and sometimes they do not. As Kurt Vonnegutt was fond of writing, -- And so it goes.", "dek": "Consider what would happen if your house were tilted 30 degrees to the left, how this would complicate ordinary activities -- like say walking. Now throw in a bouncing motion that lifts the floor five or six feet up and down in a seesaw-like motion on a perpendicular axis to the 30 degree tilt -- things become more like riding a seesaw that's attached to a merry-go-round which is missing a few bolts. That's sailing.", "pub_date": "2007-07-23T11:24:44", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-118.5213017298700180 33.4619143859216379)", "location": 7, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/sailing.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/sailing.jpg", "meta_description": "Sailing from Newport Harbor to Santa Catalina Island. It might not be crossing an ocean, but it's a step in the right direction. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 79, "fields": {"title": "Fall", "slug": "fall", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>he trees are in full technicolor swing. The land is slowly dying, and not just because it's Fall <sup id=\"fnr1\"><small><a href=\"#fn-1\">[1]</a></small></sup>, we're also in the middle of a prolonged drought -- this year being one of the worst -- but this year the leaves are opting for a James Dean-style, leave-a-good-looking-corpse exit. If you're a leaf and you've got to go, do it with class.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p><img class=\"postpic\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/athensfall.jpg\" title=\"Fall colors Athens GA\" alt=\"Fall colors Athens GA\" />Out my back door is a spectrum ranging from ochre to vermillion with all the middle hues as well, burnt sienna, tawny cinnamon, sorrel, ginger, puse and more nestled among the staid green of those that refuse to give and the more russet and mahogany tones of indifferent Oak trees. It's the beech and maple that really turn though. Almost makes you think of a certain Rush song, but we won't go there.</p>\n<p><img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2007/athensfall1.jpg\" title=\"Fall colors Athens GA\" alt=\"Fall colors Athens GA\"/>Perhaps it's a result of growing up in Los Angeles, but Fall never ceases to amaze me and I feel a bit bad for those who don't get to experience it every year. When I worked at the restaurant in Northampton we used to mock the leaf peepers, but we understood why they came.</p>\n<p>It's part of the trade off I guess. My Los Angeles friends aren't running their heater and still wearing a sweater. It gets cold here, not as cold as New England, but certainly colder than coastal California. But I'll take the cold in exchange for some tangible markers of the passing seasons, the passing time, lest it simple blur together and slip away invisibly.</p>\n<p>Just bear in mind that only part of it is passing. As a friend of mine used to say, the leaves fall for the tree every year, but the tree will never fall for the leaves. </p>\n<ol class=\"footnote\"><li><p><a name=\"fn-1\">1.</a> To my English friends who will insist on Autumn. I have it on reasonably good authority that Fall is actually proper Queen's English that fell out of fashion in the UK near the end of the last century. I intend to bring it back because Autumn reminds me of bad paperback romance novels. <a href=\"#fnr1\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p></li></ol>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>he trees are in full technicolor swing. The land is slowly dying, and not just because it's Fall <sup id=\"fnr1\"><small><a href=\"#fn-1\">[1]</a></small></sup>, we're also in the middle of a prolonged drought -- this year being one of the worst -- but this year the leaves are opting for a James Dean-style, leave-a-good-looking-corpse exit. If you're a leaf and you've got to go, do it with class.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpic\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/athensfall.jpg\" title=\"Fall colors Athens GA\" alt=\"Fall colors Athens GA\" />Out my back door is a spectrum ranging from ochre to vermillion with all the middle hues as well, burnt sienna, tawny cinnamon, sorrel, ginger, puse and more nestled among the staid green of those that refuse to give and the more russet and mahogany tones of indifferent Oak trees. It's the beech and maple that really turn though. Almost makes you think of a certain Rush song, but we won't go there.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2007/athensfall1.jpg\" title=\"Fall colors Athens GA\" alt=\"Fall colors Athens GA\"/>Perhaps it's a result of growing up in Los Angeles, but Fall never ceases to amaze me and I feel a bit bad for those who don't get to experience it every year. When I worked at the restaurant in Northampton we used to mock the leaf peepers, but we understood why they came.\r\n\r\nIt's part of the trade off I guess. My Los Angeles friends aren't running their heater and still wearing a sweater. It gets cold here, not as cold as New England, but certainly colder than coastal California. But I'll take the cold in exchange for some tangible markers of the passing seasons, the passing time, lest it simple blur together and slip away invisibly.\r\n\r\nJust bear in mind that only part of it is passing. As a friend of mine used to say, the leaves fall for the tree every year, but the tree will never fall for the leaves. \r\n\r\n<ol class=\"footnote\"><li><p><a name=\"fn-1\">1.</a> To my English friends who will insist on Autumn. I have it on reasonably good authority that Fall is actually proper Queen's English that fell out of fashion in the UK near the end of the last century. I intend to bring it back because Autumn reminds me of bad paperback romance novels. <a href=\"#fnr1\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p></li></ol>\r\n\r\n", "dek": "The trees are in full technicolor swing. The land is slowly dying, and not just because it's Fall, we're also in the middle of a prolonged drought and this year the leaves are opting for a James Dean-style, leave-a-good-looking-corpse exit. If you're a leaf and you've got to go, do it with class.", "pub_date": "2007-11-14T02:25:17", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.3885693434031197 33.9448641194789005)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/fall.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/fall.jpg", "meta_description": "Fall, Autumn, call it what you like, just remember, the leaves fall for the tree every year, but the tree never falls for the leaves. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 81, "fields": {"title": "New Year's Day", "slug": "new-years-day", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span> have at various times been accused of harboring a certain amount of cynicism (or realism, depending on the point of view of the person leveling such accusations), something I continue to deny. </p>\n<p><break>\n<img class=\"postpic\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/newyear.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"203\" alt=\"New Year's Day\" title=\"Celebrate the new year\" />However, there are a few notable moments of cynical behavior in my past and perhaps the most obvious has always been my attitude toward New Year's Day.</p>\n<p>I've always been all for New Year's Eve celebrations, parties, what have you, but somehow the next day always seemed a bit hollow and I've said as much before. Of course, while recognizing that Bono was in many way correct when he sang \"nothing changes on New Year's Day,\" it is after all a largely self-created universe, so whether or not you think anything changes on New Year's Day is really up to you. And I've always thought Bono was full of shit.</p>\n<p>So this year I managed to drag myself out of bed at a reasonable hour and whip up the sort of breakfast extravagance that seemed befitting of the first day in a new year and actually celebrated its arrival. What's more I'm doing something I haven't done in years -- making New Years resolutions.</p>\n<p>I won't bore you with the whole list, but there's one that's relevant to luxagraf -- I'm going to post a new photo everyday. Hardly original I realize, but I'm hoping that perhaps a little self-kick in the ass might also inspire me to do a bit more writing and otherwise update the site a bit more. </p>\n<p>I may not get around to actually taking <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/luxagraf/sets/72157603603431255/\">a new photograph everyday</a>, but I will at least post one (travel days excepted) and I'll be making an effort to actually take them more often as well. I can't guarantee they'll be any good, in fact I can almost guarantee that most of them won't be any good, but at least one small thing will have changed for me on New Year's Day.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span> have at various times been accused of harboring a certain amount of cynicism (or realism, depending on the point of view of the person leveling such accusations), something I continue to deny. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n<img class=\"postpic\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/newyear.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"203\" alt=\"New Year's Day\" title=\"Celebrate the new year\" />However, there are a few notable moments of cynical behavior in my past and perhaps the most obvious has always been my attitude toward New Year's Day.\r\n\r\nI've always been all for New Year's Eve celebrations, parties, what have you, but somehow the next day always seemed a bit hollow and I've said as much before. Of course, while recognizing that Bono was in many way correct when he sang \"nothing changes on New Year's Day,\" it is after all a largely self-created universe, so whether or not you think anything changes on New Year's Day is really up to you. And I've always thought Bono was full of shit.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nSo this year I managed to drag myself out of bed at a reasonable hour and whip up the sort of breakfast extravagance that seemed befitting of the first day in a new year and actually celebrated its arrival. What's more I'm doing something I haven't done in years -- making New Years resolutions.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI won't bore you with the whole list, but there's one that's relevant to luxagraf -- I'm going to post a new photo everyday. Hardly original I realize, but I'm hoping that perhaps a little self-kick in the ass might also inspire me to do a bit more writing and otherwise update the site a bit more. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI may not get around to actually taking [a new photograph everyday][1], but I will at least post one (travel days excepted) and I'll be making an effort to actually take them more often as well. I can't guarantee they'll be any good, in fact I can almost guarantee that most of them won't be any good, but at least one small thing will have changed for me on New Year's Day.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n[1]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/luxagraf/sets/72157603603431255/", "dek": "I've always been all for New Year's Eve celebrations, parties, what have you, but somehow the next day always seemed a bit hollow. U2 was, in many ways, correct -- \"nothing changes on New Year's Day.\" But, it's a self-created universe, so whether anything changes on New Year's Day is really up to you. And I've always thought Bono was full of shit.", "pub_date": "2008-01-01T11:29:26", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.3885639789849193 33.9448863704194324)", "location": 4, "status": 0, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/annienewyears.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/annienewyears.jpg", "meta_description": "", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 84, "fields": {"title": "Ring The Bells", "slug": "ring-bells", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">W</span>e landed in Managua about eight in the evening, walked outside the airport and smoked a cigarette (I know, terrible, I started smoking again), surveying the taxi drivers all clamoring for jacked up fares from the new arrivals. Eventually we gave up and paid our own jacked up fare to get to a decent guesthouse picked randomly out of the Lonely Planet. </p>\n<p><break>\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/granada1.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Granada Street\"/>Managua is a medium sized city, neither the best nor the worst I've been in, but there didn't seem to be much worth seeing, and we only had two weeks to spare so we hightailed it south to Granada at six the next morning. </p>\n<p>The slow, or ordinario, bus proved to just fine and got us to Granada in an hour or so. We were way too early to check in anywhere, but we stopped by a guesthouse (The Bearded Monkey, rating: B-), reserved a room and stashed our bags before heading out to explore the city. </p>\n<p>Granada is famed for its Colonial-era architecture and colorful buildings; it even has the UNESCO World Heritage site stamp of approval. We wandered the streets, taking in the riotous paint jobs and admiring the fantastically massive, ornately carved wooden doors. Behind most of these doorways are fantastic courtyards, lushly planted and beautifully landscaped (judging by the few that were open).</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/granada2.jpg\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Granada church\"/>We stopped by a Church that was holding services and Corrinne was hesitant to go in, but having marched right in to so many Buddhist temples (at the urging of the locals I might add) I decided to do the same with the Catholics, come hell or high water as it were.</p>\n<p>It turned out to that no one seemed to care, or perhaps the tourist-saturated nature of their town has led to an acquiescence that masquerades as acceptance. A very friendly priest of some kind stopped us on our way out and insisted that we go up in the recently restored bell tower to have a look at the city from on high. </p>\n<p>As it turned out, it was the best thing we did in Granada and, for whatever reason, no one seems to do it (or at least no one we talked to). Which isn't to slight Granada, it's definitely worth a day, but there isn't a whole lot to it. Unless you're really into horse drawn carriage tours. </p>\n<p>We paid a nominal fee -- which ostensibly goes toward further restoration efforts since the church dates from the 1600s and could use a bit of work -- and then went up the narrowest, steepest, circular concrete staircase that I've ever encountered. It had a low railing and circled up four stories worth of precipitous dropoffs before you hit solid ground. Never mind the cracks in the stairs, this is earthquake country. It happens.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/granada4.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Granada rooftops\"/>At the top you have a great 360 degree view of the city, which becomes an endless sea of mottled pink, orange and brown hues -- terra cotta roof tiles stretching from the shores of Lago Nicaragua all the way back toward the hills. Oh and there's some bells. Bells that quite clearly get rung from below, and, judging by the size, it would be best to not be around when someone yanks the rope. Thankfully no one did and we spent half and hour or more admiring the city and trying to decide if Ometepe, the towering volcano in the distance, half shrouded in the hazy of the lake, was really belching thin gray wisps of smoke. Inconclusive. It certainly <em>looked</em> like it was though.</p>\n<p>After admiring the views for a while, the idea of lounging in one the aforementioned courtyards kept coming up. Eventually we gave in and headed back to the guesthouse to do the one thing I'm really good at at doing -- nothing. And by nothing I mean napping in hammocks, sipping Tona, reading, checking out the German guy's EeePC (pathetic: Wired technology writer sees first EeePC laptop in Nicaraguan guesthouse), talking about whether or not our house would work with a courtyard and otherwise dodging the heat of the day. </p>\n<p>We went out for a late lunch and had another explore around the market area, down a few back alleys, past another very 17th century-looking church, through a game of baseball happening in the middle of the street and finally looped back to the church and climbed up the bell tower again to watch the sunset.</p>\n<p>I'm not quite sure what the occasion was, other than a Sunday (could have been a wedding perhaps, this time I decided not to intrude), but the church was in full swing with some extremely morose, gothic-tinged music thundering out of the cathedral hall and punctuated by a man in front of the church launching volleys of giant fireworks, seemingly in time with the music. The effect was like being in a bad Francis Ford Coppola movie (like the Godfather), but the fireworks sounded more like mortar shells than percussion. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/granada3.jpg\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Granada sunset\"/>Back up the scary stone staircase I sat down and closed my eyes for a minute and imagined what the same scene would have looked like twenty years ago when the explosions really would have been mortars. After all, that's what American's think of when they think of Nicaragua: war, death, suffering. Certainly all part of Nicaragua's past, but you'd never know it today. Today it's just fireworks and fugues.</p>\n<p>After the sun set we wandered back over to Parque Col\u00f3n, the central plaza that anchors the layout of the town and serves as its central hub. We sat down to the side of the park and watched the locals go about their business, enjoying the last few hours of the weekend. </p>\n<p>Eventually we headed back the guesthouse to grab some dinner and a few beers. </p>\n<p>The next morning we were the first bus headed south.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">W</span>e landed in Managua about eight in the evening, walked outside the airport and smoked a cigarette (I know, terrible, I started smoking again), surveying the taxi drivers all clamoring for jacked up fares from the new arrivals. Eventually we gave up and paid our own jacked up fare to get to a decent guesthouse picked randomly out of the Lonely Planet. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/granada1.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Granada Street\"/>Managua is a medium sized city, neither the best nor the worst I've been in, but there didn't seem to be much worth seeing, and we only had two weeks to spare so we hightailed it south to Granada at six the next morning. \r\n\r\nThe slow, or ordinario, bus proved to just fine and got us to Granada in an hour or so. We were way too early to check in anywhere, but we stopped by a guesthouse (The Bearded Monkey, rating: B-), reserved a room and stashed our bags before heading out to explore the city. \r\n\r\nGranada is famed for its Colonial-era architecture and colorful buildings; it even has the UNESCO World Heritage site stamp of approval. We wandered the streets, taking in the riotous paint jobs and admiring the fantastically massive, ornately carved wooden doors. Behind most of these doorways are fantastic courtyards, lushly planted and beautifully landscaped (judging by the few that were open).\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/granada2.jpg\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Granada church\"/>We stopped by a Church that was holding services and Corrinne was hesitant to go in, but having marched right in to so many Buddhist temples (at the urging of the locals I might add) I decided to do the same with the Catholics, come hell or high water as it were.\r\n\r\nIt turned out to that no one seemed to care, or perhaps the tourist-saturated nature of their town has led to an acquiescence that masquerades as acceptance. A very friendly priest of some kind stopped us on our way out and insisted that we go up in the recently restored bell tower to have a look at the city from on high. \r\n\r\nAs it turned out, it was the best thing we did in Granada and, for whatever reason, no one seems to do it (or at least no one we talked to). Which isn't to slight Granada, it's definitely worth a day, but there isn't a whole lot to it. Unless you're really into horse drawn carriage tours. \r\n\r\nWe paid a nominal fee -- which ostensibly goes toward further restoration efforts since the church dates from the 1600s and could use a bit of work -- and then went up the narrowest, steepest, circular concrete staircase that I've ever encountered. It had a low railing and circled up four stories worth of precipitous dropoffs before you hit solid ground. Never mind the cracks in the stairs, this is earthquake country. It happens.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/granada4.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Granada rooftops\"/>At the top you have a great 360 degree view of the city, which becomes an endless sea of mottled pink, orange and brown hues -- terra cotta roof tiles stretching from the shores of Lago Nicaragua all the way back toward the hills. Oh and there's some bells. Bells that quite clearly get rung from below, and, judging by the size, it would be best to not be around when someone yanks the rope. Thankfully no one did and we spent half and hour or more admiring the city and trying to decide if Ometepe, the towering volcano in the distance, half shrouded in the hazy of the lake, was really belching thin gray wisps of smoke. Inconclusive. It certainly *looked* like it was though.\r\n\r\nAfter admiring the views for a while, the idea of lounging in one the aforementioned courtyards kept coming up. Eventually we gave in and headed back to the guesthouse to do the one thing I'm really good at at doing -- nothing. And by nothing I mean napping in hammocks, sipping Tona, reading, checking out the German guy's EeePC (pathetic: Wired technology writer sees first EeePC laptop in Nicaraguan guesthouse), talking about whether or not our house would work with a courtyard and otherwise dodging the heat of the day. \r\n\r\nWe went out for a late lunch and had another explore around the market area, down a few back alleys, past another very 17th century-looking church, through a game of baseball happening in the middle of the street and finally looped back to the church and climbed up the bell tower again to watch the sunset.\r\n\r\nI'm not quite sure what the occasion was, other than a Sunday (could have been a wedding perhaps, this time I decided not to intrude), but the church was in full swing with some extremely morose, gothic-tinged music thundering out of the cathedral hall and punctuated by a man in front of the church launching volleys of giant fireworks, seemingly in time with the music. The effect was like being in a bad Francis Ford Coppola movie (like the Godfather), but the fireworks sounded more like mortar shells than percussion. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/granada3.jpg\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Granada sunset\"/>Back up the scary stone staircase I sat down and closed my eyes for a minute and imagined what the same scene would have looked like twenty years ago when the explosions really would have been mortars. After all, that's what American's think of when they think of Nicaragua: war, death, suffering. Certainly all part of Nicaragua's past, but you'd never know it today. Today it's just fireworks and fugues.\r\n\r\nAfter the sun set we wandered back over to Parque Col\u00f3n, the central plaza that anchors the layout of the town and serves as its central hub. We sat down to the side of the park and watched the locals go about their business, enjoying the last few hours of the weekend. \r\n\r\nEventually we headed back the guesthouse to grab some dinner and a few beers. \r\n\r\nThe next morning we were the first bus headed south.", "dek": "The Church, which dates from the 1600s has the the narrowest, steepest, circular concrete staircase that I've ever encountered. It had a low railing and circled up four stories worth of precipitous dropoffs before you hit solid ground. From the top was a views of Granada's endless sea of mottled pink, orange and brown hues -- terra cotta roof tiles stretching from the shores of Lago Nicaragua all the way back toward the hills. ", "pub_date": "2008-03-30T23:37:40", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-85.9581363081485392 11.9320622658615889)", "location": 6, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/ringthbells.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/ringthbells.jpg", "meta_description": "Wandering the streets of Granada, Nicaragua: colorful buildings, colonial-era architecture and, most importantly, hammocks. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 85, "fields": {"title": "Return to the Sea", "slug": "return-sea", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">R</span>ivas was hot, dusty and filled with touts clamoring to shove you a cab bound for just about anywhere but Rivas itself. Not being the sort of tourists that like to disappoint a determined tout, we ended up in one of those cabs, along with a couple of Nicaraguans, bound for the Pacific coast town of San Juan Del Sur.</p>\n<p><break>\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/sanjuan3.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"San Juan Del Sur \nharborfront\"/>From Granada we caught a chicken bus south, headed for Rivas. Southwestern Nicaragua is a very small strip of land with Lago Nicaragua to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Rivas is smack dab in the middle of that strip, a kind of stopping off point rather than a destination, almost like a border town, despite the fact that the border is another hour south.</p>\n<p>You essentially have two choices in Rivas: go east to the lake, visit Isle Ometepe and some of the other islands and small towns along the coast, or, go west to San Juan Del Sur and the other fishing villages along the Pacific (there's also the third option of continuing on to the Costa Rican border, but that wasn't in our plans).</p>\n<p>Curiously enough, the morning we left for Nicaragua we stopped off for a cup of coffee at Jittery Joe's and ran into our friend Nelson, who we hadn't seen since we moved back to town. In one of those strange twists of fate that I've come to accept, it turned out that Nelson had just gotten back from Nicaragua the night before. We proceeded to do a quick five minute brain pick and came up with San Juan Del Sur, which is why we found ourselves trapped in a mid-90s Nissan sedan with the world's slowest cab driver. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/sanjuan1.jpg\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Playa Majagual\"/>The Pacific coast of Nicaragua has long been famous in surfer circles for its near-perfect and seemingly endless breaks (it's featured in Endless Summer if you're into that sort of thing). The last time I went surfing Quicksilver was still run out of a garage and I have no real desire to take it up again, but I rarely say no to some time by ocean.</p>\n<p>San Juan Del Sur proper is nestled around a well protected harbor with a mediocre strip of sand. For the good surf and nice beaches you have to head up or down the coast to one of the many small inlets. And that means you'll either have to catch a cab or take one of several 4x4 drive bus thingies (like troop carrying trucks essentially). </p>\n<p>The problem is that if you stay in San Juan Del Sur, you'll end up spending a good chunk of money getting to the beach, and that has never made sense to me. We did take a cab two days, once to Playa Majagual and once to Playa Maderas, two beaches to the north of the harbor, but they were something of a letdown.</p>\n<p>The beaches themselves were curiously deserted, literally. In two days on two different beaches we were totally alone -- save for our cab driver somewhere back over the dune sleeping in his car. Which is sort of where the letdown part comes in. I realize that we were paying him decent money, but I couldn't help feeling guilty that there was this poor guy waiting all afternoon in his car. I wouldn't want to do that, would you?</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/sanjuan2.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Hammock, Hotel Colonial\"/>The guilt, coupled with the gusts of wind that whipped the sand against your skin a bit like a low grade sandblaster (come to San Juan Del Sur, free exfoliating while you wait!) made the beaches, well, something of a letdown.</p>\n<p>The third day we got it right, we didn't do anything or go anywhere. We lounged around in hammocks, had a stroll around the town, bought our own hammock and hit the harbor front restaurant/bar scene early. </p>\n<p>We ended up taking an upscale room in San Juan Del Sur since the cheap stuff was pretty morbid (it's hard to pay $25 for a room that isn't half as nice as many of the $2 rooms you've had elsewhere). As it turned out a Canadian couple that we met briefly in Granada had exactly the same thought process and ended up in the room next to use at the Hotel Colonial ($46 a night, rating: A). Kenso and Melissa had perhaps a much better justification for splashing out in San Juan Del Sur since they had taken the \"loft\" at the Bearded Monkey Guesthouse. Corrinne and I were offered the loft when we arrived at the Bearded Monkey, but we elected to hold out for a private room (which we ended up getting, thank god).</p>\n<p>Kenso and Melissa arrived after us and found that, since we had snatched the last private room, they were stuck with the loft, which was essentially a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood nailed midway up a high-ceiling hallway. Not only was there little in the way of privacy, you had to climb a rather precarious ladder to get in and out -- no small feat when you're in a country where beer is only a dollar.</p>\n<p>Somehow they managed to survive and check in next to us at the Hotel Colonial in San Juan Del Sur (and they were nice enough to bear no outward grudge for stealing the last room in Granada).</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/sanjuan4.jpg\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"sunset San Juan Del Sur \nharborfront\"/>Kenso and Melissa were on basically the same trip we were, though after San Juan Del Sur they opted to head to Ometepe while we went straight over to the Corn Island. But we spent a couple nights in one of the many near anonymous restaurants that line the harbor front, talking with Melissa and Kenso and watching the sunset while we ate lobster, fried plantains and, of course, the ever-present gallo y pinto.</p>\n<p>However after three days we felt like we had more or less exhausted San Juan Del Sur. The combination of high prices and a plethora of rather obnoxious American ex-pats that seemed to generally hail from Los Angeles or some equally dreadful American metropolis sort of turned us off. </p>\n<p>San Juan Del Sur is worth a visit, just don't be surprised when you find a battered paperback novel selling for $40 at a coffee shop where no one speaks Spanish. Americans are a cancer, someone needs to stop us (as a friend recently pointed out, something, not someone, is going to stop us -- the Euro).</p>\n<p>And really it isn't that bad. Though San Juan Del Sur may not be my favorite spot in Nicaragua, there is something to be said for watching the Pacific sunsets over a plate of lobster and a cold beer. Life could be a whole lot worse.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">R</span>ivas was hot, dusty and filled with touts clamoring to shove you a cab bound for just about anywhere but Rivas itself. Not being the sort of tourists that like to disappoint a determined tout, we ended up in one of those cabs, along with a couple of Nicaraguans, bound for the Pacific coast town of San Juan Del Sur.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/sanjuan3.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"San Juan Del Sur \r\nharborfront\"/>From Granada we caught a chicken bus south, headed for Rivas. Southwestern Nicaragua is a very small strip of land with Lago Nicaragua to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Rivas is smack dab in the middle of that strip, a kind of stopping off point rather than a destination, almost like a border town, despite the fact that the border is another hour south.\r\n\r\nYou essentially have two choices in Rivas: go east to the lake, visit Isle Ometepe and some of the other islands and small towns along the coast, or, go west to San Juan Del Sur and the other fishing villages along the Pacific (there's also the third option of continuing on to the Costa Rican border, but that wasn't in our plans).\r\n\r\nCuriously enough, the morning we left for Nicaragua we stopped off for a cup of coffee at Jittery Joe's and ran into our friend Nelson, who we hadn't seen since we moved back to town. In one of those strange twists of fate that I've come to accept, it turned out that Nelson had just gotten back from Nicaragua the night before. We proceeded to do a quick five minute brain pick and came up with San Juan Del Sur, which is why we found ourselves trapped in a mid-90s Nissan sedan with the world's slowest cab driver. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/sanjuan1.jpg\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Playa Majagual\"/>The Pacific coast of Nicaragua has long been famous in surfer circles for its near-perfect and seemingly endless breaks (it's featured in Endless Summer if you're into that sort of thing). The last time I went surfing Quicksilver was still run out of a garage and I have no real desire to take it up again, but I rarely say no to some time by ocean.\r\n\r\nSan Juan Del Sur proper is nestled around a well protected harbor with a mediocre strip of sand. For the good surf and nice beaches you have to head up or down the coast to one of the many small inlets. And that means you'll either have to catch a cab or take one of several 4x4 drive bus thingies (like troop carrying trucks essentially). \r\n\r\nThe problem is that if you stay in San Juan Del Sur, you'll end up spending a good chunk of money getting to the beach, and that has never made sense to me. We did take a cab two days, once to Playa Majagual and once to Playa Maderas, two beaches to the north of the harbor, but they were something of a letdown.\r\n\r\nThe beaches themselves were curiously deserted, literally. In two days on two different beaches we were totally alone -- save for our cab driver somewhere back over the dune sleeping in his car. Which is sort of where the letdown part comes in. I realize that we were paying him decent money, but I couldn't help feeling guilty that there was this poor guy waiting all afternoon in his car. I wouldn't want to do that, would you?\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/sanjuan2.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Hammock, Hotel Colonial\"/>The guilt, coupled with the gusts of wind that whipped the sand against your skin a bit like a low grade sandblaster (come to San Juan Del Sur, free exfoliating while you wait!) made the beaches, well, something of a letdown.\r\n\r\nThe third day we got it right, we didn't do anything or go anywhere. We lounged around in hammocks, had a stroll around the town, bought our own hammock and hit the harbor front restaurant/bar scene early. \r\n\r\nWe ended up taking an upscale room in San Juan Del Sur since the cheap stuff was pretty morbid (it's hard to pay $25 for a room that isn't half as nice as many of the $2 rooms you've had elsewhere). As it turned out a Canadian couple that we met briefly in Granada had exactly the same thought process and ended up in the room next to use at the Hotel Colonial ($46 a night, rating: A). Kenso and Melissa had perhaps a much better justification for splashing out in San Juan Del Sur since they had taken the \"loft\" at the Bearded Monkey Guesthouse. Corrinne and I were offered the loft when we arrived at the Bearded Monkey, but we elected to hold out for a private room (which we ended up getting, thank god).\r\n\r\nKenso and Melissa arrived after us and found that, since we had snatched the last private room, they were stuck with the loft, which was essentially a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood nailed midway up a high-ceiling hallway. Not only was there little in the way of privacy, you had to climb a rather precarious ladder to get in and out -- no small feat when you're in a country where beer is only a dollar.\r\n\r\nSomehow they managed to survive and check in next to us at the Hotel Colonial in San Juan Del Sur (and they were nice enough to bear no outward grudge for stealing the last room in Granada).\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/sanjuan4.jpg\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"sunset San Juan Del Sur \r\nharborfront\"/>Kenso and Melissa were on basically the same trip we were, though after San Juan Del Sur they opted to head to Ometepe while we went straight over to the Corn Island. But we spent a couple nights in one of the many near anonymous restaurants that line the harbor front, talking with Melissa and Kenso and watching the sunset while we ate lobster, fried plantains and, of course, the ever-present gallo y pinto.\r\n\r\nHowever after three days we felt like we had more or less exhausted San Juan Del Sur. The combination of high prices and a plethora of rather obnoxious American ex-pats that seemed to generally hail from Los Angeles or some equally dreadful American metropolis sort of turned us off. \r\n\r\nSan Juan Del Sur is worth a visit, just don't be surprised when you find a battered paperback novel selling for $40 at a coffee shop where no one speaks Spanish. Americans are a cancer, someone needs to stop us (as a friend recently pointed out, something, not someone, is going to stop us -- the Euro).\r\n\r\nAnd really it isn't that bad. Though San Juan Del Sur may not be my favorite spot in Nicaragua, there is something to be said for watching the Pacific sunsets over a plate of lobster and a cold beer. Life could be a whole lot worse.", "dek": "Southwestern Nicaragua is a very small strip of land with Lago Nicaragua to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. The main town in the area, Juan Del Sur, is nestled around a well protected harbor with a mediocre strip of sand. For the nice beaches you have to head up or down the coast to one of the many small inlets. ", "pub_date": "2008-04-02T20:22:29", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-85.8734750628140944 11.2543844990676032)", "location": 5, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/sanjuansunset.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/sanjuansunset.jpg", "meta_description": "San Juan Del Sur is a bit pricy due to the big expat surfer community, but still a nice stop along the Pacific coast of Nicaragua. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 86, "fields": {"title": "Little Island in the Sun", "slug": "little-island-sun", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">F</span>rom <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2008/apr/02/return-sea/\">San Juan Del Sur</a> we caught a cab back to Rivas (much faster driver this time), then a bus to Managua, switched to another bus out to the airport, then hopped a plane to Bluefields and then on to Big Corn Island where we jumped in a boat to Little Corn Island. Pretty much every form of transportation in Nicaragua in a single journey (there are no trains unfortunately). To get from the airport to San Juan Del Sur we spent $40 each. To do the same thing in reverse we paid $6 each. That's called figuring it out.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/islelittlecorn1.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Palm Tree, Little Corn Island, Nicaragua\"/>Of that journey the only stressful part was the puddle-jumper flight from Managua to Big Corn on an airline that's apparently sketchy enough that U.S. diplomats aren't allowed to fly on it. However, we met up with Kenso and Melissa again a few days later and I asked Kenso about it and he waved his hand dismissively and said the planes were fine (he's flown some pretty sketchy stuff for the U.N. in Africa so I figured it was okay and I relaxed somewhat on the flight back).</p>\n<p>We arrived on Little Corn Island around sundown and met a man I at first took to be a tout who showed us the way to the guesthouse we wanted to stay in. After settling in an getting a feel for the island I realized that Ali, the man, wasn't a tout, he was just a really nice guy who enjoyed doing favors for tourists. He would accept the occasional tip, but he wasn't in it for the money. </p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>The truth is there's just very little to do on Little Corn Island, so helping tourists passes the time. The only people that work what you and I might call a full day are the guesthouse owners and the fishermen. Pretty much everyone else seemed to not have much to do (and we were there during the the three month off season for lobster fisherman so the island was pretty well laid back).</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/islelittlecorn2.jpg\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Carlito's Guesthouse, Little Corn Island, Nicaragua\"/>In short, Little Corn Island is basically paradise. We stayed at Carlito's Sunrise Paradise ($25 a night, A+, highly recommended) and were about ten paces from the water. One afternoon I took a short nap and I sat up in bed and noticed the view you see in the photo to the right.</p>\n<p>Carlito's, like most of the guesthouses on the island, consisted of a few huts, some shaded tables by the water and central eating area. And of course the most important part -- the hammocks slug between pretty much any two appropriately spaced objects.</p>\n<p>The interesting thing about the Corn Islands is that they're more or less a totally separate experience from mainland Nicaragua. English is the primary language and the native people are of African descent. Naturally there are a number of Misquitos as well as Spanish descendant people, but for the most part the Caribbean coast is a bit like transplanting say, Jamaica, to Nicaragua.</p>\n<p>The Corn Islands are part of an autonomous zone in Nicaragua. I won't pretend to understand the nuances of the government setup here, but as I understand it, the Mosquito Indians pretty much control things and government of Nicaragua supports them (for the most part) but doesn't seem to interfere too much.</p>\n<p>This region of the Caribbean has long been a hangout for pirates and smugglers -- especially these islands, which were a favorite for British pirates waiting to hit the Spanish Galleons coming across the Gulf of Mexico. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/islelittlecorn3.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Beach, Little Corn Island, Nicaragua\"/>The pirating tradition continues to day with drug running boats. Drug-running boats en route from Colombia to Miami pass through this area. Though the boats no longer stop on the islands, every now and then someone loads a panga (local outboard boat) with gasoline and heads out into the sea (GPS to the rescue) to refuel a boat.</p>\n<p>When the drug runners come under attack by U.S. Coast Guard boats they typically pitch their rather large bales of cocaine overboard and, owing to a curious combination of wind and currents, those bales (and sometimes barrels of money as well) tend to wash up here. It used to be that the Colombians would buy the drugs back, but from what I've read the Indians have decided to stop that tradition and now get rid of it them themselves. And apparently the Colombian drug runners won't mess with the Mosquito, who are heavily armed, well-organized and have been defending this area for going on six hundred years. In short, they are not people to fuck with -- as the Spanish, British, the Nicaraguan Army, the U.S. special forces and a number of other erstwhile challengers have discovered over the years.</p>\n<p>Thus, while it certainly isn't common, the white lobster, as the bales of cocaine are known here, does turn up from time to time. As do barrels of money. For instance, according to local gossip, the woman who owns the guesthouse next to Carlito's discovered a barrel with $80,000 inside -- more than enough to open a profitable guesthouse.</p>\n<p>As you might expect, this shady past has made for a bit unrest over the years. As little as six years ago, Little Corn was a very sketchy place. Local residents lined their houses with razor wire and the <a href=\"http://www.casaiguana.net/\">Casa Iguana Guesthouse</a> had a bucket full a machetes available for any guests that were brave (or foolish) enough to even venture out at night. Luckily for those of us that probably wouldn't fare well in a machete fight, those days are largely over. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/islelittlecorn4.jpg\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Corrinne and I, Little Corn Island, Nicaragua\"/>There are still \"incidents\" on the island, but it's the tamer, stealing-stuff-from-rooms that happens in any isolated, yet heavily visited area, rather than the more violent holdups.</p>\n<p>For the record I never felt unsafe on Little Corn and we walked around at night quite a bit, alone even. Of course some of that has to do with the massively increased police presence that the government sent over for Semana Santa (Easter) who are still on the island.</p>\n<p>But if you've heard the stories floating around the internet about trouble on Little Corn and you're hesitating to go, don't. It's perfectly safe and you'll love it.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">F</span>rom [San Juan Del Sur][1] we caught a cab back to Rivas (much faster driver this time), then a bus to Managua, switched to another bus out to the airport, then hopped a plane to Bluefields and then on to Big Corn Island where we jumped in a boat to Little Corn Island. Pretty much every form of transportation in Nicaragua in a single journey (there are no trains unfortunately). To get from the airport to San Juan Del Sur we spent $40 each. To do the same thing in reverse we paid $6 each. That's called figuring it out.\r\n\r\n[1]: http://luxagraf.net/2008/apr/02/return-sea/\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/islelittlecorn1.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Palm Tree, Little Corn Island, Nicaragua\"/>Of that journey the only stressful part was the puddle-jumper flight from Managua to Big Corn on an airline that's apparently sketchy enough that U.S. diplomats aren't allowed to fly on it. However, we met up with Kenso and Melissa again a few days later and I asked Kenso about it and he waved his hand dismissively and said the planes were fine (he's flown some pretty sketchy stuff for the U.N. in Africa so I figured it was okay and I relaxed somewhat on the flight back).\r\n\r\nWe arrived on Little Corn Island around sundown and met a man I at first took to be a tout who showed us the way to the guesthouse we wanted to stay in. After settling in an getting a feel for the island I realized that Ali, the man, wasn't a tout, he was just a really nice guy who enjoyed doing favors for tourists. He would accept the occasional tip, but he wasn't in it for the money. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nThe truth is there's just very little to do on Little Corn Island, so helping tourists passes the time. The only people that work what you and I might call a full day are the guesthouse owners and the fishermen. Pretty much everyone else seemed to not have much to do (and we were there during the the three month off season for lobster fisherman so the island was pretty well laid back).\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/islelittlecorn2.jpg\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Carlito's Guesthouse, Little Corn Island, Nicaragua\"/>In short, Little Corn Island is basically paradise. We stayed at Carlito's Sunrise Paradise ($25 a night, A+, highly recommended) and were about ten paces from the water. One afternoon I took a short nap and I sat up in bed and noticed the view you see in the photo to the right.\r\n\r\nCarlito's, like most of the guesthouses on the island, consisted of a few huts, some shaded tables by the water and central eating area. And of course the most important part -- the hammocks slug between pretty much any two appropriately spaced objects.\r\n\r\nThe interesting thing about the Corn Islands is that they're more or less a totally separate experience from mainland Nicaragua. English is the primary language and the native people are of African descent. Naturally there are a number of Misquitos as well as Spanish descendant people, but for the most part the Caribbean coast is a bit like transplanting say, Jamaica, to Nicaragua.\r\n\r\nThe Corn Islands are part of an autonomous zone in Nicaragua. I won't pretend to understand the nuances of the government setup here, but as I understand it, the Mosquito Indians pretty much control things and government of Nicaragua supports them (for the most part) but doesn't seem to interfere too much.\r\n\r\nThis region of the Caribbean has long been a hangout for pirates and smugglers -- especially these islands, which were a favorite for British pirates waiting to hit the Spanish Galleons coming across the Gulf of Mexico. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/islelittlecorn3.jpg\" class=\"postpic\" alt=\"Beach, Little Corn Island, Nicaragua\"/>The pirating tradition continues to day with drug running boats. Drug-running boats en route from Colombia to Miami pass through this area. Though the boats no longer stop on the islands, every now and then someone loads a panga (local outboard boat) with gasoline and heads out into the sea (GPS to the rescue) to refuel a boat.\r\n\r\nWhen the drug runners come under attack by U.S. Coast Guard boats they typically pitch their rather large bales of cocaine overboard and, owing to a curious combination of wind and currents, those bales (and sometimes barrels of money as well) tend to wash up here. It used to be that the Colombians would buy the drugs back, but from what I've read the Indians have decided to stop that tradition and now get rid of it them themselves. And apparently the Colombian drug runners won't mess with the Mosquito, who are heavily armed, well-organized and have been defending this area for going on six hundred years. In short, they are not people to fuck with -- as the Spanish, British, the Nicaraguan Army, the U.S. special forces and a number of other erstwhile challengers have discovered over the years.\r\n\r\nThus, while it certainly isn't common, the white lobster, as the bales of cocaine are known here, does turn up from time to time. As do barrels of money. For instance, according to local gossip, the woman who owns the guesthouse next to Carlito's discovered a barrel with $80,000 inside -- more than enough to open a profitable guesthouse.\r\n\r\nAs you might expect, this shady past has made for a bit unrest over the years. As little as six years ago, Little Corn was a very sketchy place. Local residents lined their houses with razor wire and the [Casa Iguana Guesthouse][2] had a bucket full a machetes available for any guests that were brave (or foolish) enough to even venture out at night. Luckily for those of us that probably wouldn't fare well in a machete fight, those days are largely over. \r\n\r\n[2]: http://www.casaiguana.net/\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/islelittlecorn4.jpg\" class=\"postpicright\" alt=\"Corrinne and I, Little Corn Island, Nicaragua\"/>There are still \"incidents\" on the island, but it's the tamer, stealing-stuff-from-rooms that happens in any isolated, yet heavily visited area, rather than the more violent holdups.\r\n\r\nFor the record I never felt unsafe on Little Corn and we walked around at night quite a bit, alone even. Of course some of that has to do with the massively increased police presence that the government sent over for Semana Santa (Easter) who are still on the island.\r\n\r\nBut if you've heard the stories floating around the internet about trouble on Little Corn and you're hesitating to go, don't. It's perfectly safe and you'll love it.", "dek": "We arrived on Little Corn Island around sundown and met Ali, whom I at first took to be a tout, but he showed us the way to our guesthouse and, after settling in and getting a feel for the island, I realized that Ali, wasn't a tout, he was just a really nice guy who enjoyed doing favors for tourists, just beware the Yoni beverage he offers.", "pub_date": "2008-04-05T23:31:15", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-82.9745864752660367 12.2974037366733455)", "location": 3, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/coconutsun.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/coconutsun.jpg", "meta_description": "Finding paradise on Little Corn Island, literally. We stayed at Carlito's Sunrise Paradise and were about ten paces from the water. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 88, "fields": {"title": "In Love With a View: Vagabonds, Responsibilty and Living Well", "slug": "love-with-a-view-vagabonds-responsibilty-living-we", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>im Patterson, editor of <a href=\"http://matadortrips.com/\">MatadorTrips.com</a>, recently published an article entitled <a href=\"http://thetravelersnotebook.com/how-to/how-to-travel-for-free/\">How To Travel The World For Free (Seriously)</a>. There are some good tips in the article, even for the seasoned travel vet.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://xkcd.com/386/\"><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/someoneiswrong.jpg\" alt=\"XKCD Comics: Some is Wrong on the Internet\" class=\"postpic\" /></a>But what's far more fascinating is the response from commenters many of whom tore into Patterson, calling him everything from a \"rich, privileged, arrogant hipster\" to a \"dirty hippie.\"\n<break>\nHere's a random sampling of some comments on Patterson's post:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>there are three possible answers for how he can do this and not have to worry about his obligations. 1). He's a jobless loser that contributes nothing to society... 2). He's a rich, privileged, arrogant hipster who, while preaching a lifestyle of no consumerism and organic foods, really travels around in a BMW, listening to his iPod, blogging on his Macbook Air, contributes nothing to society... 3). He's a 14 year old idealist who's parents were hippies, but now work for Haliburton.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>That's the sort of cynicism that just depresses me. Why are you so convinced that everyone else is a selfish privileged asshole? At long last, have you no sense of decency sir?</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Trusting people you don't know while you sleep in their house is a good way to end up half-naked, raped, dead and in a ditch.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Mom? Is that you? </p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In fact, the further you get from the cities, the more viciously backwards with respect to medicine, hygiene and hospitality the people get... and, eventually, you reach places where the word 'culture' is completely inapplicable, and your life is seriously in danger.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>My personal favorite though is the commenter who cites the words of a Pulp Fiction character as an example of how to live. Wonderful, murderous assassins are who you look up to? </p>\n<h3>Why Vagabonds Make People Mad</h3>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/vgb.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"postpicright\" />So why all the vitriol about a seemingly innocuous concept -- that traveling doesn't have to cost a lot of money, isn't all that difficult and hey, you can even go right now. </p>\n<p>Part of the negative reaction comes from the widely-held belief that travelers are a privileged lot -- privileged because, unlike you and I, they can just drop their lives and leave. People like us, who feel tied down by responsibility, find the suggestion that we actually aren't patronizing and yes, elitist -- how dare you tell me what I can and can't do?</p>\n<p>But when I dig a bit deeper into this sort of thinking, I generally find that by elitist, most people really mean enviably rich. </p>\n<p>It may be splitting hairs, but I find that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, Americans actually admire elitists. To paraphrase and twist John Stewart a bit, we want advice from elitists. We don't want advice from people that believe everyone's a murderer.</p>\n<p>But we also don't want rich people who've never struggled telling us that it isn't hard to drop everything we're struggling with and head out into the world.</p>\n<p>The irony of course is that, in this case, the hostile reaction comes in response to an article that has ten tips on traveling cheaply -- in other words, it's trying to show you that you don't need money to travel.</p>\n<p>That said, you'll never find me denying that I am very, very lucky and have been handed an incredible amount of privilege in my life, especially relative to the rest of the world. </p>\n<p>But 90 percent of America is in the same boat. Troops do not storm our houses, bombs do not fall on our cities, Malaria, Dengue Fever, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schistosoma\">schistosoma</a> and other killer diseases are unknown here (though <a href=\"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/09/dengue_fever/\">that may change</a>). </p>\n<p>We are all privileged. For one American to call another privileged is a pot-kettle-black debate.</p>\n<p>The privileged part is just a cover for a much deeper and more personal issue in our lives. </p>\n<p>So why do we attack the author as an elitist? It's a psychological defense mechanism.</p>\n<p>Stop and consider for a moment what Patterson is really saying: it's not hard to drop your life and travel.</p>\n<h3>Living Well</h3>\n<p>The debate that happens in the comments of his article cuts right to heart of some very personal ideas -- just how important is your \"life\"? The unspoken assumption in that statement that ticks people off is the implication that everything you're doing is trivial -- that the life you're leading is so meaningless that it can be abandoned without a second thought.</p>\n<p>That's why the attacks on Patterson are so personal and so vehement, because Patterson is, consciously or not, attacking people's most cherished belief, that our lives mean something and are important.</p>\n<p>Obviously no one wants to think otherwise. </p>\n<p>But I've done it -- dropped everything and left -- and, for me, as much as I am loath to admit it, it was true. Everything I thought I needed to be doing turned out to be totally unnecessary and yes, meaningless. </p>\n<p>In fact I spent the first month of my trip wrestling with that. I was caught between feeling like I was finally doing something that <em>did</em> matter and beating myself up about having been suckered into the previous life, now rendered meaningless.</p>\n<p>In other words I understand why some people reacted to Patterson's piece the way they did.</p>\n<p>The debate that happens in the comments of his article cuts right to heart of some very personal ideas -- just how important is your \"life\"?</p>\n<p>American culture tries to convince us that if you do the right things, you life is very valuable. There are some long standing, deeply-ingrained, fundamental axioms that lead us to believe that relaxation, travel and not working are contemptible. Instead, we're told, you need to work hard to \"get ahead.\"</p>\n<p>The notion that the importance of your life is dependent on your ability to \"make something of yourself\" is pretty well ingrained. Advocating otherwise is going to bring you some hostile reactions (as Patterson recently discovered).</p>\n<p>I'm not saying I'm immune. If you learn anything traveling, it's that you can never escape your own culture. That's why I spent most of a week in Goa, India feeling guilty. Guilty that I was enjoying my life rather than working for some future enjoyment. Guilty that I had apparently been wasting my life for some years prior to that moment. Guilty that I was able to finally escape that when so many people never do. Guilty for all sorts of contradictory things.</p>\n<p>And scared. Scared that when I got back, jobless and penniless I would end up homeless and starving to death. Scared that I might not make it back (India's bus system will do that to you).</p>\n<p>This is the part where I'm supposed to tell you about how I came to peace with it all. But the truth is that never exactly happened. In India I ended up meeting an Englishman who had a seemingly endless supply of excellent scotch and I quickly forgot about my guilt and fear. But it comes back.</p>\n<p>I know, that's not the answer you were looking for. Bear with me.</p>\n<h3>Making Something</h3>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/balancingactgoa.jpg\" alt=\"balancing act, goa, India\" class=\"postpicright\" />Let's go back to the notion of making something of yourself. I do believe in \"making something of myself.\" And I am aware that that's a uniquely American idea, or at least western, since we seem to have somewhat successfully exported the idea to Europe as well. </p>\n<p>What's interesting is how we define the key variable in that sentence -- what does it <em>mean</em> to make something of yourself?</p>\n<p>In defending his co-writer, fellow Matador author Josh Kearns offers all sorts of ways that travel can <a href=\"http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2008/06/04/the-tao-of-vagabond-travel/\">lead to a more meaningful definition of who you are</a>. He cites Alan Watts, Lao Tzu and some other very wise men to point out that in fact traveling can be exactly what you need to \"make something of yourself.\"</p>\n<p>But in many ways that simply begs the question -- if you're open to Alan Watts and Lao Tzu, you probably didn't disagree with Patterson's original argument. If you think Alan Watts was a communist and Lao Tzu comes with Kung Pao chicken, Kearns' argument isn't going to say anything to you.</p>\n<p>How you answer that question -- what does it mean to \"make something of yourself\" -- greatly affects how you view the world around you and will determine how you react to a stance like Patterson's.</p>\n<p>It's pretty easy to see how the more vitriolic commenters answer the question, all you need to do is reverse engineer the thought process. For instance, it's not hard to imagine that the person quoted above, who says staying with strangers is dangerous, lacks a strong sense of faith in humanity. </p>\n<p>I have no idea why, but I'll make a guess -- one way to make something of yourself is to make nothing of everyone else. </p>\n<p>If you see everyone around you as a murderous bunch of rapists and psychopaths, you get to see yourself and your family and friends as shining examples of humanity. You've made something of yourself -- You're better than the murderous bastards out there -- without doing anything at all. You're most likely going to lead a miserable existence, but it is one way to answer the question.</p>\n<p>For others the answer to the \"make something of yourself\" question is tied up in western technological superiority. Like the man who says that the further you go \"the more viciously backwards with respect to medicine, hygiene and hospitality the people get.\" </p>\n<p>In order to think that you need to believe that your society is superior to everyone else's because we have all the things <em>we</em> value and they have none of the things <em>we</em> value -- never mind what they value, that's irrelevant. So you can say you've made something of yourself because you're part of (by your own definition) a superior society.</p>\n<p>But here's what I think Kearns and Patterson are trying to say -- these might not be the best ways to \"make something of yourself.\" In fact you might need to get completely outside yourself in order to make something.</p>\n<p>If your definition of living well is making something of yourself and your primary means of making something of yourself is making less of everyone else then it's not surprising that anyone who suggests temporarily abandoning your life and your society is going to make you confused, angry, fearful and perhaps guilty.</p>\n<h3>The View From Here</h3>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/viewfromahammock.jpg\" alt=\"view from a hammock, little corn island, nicaragua\" class=\"postpic\" />Which brings me back to my own experiences in Goa -- fear, guilt, anger and confusion.</p>\n<p>No, I never have entirely come to terms with the guilt or the confusion, but the fear and anger did go away. I quickly realized that there was no point being angry with myself for failing to leave my life sooner, I took comfort in the fact that at least I left eventually.</p>\n<p>The guilt is still there. Much as I enjoy <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2008/apr/05/little-island-sun/\">sitting in hammock in Nicaragua</a> I spend a good bit of my time sitting there thinking about how I should be doing something with my life -- writing a novel, building a website, at the very least writing something about my travels. </p>\n<p>You name it, I've felt guilty about not doing it. </p>\n<p>But this last trip I started thinking about something else more troubling -- have I turned back into someone who thinks their life is important? Have I forgotten that feeling of total freedom that comes from abandoing your \"life,\" that relief of realizing that all the things I agonize over in my \"real\" life, are actually quite meaningless?</p>\n<p>See unlike the commenters who don't buy the vagabond argument, I suffer from a different American cliche.</p>\n<p>For me, America ingrained its devil-may-care adventure motif far more than its make-something-of-yourself cliche. From Lewis and Clark to Jack Kerouac, there's a strong cultural legacy of lighting out for the territories.</p>\n<p>Now I'm in an entirely different situation than I was when I left for my last trip. </p>\n<p>I'll be married later this month. The common wisdom is that traveling with a family is somehow impossible, in America there's a myth that once you're married and have kids you have to settle down and that butts up against the myth I've been buying into all this time -- Kerouac and the rest.</p>\n<p>I still don't know if it's my idea or just me replicating that devil-may-care cultural meme, but I reject the idea of settling down and I've met enough traveling families to know I won't be the first to reject it. </p>\n<p>It may be more difficult to travel with a family, I'll have to get back to you on that, and fear not, I will get back to you because I will do it.</p>\n<p>But the thing that strikes me is that, if I hadn't already set out, rejected my own life and gone through everything that I went through, adding a family to the equation might well make the whole idea seeming completely unfathomable. </p>\n<p>And that's something I think many of these self-styled vagabond travel writers leave out of their \"anyone can do it\" travel pieces.</p>\n<p>Anyone <em>can</em> do it, but it takes a hell of a lot more courage and effort for some than for others. I have no doubt that Patterson and Kearns are both aware of that and I understand that including the nuances just isn't something online journalism generally allows for, but it's a shame because it ends up alienating the people who could most benefit from some encouraging.</p>\n<p>So while I agree with both authors, I think the \"just do it\" incantations are every bit as hollow as a Nike ad -- even when they're true.</p>\n<p>And the glibness of most travel writing, particularly those of the so-called vagabond stripe ends up having the opposite effect that the proponents intend (<a href=\"http://www.rolfpotts.com/\">Rolf Potts</a> is a notable exception). </p>\n<p>I'm not going to tell you that it's easy to drop your life and take off to see the world. \nHowever, I will say that it isn't as hard as you think. Your job isn't as valuable as you think, there's probably someone who'd love to rent your house and your kids will thank you when they're older (mom, dad, thanks).</p>\n<p>I'm also not going to say that I don't buy the idea that you should strive to \"make something of yourself,\" but the important thing about the \"making\" is that <em>you</em> define what that means. For some it might mean sticking to one job and providing for a family. For others it might mean dragging your family around the world on a grand adventure. Both answers are valid -- just make sure that it's you, not your culture, making the decision. And make sure that you realize both really are valid possibilities -- the only limitation to your life is your own imagination.</p>\n<p>For me, making something of yourself is a never-ending process and one of the key elements is exploring all the different ways people around the world answer that fundamental question -- what does living well mean?</p>\n<p>[VGB image from <a href=\"http://www.rolfpotts.com/\">Rolf Potts</a>, cartoon from the ever hilarious <a href=\"http://xkcd.com/386/\">xkcd</a>]</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>im Patterson, editor of [MatadorTrips.com][2], recently published an article entitled [How To Travel The World For Free (Seriously)][3]. There are some good tips in the article, even for the seasoned travel vet.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://xkcd.com/386/\"><img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/someoneiswrong.jpg\" alt=\"XKCD Comics: Some is Wrong on the Internet\" class=\"postpic\" /></a>But what's far more fascinating is the response from commenters many of whom tore into Patterson, calling him everything from a \"rich, privileged, arrogant hipster\" to a \"dirty hippie.\"\r\n<break>\r\nHere's a random sampling of some comments on Patterson's post:\r\n\r\n>there are three possible answers for how he can do this and not have to worry about his obligations. 1). He's a jobless loser that contributes nothing to society... 2). He's a rich, privileged, arrogant hipster who, while preaching a lifestyle of no consumerism and organic foods, really travels around in a BMW, listening to his iPod, blogging on his Macbook Air, contributes nothing to society... 3). He's a 14 year old idealist who's parents were hippies, but now work for Haliburton.\r\n\r\nThat's the sort of cynicism that just depresses me. Why are you so convinced that everyone else is a selfish privileged asshole? At long last, have you no sense of decency sir?\r\n\r\n>Trusting people you don't know while you sleep in their house is a good way to end up half-naked, raped, dead and in a ditch.\r\n\r\nMom? Is that you? \r\n\r\n>In fact, the further you get from the cities, the more viciously backwards with respect to medicine, hygiene and hospitality the people get... and, eventually, you reach places where the word 'culture' is completely inapplicable, and your life is seriously in danger.\r\n\r\nMy personal favorite though is the commenter who cites the words of a Pulp Fiction character as an example of how to live. Wonderful, murderous assassins are who you look up to? \r\n\r\n###Why Vagabonds Make People Mad###\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/vgb.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"postpicright\" />So why all the vitriol about a seemingly innocuous concept -- that traveling doesn't have to cost a lot of money, isn't all that difficult and hey, you can even go right now. \r\n\r\nPart of the negative reaction comes from the widely-held belief that travelers are a privileged lot -- privileged because, unlike you and I, they can just drop their lives and leave. People like us, who feel tied down by responsibility, find the suggestion that we actually aren't patronizing and yes, elitist -- how dare you tell me what I can and can't do?\r\n\r\nBut when I dig a bit deeper into this sort of thinking, I generally find that by elitist, most people really mean enviably rich. \r\n\r\nIt may be splitting hairs, but I find that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, Americans actually admire elitists. To paraphrase and twist John Stewart a bit, we want advice from elitists. We don't want advice from people that believe everyone's a murderer.\r\n\r\nBut we also don't want rich people who've never struggled telling us that it isn't hard to drop everything we're struggling with and head out into the world.\r\n\r\nThe irony of course is that, in this case, the hostile reaction comes in response to an article that has ten tips on traveling cheaply -- in other words, it's trying to show you that you don't need money to travel.\r\n\r\nThat said, you'll never find me denying that I am very, very lucky and have been handed an incredible amount of privilege in my life, especially relative to the rest of the world. \r\n\r\nBut 90 percent of America is in the same boat. Troops do not storm our houses, bombs do not fall on our cities, Malaria, Dengue Fever, [schistosoma][4] and other killer diseases are unknown here (though [that may change][5]). \r\n\r\nWe are all privileged. For one American to call another privileged is a pot-kettle-black debate.\r\n\r\nThe privileged part is just a cover for a much deeper and more personal issue in our lives. \r\n\r\nSo why do we attack the author as an elitist? It's a psychological defense mechanism.\r\n\r\nStop and consider for a moment what Patterson is really saying: it's not hard to drop your life and travel.\r\n\r\n###Living Well###\r\n\r\nThe debate that happens in the comments of his article cuts right to heart of some very personal ideas -- just how important is your \"life\"? The unspoken assumption in that statement that ticks people off is the implication that everything you're doing is trivial -- that the life you're leading is so meaningless that it can be abandoned without a second thought.\r\n\r\nThat's why the attacks on Patterson are so personal and so vehement, because Patterson is, consciously or not, attacking people's most cherished belief, that our lives mean something and are important.\r\n\r\nObviously no one wants to think otherwise. \r\n\r\nBut I've done it -- dropped everything and left -- and, for me, as much as I am loath to admit it, it was true. Everything I thought I needed to be doing turned out to be totally unnecessary and yes, meaningless. \r\n\r\nIn fact I spent the first month of my trip wrestling with that. I was caught between feeling like I was finally doing something that _did_ matter and beating myself up about having been suckered into the previous life, now rendered meaningless.\r\n\r\nIn other words I understand why some people reacted to Patterson's piece the way they did.\r\n\r\nThe debate that happens in the comments of his article cuts right to heart of some very personal ideas -- just how important is your \"life\"?\r\n\r\nAmerican culture tries to convince us that if you do the right things, you life is very valuable. There are some long standing, deeply-ingrained, fundamental axioms that lead us to believe that relaxation, travel and not working are contemptible. Instead, we're told, you need to work hard to \"get ahead.\"\r\n\r\nThe notion that the importance of your life is dependent on your ability to \"make something of yourself\" is pretty well ingrained. Advocating otherwise is going to bring you some hostile reactions (as Patterson recently discovered).\r\n\r\nI'm not saying I'm immune. If you learn anything traveling, it's that you can never escape your own culture. That's why I spent most of a week in Goa, India feeling guilty. Guilty that I was enjoying my life rather than working for some future enjoyment. Guilty that I had apparently been wasting my life for some years prior to that moment. Guilty that I was able to finally escape that when so many people never do. Guilty for all sorts of contradictory things.\r\n\r\nAnd scared. Scared that when I got back, jobless and penniless I would end up homeless and starving to death. Scared that I might not make it back (India's bus system will do that to you).\r\n\r\nThis is the part where I'm supposed to tell you about how I came to peace with it all. But the truth is that never exactly happened. In India I ended up meeting an Englishman who had a seemingly endless supply of excellent scotch and I quickly forgot about my guilt and fear. But it comes back.\r\n\r\nI know, that's not the answer you were looking for. Bear with me.\r\n\r\n###Making Something###\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/balancingactgoa.jpg\" alt=\"balancing act, goa, India\" class=\"postpicright\" />Let's go back to the notion of making something of yourself. I do believe in \"making something of myself.\" And I am aware that that's a uniquely American idea, or at least western, since we seem to have somewhat successfully exported the idea to Europe as well. \r\n\r\nWhat's interesting is how we define the key variable in that sentence -- what does it _mean_ to make something of yourself?\r\n\r\nIn defending his co-writer, fellow Matador author Josh Kearns offers all sorts of ways that travel can [lead to a more meaningful definition of who you are][6]. He cites Alan Watts, Lao Tzu and some other very wise men to point out that in fact traveling can be exactly what you need to \"make something of yourself.\"\r\n\r\nBut in many ways that simply begs the question -- if you're open to Alan Watts and Lao Tzu, you probably didn't disagree with Patterson's original argument. If you think Alan Watts was a communist and Lao Tzu comes with Kung Pao chicken, Kearns' argument isn't going to say anything to you.\r\n\r\nHow you answer that question -- what does it mean to \"make something of yourself\" -- greatly affects how you view the world around you and will determine how you react to a stance like Patterson's.\r\n\r\nIt's pretty easy to see how the more vitriolic commenters answer the question, all you need to do is reverse engineer the thought process. For instance, it's not hard to imagine that the person quoted above, who says staying with strangers is dangerous, lacks a strong sense of faith in humanity. \r\n\r\nI have no idea why, but I'll make a guess -- one way to make something of yourself is to make nothing of everyone else. \r\n\r\nIf you see everyone around you as a murderous bunch of rapists and psychopaths, you get to see yourself and your family and friends as shining examples of humanity. You've made something of yourself -- You're better than the murderous bastards out there -- without doing anything at all. You're most likely going to lead a miserable existence, but it is one way to answer the question.\r\n\r\nFor others the answer to the \"make something of yourself\" question is tied up in western technological superiority. Like the man who says that the further you go \"the more viciously backwards with respect to medicine, hygiene and hospitality the people get.\" \r\n\r\nIn order to think that you need to believe that your society is superior to everyone else's because we have all the things _we_ value and they have none of the things _we_ value -- never mind what they value, that's irrelevant. So you can say you've made something of yourself because you're part of (by your own definition) a superior society.\r\n\r\nBut here's what I think Kearns and Patterson are trying to say -- these might not be the best ways to \"make something of yourself.\" In fact you might need to get completely outside yourself in order to make something.\r\n\r\nIf your definition of living well is making something of yourself and your primary means of making something of yourself is making less of everyone else then it's not surprising that anyone who suggests temporarily abandoning your life and your society is going to make you confused, angry, fearful and perhaps guilty.\r\n\r\n###The View From Here###\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/viewfromahammock.jpg\" alt=\"view from a hammock, little corn island, nicaragua\" class=\"postpic\" />Which brings me back to my own experiences in Goa -- fear, guilt, anger and confusion.\r\n\r\nNo, I never have entirely come to terms with the guilt or the confusion, but the fear and anger did go away. I quickly realized that there was no point being angry with myself for failing to leave my life sooner, I took comfort in the fact that at least I left eventually.\r\n\r\nThe guilt is still there. Much as I enjoy [sitting in hammock in Nicaragua][1] I spend a good bit of my time sitting there thinking about how I should be doing something with my life -- writing a novel, building a website, at the very least writing something about my travels. \r\n\r\nYou name it, I've felt guilty about not doing it. \r\n\r\nBut this last trip I started thinking about something else more troubling -- have I turned back into someone who thinks their life is important? Have I forgotten that feeling of total freedom that comes from abandoing your \"life,\" that relief of realizing that all the things I agonize over in my \"real\" life, are actually quite meaningless?\r\n\r\nSee unlike the commenters who don't buy the vagabond argument, I suffer from a different American cliche.\r\n\r\nFor me, America ingrained its devil-may-care adventure motif far more than its make-something-of-yourself cliche. From Lewis and Clark to Jack Kerouac, there's a strong cultural legacy of lighting out for the territories.\r\n\r\nNow I'm in an entirely different situation than I was when I left for my last trip. \r\n\r\nI'll be married later this month. The common wisdom is that traveling with a family is somehow impossible, in America there's a myth that once you're married and have kids you have to settle down and that butts up against the myth I've been buying into all this time -- Kerouac and the rest.\r\n\r\nI still don't know if it's my idea or just me replicating that devil-may-care cultural meme, but I reject the idea of settling down and I've met enough traveling families to know I won't be the first to reject it. \r\n\r\nIt may be more difficult to travel with a family, I'll have to get back to you on that, and fear not, I will get back to you because I will do it.\r\n\r\nBut the thing that strikes me is that, if I hadn't already set out, rejected my own life and gone through everything that I went through, adding a family to the equation might well make the whole idea seeming completely unfathomable. \r\n\r\nAnd that's something I think many of these self-styled vagabond travel writers leave out of their \"anyone can do it\" travel pieces.\r\n\r\nAnyone _can_ do it, but it takes a hell of a lot more courage and effort for some than for others. I have no doubt that Patterson and Kearns are both aware of that and I understand that including the nuances just isn't something online journalism generally allows for, but it's a shame because it ends up alienating the people who could most benefit from some encouraging.\r\n\r\nSo while I agree with both authors, I think the \"just do it\" incantations are every bit as hollow as a Nike ad -- even when they're true.\r\n\r\nAnd the glibness of most travel writing, particularly those of the so-called vagabond stripe ends up having the opposite effect that the proponents intend ([Rolf Potts][7] is a notable exception). \r\n\r\nI'm not going to tell you that it's easy to drop your life and take off to see the world. \r\nHowever, I will say that it isn't as hard as you think. Your job isn't as valuable as you think, there's probably someone who'd love to rent your house and your kids will thank you when they're older (mom, dad, thanks).\r\n\r\nI'm also not going to say that I don't buy the idea that you should strive to \"make something of yourself,\" but the important thing about the \"making\" is that _you_ define what that means. For some it might mean sticking to one job and providing for a family. For others it might mean dragging your family around the world on a grand adventure. Both answers are valid -- just make sure that it's you, not your culture, making the decision. And make sure that you realize both really are valid possibilities -- the only limitation to your life is your own imagination.\r\n\r\nFor me, making something of yourself is a never-ending process and one of the key elements is exploring all the different ways people around the world answer that fundamental question -- what does living well mean?\r\n\r\n[VGB image from <a href=\"http://www.rolfpotts.com/\">Rolf Potts</a>, cartoon from the ever hilarious <a href=\"http://xkcd.com/386/\">xkcd</a>]\r\n\r\n[1]: http://luxagraf.net/2008/apr/05/little-island-sun/\r\n[2]: http://matadortrips.com/\r\n[3]: http://thetravelersnotebook.com/how-to/how-to-travel-for-free/\r\n[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schistosoma\r\n[5]: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/09/dengue_fever/\r\n[6]: http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2008/06/04/the-tao-of-vagabond-travel/\r\n[7]: http://www.rolfpotts.com/", "dek": "Why all the vitriol about a seemingly innocuous concept -- that traveling doesn't have to cost a lot of money, isn't all that difficult and hey, you can even go right now? People like us, who feel tied down by responsibility, find the suggestion that we actually aren't tied down patronizing and yes, elitist.", "pub_date": "2008-06-07T14:45:29", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.3886068943292571 33.9448774700439060)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/wrong.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/wrong.jpg", "meta_description": "Saying that anyone can just drop everything and travel the world is patronizing and elitist, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 89, "fields": {"title": "Returning Again — Back on Little Corn Island", "slug": "returning-again-back-little-corn-island", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>his is a first -- going back to somewhere I've already been. Generally speaking, the world seems so huge and so full of amazing destinations that repeating one never struck me as a judicious use of my short allotment of time. However, given a rather small window of time for our honeymoon, Corrinne and I decided that the vaguely familiar would be more fun than something totally unpredictable and new.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/bigcorn2-1.jpg\" alt=\"Big corn Island Harbor\" class=\"postpic\" />Of course, the universe being what it is, our second trip to Little Corn Island has been unpredictable and entirely new. Other than the Best Western, still stolidly sitting directly across from the Managua airport, coming back to Nicaragua has presented a host of new and interesting experiences.</p>\n<p>For instance we weren't counting on the fact that the increased gas prices have severely pinched the average lobster fisherman and to protest the fact that lobster prices remain at their pre-expensive gas levels, the fisherman converged on the airstrip on Big Corn Island and proceeded to blockade the runway with trucks and their own bodies, effectively cutting off the island from the mainland for four days.\n<break>\nAll inbound flights were forced to stop in Bluefields, leaving stranded travelers milling around a town with very little to offer. Those looking to go the other way, back to Managua, were in even worse shape -- no incoming planes meant no outgoing ones either. </p>\n<p>Those desperate to make connecting flights onward from Managua were forced to charter fishing boats for up to $1200 and suffer through what had to be a very punishing ride across rough seas all the way back to Bluefields where they might be able to catch a (now very crowded) flight back to Managua.</p>\n<p>Fortunately the same sort of blind luck that has gotten me this far prevailed and the fishermen gave up the strike the morning we were set to leave. </p>\n<h2>Stranded on Big Corn</h2>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/bigcorn2-3.jpg\" alt=\"Stranded travelers waiting for the panga\" class=\"postpicright\" />Unfortunately, the drivers of the panga boat that runs between Big Corn and Little Corn didn't feel like there was enough business to bother with the evening trip the day we arrived. So Corrinne and I, along with a dozen or so fellow travelers, were stranded on Big Corn that night. </p>\n<p>Being stranded on an island in the Gulf of Mexico probably doesn't sound all that bad, but if the island happens to be Big Corn, well there just isn't much worth seeing or doing on Big Corn. And everything nice on Big Corn is at the south end, but our ferry was set to leave the next morning from the north end, so heading out for an explore seemed like a good way to miss the morning boat and possibly spend yet another day waiting.</p>\n<p>We holed up in a guesthouse just off the public shipping dock and spent the the afternoon and evening drinking and talking to the other people stuck in the same situation. Most of the local restaurants were closed, though we did manage to find a decent plate of shrimp and of course, plenty of Victoria to go around.</p>\n<p>And I made a hilarious discovery that proved a revelation to even the two dive masters who lived on Little Corn -- topless lighters. The store across the street from the Big Corn ferry sells the sort of cigarette lighters that have built-in flashlights, but rather than a simple LED flashlight, the manufacturer decided to go to the next logical level and packed in an image that looks to have been pirated from 1970s-era Playboy pinups. The result is a spotlight of a half naked Playmate, which provided no end of amusement to our stranded group. </p>\n<p>In fact, Big Corn would have been pretty much okay were it not for the dog somewhere in the vicinity of our guesthouse that sounded like it was being skinned alive. It wasn't, though the next morning several guests volunteered to do so, but it barked, yelped, cried and otherwise howled from around the time we went to bed until just before dawn. I actually didn't hear it much since I can sleep through just about anything, but no one else got much sleep that night.</p>\n<h2>The Wet Season</h2>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/bigcorn2-2.jpg\" alt=\"Corrinne and I waiting on the boat in Big Corn Island\" class=\"postpic\" />The first day on Little Corn we managed to find a bit of sun in the afternoon and somehow were already under shelter every time the rains came. Shelter is an interesting thing in the rain though, finding a roof isn't enough because the rain is almost completely horizontal thanks to a steady onshore wind, which has been increasing in force ever since we arrived.</p>\n<p>The first night we ate dinner at Casa Iguana with the owner's brother, who is currently involved in a sun-dried fruit project that might, if all goes well, one day be on the shelves of your local Whole Foods or Trader Joe's market. We sat a while afterward drinking mojitos with Camilla, an English girl we met the day before when we were all stranded on Big Corn.</p>\n<p>Still tired from a lack of sleep during the five-day party that was our wedding and the dog from the night before, we turned in early, this time with earplugs firmly in place. </p>\n<p>However, we somehow ended up in the cabin with no window blinds and around midnight a pretty massive storm blew in with winds that howled and horizontal rain driving straight under our porch awning and lashing against the window. But that wasn't what woke me up, it was the lightening flashes that turned night into day and somehow managed to burn through my closed eyelids that woke me up. </p>\n<p>Lightening doesn't especially bother me, I do after all live in Georgia where it's a near daily occurrence in the summer. But as I lay there in bed watching the torrential rains and flaying palm trees in the eery white glow of distant flashes, it suddenly occurred to me that we were sleeping in metal-roofed hut pretty near the highest point on the island -- basically a lightening rod with walls.</p>\n<p>So I lay awake thinking that being killed by lightening on your honeymoon was exactly the sort of horribly cheesy and predictable plot line that life seems to love -- up there with the super athlete contracts cancer, the day trader who suffers a heart attack on the first day of retirement and all the other things that Alanis Morrisette would say are ironic, but of course aren't. They're just strange coincidences. And I fear strange coincidences.</p>\n<p>I lay awake for an hour or more considering safer places to be in the storm and didn't really come up with anything since just about every building on the island has a metal roof. In the end I decided that being struck by lightening in my sleep would be somewhat better than the same while you're awake so I drifted off again and woke up to windy, but sunny skies.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>his is a first -- going back to somewhere I've already been. Generally speaking, the world seems so huge and so full of amazing destinations that repeating one never struck me as a judicious use of my short allotment of time. However, given a rather small window of time for our honeymoon, Corrinne and I decided that the vaguely familiar would be more fun than something totally unpredictable and new.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/bigcorn2-1.jpg\" alt=\"Big corn Island Harbor\" class=\"postpic\" />Of course, the universe being what it is, our second trip to Little Corn Island has been unpredictable and entirely new. Other than the Best Western, still stolidly sitting directly across from the Managua airport, coming back to Nicaragua has presented a host of new and interesting experiences.\r\n\r\nFor instance we weren't counting on the fact that the increased gas prices have severely pinched the average lobster fisherman and to protest the fact that lobster prices remain at their pre-expensive gas levels, the fisherman converged on the airstrip on Big Corn Island and proceeded to blockade the runway with trucks and their own bodies, effectively cutting off the island from the mainland for four days.\r\n<break>\r\nAll inbound flights were forced to stop in Bluefields, leaving stranded travelers milling around a town with very little to offer. Those looking to go the other way, back to Managua, were in even worse shape -- no incoming planes meant no outgoing ones either. \r\n\r\nThose desperate to make connecting flights onward from Managua were forced to charter fishing boats for up to $1200 and suffer through what had to be a very punishing ride across rough seas all the way back to Bluefields where they might be able to catch a (now very crowded) flight back to Managua.\r\n\r\nFortunately the same sort of blind luck that has gotten me this far prevailed and the fishermen gave up the strike the morning we were set to leave. \r\n\r\n##Stranded on Big Corn##\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/bigcorn2-3.jpg\" alt=\"Stranded travelers waiting for the panga\" class=\"postpicright\" />Unfortunately, the drivers of the panga boat that runs between Big Corn and Little Corn didn't feel like there was enough business to bother with the evening trip the day we arrived. So Corrinne and I, along with a dozen or so fellow travelers, were stranded on Big Corn that night. \r\n\r\nBeing stranded on an island in the Gulf of Mexico probably doesn't sound all that bad, but if the island happens to be Big Corn, well there just isn't much worth seeing or doing on Big Corn. And everything nice on Big Corn is at the south end, but our ferry was set to leave the next morning from the north end, so heading out for an explore seemed like a good way to miss the morning boat and possibly spend yet another day waiting.\r\n\r\nWe holed up in a guesthouse just off the public shipping dock and spent the the afternoon and evening drinking and talking to the other people stuck in the same situation. Most of the local restaurants were closed, though we did manage to find a decent plate of shrimp and of course, plenty of Victoria to go around.\r\n\r\nAnd I made a hilarious discovery that proved a revelation to even the two dive masters who lived on Little Corn -- topless lighters. The store across the street from the Big Corn ferry sells the sort of cigarette lighters that have built-in flashlights, but rather than a simple LED flashlight, the manufacturer decided to go to the next logical level and packed in an image that looks to have been pirated from 1970s-era Playboy pinups. The result is a spotlight of a half naked Playmate, which provided no end of amusement to our stranded group. \r\n\r\nIn fact, Big Corn would have been pretty much okay were it not for the dog somewhere in the vicinity of our guesthouse that sounded like it was being skinned alive. It wasn't, though the next morning several guests volunteered to do so, but it barked, yelped, cried and otherwise howled from around the time we went to bed until just before dawn. I actually didn't hear it much since I can sleep through just about anything, but no one else got much sleep that night.\r\n\r\n##The Wet Season##\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/bigcorn2-2.jpg\" alt=\"Corrinne and I waiting on the boat in Big Corn Island\" class=\"postpic\" />The first day on Little Corn we managed to find a bit of sun in the afternoon and somehow were already under shelter every time the rains came. Shelter is an interesting thing in the rain though, finding a roof isn't enough because the rain is almost completely horizontal thanks to a steady onshore wind, which has been increasing in force ever since we arrived.\r\n\r\nThe first night we ate dinner at Casa Iguana with the owner's brother, who is currently involved in a sun-dried fruit project that might, if all goes well, one day be on the shelves of your local Whole Foods or Trader Joe's market. We sat a while afterward drinking mojitos with Camilla, an English girl we met the day before when we were all stranded on Big Corn.\r\n\r\nStill tired from a lack of sleep during the five-day party that was our wedding and the dog from the night before, we turned in early, this time with earplugs firmly in place. \r\n\r\nHowever, we somehow ended up in the cabin with no window blinds and around midnight a pretty massive storm blew in with winds that howled and horizontal rain driving straight under our porch awning and lashing against the window. But that wasn't what woke me up, it was the lightening flashes that turned night into day and somehow managed to burn through my closed eyelids that woke me up. \r\n\r\nLightening doesn't especially bother me, I do after all live in Georgia where it's a near daily occurrence in the summer. But as I lay there in bed watching the torrential rains and flaying palm trees in the eery white glow of distant flashes, it suddenly occurred to me that we were sleeping in metal-roofed hut pretty near the highest point on the island -- basically a lightening rod with walls.\r\n\r\nSo I lay awake thinking that being killed by lightening on your honeymoon was exactly the sort of horribly cheesy and predictable plot line that life seems to love -- up there with the super athlete contracts cancer, the day trader who suffers a heart attack on the first day of retirement and all the other things that Alanis Morrisette would say are ironic, but of course aren't. They're just strange coincidences. And I fear strange coincidences.\r\n\r\nI lay awake for an hour or more considering safer places to be in the storm and didn't really come up with anything since just about every building on the island has a metal roof. In the end I decided that being struck by lightening in my sleep would be somewhat better than the same while you're awake so I drifted off again and woke up to windy, but sunny skies.\r\n\r\n", "dek": "Generally speaking, the world seems so huge and so full of amazing destinations that repeating one never struck me as a judicious use of my short allotment of time. But for Little Corn Island I'm willing to make an exception and of course, the universe being what it is, our second trip to Little Corn Island has been unpredictable and entirely new.", "pub_date": "2008-06-26T13:21:17", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-82.9713249091043821 12.2906947452453945)", "location": 3, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/littlecornagain.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/littlecornagain.jpg", "meta_description": "The world is vast, so vast you rarely return somewhere twice, but Little Corn Island demands an exception.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 90, "fields": {"title": "You Can't Go Home Again", "slug": "you-cant-go-home-again", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>he wind became constant on the second day, changing from the occasional gust that would precede an hour or two of torrential rains, to a steady 20-25 knot blow as if Zephuros himself were paying a visit to the island.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/littlecorn2-1.jpg\" alt=\"approaching storm, little corn island, nicaragua\" class=\"postpic\" />Once the wind became constant, silence retreated back to wherever silence goes in a world where squalls rule. At first you just notice the clattering palm leaves and of course the near deafening roar of the the rain on the tin roofs. Both mingle with the background of surf breaking just below the bluff where our cabin sits, facing east -- to Cuba and the oncoming clouds. \n<break>\nBut on the second day I started to hear other sounds -- the low steady groan of a turbine, like the sound you make when blowing on the top of an empty bottle. Then there are creaking screws and rusted hooks that hold up the hammocks on my porch. And of course the hammocks themselves, finely woven Nicaragua cotton battered about in the wind.</p>\n<p>When the rain comes it's horizontal, making awnings and porches a useless defense. The only way to stay dry is either inside or pressed against the leeward side of a building. </p>\n<p>The first time we came to Little Corn Island it was April, the tail end of the dry season. It rained once or twice, but never for more than five minutes and always followed by more sunshine.</p>\n<p>This time it's the end of June, just well into the wet season, and the island is an entirely different place.</p>\n<p>Naturally I wasn't really expecting it to be the same. I knew the weather would have changed, I knew the people we had met would be gone, save a few and I knew that it would be a different experience.</p>\n<p>But I wasn't entirely prepared for <em>how</em> different it would be.</p>\n<p>When I first returned from Southeast Asia, I wrote that it was impossible to go back. That travel was singular and unrepeatable.</p>\n<p>My actual words were \"You will want to hang on to things when they are perfect. You will want to stay in Vang Veing, a floating village, on an island lost at sea. You will want to return even after you have left. You will want things to be the same when you return. But they will not be the same.\"</p>\n<p>For all the overly-dramatic certitude, that was just a theory. Being the son of a scientist I hate to spout untested hypotheses, but now we've tested it and I can definitively say that I was right -- there is no going back. </p>\n<p>Going back must mean going again, otherwise it would imply that you, the place and everyone in it are static, fixed, immutable, and of course that simply isn't the world we live in. </p>\n<p>The danger in going again is that we will compare the present to the past and for some reason the present rarely fares well in that comparison.</p>\n<p>So yes, you can go back, physically, but be prepared for something entirely different -- for instance, here on Little Corn not only are the people different, but the very island has morphed and changed -- the rain comes daily and the beaches are almost non-existent.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/littlecorn2-3.jpg\" alt=\"ali, corrinne, little corn island, nicaragua\" class=\"postpicright\" />Ali, Little Corn's self-appointed medicine man, tells me that the shifting tides pull much of the sand back out toward the reef and the considerably bigger waves breaking on the far side of the reef would seem to prove his point. Eventually, come December, the tides will shift again, bring the sand back in. </p>\n<p>But in the mean time the island has literally shrunk. The beach where we spent most of our previous trip is now under two feet of water at high tide.</p>\n<p>I was sitting up at the Casa Iguana restaurant area yesterday thinking about how much even places can change, not in a matter of years, but months, even days. The remarkable thing about traveling is that it's not simply a matter of moving through space, it's time as well.</p>\n<p>In fact it might be one of life's more undisguised illustrations of the intrinsic link between space and time.</p>\n<p>Arriving somewhere is somewhat like a game of pool slowed down. </p>\n<p>When one pool balls strikes another there is that infinitesimal period of time where the balls actually compress, changing shape as they transfer energy. </p>\n<p>If you were to slow time and and magnify space sufficiently, you would see the balls compress as they touched -- that minute moment of contracting and expanding, the transfer of force, the temporary mingling of color and atoms, the kaleidoscope of impact -- somewhat akin to what it's like to spend a week in one particular place.</p>\n<p>You travel somewhere for a week, a month; you exist in that compressed space, impossible to observe from the outside, but very tangible and obvious within the kaleidoscope of the moment. Everything slows to near stop in relation to the outside world.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/littlecorn2-2.jpg\" alt=\"sunnier days, little corn island, nicaragua\" class=\"postpic\" />To an outside observer there is merely the impact, some photos on Flickr and the balls are already headed in opposite directions, vast expanses of blue-green felt suddenly between them.</p>\n<p>From the outside it looks like mere mechanics -- people and places collide and some record of time is produced -- but from the inside the experience is very different.</p>\n<p>As the one-time champion of the Denver pool halls, Ramstead Gordon (who was later dethroned by no less than Neal Cassady), once said \"This is not a game of physics, it's a game of magic.\"</p>\n<p>No two shots will ever be the same, no two or three or ten balls will ever cluster exactly the same way twice, no matter how similar they might seem from the outside. </p>\n<p>Duplication is almost certainly impossible, why else would our culture be so obsessed with the things we <em>can</em> duplicate if not as some defense against the things we cannot?</p>\n<p>So yes, as in pool, the places and experiences of travel are finite and you can never go back. But you can go again and bask in the changes because that's part of what makes it so interesting -- just don't try to fight it.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>he wind became constant on the second day, changing from the occasional gust that would precede an hour or two of torrential rains, to a steady 20-25 knot blow as if Zephuros himself were paying a visit to the island.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/littlecorn2-1.jpg\" alt=\"approaching storm, little corn island, nicaragua\" class=\"postpic\" />Once the wind became constant, silence retreated back to wherever silence goes in a world where squalls rule. At first you just notice the clattering palm leaves and of course the near deafening roar of the the rain on the tin roofs. Both mingle with the background of surf breaking just below the bluff where our cabin sits, facing east -- to Cuba and the oncoming clouds. \r\n<break>\r\nBut on the second day I started to hear other sounds -- the low steady groan of a turbine, like the sound you make when blowing on the top of an empty bottle. Then there are creaking screws and rusted hooks that hold up the hammocks on my porch. And of course the hammocks themselves, finely woven Nicaragua cotton battered about in the wind.\r\n\r\nWhen the rain comes it's horizontal, making awnings and porches a useless defense. The only way to stay dry is either inside or pressed against the leeward side of a building. \r\n\r\nThe first time we came to Little Corn Island it was April, the tail end of the dry season. It rained once or twice, but never for more than five minutes and always followed by more sunshine.\r\n\r\nThis time it's the end of June, just well into the wet season, and the island is an entirely different place.\r\n\r\nNaturally I wasn't really expecting it to be the same. I knew the weather would have changed, I knew the people we had met would be gone, save a few and I knew that it would be a different experience.\r\n\r\nBut I wasn't entirely prepared for _how_ different it would be.\r\n\r\nWhen I first returned from Southeast Asia, I wrote that it was impossible to go back. That travel was singular and unrepeatable.\r\n\r\nMy actual words were \"You will want to hang on to things when they are perfect. You will want to stay in Vang Veing, a floating village, on an island lost at sea. You will want to return even after you have left. You will want things to be the same when you return. But they will not be the same.\"\r\n\r\nFor all the overly-dramatic certitude, that was just a theory. Being the son of a scientist I hate to spout untested hypotheses, but now we've tested it and I can definitively say that I was right -- there is no going back. \r\n\r\nGoing back must mean going again, otherwise it would imply that you, the place and everyone in it are static, fixed, immutable, and of course that simply isn't the world we live in. \r\n\r\nThe danger in going again is that we will compare the present to the past and for some reason the present rarely fares well in that comparison.\r\n\r\nSo yes, you can go back, physically, but be prepared for something entirely different -- for instance, here on Little Corn not only are the people different, but the very island has morphed and changed -- the rain comes daily and the beaches are almost non-existent.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/littlecorn2-3.jpg\" alt=\"ali, corrinne, little corn island, nicaragua\" class=\"postpicright\" />Ali, Little Corn's self-appointed medicine man, tells me that the shifting tides pull much of the sand back out toward the reef and the considerably bigger waves breaking on the far side of the reef would seem to prove his point. Eventually, come December, the tides will shift again, bring the sand back in. \r\n\r\nBut in the mean time the island has literally shrunk. The beach where we spent most of our previous trip is now under two feet of water at high tide.\r\n\r\nI was sitting up at the Casa Iguana restaurant area yesterday thinking about how much even places can change, not in a matter of years, but months, even days. The remarkable thing about traveling is that it's not simply a matter of moving through space, it's time as well.\r\n\r\nIn fact it might be one of life's more undisguised illustrations of the intrinsic link between space and time.\r\n\r\nArriving somewhere is somewhat like a game of pool slowed down. \r\n\r\nWhen one pool balls strikes another there is that infinitesimal period of time where the balls actually compress, changing shape as they transfer energy. \r\n\r\nIf you were to slow time and and magnify space sufficiently, you would see the balls compress as they touched -- that minute moment of contracting and expanding, the transfer of force, the temporary mingling of color and atoms, the kaleidoscope of impact -- somewhat akin to what it's like to spend a week in one particular place.\r\n\r\nYou travel somewhere for a week, a month; you exist in that compressed space, impossible to observe from the outside, but very tangible and obvious within the kaleidoscope of the moment. Everything slows to near stop in relation to the outside world.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/littlecorn2-2.jpg\" alt=\"sunnier days, little corn island, nicaragua\" class=\"postpic\" />To an outside observer there is merely the impact, some photos on Flickr and the balls are already headed in opposite directions, vast expanses of blue-green felt suddenly between them.\r\n\r\nFrom the outside it looks like mere mechanics -- people and places collide and some record of time is produced -- but from the inside the experience is very different.\r\n\r\nAs the one-time champion of the Denver pool halls, Ramstead Gordon (who was later dethroned by no less than Neal Cassady), once said \"This is not a game of physics, it's a game of magic.\"\r\n\r\nNo two shots will ever be the same, no two or three or ten balls will ever cluster exactly the same way twice, no matter how similar they might seem from the outside. \r\n\r\nDuplication is almost certainly impossible, why else would our culture be so obsessed with the things we _can_ duplicate if not as some defense against the things we cannot?\r\n\r\nSo yes, as in pool, the places and experiences of travel are finite and you can never go back. But you can go again and bask in the changes because that's part of what makes it so interesting -- just don't try to fight it.", "dek": "The first time we came to Little Corn Island it was April, the tail end of the dry season. It rained once or twice, but never for more than five minutes and always followed by more sunshine. This time it's the end of June, just well into the wet season, and the island is an entirely different place.", "pub_date": "2008-06-30T17:49:43", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-82.9709815863503763 12.2896883817668812)", "location": 3, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/nohomeagain.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/nohomeagain.jpg", "meta_description": "Little Corn Island in the wet season -- horizontal rains and wind that makes even the beach temporarily retreat back out to sea. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 91, "fields": {"title": "Tiny Cities Made of Ash", "slug": "tiny-cities-made-ash", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>he bells are a constant cacophony, not the rhythmic ringing out of the hours or tolling from mass that the human mind seems to find pleasant; no, this is constant banging, the sort of atonal banging that only appeals to the young and dumb. The firecrackers bursting back over behind the cathedral add an off rhythm that only makes the whole mess more jarring.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/leon1.jpg\" alt=\"Leon, lion statue\" class=\"postpic\" />But Francisco seems entirely unperturbed and only once even glances over at toward the other side of the park, the source of all the noise and confusion. He's too fascinated with the tattoo on Corrinne's shoulder to bother with what slowly just becomes yet another sound echoing through León.</p>\n<p>Francisco is a shoe shiner, but since we're both wearing sandals he's out of luck and has reverted to what seems to be the secondary universal appeal of westerners -- a chance to practice English.\n<break>\nWe're sipping Victorias in a cafe just off the main park in León, Nicaragua. It's our fourth day here -- with an extra day spent at the nearby Pacific beaches -- in what is, so far, my favorite city in Nicaragua.</p>\n<p>Architecturally León is a bit like Granada, but since it lacks the UNESCO stamp it's somewhat less touristy and a bit more Nicaraguan, whatever that means. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/leon2.jpg\" alt=\"Leon, church bells\" class=\"postpicright\" />It's a city of poets and painters, philosophers and political revolutionaries. In fact, Nicaragua as a whole is full of poets and artists, all the newspapers still carry at least one poem everyday (U.S. newspapers used to do that too), but León is perhaps the pinnacle of Nicaraguan writing and painting, if for no other reason than it's a college town -- the constant influx of youth always brings with it vitality and art.</p>\n<p>There are three separate Nicaragua universities in León and even though none of them are in session right now, as with Athens, GA the fomenting imprint of students lingers even when they are gone -- political graffiti dots the cafes, bars are open later, people seem more active, the bells clang, the fireworks explode on an otherwise ordinary Sunday evening. </p>\n<p>In short, León has something that most of the rest of Nicaragua (and the U.S. for that matter) lacks -- a vibrant sense of community. </p>\n<p>Of course in relation to the States nearly everywhere seems to have a much stronger sense of community and togetherness. </p>\n<p>The irony though is that just writing those words together fills me with dread and loathing, a sure sign of my own inherent Americanism. </p>\n<p>But the truth is community doesn't have to mean over-priced \"organic\" markets, war protests round the maypole and whatever other useless crap passes itself off as community in Athens and elsewhere in America.</p>\n<p>Every time I go abroad, not just Nicaragua, but Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, just about anywhere, the communities are somehow more vibrant, more alive, more sensual -- full of bright colors, playing children, people walking to work, to the market, to the gym, to wherever. There is life in the streets.</p>\n<p>In Athens there's mainly just cars in the streets. Big, fast cars.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/leon3.jpg\" alt=\"house, Leon\" class=\"postpic\" />For instance, in León the houses are not the stolid tans, boring greys and muted greens you find in Athens, but brightly colored -- reds, blues, yellows, crimson, indigo, chartreuse even -- the doors are not shuttered and double-bolted, there are no lawns, no barriers between the life of the home and life of the street, everything co-mingles, a great soup of public and private with each overlapping the other. </p>\n<p>The clatter of the Red Sox game drifts out the window, along with the smell of fresh roasted chicken that mingles with the dust of the street, the kids gathering in the park, the declining light of the day, the first streetlights, the evening news, the women in curlers walking in the shadows just behind the half-open wooden doors....</p>\n<p>And it makes the streets more fun to walk down, there's something to experience, things to see and hear and smell and taste.</p>\n<p>Which isn't to say that León is Paris or New York, but in its own way it sort of is. Certainly it's better than my own neighborhood where I know exactly what color the houses will be before I even step out the door -- and not because I know the neighborhood, but because I know what colors comprise the set of acceptable options in the States -- where the children are staked in the front yard on leashes (invisible for the most part, but it won't surprise me when the leashes can be seen), neighbors wave, but rarely stop to talk and certainly no one walks anywhere unless it's for exercise.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/leon4.jpg\" alt=\"doorway, Leon\" class=\"postpicright\" />Why are American neighborhoods so dull? Why no happy colors? Why make things more lifeless than they already are, given that our neighborhoods are set up in such away that we abandon them all day and return only at night to sleep?</p>\n<p>Dunno, but I can tell you this, León, Paris, Phnom Phen, Prague, Vientiane and just about everywhere else is far more exciting to walk around than the average American town. And it isn't just the exotic appeal of the foreign; it's about architecture, design and the sharp division of public and private those two create to make our neighborhoods into the rigid anti-fun caricature that the rest of the world sees.</p>\n<p>Do I sound like a transcendentalist-inspired, anti-american crank? Sorry about that. I like America, really I do. And I hold out hope. One day my house will be vermillion -- my own small step.</p>\n<p>Plus, that's a big part of what I enjoy about traveling -- seeing how other people construct their house, their neighborhoods, their cities, their way of life... see not just how it differs from our own, but perhaps see some ways you could improve our lives. </p>\n<p>Like hammocks. We desperately need more hammocks. Lots of hammocks.</p>\n<p>But León isn't perfect. In fact it fails on several levels -- take that butt ugly radio/microwave/cell tower on the horizon -- why the hell would you put that in the middle of otherwise majestic 18th century Spanish colonial city?</p>\n<p>León, I'll miss you, you're just about perfect as far as Central America goes, maybe just see about moving that radio tower....</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>he bells are a constant cacophony, not the rhythmic ringing out of the hours or tolling from mass that the human mind seems to find pleasant; no, this is constant banging, the sort of atonal banging that only appeals to the young and dumb. The firecrackers bursting back over behind the cathedral add an off rhythm that only makes the whole mess more jarring.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/leon1.jpg\" alt=\"Leon, lion statue\" class=\"postpic\" />But Francisco seems entirely unperturbed and only once even glances over at toward the other side of the park, the source of all the noise and confusion. He's too fascinated with the tattoo on Corrinne's shoulder to bother with what slowly just becomes yet another sound echoing through León.\r\n\r\nFrancisco is a shoe shiner, but since we're both wearing sandals he's out of luck and has reverted to what seems to be the secondary universal appeal of westerners -- a chance to practice English.\r\n<break>\r\nWe're sipping Victorias in a cafe just off the main park in León, Nicaragua. It's our fourth day here -- with an extra day spent at the nearby Pacific beaches -- in what is, so far, my favorite city in Nicaragua.\r\n\r\nArchitecturally León is a bit like Granada, but since it lacks the UNESCO stamp it's somewhat less touristy and a bit more Nicaraguan, whatever that means. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/leon2.jpg\" alt=\"Leon, church bells\" class=\"postpicright\" />It's a city of poets and painters, philosophers and political revolutionaries. In fact, Nicaragua as a whole is full of poets and artists, all the newspapers still carry at least one poem everyday (U.S. newspapers used to do that too), but León is perhaps the pinnacle of Nicaraguan writing and painting, if for no other reason than it's a college town -- the constant influx of youth always brings with it vitality and art.\r\n\r\nThere are three separate Nicaragua universities in León and even though none of them are in session right now, as with Athens, GA the fomenting imprint of students lingers even when they are gone -- political graffiti dots the cafes, bars are open later, people seem more active, the bells clang, the fireworks explode on an otherwise ordinary Sunday evening. \r\n\r\nIn short, León has something that most of the rest of Nicaragua (and the U.S. for that matter) lacks -- a vibrant sense of community. \r\n\r\nOf course in relation to the States nearly everywhere seems to have a much stronger sense of community and togetherness. \r\n\r\nThe irony though is that just writing those words together fills me with dread and loathing, a sure sign of my own inherent Americanism. \r\n\r\nBut the truth is community doesn't have to mean over-priced \"organic\" markets, war protests round the maypole and whatever other useless crap passes itself off as community in Athens and elsewhere in America.\r\n\r\nEvery time I go abroad, not just Nicaragua, but Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, just about anywhere, the communities are somehow more vibrant, more alive, more sensual -- full of bright colors, playing children, people walking to work, to the market, to the gym, to wherever. There is life in the streets.\r\n\r\nIn Athens there's mainly just cars in the streets. Big, fast cars.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/leon3.jpg\" alt=\"house, Leon\" class=\"postpic\" />For instance, in León the houses are not the stolid tans, boring greys and muted greens you find in Athens, but brightly colored -- reds, blues, yellows, crimson, indigo, chartreuse even -- the doors are not shuttered and double-bolted, there are no lawns, no barriers between the life of the home and life of the street, everything co-mingles, a great soup of public and private with each overlapping the other. \r\n\r\nThe clatter of the Red Sox game drifts out the window, along with the smell of fresh roasted chicken that mingles with the dust of the street, the kids gathering in the park, the declining light of the day, the first streetlights, the evening news, the women in curlers walking in the shadows just behind the half-open wooden doors....\r\n\r\nAnd it makes the streets more fun to walk down, there's something to experience, things to see and hear and smell and taste.\r\n\r\nWhich isn't to say that León is Paris or New York, but in its own way it sort of is. Certainly it's better than my own neighborhood where I know exactly what color the houses will be before I even step out the door -- and not because I know the neighborhood, but because I know what colors comprise the set of acceptable options in the States -- where the children are staked in the front yard on leashes (invisible for the most part, but it won't surprise me when the leashes can be seen), neighbors wave, but rarely stop to talk and certainly no one walks anywhere unless it's for exercise.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/leon4.jpg\" alt=\"doorway, Leon\" class=\"postpicright\" />Why are American neighborhoods so dull? Why no happy colors? Why make things more lifeless than they already are, given that our neighborhoods are set up in such away that we abandon them all day and return only at night to sleep?\r\n\r\nDunno, but I can tell you this, León, Paris, Phnom Phen, Prague, Vientiane and just about everywhere else is far more exciting to walk around than the average American town. And it isn't just the exotic appeal of the foreign; it's about architecture, design and the sharp division of public and private those two create to make our neighborhoods into the rigid anti-fun caricature that the rest of the world sees.\r\n\r\nDo I sound like a transcendentalist-inspired, anti-american crank? Sorry about that. I like America, really I do. And I hold out hope. One day my house will be vermillion -- my own small step.\r\n\r\nPlus, that's a big part of what I enjoy about traveling -- seeing how other people construct their house, their neighborhoods, their cities, their way of life... see not just how it differs from our own, but perhaps see some ways you could improve our lives. \r\n\r\nLike hammocks. We desperately need more hammocks. Lots of hammocks.\r\n\r\nBut León isn't perfect. In fact it fails on several levels -- take that butt ugly radio/microwave/cell tower on the horizon -- why the hell would you put that in the middle of otherwise majestic 18th century Spanish colonial city?\r\n\r\nLeón, I'll miss you, you're just about perfect as far as Central America goes, maybe just see about moving that radio tower....", "dek": "The church bells of León have become a constant cacophony, not the rhythmic ringing out of the hours or tolling from Mass that the human mind seems to find pleasant, but the atonal banging that only appeals to the young and dumb. But Francisco is entirely unperturbed; He's too fascinated with the tattoo on Corrinne's shoulder to bother with what slowly just becomes yet another sound echoing through León.", "pub_date": "2008-07-03T23:21:22", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-86.8822002289945345 12.4356545516585317)", "location": 2, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/citiesmadeofash.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/citiesmadeofash.jpg", "meta_description": "Drinking ice cold beer in the afternoon heat of Leon, thinking about what I've learned in Nicaragua: the world needs more hammocks. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 92, "fields": {"title": "Our Days Are Becoming Nights", "slug": "our-days-are-becoming-nights", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">E</span>verywhere I go I think, I should live here... I should know what it's like to work in a cigar factory in Leon, fish in the Mekong, living in a floating house on Tonle Sap, sell hot dogs at Fenway Park, trade stocks in New York, wander the Thar Desert by camel, navigate the Danube, see the way Denali looks at sunset, the smell the Sonora Desert after a rain, taste the dust of a Juarez street, know how to make tortillas, what Mate tastes like, feel autumn in Paris, spend a winter in Moscow, a summer in Death Valley. I should be able to not just visit places, but in habit them.\n<break>\nThere is, so far as I know, only one short life. And in this life I will do very few of these things. </p>\n<p>Sometimes I think that's very sad.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">E</span>verywhere I go I think, I should live here... I should know what it's like to work in a cigar factory in Leon, fish in the Mekong, living in a floating house on Tonle Sap, sell hot dogs at Fenway Park, trade stocks in New York, wander the Thar Desert by camel, navigate the Danube, see the way Denali looks at sunset, the smell the Sonora Desert after a rain, taste the dust of a Juarez street, know how to make tortillas, what Mate tastes like, feel autumn in Paris, spend a winter in Moscow, a summer in Death Valley. I should be able to not just visit places, but in habit them.\r\n<break>\r\nThere is, so far as I know, only one short life. And in this life I will do very few of these things. \r\n\r\nSometimes I think that's very sad.", "dek": "A short thought on the eve of our departure from Nicaragua: Everywhere I go I think, I should live here... I should be able to not just visit places, but in habit them. Of course that isn't possible, which is too bad.", "pub_date": "2008-07-06T23:30:25", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-86.8845820305993897 12.4364822429039421)", "location": 2, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/daysnights.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/daysnights.jpg", "meta_description": "Everywhere I go I think, I should live here... and indeed I should, but it just doesn't work like that does it? By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 93, "fields": {"title": "Rope Swings and River Floats", "slug": "rope-swings-and-river-floats", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>wo weekends ago we went up to the mountains, just outside of Dahlonega GA, and floated the Chestatee River using inner tubes, various pool toys and one super-cool inflatable seahorse. We even rigged up an inner tube to carry a cooler of beer and dragged an extra inflatable boat to pick up trash (as well as hold our own).</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/chestatee_river_1.jpg\" alt=\"Tubing on the Chestatee River\" class=\"postpic\" />It was great fun. We found a rope swing where you could climb up about six feet on the bank and swing out over the river and drop into a nice pool that was plenty deep for the landing. </p>\n<p>What made the whole thing possible is that my wife's parents own a cabin in the area, which they are kind enough to let us use. </p>\n<p>Since this weekend was my father-in-law's birthday, we decided to head up and do another river run.\n<break>\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/chestatee_river_2.jpg\" alt=\"Tubing on the Chestatee River\" class=\"postpicright\" />After parking the car at the end and trucking the tubes down to the launch point, we put into the river. Just beyond the launch point there's a couple sizable drops that we walked around last time, but this time, after scouting things out, I figured out how to go down. </p>\n<p>I made it through unscathed and I sat in the lower pool waiting for the others.</p>\n<p>In short, things started well. </p>\n<p>About a minute later a drowning bumble bee somehow climbed out of the river, onto my tube and then stung my right arm. </p>\n<p>For most people that's a moment of discomfort and no big deal. But I'm lucky, I'm allergic to bees so for me it means a moment of discomfort followed by several days of swelling and aching -- as I type this my forearm is about one and half times its normal size. Of course it could be worse, I could be \"I have to carry an epi-pen\" allergic, which, thankfully, I'm not.</p>\n<p>Everyone asked if I was okay or if we should turn around. In hindsight, I should have said no, I wasn't okay and yes we should turn around -- not because of me, just because I know what happened next -- but I didn't, so we continued on. [This would have been a great time for the crazy old man of the river to come out of the woods, point a crooked finger in our direction and prophetically croak, \"you're all doomed.\" But as far as I know the Chestatee lacks any such character.]</p>\n<p>For about an hour it was the same peaceful float we did two weeks ago, a few rapids, long calm stretches where the river is too deep to touch bottom, just lying back in your tube watching the hardwood's overhanging branches threading across the gray-blue sky. Or the snarled banks choked with laurel and the occasional honeysuckle, roots protruding out like fingers rubbed raw by the passing water.</p>\n<p>It's one of the finest stretches of river I've ever been down.</p>\n<p>And then we came to the rope swing. </p>\n<p>Everything that follows is essentially my fault. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/chestatee_river_3.jpg\" alt=\"rope swing\" class=\"postpic\" />See, I love to jump off of things. Swinging off of things is even better. And if you can dive... If there's somewhere to jump, swing or dive, I'm probably going to find it. </p>\n<p>Of course it's not the safest thing in the world to do, nor am I the sharpest tool in the shed, but you already knew that much.</p>\n<p>When we went down two weeks ago I spied a rope hanging down from a tree. Naturally, I immediately started paddling for the shore. Now I seriously wish I hadn't, but I did. </p>\n<p>I climbed out of my tube and grabbed the rope and walked up the bank. I quickly discovered that I couldn't reach the handle someone had kindly attached. However there was a bit of rope extending down from the handle, which some other shorter person had no doubt added. </p>\n<p>Normally I would have climbed back down the bank and checked to see how far off the ground the little extension of rope would have put me. But for whatever reason I didn't, I just grabbed it and jumped. </p>\n<p>Just below the embankment where you launched from there were some stratified rocks sticking out of the water -- fairly sharp, ridged rocks, the sort of rocks that look to have jutted up straight out of the Mesozoic era.</p>\n<p>And I hit them. About a millisecond after I jumped I knew I was doomed and I pulled my legs up to my chest as tight as could and tried to control the crash. I hit the rocks hard, but with my feet (the Choco sandals I bought for my trip around the world are still the best purchase I've ever made and they allow me to do things like bounce off rocks without a scratch).</p>\n<p>As soon as my feet hit the rocks I twisted my body and pushed off out into the deeper water and managed to avoid more serious injury. However, it wasn't so much my skills or planning that saved me, really it was just dumb luck.</p>\n<p>Undeterred (or stupidly if that syntax works better for you) I climbed back up and was joined by a couple of other people from our river party who wanted to give it a try. </p>\n<p>Long story short: it turned out that if you were about six feet tall you could reach the handle, if you were five ten like me and someone else put their weight on the rope to stretch it, you could also reach the handle. </p>\n<p>If you were five five like one girl who did it, you could be picked up and then grab the rope handle. The problem is that the person picking you up is on a muddy incline and bit off balance themselves.</p>\n<p>Which brings us to today.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/chestatee_river_4.jpg\" alt=\"rope swing\" class=\"postpicright\" />My wife's brother Jeremy and I stopped at the swing and his girlfriend, Tova, wanted to give it a try. I held the rope and Jeremy held her up until she could grab the handle. It worked and she swung out over the river and let go. We all had a turn and then another. </p>\n<p>We went up for a third try.</p>\n<p>Same routine, I pulled the rope as taut as it would go and Jeremy held her up to grab the handle. We both thought she had it, but as Jeremy was starting to let go she said, \"no, wait.\" </p>\n<p>But it was already too late, he couldn't have held her if he wanted to. Even if he had been able to they both would have fallen and landed on the roots and rocks below.</p>\n<p>Instead, Tova swung out about five feet and then her grip slipped and she fell, hard, face first onto the same rocks I had hit with my feet. </p>\n<p>When she first came up out of the water I could already see a blue bruise and blood on her leg. I thought for a moment that it was a broken bone sticking up, ready to break through the skin. I went down to help, but there wasn't much I could do. I figured having a broken bone sticking up <em>and</em> having someone throw up on you was probably worse than just the bone. </p>\n<p>I looked around trying to figure out a way off the river and out of the valley. But there wasn't one. Even if we had a cellphone, there was no way you could fly a helicopter into the riverbed, it was too narrow and overgrown (I bet <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2008/apr/02/return-sea/\">Kenso could have done it</a>, but he wasn't immediately available). </p>\n<p>The options were: walk upstream or float down. That really isn't a hard decision if you spend much time thinking about it.</p>\n<p>Thankfully the majority of her fall was broken by the innertubes we had stacked below to try and cover the rocks in case of something like what happened. Unfortunately we missed a spot, the center of tubes, and that's where her knee hit.</p>\n<p>Luckily it turned out out that bloody blue bruise I saw wasn't a broken bone threatening to poke through the skin. Of course that fact that the bruised, bloody contusion was her kneecap didn't really make things much better.</p>\n<p>After a few minutes of evaluating our options, Tova said she felt okay enough to continue down. We took ice from the cooler and put it on her leg and Jeremy walked the rest of way, guiding Tova in the small inflatable boat, with her leg elevated and the ice-pack resting on her knee.</p>\n<p>Eventually we got back to the car and got Tova to a hospital where X-Rays determined that she had fractured her patella (kneecap). </p>\n<p>Which means Tova floated for over half hour down a river with no painkillers other than ice, with a fractured kneecap. </p>\n<p>You wouldn't be able to do that. I wouldn't be able to do that. But Tova is considerably tougher than the rest of us and she did it.</p>\n<p>I don't know what will happen with her knee in the long run, hopefully surgery won't be necessary. I once did something similar skiing and I know how much joint injuries suck. Her leg is currently in one of those super annoying anti-mobility casts that extends from your mid hip to your ankle, which means you can't drive or really do much of anything. </p>\n<p>If you'd like to send a care package or something of that nature, e-mail me and I'll give you an address. In the mean time hopefully the pain isn't too bad. </p>\n<p>And I have to say, Tova, I think you're pretty badass for floating the rest of way down the river with a shattered kneecap and a smile. I would have cried the whole way.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>wo weekends ago we went up to the mountains, just outside of Dahlonega GA, and floated the Chestatee River using inner tubes, various pool toys and one super-cool inflatable seahorse. We even rigged up an inner tube to carry a cooler of beer and dragged an extra inflatable boat to pick up trash (as well as hold our own).\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/chestatee_river_1.jpg\" alt=\"Tubing on the Chestatee River\" class=\"postpic\" />It was great fun. We found a rope swing where you could climb up about six feet on the bank and swing out over the river and drop into a nice pool that was plenty deep for the landing. \r\n\r\nWhat made the whole thing possible is that my wife's parents own a cabin in the area, which they are kind enough to let us use. \r\n\r\nSince this weekend was my father-in-law's birthday, we decided to head up and do another river run.\r\n<break>\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/chestatee_river_2.jpg\" alt=\"Tubing on the Chestatee River\" class=\"postpicright\" />After parking the car at the end and trucking the tubes down to the launch point, we put into the river. Just beyond the launch point there's a couple sizable drops that we walked around last time, but this time, after scouting things out, I figured out how to go down. \r\n\r\nI made it through unscathed and I sat in the lower pool waiting for the others.\r\n\r\nIn short, things started well. \r\n\r\nAbout a minute later a drowning bumble bee somehow climbed out of the river, onto my tube and then stung my right arm. \r\n\r\nFor most people that's a moment of discomfort and no big deal. But I'm lucky, I'm allergic to bees so for me it means a moment of discomfort followed by several days of swelling and aching -- as I type this my forearm is about one and half times its normal size. Of course it could be worse, I could be \"I have to carry an epi-pen\" allergic, which, thankfully, I'm not.\r\n\r\nEveryone asked if I was okay or if we should turn around. In hindsight, I should have said no, I wasn't okay and yes we should turn around -- not because of me, just because I know what happened next -- but I didn't, so we continued on. [This would have been a great time for the crazy old man of the river to come out of the woods, point a crooked finger in our direction and prophetically croak, \"you're all doomed.\" But as far as I know the Chestatee lacks any such character.]\r\n\r\nFor about an hour it was the same peaceful float we did two weeks ago, a few rapids, long calm stretches where the river is too deep to touch bottom, just lying back in your tube watching the hardwood's overhanging branches threading across the gray-blue sky. Or the snarled banks choked with laurel and the occasional honeysuckle, roots protruding out like fingers rubbed raw by the passing water.\r\n\r\nIt's one of the finest stretches of river I've ever been down.\r\n\r\nAnd then we came to the rope swing. \r\n\r\nEverything that follows is essentially my fault. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/chestatee_river_3.jpg\" alt=\"rope swing\" class=\"postpic\" />See, I love to jump off of things. Swinging off of things is even better. And if you can dive... If there's somewhere to jump, swing or dive, I'm probably going to find it. \r\n\r\nOf course it's not the safest thing in the world to do, nor am I the sharpest tool in the shed, but you already knew that much.\r\n\r\nWhen we went down two weeks ago I spied a rope hanging down from a tree. Naturally, I immediately started paddling for the shore. Now I seriously wish I hadn't, but I did. \r\n\r\nI climbed out of my tube and grabbed the rope and walked up the bank. I quickly discovered that I couldn't reach the handle someone had kindly attached. However there was a bit of rope extending down from the handle, which some other shorter person had no doubt added. \r\n\r\nNormally I would have climbed back down the bank and checked to see how far off the ground the little extension of rope would have put me. But for whatever reason I didn't, I just grabbed it and jumped. \r\n\r\nJust below the embankment where you launched from there were some stratified rocks sticking out of the water -- fairly sharp, ridged rocks, the sort of rocks that look to have jutted up straight out of the Mesozoic era.\r\n\r\nAnd I hit them. About a millisecond after I jumped I knew I was doomed and I pulled my legs up to my chest as tight as could and tried to control the crash. I hit the rocks hard, but with my feet (the Choco sandals I bought for my trip around the world are still the best purchase I've ever made and they allow me to do things like bounce off rocks without a scratch).\r\n\r\nAs soon as my feet hit the rocks I twisted my body and pushed off out into the deeper water and managed to avoid more serious injury. However, it wasn't so much my skills or planning that saved me, really it was just dumb luck.\r\n\r\nUndeterred (or stupidly if that syntax works better for you) I climbed back up and was joined by a couple of other people from our river party who wanted to give it a try. \r\n\r\nLong story short: it turned out that if you were about six feet tall you could reach the handle, if you were five ten like me and someone else put their weight on the rope to stretch it, you could also reach the handle. \r\n\r\nIf you were five five like one girl who did it, you could be picked up and then grab the rope handle. The problem is that the person picking you up is on a muddy incline and bit off balance themselves.\r\n\r\nWhich brings us to today.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/chestatee_river_4.jpg\" alt=\"rope swing\" class=\"postpicright\" />My wife's brother Jeremy and I stopped at the swing and his girlfriend, Tova, wanted to give it a try. I held the rope and Jeremy held her up until she could grab the handle. It worked and she swung out over the river and let go. We all had a turn and then another. \r\n\r\nWe went up for a third try.\r\n\r\nSame routine, I pulled the rope as taut as it would go and Jeremy held her up to grab the handle. We both thought she had it, but as Jeremy was starting to let go she said, \"no, wait.\" \r\n\r\nBut it was already too late, he couldn't have held her if he wanted to. Even if he had been able to they both would have fallen and landed on the roots and rocks below.\r\n\r\nInstead, Tova swung out about five feet and then her grip slipped and she fell, hard, face first onto the same rocks I had hit with my feet. \r\n\r\nWhen she first came up out of the water I could already see a blue bruise and blood on her leg. I thought for a moment that it was a broken bone sticking up, ready to break through the skin. I went down to help, but there wasn't much I could do. I figured having a broken bone sticking up _and_ having someone throw up on you was probably worse than just the bone. \r\n\r\nI looked around trying to figure out a way off the river and out of the valley. But there wasn't one. Even if we had a cellphone, there was no way you could fly a helicopter into the riverbed, it was too narrow and overgrown (I bet [Kenso could have done it][1], but he wasn't immediately available). \r\n\r\n[1]: http://luxagraf.net/2008/apr/02/return-sea/\r\n\r\nThe options were: walk upstream or float down. That really isn't a hard decision if you spend much time thinking about it.\r\n\r\nThankfully the majority of her fall was broken by the innertubes we had stacked below to try and cover the rocks in case of something like what happened. Unfortunately we missed a spot, the center of tubes, and that's where her knee hit.\r\n\r\nLuckily it turned out out that bloody blue bruise I saw wasn't a broken bone threatening to poke through the skin. Of course that fact that the bruised, bloody contusion was her kneecap didn't really make things much better.\r\n\r\nAfter a few minutes of evaluating our options, Tova said she felt okay enough to continue down. We took ice from the cooler and put it on her leg and Jeremy walked the rest of way, guiding Tova in the small inflatable boat, with her leg elevated and the ice-pack resting on her knee.\r\n\r\nEventually we got back to the car and got Tova to a hospital where X-Rays determined that she had fractured her patella (kneecap). \r\n\r\nWhich means Tova floated for over half hour down a river with no painkillers other than ice, with a fractured kneecap. \r\n\r\nYou wouldn't be able to do that. I wouldn't be able to do that. But Tova is considerably tougher than the rest of us and she did it.\r\n\r\nI don't know what will happen with her knee in the long run, hopefully surgery won't be necessary. I once did something similar skiing and I know how much joint injuries suck. Her leg is currently in one of those super annoying anti-mobility casts that extends from your mid hip to your ankle, which means you can't drive or really do much of anything. \r\n\r\nIf you'd like to send a care package or something of that nature, e-mail me and I'll give you an address. In the mean time hopefully the pain isn't too bad. \r\n\r\nAnd I have to say, Tova, I think you're pretty badass for floating the rest of way down the river with a shattered kneecap and a smile. I would have cried the whole way.", "dek": "Two weekends ago we went up to the mountains, just outside of Dahlonega GA, and floated the Chestatee River using inner tubes, various pool toys and one super-cool inflatable seahorse. Unfortunately, proving one of my travel mottos -- you can never go back -- a return trip proved disastrous.", "pub_date": "2008-07-27T20:14:49", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.9028024556666310 34.5346315992127089)", "location": 1, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/chestateeriver.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/chestateeriver.jpg", "meta_description": "Inner tubing down the Chestatee River, just outside of Dahlonega, GA. Fun, but possibly a little dangerous as well. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 94, "fields": {"title": "Elkmont and the Great Smoky Mountains", "slug": "elkmont-and-great-smoky-mountains", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>he road undulates through the darkness, over the long, arching tails of mountain ridges, where the eastern slopes of the Smokies taper off into the Tennessee River Valley. Divets between tiny the rolling hilltops form eerie microclimes of misty white clouds hugging the valleys and road like the fingers of some wispy white mountain ghosts snaking down from the peaks. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/road_night_sm.jpg\" alt=\"headlights on the road\" class=\"postpic\" />With the windows cracked it's not hard to tell that the pockets of fog gather in the cold crevasses where the temperature drops noticeably along with the highway. From the top of every small hill, the headlights move like shiny ribbons though the knuckles of mountains. As the beams dive back down, the view from behind the windshield becomes a bath of smoky white light -- a film noir scene brought to life. And then the car rushes up out of the chilly depths and into the clear night, atop another ridge where the remnants of wood plank fences line the road.</p>\n<p>From a particularly high ridge the land is lit up by the rising moon and succession of foggy pockets and lumpy ridges between spreads out like cigarette smoke settling in the creases of some red vinyl cushions, tucked in the corner of an all night diner, straight out of the 1950s.</p>\n<p>The Smoky Mountains are, as it turns out, well named. </p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>Were it light, the landscape and buildings in the area would indeed look much like the 50s. Not a lot appears to have changed on the slopes of the Smokies in quite some time. The new developments -- strip malls, cookie cutter suburbs and giant megastores -- are further up ahead, around the bend in Knoxville, Maryville.</p>\n<p>But out here in the boundary land of mountain and plain it's just the headlights stabbing through the fog. </p>\n<p>I keep half expecting to see some ghostly figure off in the shadowy outline of trees at the edge of the small arc of headlamps, to catch some otherworldly creature slouching through the foggy forest, off to haunt the crumbling farm houses set back from the road, enveloped in night.</p>\n<p>Occasionally I pass through a town -- sudden, brilliant, florescent -- gas stations, neon beer signs in a window, telephone wires, stoplights, downshifting and then fading in the rearview mirror, returning to the murky hills.</p>\n<p>It continues like that with a brief break through Maryville where Starbucks and shopping malls remind me that I am indeed still part of the 21st century. But then that fades as we move into the mountains again, higher, this time in pure blackness, even the fog is gone.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/fog.jpg\" alt=\"fog, hillside\" class=\"postpicright\" />After a while the zigzags stop and the road follows the river upstream headed to Pigeon Forge, which, when you reach it in darkness, can't help but look like an amusement park at the gates of hell, a last ditch effort of all failed American cultural ideas shored up together -- Elvis impersonators, mini golf, Dollyworld, all-you-can-eat restaurants serving every food imaginable as long as your imagination is limited to steak and pizza, which apparently, for many, it is.</p>\n<p>Pigeon Forge is everything that's wrong with America. </p>\n<p>Pigeon Forge is Myrtle Beach in the mountains, it lacks any basis in reality and, like Myrtle Beach, <a href=\"/2007/jun/17/being-there/\">it doesn't really exist</a>. It's all just redneck weddings cascading straight out of the chapel and into the mini golf reception area.</p>\n<p>I used to think the demise of such places would be gradual, almost imperceptible, until one day they were just vacant and ghostly, joining Bowie CA, Bisbee, St Elmo and other places that simply slipped our collective minds. However, in the case of Pigeon Forge it may well be much faster. The people who come here are the same ones now mailing their house keys to the mortgage companies -- the unreality of it all only lasts for so long. Of course I could be wrong.</p>\n<p>And we aren't here for Pigeon Forge, it just happens to have a free condo we're staying in. We're here for the mountains. Smoky Mountain National Park is just a few miles up the road.</p>\n<p><span class=\"break\"> </span></p>\n<p>The next morning I'm sitting on the patio, bundled up against the unseasonable cold, reading Cormac McCarthy's <cite>The Orchard Keeper</cite> which is largely set here in these same mountains, but back in the early 1920s. <cite>The Orchard Keeper</cite> is fiction, but McCarthy spent a fair share of his life in Sevier County and knew these mountains well -- you can feel them living and breathing right there in the turning of the page.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>He came out on a high bald knoll that looked over the valley and he stopped here and studied it as a man might cresting a hill and seeing a strange landscape for the first time. Pine and cedars in a dark swath of green piled down the mountain to the left and ceased again where the road cut through. Beyond that a field and a log hogpin, the shakes spilling down the broken roof, looking like some diminutive settler's cabin in ruins. Through the leaves of the hardwoods he could see the zinc-colored roof of the church faintly coruscant and patched of boarded siding weathered the paper-gray of a waspnest. And in the distance the long purple welts of the Great Smokies.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/purplemountains.jpg\" alt=\"ridges of the smokies\" class=\"postpic\" />Although with a bit of driving, and some selective horizon framing, you can find crumbling buildings with collapsing siding that does indeed resemble the \"paper-gray of a waspnest,\" or the ridgelines like bruised knuckles interrupting the sunrise, for the most part McCarthy's vision of the Smokies is just a memory, a half crumbled placemarker at a neglected turnout in the road, a few yellowed, slightly retouched photos in a visitor center, a coffee table book of history purchased for friends back home.</p>\n<p>I would love to know what McCarthy thinks of Sevier and environs now. It would be nice to drink a pint with him and hear about a time when men and women were sane, cautious and respectful. Of course, if you've ever read a McCarthy book you know what happens to those characters, they are, in one way or another displaced by the less savory, the more ambitious, more full of hot air and power-hungry dreams.</p>\n<p>In McCarthy's world the meek very rarely inherit anything save dust and silence, but they do retain their dignity, something painfully lacking in Pigeon Forge.</p>\n<p><span class=\"break\"> </span></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/reflectedtrees.jpg\" alt=\"river, trees\" class=\"postpicright\" />The mountains are still beautiful, dying perhaps, choking on smoke from Chattanooga and Atlanta, mostly Atlanta, but in the mean time the leaves on the trees run the spectrum from ochre to vermillion with all the middle hues as well.</p>\n<p>We spend a few days, driving mainly, but occasionally walking, through the mountains, the trees, along the rivers and streams, the windswept peaks with fog breaking over them like waves of mist and smoke.</p>\n<p>There are also the crumbling remains of old grist mills and early towns now abandoned; remnants of a time, near the end of the 19th century when hiking and exploring the outdoors was all the rage -- John Muir helped the trend along, but for a time people genuinely liked to get up into the mountains, out in the desert and see America's unparalleled natural wonderland. </p>\n<p>One the byproducts of that era is the ghost town of Elkmont, nestled up against the steep ridges of the Smokies at the end of railway line that used to stretch back to down to Maryville. Elkmont began like as a rough and tumble logging town, and while I couldn't find mention of it in <cite>The Orchard Keeper</cite>, it dates from 1908 which puts it in roughly the same time frame. </p>\n<p>Over time Elkmont ran out of trees to easily harvest and the town gradually evolved into a haven for the socially prominent and wealthy members of Knoxville, Maryville, and Chattanooga -- summer cottages were built, a central hunting lodge was added and members built a number of trails that lead off into the Smokies.</p>\n<p>At the zenith of its popularity the Little River Railroad, which ran from Knoxville to Elkmont, offered a Sunday \"Elkmont Special\" -- non-stop train service to the mountains. That proved popular enough that the Sunday special became a regular, several days a week route.</p>\n<p>Then that passed or was diluted somehow, getting out to see the land was condensed down to the somewhat easier, more profitable habit of just buying fleece jackets at the mega-mall and playing a bit of putt-putt golf in Pigeon Forge.</p>\n<p>Oh well.</p>\n<p><span class=\"break\"> </span></p>\n<p>One piece of advice, should you head to Smoky Mountain National Park, don't dig too deep, if you do any more than scratch the surface you might discover some unpleasant things -- like the signs along the river that read: Do Not Drink, Swim, Bathe or Touch the Water; River contains fecal matter.</p>\n<p>Yes, the rivers are full of shit. Shouldn't be surprising then that Pigeon Forge is full of shit. Everything trickles downhill as they say.</p>\n<p>And we are all more or less full of shit.</p>\n<p>Don't drink the water.</p>\n<p>And so it goes.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>he road undulates through the darkness, over the long, arching tails of mountain ridges, where the eastern slopes of the Smokies taper off into the Tennessee River Valley. Divets between tiny the rolling hilltops form eerie microclimes of misty white clouds hugging the valleys and road like the fingers of some wispy white mountain ghosts snaking down from the peaks. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/road_night_sm.jpg\" alt=\"headlights on the road\" class=\"postpic\" />With the windows cracked it's not hard to tell that the pockets of fog gather in the cold crevasses where the temperature drops noticeably along with the highway. From the top of every small hill, the headlights move like shiny ribbons though the knuckles of mountains. As the beams dive back down, the view from behind the windshield becomes a bath of smoky white light -- a film noir scene brought to life. And then the car rushes up out of the chilly depths and into the clear night, atop another ridge where the remnants of wood plank fences line the road.\r\n\r\nFrom a particularly high ridge the land is lit up by the rising moon and succession of foggy pockets and lumpy ridges between spreads out like cigarette smoke settling in the creases of some red vinyl cushions, tucked in the corner of an all night diner, straight out of the 1950s.\r\n\r\nThe Smoky Mountains are, as it turns out, well named. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nWere it light, the landscape and buildings in the area would indeed look much like the 50s. Not a lot appears to have changed on the slopes of the Smokies in quite some time. The new developments -- strip malls, cookie cutter suburbs and giant megastores -- are further up ahead, around the bend in Knoxville, Maryville.\r\n\r\nBut out here in the boundary land of mountain and plain it's just the headlights stabbing through the fog. \r\n\r\nI keep half expecting to see some ghostly figure off in the shadowy outline of trees at the edge of the small arc of headlamps, to catch some otherworldly creature slouching through the foggy forest, off to haunt the crumbling farm houses set back from the road, enveloped in night.\r\n\r\nOccasionally I pass through a town -- sudden, brilliant, florescent -- gas stations, neon beer signs in a window, telephone wires, stoplights, downshifting and then fading in the rearview mirror, returning to the murky hills.\r\n\r\nIt continues like that with a brief break through Maryville where Starbucks and shopping malls remind me that I am indeed still part of the 21st century. But then that fades as we move into the mountains again, higher, this time in pure blackness, even the fog is gone.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/fog.jpg\" alt=\"fog, hillside\" class=\"postpicright\" />After a while the zigzags stop and the road follows the river upstream headed to Pigeon Forge, which, when you reach it in darkness, can't help but look like an amusement park at the gates of hell, a last ditch effort of all failed American cultural ideas shored up together -- Elvis impersonators, mini golf, Dollyworld, all-you-can-eat restaurants serving every food imaginable as long as your imagination is limited to steak and pizza, which apparently, for many, it is.\r\n\r\nPigeon Forge is everything that's wrong with America. \r\n\r\nPigeon Forge is Myrtle Beach in the mountains, it lacks any basis in reality and, like Myrtle Beach, <a href=\"/2007/jun/17/being-there/\">it doesn't really exist</a>. It's all just redneck weddings cascading straight out of the chapel and into the mini golf reception area.\r\n\r\nI used to think the demise of such places would be gradual, almost imperceptible, until one day they were just vacant and ghostly, joining Bowie CA, Bisbee, St Elmo and other places that simply slipped our collective minds. However, in the case of Pigeon Forge it may well be much faster. The people who come here are the same ones now mailing their house keys to the mortgage companies -- the unreality of it all only lasts for so long. Of course I could be wrong.\r\n\r\nAnd we aren't here for Pigeon Forge, it just happens to have a free condo we're staying in. We're here for the mountains. Smoky Mountain National Park is just a few miles up the road.\r\n\r\n<span class=\"break\"> </span>\r\n\r\nThe next morning I'm sitting on the patio, bundled up against the unseasonable cold, reading Cormac McCarthy's <cite>The Orchard Keeper</cite> which is largely set here in these same mountains, but back in the early 1920s. <cite>The Orchard Keeper</cite> is fiction, but McCarthy spent a fair share of his life in Sevier County and knew these mountains well -- you can feel them living and breathing right there in the turning of the page.\r\n\r\n>He came out on a high bald knoll that looked over the valley and he stopped here and studied it as a man might cresting a hill and seeing a strange landscape for the first time. Pine and cedars in a dark swath of green piled down the mountain to the left and ceased again where the road cut through. Beyond that a field and a log hogpin, the shakes spilling down the broken roof, looking like some diminutive settler's cabin in ruins. Through the leaves of the hardwoods he could see the zinc-colored roof of the church faintly coruscant and patched of boarded siding weathered the paper-gray of a waspnest. And in the distance the long purple welts of the Great Smokies.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/purplemountains.jpg\" alt=\"ridges of the smokies\" class=\"postpic\" />Although with a bit of driving, and some selective horizon framing, you can find crumbling buildings with collapsing siding that does indeed resemble the \"paper-gray of a waspnest,\" or the ridgelines like bruised knuckles interrupting the sunrise, for the most part McCarthy's vision of the Smokies is just a memory, a half crumbled placemarker at a neglected turnout in the road, a few yellowed, slightly retouched photos in a visitor center, a coffee table book of history purchased for friends back home.\r\n\r\nI would love to know what McCarthy thinks of Sevier and environs now. It would be nice to drink a pint with him and hear about a time when men and women were sane, cautious and respectful. Of course, if you've ever read a McCarthy book you know what happens to those characters, they are, in one way or another displaced by the less savory, the more ambitious, more full of hot air and power-hungry dreams.\r\n\r\nIn McCarthy's world the meek very rarely inherit anything save dust and silence, but they do retain their dignity, something painfully lacking in Pigeon Forge.\r\n\r\n<span class=\"break\"> </span>\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/reflectedtrees.jpg\" alt=\"river, trees\" class=\"postpicright\" />The mountains are still beautiful, dying perhaps, choking on smoke from Chattanooga and Atlanta, mostly Atlanta, but in the mean time the leaves on the trees run the spectrum from ochre to vermillion with all the middle hues as well.\r\n\r\nWe spend a few days, driving mainly, but occasionally walking, through the mountains, the trees, along the rivers and streams, the windswept peaks with fog breaking over them like waves of mist and smoke.\r\n\r\nThere are also the crumbling remains of old grist mills and early towns now abandoned; remnants of a time, near the end of the 19th century when hiking and exploring the outdoors was all the rage -- John Muir helped the trend along, but for a time people genuinely liked to get up into the mountains, out in the desert and see America's unparalleled natural wonderland. \r\n\r\nOne the byproducts of that era is the ghost town of Elkmont, nestled up against the steep ridges of the Smokies at the end of railway line that used to stretch back to down to Maryville. Elkmont began like as a rough and tumble logging town, and while I couldn't find mention of it in <cite>The Orchard Keeper</cite>, it dates from 1908 which puts it in roughly the same time frame. \r\n\r\nOver time Elkmont ran out of trees to easily harvest and the town gradually evolved into a haven for the socially prominent and wealthy members of Knoxville, Maryville, and Chattanooga -- summer cottages were built, a central hunting lodge was added and members built a number of trails that lead off into the Smokies.\r\n\r\nAt the zenith of its popularity the Little River Railroad, which ran from Knoxville to Elkmont, offered a Sunday \"Elkmont Special\" -- non-stop train service to the mountains. That proved popular enough that the Sunday special became a regular, several days a week route.\r\n\r\nThen that passed or was diluted somehow, getting out to see the land was condensed down to the somewhat easier, more profitable habit of just buying fleece jackets at the mega-mall and playing a bit of putt-putt golf in Pigeon Forge.\r\n\r\nOh well.\r\n\r\n<span class=\"break\"> </span>\r\n\r\nOne piece of advice, should you head to Smoky Mountain National Park, don't dig too deep, if you do any more than scratch the surface you might discover some unpleasant things -- like the signs along the river that read: Do Not Drink, Swim, Bathe or Touch the Water; River contains fecal matter.\r\n\r\nYes, the rivers are full of shit. Shouldn't be surprising then that Pigeon Forge is full of shit. Everything trickles downhill as they say.\r\n\r\nAnd we are all more or less full of shit.\r\n\r\nDon't drink the water.\r\n\r\nAnd so it goes.", "dek": "Pigeon Forge is Myrtle Beach in the mountains. Redneck weddings cascade straight out of the chapel and into the mini golf reception area. Pigeon Forge is everything that's wrong with America. But we aren't here for Pigeon Forge, it just happens to have a free condo we're staying in. We're here for the mountains. Smoky Mountain National Park is just a few miles up the road.", "pub_date": "2008-10-31T15:16:13", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.6502456548595603 35.6804462347582358)", "location": 78, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2008/reflectedtrees.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2008/reflectedtrees.jpg", "meta_description": "Tracking down the lost summer camp of Elkmost amidst the Fall folliage of Smoky Mountain NP. Avoid Pigeon Forge and you'll survive. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 95, "fields": {"title": "Leonardo Da Vinci and the Codex on Bunnies", "slug": "leonardo-da-vinci-and-codex-bunnies", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">D</span>owntown Birmingham is deserted, even the trees are bare and there's hardly any sign of life, save the occasional car on the interstate somewhere up above, propped aloft on concrete pylons. There's a far too bitter wind for October in the South; it cuts around the brick edifices and concrete parking garages.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/22509254@N05/3046206224/\"><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/dtbrimingham.jpg\" alt=\"Alabama Power by filam61, flickr\" class=\"postpic\" /></a>I've come to Birmingham for Da Vinci. He of the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel and the Codex of Birds. </p>\n<p>You wouldn't expect Da Vinci in Birmingham Alabama, it of the civil rights struggle, much more readily conjured as a synecdoche of mediocre backwaters everywhere.</p>\n<p>Yet here he is. </p>\n<p>Or his notebooks anyway. \n<break>\nI should say that I did not so much <em>want</em> to see <cite>Drawings From the Biblioteca Reale in Turin</cite>, rather I felt that I should, which I freely admit is a very poor reason for going. But in truth there is more to it than that. I didn't feel I should go because it was somehow necessary to see, an educational exercise or anything like that.</p>\n<p>Rather, something in my head kept saying, for no reason I could deduce, <em>go to that exhibit</em>. In hindsight I now know that I needed to go for the bunnies.</p>\n<p>But let's start at the beginning, the warm, red-lipped smile from the middle age woman who collects my ticket, the very nice white-haired gentleman who hands me a brochure on Da Vinci and his notebooks, the other elderly gentleman in a blue docent's vest who directs me to the back of the line.</p>\n<p>Oh yes, the line. </p>\n<p>Over two hours worth of people backed up, snaking through the main foyer, up the staircase to the second floor, around the landing and then inside some hidden room where, under glass and guarded by more museum security than I've ever encountered anywhere else combined (Da Vinci may have come to Alabama but clearly no one trusts Alabamians to react well to his arrival), the drawings await us.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.suite101.com/view_image.cfm/512821\"> <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/codexofbirds.jpg\" alt=\"Leonardo Da Vinci, Codex on Flight of Birds\" class=\"postpicright\" /></a>Imagine for a moment if, some 500 hundred years from now, a few pages torn from your notebook could draw thousands of people from around the world.</p>\n<p>Be a bit strange wouldn't it? But never mind that.</p>\n<p>I suspect that, had Da Vinci's codex of birds arrived in Birmingham Alabama say ten years ago, I would likely be standing alone right now. But then there was that damnable Da Vinci Code book. </p>\n<p>Yes. I've read it. It was once the only English language book on Ko Muk where I was once trapped for while. It was just me, an Australian who told me with a straight face that he was an ex-lifeguard, a grumpy collection of Thai guesthouse staff, three naked Swedish girls and that damn book. I read it in three hours. </p>\n<p>But I digress.</p>\n<p>We need to get to the beginning. Further back than just the museum, further back than the curator who set up the show, further back than Italy from whence it came, probably all the way back to Da Vinci himself, who once made some doodles in a notebook, drawing people, drawing birds, drawing horses.</p>\n<p>To keep things short we'll setting for the moment I first encountered the bunnies.</p>\n<p>The week before I left to travel the world, months before I would read The Da Vinci code, years before I would go to Birmingham, Alabama, I went up to San Francisco to visit Mike and Hilary. Bill drove, fun was had as I recall. For me the thing that sticks out though are the bunnies on the wall (well, that and the wolf coughing in the living room, but that's another story).</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.kozyndan.com/new_portfolio/GR28.html\" title=\"Uprisings, by kozyndan\"><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/uprisings_by_kozyndan.jpg\" alt=\"Uprisings by Kozyndan\" class=\"postpic\" /></a>The bunnies were on the wall. Two dimensional bunnies. There were posters of bunnies. Specifically Kozyndan's poster of various famous Japanese paintings recast with bunnies. Where there should be sea foam <a href=\"http://www.kozyndan.com/new_portfolio/GR28.html\">there were bunnies</a>. Where there should have been leaves, <a href=\"http://www.kozyndan.com/assets/the_bunnies_fall.jpg\">there were bunnies</a>. Where there should have been cherry blossoms, <a href=\"http://www.kozyndan.com/bunny_blossom.html\">there were bunnies</a>. </p>\n<p>There were bunnies everywhere damnit.</p>\n<p>Prior to seeing those images I'm not sure I ever gave bunnies much thought (several months later in Austria I would eat a bunny and be somewhat unimpressed), but there, hanging on the wall of a San Francisco apartment, were posters of bunnies, hundreds of bunnies, thousands perhaps and I, for the first time, I was forced to think about bunnies. Bunnies in places you would not expect bunnies.</p>\n<p>You can see where, if, shortly after seeing such a thing you suddenly had roughly an entire year's worth of free time in part of world where beer is about 25 cents a pint, you might develop something of an obsession with the bunnies in places where there should not be bunnies (what if, instead of rats running around this hostel, there were bunnies? And so on).</p>\n<p>I did a bit of googling and discovered that the artist(s) have something of a bunny fetish, <a href=\"http://www.kozyndan.com/pacific.html\">bunny fish</a>, <a href=\"http://www.kozyndan.com/assets/winter_bunnies_800.jpg\">bunnies in winter</a>, bunnies in a crowd and so on. When I got back one of the first things I did after I had a roof over my head was order my own copies of the bunny posters.</p>\n<p>Of course none of that prepared me for the Ur Bunny in Birmingham.</p>\n<p>Eventually the long line to see the Da Vinci exhibit made its way up the stairs and around the second story, through a smallish exhibit of Asian art. Finally, I thought, at least there is something to do while I wait, some art to examine.</p>\n<p>As the line wound around the room, there were a number of interesting pieces, but in the corner I spied something that looked like a traditional Japanese or perhaps Chinese landscape paintings -- a tree in fall, some mountains in the background and some, wait a minute, are those bunnies? Holy crap, they are bunnies and they have <em>glowing red eyes</em>.</p>\n<p>There, fortunately restrained under protective museum glass, was a Chinese landscape populated by red-eyed bunnies, lurking under trees, trying, but failing, to look innocent.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/redeyedbunnies.jpg\" alt=\"red eyed bunnies\" class=\"postpicright\" />I had plenty of time to confront the bunnies, to study them in the their natural watercolor state and it didn't take long to feel there was a noticeably evil glint in their eyes, as if wary of being caught in the act of colluding on some nefarious project, almost certainly some sort of world takeover scheme -- not unlike what the conspiracy theorists attribute to Da Vinci, but so much sneakier because no one expects the bunnies.</p>\n<p>Bunnies are cute. Bunnies do not generally attack. Of course there was that incident in The Holy Grail and, as we all know, humor has a way of cutting much closer to the truth, but still, bunnies are harmless right? Cute, fluffy little things... but what's with the red eyes? The artist clearly did not have cute fluffy little things in mind when he painted these bunnies.</p>\n<p>Red-eyed things are zombies, re-animated nightmares, conspiratorial evil plotting against us. Now I understand the kozyndan posters, they're a warning, a vision of future where bunnies have taken over the sea, the mountains, become like water, like snow, like wind to meld themselves irreversibly into the fabric of our existence.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2008/urbunnies.jpg\" alt=\"red eyed bunnies, full image\" class=\"postpic\" />Think about, with the birthrate of bunnies it wouldn't take but a couple of years for properly conditioned bunnies to replace nearly every atom of our existence with themselves.</p>\n<p>Here's what I know: the Ur bunnies have glowing red eyes and while Da Vinci did not, so far as we know, produce a Codex of Bunnies, given his secret society connections, he surely must have known of the Ur bunnies. Known enough to hide the codex and hide it well.</p>\n<p>As for the stuff he didn't hide quite as well, well, it was interesting, perhaps even illuminating, but somehow it seemed suddenly unimportant in the face of the inevitable bunny onslaught. Remember, you read it here first.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">D</span>owntown Birmingham is deserted, even the trees are bare and there's hardly any sign of life, save the occasional car on the interstate somewhere up above, propped aloft on concrete pylons. There's a far too bitter wind for October in the South; it cuts around the brick edifices and concrete parking garages.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/22509254@N05/3046206224/\"><img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/dtbrimingham.jpg\" alt=\"Alabama Power by filam61, flickr\" class=\"postpic\" /></a>I've come to Birmingham for Da Vinci. He of the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel and the Codex of Birds. \r\n\r\nYou wouldn't expect Da Vinci in Birmingham Alabama, it of the civil rights struggle, much more readily conjured as a synecdoche of mediocre backwaters everywhere.\r\n\r\nYet here he is. \r\n\r\nOr his notebooks anyway. \r\n<break>\r\nI should say that I did not so much _want_ to see <cite>Drawings From the Biblioteca Reale in Turin</cite>, rather I felt that I should, which I freely admit is a very poor reason for going. But in truth there is more to it than that. I didn't feel I should go because it was somehow necessary to see, an educational exercise or anything like that.\r\n\r\nRather, something in my head kept saying, for no reason I could deduce, _go to that exhibit_. In hindsight I now know that I needed to go for the bunnies.\r\n\r\nBut let's start at the beginning, the warm, red-lipped smile from the middle age woman who collects my ticket, the very nice white-haired gentleman who hands me a brochure on Da Vinci and his notebooks, the other elderly gentleman in a blue docent's vest who directs me to the back of the line.\r\n\r\nOh yes, the line. \r\n\r\nOver two hours worth of people backed up, snaking through the main foyer, up the staircase to the second floor, around the landing and then inside some hidden room where, under glass and guarded by more museum security than I've ever encountered anywhere else combined (Da Vinci may have come to Alabama but clearly no one trusts Alabamians to react well to his arrival), the drawings await us.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://www.suite101.com/view_image.cfm/512821\"> <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/codexofbirds.jpg\" alt=\"Leonardo Da Vinci, Codex on Flight of Birds\" class=\"postpicright\" /></a>Imagine for a moment if, some 500 hundred years from now, a few pages torn from your notebook could draw thousands of people from around the world.\r\n\r\nBe a bit strange wouldn't it? But never mind that.\r\n\r\nI suspect that, had Da Vinci's codex of birds arrived in Birmingham Alabama say ten years ago, I would likely be standing alone right now. But then there was that damnable Da Vinci Code book. \r\n\r\nYes. I've read it. It was once the only English language book on Ko Muk where I was once trapped for while. It was just me, an Australian who told me with a straight face that he was an ex-lifeguard, a grumpy collection of Thai guesthouse staff, three naked Swedish girls and that damn book. I read it in three hours. \r\n\r\nBut I digress.\r\n\r\nWe need to get to the beginning. Further back than just the museum, further back than the curator who set up the show, further back than Italy from whence it came, probably all the way back to Da Vinci himself, who once made some doodles in a notebook, drawing people, drawing birds, drawing horses.\r\n\r\nTo keep things short we'll setting for the moment I first encountered the bunnies.\r\n\r\nThe week before I left to travel the world, months before I would read The Da Vinci code, years before I would go to Birmingham, Alabama, I went up to San Francisco to visit Mike and Hilary. Bill drove, fun was had as I recall. For me the thing that sticks out though are the bunnies on the wall (well, that and the wolf coughing in the living room, but that's another story).\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://www.kozyndan.com/new_portfolio/GR28.html\" title=\"Uprisings, by kozyndan\"><img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/uprisings_by_kozyndan.jpg\" alt=\"Uprisings by Kozyndan\" class=\"postpic\" /></a>The bunnies were on the wall. Two dimensional bunnies. There were posters of bunnies. Specifically Kozyndan's poster of various famous Japanese paintings recast with bunnies. Where there should be sea foam [there were bunnies][1]. Where there should have been leaves, [there were bunnies][2]. Where there should have been cherry blossoms, [there were bunnies][4]. \r\n\r\nThere were bunnies everywhere damnit.\r\n\r\nPrior to seeing those images I'm not sure I ever gave bunnies much thought (several months later in Austria I would eat a bunny and be somewhat unimpressed), but there, hanging on the wall of a San Francisco apartment, were posters of bunnies, hundreds of bunnies, thousands perhaps and I, for the first time, I was forced to think about bunnies. Bunnies in places you would not expect bunnies.\r\n\r\nYou can see where, if, shortly after seeing such a thing you suddenly had roughly an entire year's worth of free time in part of world where beer is about 25 cents a pint, you might develop something of an obsession with the bunnies in places where there should not be bunnies (what if, instead of rats running around this hostel, there were bunnies? And so on).\r\n\r\nI did a bit of googling and discovered that the artist(s) have something of a bunny fetish, [bunny fish][5], [bunnies in winter][3], bunnies in a crowd and so on. When I got back one of the first things I did after I had a roof over my head was order my own copies of the bunny posters.\r\n\r\nOf course none of that prepared me for the Ur Bunny in Birmingham.\r\n\r\nEventually the long line to see the Da Vinci exhibit made its way up the stairs and around the second story, through a smallish exhibit of Asian art. Finally, I thought, at least there is something to do while I wait, some art to examine.\r\n\r\nAs the line wound around the room, there were a number of interesting pieces, but in the corner I spied something that looked like a traditional Japanese or perhaps Chinese landscape paintings -- a tree in fall, some mountains in the background and some, wait a minute, are those bunnies? Holy crap, they are bunnies and they have _glowing red eyes_.\r\n\r\nThere, fortunately restrained under protective museum glass, was a Chinese landscape populated by red-eyed bunnies, lurking under trees, trying, but failing, to look innocent.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/redeyedbunnies.jpg\" alt=\"red eyed bunnies\" class=\"postpicright\" />I had plenty of time to confront the bunnies, to study them in the their natural watercolor state and it didn't take long to feel there was a noticeably evil glint in their eyes, as if wary of being caught in the act of colluding on some nefarious project, almost certainly some sort of world takeover scheme -- not unlike what the conspiracy theorists attribute to Da Vinci, but so much sneakier because no one expects the bunnies.\r\n\r\nBunnies are cute. Bunnies do not generally attack. Of course there was that incident in The Holy Grail and, as we all know, humor has a way of cutting much closer to the truth, but still, bunnies are harmless right? Cute, fluffy little things... but what's with the red eyes? The artist clearly did not have cute fluffy little things in mind when he painted these bunnies.\r\n\r\nRed-eyed things are zombies, re-animated nightmares, conspiratorial evil plotting against us. Now I understand the kozyndan posters, they're a warning, a vision of future where bunnies have taken over the sea, the mountains, become like water, like snow, like wind to meld themselves irreversibly into the fabric of our existence.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2008/urbunnies.jpg\" alt=\"red eyed bunnies, full image\" class=\"postpic\" />Think about, with the birthrate of bunnies it wouldn't take but a couple of years for properly conditioned bunnies to replace nearly every atom of our existence with themselves.\r\n\r\nHere's what I know: the Ur bunnies have glowing red eyes and while Da Vinci did not, so far as we know, produce a Codex of Bunnies, given his secret society connections, he surely must have known of the Ur bunnies. Known enough to hide the codex and hide it well.\r\n\r\nAs for the stuff he didn't hide quite as well, well, it was interesting, perhaps even illuminating, but somehow it seemed suddenly unimportant in the face of the inevitable bunny onslaught. Remember, you read it here first.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n[1]: http://www.kozyndan.com/new_portfolio/GR28.html\r\n[2]: http://www.kozyndan.com/assets/the_bunnies_fall.jpg\r\n[3]: http://www.kozyndan.com/assets/winter_bunnies_800.jpg\r\n[4]: http://www.kozyndan.com/bunny_blossom.html\r\n[5]: http://www.kozyndan.com/pacific.html\r\n[6]: http://blog.al.com/mhuebner/2008/09/birmingham_museum_of_art_sets.html", "dek": "A few pages from Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks make a rare trip outside Italy, to Birmingham, AL, of all places. But the Birmingham Museum of Art is home to far more alarming works of art, works which depict the eventual, inevitable, bunny takeover, after which all the elements of our reality will be replaced by bunnies. Seriously. You heard it here first.", "pub_date": "2008-12-09T18:18:33", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-86.8107998250280275 33.5214419936726458)", "location": 79, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2009/codexofbunnies.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2009/codexofbunnies.jpg", "meta_description": "Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex of Birds visits Birmingham, AL; but the real story is the Ur Bunny of Birmingham. Beware, strangeness ahead. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 96, "fields": {"title": "No Strangers on a Train", "slug": "strangers-on-a-train", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span> have a weakness for trains. It doesn't matter if it's a subway ride across town or the Trans-Siberian railway, count me in.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2009/boxcarcover.jpg\" alt=\"The boxcar Children book cover\" class=\"postpic\" />I blame the whole thing on the <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807508543?ie=UTF8&tag=librograf-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0807508543\">The Boxcar Children</a><img src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=librograf-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0807508543\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" />, certainly not the world I grew up in, where there were very few trains.<sup id=\"fnr-001\"><a href=\"#fn-001\">[1]</a></sup></p>\n<p>Trains are almost totally unknown where I come from. If trains pass through Los Angeles, they don't do it anywhere near where I lived. When it came to traveling from LA there were two options -- get in the car or head to LAX.</p>\n<p>And yet trains lurk in the background of most American myths, from Kerouac hopping freight cars in <cite>On the Road</cite> to the music of Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Bob Dylan and countless others. Chances are, if something is hailed as \"uniquely American,\" then there's a train in there somewhere.</p>\n<p>So how does a culture end up with a mythology built around something most of us have never experienced in any way?</p>\n<p>The answer lies more in what trains represent than their practical reality. Rail travel taps into a very primal part of the American imagination -- that we're all free. And by free I think we mean the idea that there is still some untapped thing out there that we can, at any moment, propel ourselves toward. </p>\n<p>It's part of the belief that there is freedom in travel -- the way parallel tracks converge in the distance offers the promise of the infinite, toward which we are always running.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>That's why the mythology of trains is tied up in that of nomadic wanderers. The train-riding hobos of old are the modern vagabonds' spiritual predecessors; travelers who, like the hobos of pop mythology, place more value on the freedom of movement than the accumulation of things (there's also the similarity in bathing habits, but hey, you have to take the bad with the good).</p>\n<p>I didn't spend any real time on trains until I got to India, where I spent nearly all my time on trains.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2009/thailandtrain.jpg\" alt=\"Train from Trang Thailand to Bangkok\" class=\"postpicright\" />My overwhelming memory of India is the Indian railway system, which is simultaneously the most mind-boggling complex thing I have encountered,<sup id=\"fnr-002\"><a href=\"#fn-002\">[2]</a></sup> and also the coolest, most convenient and downright fun way to travel.</p>\n<p>My best memories of India are sitting on the steps of an Indian train car, feeling the rush of air, the thousand foreign smells, watching the scenery pass, from the red mud jungles of the south to the dry barren deserts of Rajasthan. In all I traveled nearly a thousand miles by train in India (and saw no less than four major bus wrecks from the comfort of my train car, which gave me additional motivation to stick to trains).</p>\n<p>The train system is the life blood of India, not only is it the single largest employer in the world, it's how the country moves. </p>\n<p>The vast majority of the Indians I met were fellow rail passengers. The secret is to always travel second class. First is too segregated, you don't meet anyone but army officers and fellow backpackers. Third class is standing room only and generally too crowded to move. Second class is just right.</p>\n<p>In second class train cars I met Indians from all walks of life, from the cobbler's family that asked me to babysit their children and offered me the best samosas I've ever had, to the two teenage aspiring rappers who gave me a full day tour of New Delhi when we arrived. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2009/indiatrain.jpg\" alt=\"Train to Udiapur, Rajasthan, India\" class=\"postpic\" />Indian trains offer something I've rarely found in America -- organic community travel.</p>\n<p>In the west especially, a community of travelers has become little more than businessmen drinking at the Holiday Inn Express bar, or backpackers smoking in some dingy flophouse, or worse, the online communities we mistake for genuine connections between people.<sup id=\"fnr-003\"><a href=\"#fn-003\">[3]</a></sup> </p>\n<p>Trains have become one of the last real manifestations of our longing for something more -- some shared group travel experience that is almost totally lost in American culture.</p>\n<p>I think in the end that's why we mythologize trains, because they harken back to an age of community travel, a real, tangible community of travelers, not just backpackers, but people from all walks of life, people traveling near and far together in a shared space that isn't locked down like an airplane and isn't isolated like a car; it's a shared travel experience and there are precious few of those left in our world.</p>\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\n<li id=\"fn-001\">\n<p><span class=\"note1\">1. I do remember once as a child taking the train from Santa Ana to San Juan Capistrano to see the swallows, or perhaps the monarch butterflies, that part is hazy, but the train ride I am certain of.</span><a href=\"#fnr-001\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n<li id=\"fn-002\">\n<p><span class=\"note1\">2. The single best resource for deciphering train travel and the complexities of timetables is undoubtedly the wonderful <a href=\"http://www.seat61.com/\">Seat 61 website</a>.</span><a href=\"#fnr-002\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n<li id=\"fn-003\">\n<p><span class=\"note1\">3. Old man internet joke: what's the difference between a 1998 BBS and Facebook? Ten years of rationalizing our isolation.</span><a href=\"#fnr-003\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span> have a weakness for trains. It doesn't matter if it's a subway ride across town or the Trans-Siberian railway, count me in.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2009/boxcarcover.jpg\" alt=\"The boxcar Children book cover\" class=\"postpic\" />I blame the whole thing on the <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807508543?ie=UTF8&tag=librograf-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0807508543\">The Boxcar Children</a><img src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=librograf-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0807508543\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" />, certainly not the world I grew up in, where there were very few trains.<sup id=\"fnr-001\"><a href=\"#fn-001\">[1]</a></sup>\r\n\r\nTrains are almost totally unknown where I come from. If trains pass through Los Angeles, they don't do it anywhere near where I lived. When it came to traveling from LA there were two options -- get in the car or head to LAX.\r\n\r\nAnd yet trains lurk in the background of most American myths, from Kerouac hopping freight cars in <cite>On the Road</cite> to the music of Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Bob Dylan and countless others. Chances are, if something is hailed as \"uniquely American,\" then there's a train in there somewhere.\r\n\r\nSo how does a culture end up with a mythology built around something most of us have never experienced in any way?\r\n\r\nThe answer lies more in what trains represent than their practical reality. Rail travel taps into a very primal part of the American imagination -- that we're all free. And by free I think we mean the idea that there is still some untapped thing out there that we can, at any moment, propel ourselves toward. \r\n\r\nIt's part of the belief that there is freedom in travel -- the way parallel tracks converge in the distance offers the promise of the infinite, toward which we are always running.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nThat's why the mythology of trains is tied up in that of nomadic wanderers. The train-riding hobos of old are the modern vagabonds' spiritual predecessors; travelers who, like the hobos of pop mythology, place more value on the freedom of movement than the accumulation of things (there's also the similarity in bathing habits, but hey, you have to take the bad with the good).\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI didn't spend any real time on trains until I got to India, where I spent nearly all my time on trains.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2009/thailandtrain.jpg\" alt=\"Train from Trang Thailand to Bangkok\" class=\"postpicright\" />My overwhelming memory of India is the Indian railway system, which is simultaneously the most mind-boggling complex thing I have encountered,<sup id=\"fnr-002\"><a href=\"#fn-002\">[2]</a></sup> and also the coolest, most convenient and downright fun way to travel.\r\n\r\nMy best memories of India are sitting on the steps of an Indian train car, feeling the rush of air, the thousand foreign smells, watching the scenery pass, from the red mud jungles of the south to the dry barren deserts of Rajasthan. In all I traveled nearly a thousand miles by train in India (and saw no less than four major bus wrecks from the comfort of my train car, which gave me additional motivation to stick to trains).\r\n\r\nThe train system is the life blood of India, not only is it the single largest employer in the world, it's how the country moves. \r\n\r\nThe vast majority of the Indians I met were fellow rail passengers. The secret is to always travel second class. First is too segregated, you don't meet anyone but army officers and fellow backpackers. Third class is standing room only and generally too crowded to move. Second class is just right.\r\n\r\nIn second class train cars I met Indians from all walks of life, from the cobbler's family that asked me to babysit their children and offered me the best samosas I've ever had, to the two teenage aspiring rappers who gave me a full day tour of New Delhi when we arrived. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2009/indiatrain.jpg\" alt=\"Train to Udiapur, Rajasthan, India\" class=\"postpic\" />Indian trains offer something I've rarely found in America -- organic community travel.\r\n\r\nIn the west especially, a community of travelers has become little more than businessmen drinking at the Holiday Inn Express bar, or backpackers smoking in some dingy flophouse, or worse, the online communities we mistake for genuine connections between people.<sup id=\"fnr-003\"><a href=\"#fn-003\">[3]</a></sup> \r\n\r\nTrains have become one of the last real manifestations of our longing for something more -- some shared group travel experience that is almost totally lost in American culture.\r\n\r\nI think in the end that's why we mythologize trains, because they harken back to an age of community travel, a real, tangible community of travelers, not just backpackers, but people from all walks of life, people traveling near and far together in a shared space that isn't locked down like an airplane and isn't isolated like a car; it's a shared travel experience and there are precious few of those left in our world.\r\n\r\n\r\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\r\n<li id=\"fn-001\">\r\n<p><span class=\"note1\">1. I do remember once as a child taking the train from Santa Ana to San Juan Capistrano to see the swallows, or perhaps the monarch butterflies, that part is hazy, but the train ride I am certain of.</span><a href=\"#fnr-001\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\r\n</li>\r\n<li id=\"fn-002\">\r\n<p><span class=\"note1\">2. The single best resource for deciphering train travel and the complexities of timetables is undoubtedly the wonderful <a href=\"http://www.seat61.com/\">Seat 61 website</a>.</span><a href=\"#fnr-002\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\r\n</li>\r\n<li id=\"fn-003\">\r\n<p><span class=\"note1\">3. Old man internet joke: what's the difference between a 1998 BBS and Facebook? Ten years of rationalizing our isolation.</span><a href=\"#fnr-003\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\r\n</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n", "dek": "We mythologize trains because they harken back to an age of community travel, a real, tangible community of travelers, not just backpackers, but people from all walks of life, people traveling near and far together in a shared space that isn't locked down like an airplane and isn't isolated like a car; it's a shared travel experience and there are precious few of those left in our world.", "pub_date": "2009-04-13T19:36:13", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.4082460287333589 33.9581869416093696)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2009/strangersonatrain.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2009/strangersonatrain.jpg", "meta_description": "Traveling by train is a more communal experience; travelers come together in ways that don't happen on planes, buses or cars. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 97, "fields": {"title": "How to Get Off Your Butt and Travel the World", "slug": "how-to-get-your-butt-and-travel-world", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">H</span>ow do you make the leap from cubicle daydreams to life on to the road?</p>\n<p>There are plenty of guides on the practicalities of traveling the world -- like planning an itinerary, booking cheap flights or living in hostels -- but sometimes the harder questions go unanswered -- how do you find the courage to travel?</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/98063470@N00/326044514/\"><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2009/getoffyourbutt1.jpg\" alt=\"Endless road by TheFriendlyFiend, Flickr\" class=\"postpic\" /></a>Even for those that want nothing more than to escape a life of monotony, even for those that hate their jobs, even for those that feel like they have no life and desperately need some excitement, it still isn't easy to actually get on a plane and go.</p>\n<p>I know. I've been there. I decided to travel to world when I was 24. I left to travel the world when I was 29. </p>\n<p>For five years I found excuses to postpone my dreams, not consciously of course, but there was always some excuse to stay. Only years later, once I'd made it all the way to India, did I realize what held me back -- <strong>fear born of inertia</strong>.</p>\n<p>Inertia is a powerful thing -- both imprisoning and liberating at the same time. The negative aspect is the inertia that imbues our lives in the form of habit. We get up, we go to work, we come home, and the same thing happens the next day.</p>\n<p>The first law of thermodynamics says, more or less, that bodies in crappy ruts tend to remain in crappy ruts. </p>\n<p>The good news is that bodies on the road tend to remain on the road.</p>\n<p>The question is: how do we make inertia work for us rather than against us?</p>\n<p>The answer is that it's going to take some energy. You have to make the change happen. You must decide to save yourself.\n<break>\nOne thing that I think is absolutely key to understand is that traveling doesn't have to be turning your back on your life at home. I don't think of travel as escaping from my life at home (which I like), but as something that enhances and informs the life I live when I return home.</p>\n<h3>Eliminate Excuses</h3>\n<p>The best way to change your habits is to look at what's stopping you from changing.</p>\n<p>You want to travel the world, but, like me, you have a million excuses stopping you. </p>\n<p>Let's take a look at some common reasons to not travel (this is not an exhaustive list, but it reflects both my experiences and those of people I've met in my travels).</p>\n<p>Most of these reasons (excuses) complete the phrase <em>i'd love to travel the world, but...</em></p>\n<p><strong>I don't have the money</strong></p>\n<p>Generally speaking this is a less self-indicting way of saying, <em>I already spent the money on something else</em>. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartpilbrow/2942333106/\"><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2009/getoffyourbutt5.jpg\" alt=\"Money...What Money, by stuartpilbrow, Flickr\" class=\"postpicright\" /></a>Very few of us are so poor we can't save money to travel the world. It doesn't take nearly as much money as you think; I spent $12,000 including airfare ($2000), traveling for three months in Europe and seven months in Asia. That averages out to $1,200 a month, far less than most of us spend at home (and for the record I was not pinching pennies as I traveled, I ate well, slept in nice, clean guesthouses and didn't pass on anything I wanted to do just because it was expensive).</p>\n<p>So how do you save for a trip? That depends, but here's a good place to start: <strong>stop buying so much stuff</strong>. We all spend a shocking amount of money on stuff we don't need, and this is the number one habit to break if you're serious about traveling the world. Live simply and save your money. Here's how <a href=\"http://www.vagablogging.net/3727.html\">Rolf Potts recently addressed the question of money</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The specifics are less important than your attitude. That is, whatever job you take to travel the world and/or fund your journeys, the most important thing is to stay positive, live simply, and discipline yourself in such a way that you save your money. For my first vagabonding journey around the North America when I was 23, I worked as a landscaper for 8 months. This wasn't a super high-paying job, but by living simply I was able to save enough money to travel the USA by van for eight months.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>My experience was similar, I was running a restaurant kitchen (not a good way to get rich), and I mananged to save the money I needed. To expedite the savings I also did some web development on the side.</p>\n<p>Start a savings account and, instead of buying stuff, put your money in the account. If you're new to saving, check out <a href=\"http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/\">Get Rich Slowly</a> for some tips and inspiration and <a href=\"http://chrisguillebeau.com/3x5/\">The Art of Nonconformity</a> for some reasons why stuff leads to mediocrity, not the sort of life changing experiences we all crave.</p>\n<p>The key to letting go of stuff is realizing how much more valuable experience is -- this is a profound shift of priorities and, in my experience, goes far beyond just saving to travel. </p>\n<p>I'm not big on being frugal, but if you simply eliminate stuff from your life, you'll suddenly discover you have quite a bit of extra money.</p>\n<p><strong>I can't quit my job</strong> </p>\n<p>This one is doubly powerful in today's economy. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikecolvin82/730140838/\"><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2009/getoffyourbutt2.jpg\" alt=\"I HATE MY JOB by mikecolvin82, Flickr\" class=\"postpic\" /></a>There are probably some of you who have found completely fulfilling work and are in the place you should be. I understand that, I haven't done a long trip in three years because I had such a job. But if that was really true, you wouldn't be reading this post. </p>\n<p>And if your job is not fulfilling and not making you feel like you are doing your best work for the world, then there is absolutely nothing to lose by quitting it. </p>\n<p>Think of it this way: the world needs you and you're ignoring it. Working at job you dislike is cheating the world out of your creative genius and passion. Don't be that guy.</p>\n<p>As for the current economic situation... if you're really worried about the long-term viability of your job, then what's the harm in quitting?</p>\n<p><strong>I only speak English</strong></p>\n<p>80 percent of the world is desperately trying to learn something you already know. You're way ahead of the curve here.</p>\n<p>Would it be nice to speak Nepalese and chat with the sherpas by a campfire in Nepal? Absolutely, but trust me, no one is going to hate you because you can't (that said, a phrasebook is always a good idea, just making a tiny effort will get you a long way). I have the utmost respect for those who can learn languages, but I suck at it and it has never gotten in the way of my travels. </p>\n<p>Besides what better way to learn a language than to immerse yourself in the country?</p>\n<p><strong>I'm too old</strong> </p>\n<p>No, you're not. </p>\n<p><strong>I'll do that when I'm older</strong></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/rileyroxx/151985627/\"><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2009/getoffyourbutt4.jpg\" alt=\"Old People Sign by rileyroxx, Flickr\" class=\"postpicright\" /></a>Sadly, from what I've seen, you probably won't. I've never understood long term deferred gratification -- why would you assume that you will in fact be old? Why take that risk? </p>\n<p>If you've never seen it, watch Rady Pausch's <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo\">The Last Lecture</a>, which is heartbreaking, but very inspiring as well. And bear in mind one of his central messages: \"We don't beat the Reaper by living longer. We beat the Reaper by living well.\"</p>\n<p><strong>Isn't traveling just running away from my problems?</strong></p>\n<p>Possibly, but not necessarily; you'll never know until you go. Even if you are running, it may not be away, it could easily be toward. There's really no way to answer this one until you go. And don't be afraid to fail. If you head out to travel the world and discover that you absolutely hate it, hey, you can always go home. But you'll never be able to answer that question until you leave.</p>\n<p><strong>I don't have anyone to travel with</strong></p>\n<p>I'm an only child so I'll admit that this one had never actually occurred to me, but I can say that being alone, even being lonely, can be a very healthy experience. </p>\n<p>However, the truth is, unless you willfully decide to be alone, you're going to meet tons of people on the road. Even if you leave home alone, you won't be alone for long (which is both a blessing and curse, depending on your personality).</p>\n<h3>Inspire Yourself</h3>\n<p>Eliminating your excuses is only half the challenge.</p>\n<p>Excuses are the result of movement in the wrong direction, and to stop moving in the wrong direction is progress, but only so much. </p>\n<p>Once you have stopped your old habits, you must shift directions and move again somewhere new.</p>\n<p>Start with something very simple, like taking a different route to work, ride the bus (which also saves money), walking somewhere you usually drive, or otherwise physically alter the way you see the world around you. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/esparta/482348262/\"><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2009/getoffyourbutt3.jpg\" alt=\"I used to have Super Human Powers by Esparta, Flickr\" class=\"postpic\" /></a>Start photographing your day, not only will you get a new perspective on things, but if the results are rather dull then you'll have even more inspiration to change.</p>\n<p>Start a journal, write down what you like about your life, what you don't like and how travel is going to change that (this will prove hilarious about halfway through your trip).</p>\n<p>These things might sound silly to you, they might seem unimportant. But traveling is about much more than just going somewhere else; it can offer all variety of life changing experiences, but only if you're ready for them, so get yourself ready by changing <em>before</em> you leave.</p>\n<h3>Start Planning</h3>\n<p>So you're looking at the world around you a bit differently, now it's time to get serious about this trip you want to do. </p>\n<p>It's time for a concrete plan. The simple action of planning can easily become the inertia you need to propel yourself onto the road.</p>\n<p>Head to your local library and check out some books. Buy them if you must, but remember we're trying eliminating stuff, so try not to buy too many. And don't get guidebooks just yet, pick something like Rolf Potts' book, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812992180?ie=UTF8&tag=librograf-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0812992180\">Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-term World Travel</a> <sup id=\"fnr-001\"><a href=\"#fn-001\"><a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo\">1</a></a></sup> or Edward Hasbrouck's <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1566918286?ie=UTF8&tag=librograf-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1566918286\">The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World</a>, both are excellent and will inspire you in numerous ways.</p>\n<p>Delve in into the practicalities of living on the road, sell your stuff, rent a storage unit if you really can't part with all of it, get rid of the things that block your path.</p>\n<p>Also start doing some research on how to travel. It sounds silly, but there is an art to traveling. Read travel blogs of those who have gone before you, <a href=\"http://www.vagabonding.com/\">vagabonding.com</a> is a great site (though it's no longer updated), as is <a href=\"http://www.worldhum.com/\">World Hum</a> and <a href=\"http://www.vagabondish.com/\">Vagabondish.com.</a> Half of what you learn will be wrong and most of your preconceptions will be shot to hell the minute you land, but it doesn't matter, make yourself part of the travel world and eventually you will end up living in it.</p>\n<p>Figure out where you want to go and how you want to get there. I suggest you buy round the world plane tickets, you'll save a lot of money that way, but be sure that your tickets include overland travel as well<sup id=\"fnr-002\"><a href=\"#fn-002\"><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812992180?ie=UTF8&tag=librograf-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0812992180\">2</a></a></sup>. Unless you're hopping islands in the South Pacific, ground travel is almost always cheaper (and infinitely more fun).</p>\n<p>But chances are you will need some plane tickets, so when you're ready to kick your butt in high gear, go ahead and buy them. I used Airtreks, there are others that will work just as well. Or cash in your frequent flyer miles if you have them. </p>\n<p>Buy a ticket, set a date and make the new path real. </p>\n<p>Give notice at work. There are few more personally liberating acts than quitting a job.</p>\n<p>Once you know where you're headed, it's off to the bookstore in your spare time. Read the latest editions of relevant guidebooks, but don't buy any. If you must, buy the guide to the first country you'll visit, wait and buy the rest when on the road.</p>\n<p>But while you're digging through the guidebooks, wander over to the fiction and memoirs sections as well to see if you can find some novels or travel narratives on the area you've chosen. Headed to Asia? Read Graham Green's The Quiet American. Headed to Europe? read Kafka, Dickens or my personal favorite, W.G. Sebald. Headed to South America? Read some Borges, some Marquez or some Neruda. Headed to Central America? Read Arturo Bolano, Ernesto Cardenal or any of the many accounts of the civil wars in the region.</p>\n<p>Here's another one some people will find silly: go have a meal a restaurant that serves food from an area where you're headed.</p>\n<p>Read, eat, sleep and breathe your travel ambitions. Make them real.</p>\n<h3>Conclusion</h3>\n<p>Congratulations, you've almost made it. By this point you have tickets in hand, you have some idea of what living on the road will be like, you have some gear and maybe you've even have packed. You've kissed the job goodbye, shed the stuff that was holding you back and you're nearly there.</p>\n<p>About the only thing left to do is get on the plane (or bus or train or whatever). </p>\n<p>It's difficult to describe what that will feel like, I've rewritten this sentence about twenty times now and I still can't do it justice. It's a sense of liberation that you will rarely get a chance to feel. Embrace it.</p>\n<p>Not very many people create the opportunities to live out their dreams; think about how lucky you are when you walk down the concourse and step on that plane.</p>\n<h3>A Word about Failure</h3>\n<p>Not every trip happens. When it's your first trip, failure is hard swallow. But the truth is, there's is no such thing as a failed trip, there are just postponed trips.</p>\n<p>For every long trip I've gone on (and that would really only be two long trips, totaling almost two years of traveling), there's half a dozen well-laid plans that have fallen through for one reason or another. I should be writing this from Paris, but I'm not. I bought a house instead -- I failed to travel to Paris. </p>\n<p>Like anything, travel is the result of choices, sometimes you go, sometimes you don't just yet.</p>\n<p>Don't beat yourself up if your initial plan doesn't work out. Hang a map on the wall, keep saving and eventually you'll get there.</p>\n<p><hr class=\"footnotes\">\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\n<li id=\"fn-001\">\n<p><span class=\"note1\">1. Full disclosure: I write for Rolf's vagablogging.net, it's not a paid job and Rolf has never suggested that I pimp his books. I just happen to genuinely think that his book is one of the best meditations on extended, budget travel that's out there.</span><a href=\"#fnr-001\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n<li id=\"fn-002\">\n<p><span class=\"note1\">2. One of my only real regrets in my own trip is that I didn't go overland from India to Nepal. I already had the (non-refundable) ticket so I got on the plane. Everyone I've ever talked to loved the journey from India to Kathmandu and I wish I had done it. Next time.</span><a href=\"#fnr-002\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol></p>\n<p>[photo credits, from top down: <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/98063470@N00/326044514/\">TheFriendlyFiend</a>,<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartpilbrow/2942333106/\">stuartpilbrow</a>, <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikecolvin82/730140838/\">mikecolvin82</a>, <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/rileyroxx/151985627/\">rileyroxx</a>, <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/esparta/482348262/\">Esparta</a>]</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">H</span>ow do you make the leap from cubicle daydreams to life on to the road?\r\n\r\nThere are plenty of guides on the practicalities of traveling the world -- like planning an itinerary, booking cheap flights or living in hostels -- but sometimes the harder questions go unanswered -- how do you find the courage to travel?\r\n\r\n[<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2009/getoffyourbutt1.jpg\" alt=\"Endless road by TheFriendlyFiend, Flickr\" class=\"postpic\" />][8]Even for those that want nothing more than to escape a life of monotony, even for those that hate their jobs, even for those that feel like they have no life and desperately need some excitement, it still isn't easy to actually get on a plane and go.\r\n\r\nI know. I've been there. I decided to travel to world when I was 24. I left to travel the world when I was 29. \r\n\r\nFor five years I found excuses to postpone my dreams, not consciously of course, but there was always some excuse to stay. Only years later, once I'd made it all the way to India, did I realize what held me back -- **fear born of inertia**.\r\n\r\nInertia is a powerful thing -- both imprisoning and liberating at the same time. The negative aspect is the inertia that imbues our lives in the form of habit. We get up, we go to work, we come home, and the same thing happens the next day.\r\n\r\nThe first law of thermodynamics says, more or less, that bodies in crappy ruts tend to remain in crappy ruts. \r\n\r\nThe good news is that bodies on the road tend to remain on the road.\r\n\r\nThe question is: how do we make inertia work for us rather than against us?\r\n\r\nThe answer is that it's going to take some energy. You have to make the change happen. You must decide to save yourself.\r\n<break>\r\nOne thing that I think is absolutely key to understand is that traveling doesn't have to be turning your back on your life at home. I don't think of travel as escaping from my life at home (which I like), but as something that enhances and informs the life I live when I return home.\r\n\r\n###Eliminate Excuses\r\n\r\nThe best way to change your habits is to look at what's stopping you from changing.\r\n\r\nYou want to travel the world, but, like me, you have a million excuses stopping you. \r\n\r\nLet's take a look at some common reasons to not travel (this is not an exhaustive list, but it reflects both my experiences and those of people I've met in my travels).\r\n\r\nMost of these reasons (excuses) complete the phrase *i'd love to travel the world, but...*\r\n\r\n**I don't have the money**\r\n\r\nGenerally speaking this is a less self-indicting way of saying, *I already spent the money on something else*. \r\n\r\n[<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2009/getoffyourbutt5.jpg\" alt=\"Money...What Money, by stuartpilbrow, Flickr\" class=\"postpicright\" />][9]Very few of us are so poor we can't save money to travel the world. It doesn't take nearly as much money as you think; I spent $12,000 including airfare ($2000), traveling for three months in Europe and seven months in Asia. That averages out to $1,200 a month, far less than most of us spend at home (and for the record I was not pinching pennies as I traveled, I ate well, slept in nice, clean guesthouses and didn't pass on anything I wanted to do just because it was expensive).\r\n\r\nSo how do you save for a trip? That depends, but here's a good place to start: **stop buying so much stuff**. We all spend a shocking amount of money on stuff we don't need, and this is the number one habit to break if you're serious about traveling the world. Live simply and save your money. Here's how [Rolf Potts recently addressed the question of money][7]:\r\n\r\n>The specifics are less important than your attitude. That is, whatever job you take to travel the world and/or fund your journeys, the most important thing is to stay positive, live simply, and discipline yourself in such a way that you save your money. For my first vagabonding journey around the North America when I was 23, I worked as a landscaper for 8 months. This wasn't a super high-paying job, but by living simply I was able to save enough money to travel the USA by van for eight months.\r\n\r\nMy experience was similar, I was running a restaurant kitchen (not a good way to get rich), and I mananged to save the money I needed. To expedite the savings I also did some web development on the side.\r\n\r\nStart a savings account and, instead of buying stuff, put your money in the account. If you're new to saving, check out [Get Rich Slowly][111] for some tips and inspiration and [The Art of Nonconformity][222] for some reasons why stuff leads to mediocrity, not the sort of life changing experiences we all crave.\r\n\r\nThe key to letting go of stuff is realizing how much more valuable experience is -- this is a profound shift of priorities and, in my experience, goes far beyond just saving to travel. \r\n\r\nI'm not big on being frugal, but if you simply eliminate stuff from your life, you'll suddenly discover you have quite a bit of extra money.\r\n\r\n**I can't quit my job** \r\n\r\nThis one is doubly powerful in today's economy. \r\n\r\n[<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2009/getoffyourbutt2.jpg\" alt=\"I HATE MY JOB by mikecolvin82, Flickr\" class=\"postpic\" />][10]There are probably some of you who have found completely fulfilling work and are in the place you should be. I understand that, I haven't done a long trip in three years because I had such a job. But if that was really true, you wouldn't be reading this post. \r\n\r\nAnd if your job is not fulfilling and not making you feel like you are doing your best work for the world, then there is absolutely nothing to lose by quitting it. \r\n\r\nThink of it this way: the world needs you and you're ignoring it. Working at job you dislike is cheating the world out of your creative genius and passion. Don't be that guy.\r\n\r\nAs for the current economic situation... if you're really worried about the long-term viability of your job, then what's the harm in quitting?\r\n\r\n**I only speak English**\r\n\r\n80 percent of the world is desperately trying to learn something you already know. You're way ahead of the curve here.\r\n\r\nWould it be nice to speak Nepalese and chat with the sherpas by a campfire in Nepal? Absolutely, but trust me, no one is going to hate you because you can't (that said, a phrasebook is always a good idea, just making a tiny effort will get you a long way). I have the utmost respect for those who can learn languages, but I suck at it and it has never gotten in the way of my travels. \r\n\r\nBesides what better way to learn a language than to immerse yourself in the country?\r\n\r\n**I'm too old** \r\n\r\nNo, you're not. \r\n\r\n**I'll do that when I'm older**\r\n\r\n[<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2009/getoffyourbutt4.jpg\" alt=\"Old People Sign by rileyroxx, Flickr\" class=\"postpicright\" />][11]Sadly, from what I've seen, you probably won't. I've never understood long term deferred gratification -- why would you assume that you will in fact be old? Why take that risk? \r\n\r\nIf you've never seen it, watch Rady Pausch's [The Last Lecture][1], which is heartbreaking, but very inspiring as well. And bear in mind one of his central messages: \"We don't beat the Reaper by living longer. We beat the Reaper by living well.\"\r\n\r\n\r\n**Isn't traveling just running away from my problems?**\r\n\r\nPossibly, but not necessarily; you'll never know until you go. Even if you are running, it may not be away, it could easily be toward. There's really no way to answer this one until you go. And don't be afraid to fail. If you head out to travel the world and discover that you absolutely hate it, hey, you can always go home. But you'll never be able to answer that question until you leave.\r\n\r\n**I don't have anyone to travel with**\r\n\r\nI'm an only child so I'll admit that this one had never actually occurred to me, but I can say that being alone, even being lonely, can be a very healthy experience. \r\n\r\nHowever, the truth is, unless you willfully decide to be alone, you're going to meet tons of people on the road. Even if you leave home alone, you won't be alone for long (which is both a blessing and curse, depending on your personality).\r\n\r\n\r\n###Inspire Yourself\r\n\r\nEliminating your excuses is only half the challenge.\r\n\r\nExcuses are the result of movement in the wrong direction, and to stop moving in the wrong direction is progress, but only so much. \r\n\r\nOnce you have stopped your old habits, you must shift directions and move again somewhere new.\r\n\r\nStart with something very simple, like taking a different route to work, ride the bus (which also saves money), walking somewhere you usually drive, or otherwise physically alter the way you see the world around you. \r\n\r\n[<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2009/getoffyourbutt3.jpg\" alt=\"I used to have Super Human Powers by Esparta, Flickr\" class=\"postpic\" />][12]Start photographing your day, not only will you get a new perspective on things, but if the results are rather dull then you'll have even more inspiration to change.\r\n\r\nStart a journal, write down what you like about your life, what you don't like and how travel is going to change that (this will prove hilarious about halfway through your trip).\r\n\r\nThese things might sound silly to you, they might seem unimportant. But traveling is about much more than just going somewhere else; it can offer all variety of life changing experiences, but only if you're ready for them, so get yourself ready by changing *before* you leave.\r\n\r\n###Start Planning\r\n\r\nSo you're looking at the world around you a bit differently, now it's time to get serious about this trip you want to do. \r\n\r\nIt's time for a concrete plan. The simple action of planning can easily become the inertia you need to propel yourself onto the road.\r\n\r\nHead to your local library and check out some books. Buy them if you must, but remember we're trying eliminating stuff, so try not to buy too many. And don't get guidebooks just yet, pick something like Rolf Potts' book, [Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-term World Travel][2] <sup id=\"fnr-001\"><a href=\"#fn-001\">[1]</a></sup> or Edward Hasbrouck's [The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World][3], both are excellent and will inspire you in numerous ways.\r\n\r\nDelve in into the practicalities of living on the road, sell your stuff, rent a storage unit if you really can't part with all of it, get rid of the things that block your path.\r\n\r\nAlso start doing some research on how to travel. It sounds silly, but there is an art to traveling. Read travel blogs of those who have gone before you, [vagabonding.com][4] is a great site (though it's no longer updated), as is [World Hum][5] and [Vagabondish.com.][6] Half of what you learn will be wrong and most of your preconceptions will be shot to hell the minute you land, but it doesn't matter, make yourself part of the travel world and eventually you will end up living in it.\r\n\r\nFigure out where you want to go and how you want to get there. I suggest you buy round the world plane tickets, you'll save a lot of money that way, but be sure that your tickets include overland travel as well<sup id=\"fnr-002\"><a href=\"#fn-002\">[2]</a></sup>. Unless you're hopping islands in the South Pacific, ground travel is almost always cheaper (and infinitely more fun).\r\n\r\nBut chances are you will need some plane tickets, so when you're ready to kick your butt in high gear, go ahead and buy them. I used Airtreks, there are others that will work just as well. Or cash in your frequent flyer miles if you have them. \r\n\r\nBuy a ticket, set a date and make the new path real. \r\n\r\nGive notice at work. There are few more personally liberating acts than quitting a job.\r\n\r\nOnce you know where you're headed, it's off to the bookstore in your spare time. Read the latest editions of relevant guidebooks, but don't buy any. If you must, buy the guide to the first country you'll visit, wait and buy the rest when on the road.\r\n\r\nBut while you're digging through the guidebooks, wander over to the fiction and memoirs sections as well to see if you can find some novels or travel narratives on the area you've chosen. Headed to Asia? Read Graham Green's The Quiet American. Headed to Europe? read Kafka, Dickens or my personal favorite, W.G. Sebald. Headed to South America? Read some Borges, some Marquez or some Neruda. Headed to Central America? Read Arturo Bolano, Ernesto Cardenal or any of the many accounts of the civil wars in the region.\r\n\r\nHere's another one some people will find silly: go have a meal a restaurant that serves food from an area where you're headed.\r\n\r\nRead, eat, sleep and breathe your travel ambitions. Make them real.\r\n\r\n###Conclusion\r\n\r\nCongratulations, you've almost made it. By this point you have tickets in hand, you have some idea of what living on the road will be like, you have some gear and maybe you've even have packed. You've kissed the job goodbye, shed the stuff that was holding you back and you're nearly there.\r\n\r\nAbout the only thing left to do is get on the plane (or bus or train or whatever). \r\n\r\nIt's difficult to describe what that will feel like, I've rewritten this sentence about twenty times now and I still can't do it justice. It's a sense of liberation that you will rarely get a chance to feel. Embrace it.\r\n\r\nNot very many people create the opportunities to live out their dreams; think about how lucky you are when you walk down the concourse and step on that plane.\r\n\r\n###A Word about Failure\r\n\r\nNot every trip happens. When it's your first trip, failure is hard swallow. But the truth is, there's is no such thing as a failed trip, there are just postponed trips.\r\n\r\nFor every long trip I've gone on (and that would really only be two long trips, totaling almost two years of traveling), there's half a dozen well-laid plans that have fallen through for one reason or another. I should be writing this from Paris, but I'm not. I bought a house instead -- I failed to travel to Paris. \r\n\r\nLike anything, travel is the result of choices, sometimes you go, sometimes you don't just yet.\r\n\r\nDon't beat yourself up if your initial plan doesn't work out. Hang a map on the wall, keep saving and eventually you'll get there.\r\n\r\n\r\n<hr class=\"footnotes\">\r\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\r\n<li id=\"fn-001\">\r\n<p><span class=\"note1\">1. Full disclosure: I write for Rolf's vagablogging.net, it's not a paid job and Rolf has never suggested that I pimp his books. I just happen to genuinely think that his book is one of the best meditations on extended, budget travel that's out there.</span><a href=\"#fnr-001\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\r\n</li>\r\n<li id=\"fn-002\">\r\n<p><span class=\"note1\">2. One of my only real regrets in my own trip is that I didn't go overland from India to Nepal. I already had the (non-refundable) ticket so I got on the plane. Everyone I've ever talked to loved the journey from India to Kathmandu and I wish I had done it. Next time.</span><a href=\"#fnr-002\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\r\n</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>[photo credits, from top down: <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/98063470@N00/326044514/\">TheFriendlyFiend</a>,<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartpilbrow/2942333106/\">stuartpilbrow</a>, <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikecolvin82/730140838/\">mikecolvin82</a>, <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/rileyroxx/151985627/\">rileyroxx</a>, <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/esparta/482348262/\">Esparta</a>]</p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo\r\n[2]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812992180?ie=UTF8&tag=librograf-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0812992180\r\n[3]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1566918286?ie=UTF8&tag=librograf-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1566918286\r\n[4]: http://www.vagabonding.com/\r\n[5]: http://www.worldhum.com/\r\n[6]: http://www.vagabondish.com/\r\n[7]: http://www.vagablogging.net/3727.html\r\n[8]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/98063470@N00/326044514/\r\n[9]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartpilbrow/2942333106/\r\n[10]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikecolvin82/730140838/\r\n[11]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rileyroxx/151985627/\r\n[12]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/esparta/482348262/\r\n[111]: http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/\r\n[222]: http://chrisguillebeau.com/3x5/", "dek": "How do you make the leap from cubicle daydreams to life on to the road? You want to travel the world, but, like me, you have a million excuses stopping you. How do overcome the inertia that keeps you trapped in a life that isn't what you want it to be? Here's a few practical tips and how tos designed to motivate you to get off your butt and travel the world.", "pub_date": "2009-05-03T19:39:16", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.4087180975200084 33.9576352028054416)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2009/traveltheworld.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2010/traveltheworld.jpg", "meta_description": "Long term traveling can be daunting; here are some practical, helpful tips to get you started planning the trip of a lifetime. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 98, "fields": {"title": "So Far, I Have Not Found The Science", "slug": "so-far-i-have-not-found-science", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">K</span>ingfisher Landing, on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp, is quiet. A few warblers are flitting around in the fetterbush and holly-like shrubs that line the channel around the put in. I unroll a sleeping pad and stretch out in the sun. It's the first warm day I've seen in months.</p>\n<p>Eventually the others return from the car shuttle run. Gear piles into the canoes and we after it. </p>\n<p>The swamp water is inky black here. Dead still everywhere. </p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2010/kingfisher-lg-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2010/kingfisher-lg.jpg 1180w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2010/kingfisher-lg-2280.jpg 2280w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2010/kingfisher-lg.jpg\" alt=\"Kingfisher Channel, Okefenokee Swamp\"></p>\n<p>When the water becomes shallower on day two it reveals its true colors, a deep cinnamon red that's often compared to well-steeped Earl Grey tea. The color comes from the acid in the myriad decaying plants. The stillness comes from something else.</p>\n<p>The water is so still that even following another canoe, provided you hang back a hundred yards, the water never appears disturbed -- the ripples of previous paddles quickly fade, absorbed into the marshland around the narrow channels.</p>\n<p>It isn't more than a couple of hours paddling before we run across the first alligator, sunning itself on a boggy patch of mud, one of the countless floating islands of the swamp. </p>\n<p>Some of these islands are hardly worthy of the name, a patch of mud barely big enough to support a six-foot alligator, others are immense, supporting swamp cypress, pines and who knows what else lurking deep in the impenetrable thickets of grass and shrubs and undergrowth. </p>\n<p>Okefenokee is a Creek Indian word, O-ke-fin-o-cau, \"Land of the Trembling Earth.\"</p>\n<p>Standing on the islands would be akin to walking on a waterbed. Full of alligators. None of us try it. </p>\n<p>Our route through the swamp takes us mainly through the prairie areas -- grasses and sedges with patches of peat, water lilies starting to bloom, clumps of pitcher plants luring unsuspecting insects.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/matt-paddling.jpg\" alt=\"Matt paddling a canoe, Okefenokee Swamp\" /></p>\n<p>The first two days we see no one. Once, as the channel swings back toward the edge of the swamp we hear distant murmur of a train whistle. The rest of the time the only sounds are the splash of paddles in the water. The cries of Red Tailed Hawks, Wood Ducks and Cowbirds. The occasional groan of an alligator.</p>\n<p>In the evenings Ibis and Sand Hill Cranes can be heard calling in the shadows of larger islands. The silhouettes of Sand Hills glide across the horizon, their enormous wingspans black against the orange of the setting sun.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide960\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/blufflakesunset.jpg\" alt=\"Sunset at Bluff Lake, Okefenokee Swamp\" /></p>\n<p>We paddle for six hours a day. Muscles complain. The shoulders, the triceps, the back. Something called the rotator cuff. It is hard not to suddenly wonder about the exact names of these new pinpoints of pain, muscles previously unaccounted for in daily activities. </p>\n<p>The aches start in the shoulders and generally cascades down the back. But it's bearable. An acceptable trade off for solitude, Sand Hills and a land of trembling earth.</p>\n<p>When the channel narrows and weaves through the dense thickets of forest on day two, our pace slows to only one mile an hour. Otherwise we are able to do two, even three at times, depending on midday beer consumption.</p>\n<p>The last night a smallish alligator, no bigger than your leg really, shows up right around dinner time, circling the front of the platform in what looks like a reptilian attempt to beg for food. At some point the alligator has no doubt been fed a leftover clump of cold pasta, a extra Oreo cookie or some other paddler morsel and is now attempting, as best its species can, to beg for more.</p>\n<p>Strange though it might sound, it's hard not to find the alligator (hereafter, Steve), well, scaly yes, but also somehow strangely, yes, perhaps even cute.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/alligator.jpg\" alt=\"Alligator, Roundtop Shelter, Okefenokee Swamp\" /></p>\n<p>It's likewise difficult to not regard Steve's dark watery eyes, nearly unblinking in their stare, as quite simply curious. An alligator in the midst of teenage curiosity and rebellion. </p>\n<p>It's hard not to anthropomorphize. It's also hard not to see any single alligator as possessing the entire history of the species. True, Steve in particular has not been alive since the Late Cretaceous Age, but the species has. It found its niche and did so well that evolution decided it was done, perfection attained, no need for further change. And it survived shifting continents, disappearing oceans, possibly comets, ice ages and all other manner of geologic apocalypse.</p>\n<p>Alligators are one of the only living links back to the dinosaurs. 100 million odd years of continuous existence on earth.</p>\n<p>There is something Zen-like about the alligator. A creature which has not only not changed in 100 million years, but found a way to spend the majority of its day simply lying in the sun, eating when it wants, doing nothing when it wants.</p>\n<p>It is the apex of evolution in many ways. Perhaps not the top, perhaps not the goal, but nevertheless able to be here now, then, and like the swamp itself, perhaps here forever.</p>\n<p>In the mean time, we will have to move on.</p>\n<h4 class=\"notes\">Assorted notes and further thoughts:</h4>\n\n<dl class=\"addendum\">\n\n<dt>to the person or persons who complained in the registration book at the Bluff Lake shelter that some \"jerks\" left a large bundle of plastic piled under the cooking table</dt>\n\n<dd>The \"jerks\" are the rangers who left it there so your hemp sleeping bag won't get wet should the rain become horizontal. Are you by chance the owners of the DIY wooden camper we saw in the parking lot with the license plate VEGANS?</dd>\n\n<dt>to people buying things made of alligator skin.</dt>\n\n<dd>Desist.</dd>\n\n<dt>to the only live armadillo I have ever seen, which was running at breakneck speed toward the very cars and highway that reduced its brethren to the far more familiar smear of blood and guts and flattened shell</dt>\n\n<dd>Stop.</dd>\n\n<dt>to the very loud, very drunk retirees camping in the monstrous bus-size vehicle near the water at Laura Walker state park who quite clearly were not worried what the neighbors might think</dt>\n\n<dd>Rock on.</dd>\n\n<dt>to the wonderful people of Stinton's barbecue in Lumber City, Georgia</dt>\n\n<dd>The ribs were delicious. We hope that Mrs <span>_____</span> finds a buyer for her land and that coons are not too much trouble (we can't help thinking six acres for $20,000 is a steal, inquire within). We do not, however, think that the girl sitting at the table by the windows was really old enough to get married. We are assuming this is some sort of inside joke played on passersby like ourselves. In any case, the mustard sauce was excellent.</dd>\n\n<dt>to the person or persons who erected the dogmatic, and frankly, quite alarming, religious billboards in Lumber City</dt>\n\n<dd>We are concerned about your soul and hope that your view of humanity is soon profoundly improved by something beautiful.</dd>\n\n</dl>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">K</span>ingfisher Landing, on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp, is quiet. A few warblers are flitting around in the fetterbush and holly-like shrubs that line the channel around the put in. I unroll a sleeping pad and stretch out in the sun. It's the first warm day I've seen in months.\r\n\r\nEventually the others return from the car shuttle run. Gear piles into the canoes and we after it. \r\n\r\nThe swamp water is inky black here. Dead still everywhere. \r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\r\n srcset=\"[[base_url]]2010/kingfisher-lg-640.jpg 640w,\r\n [[base_url]]2010/kingfisher-lg.jpg 1180w,\r\n [[base_url]]2010/kingfisher-lg-2280.jpg 2280w\"\r\n src=\"[[base_url]]2010/kingfisher-lg.jpg\" alt=\"Kingfisher Channel, Okefenokee Swamp\">\r\n\r\nWhen the water becomes shallower on day two it reveals its true colors, a deep cinnamon red that's often compared to well-steeped Earl Grey tea. The color comes from the acid in the myriad decaying plants. The stillness comes from something else.\r\n\r\nThe water is so still that even following another canoe, provided you hang back a hundred yards, the water never appears disturbed -- the ripples of previous paddles quickly fade, absorbed into the marshland around the narrow channels.\r\n\r\nIt isn't more than a couple of hours paddling before we run across the first alligator, sunning itself on a boggy patch of mud, one of the countless floating islands of the swamp. \r\n\r\nSome of these islands are hardly worthy of the name, a patch of mud barely big enough to support a six-foot alligator, others are immense, supporting swamp cypress, pines and who knows what else lurking deep in the impenetrable thickets of grass and shrubs and undergrowth. \r\n\r\nOkefenokee is a Creek Indian word, O-ke-fin-o-cau, \"Land of the Trembling Earth.\"\r\n\r\nStanding on the islands would be akin to walking on a waterbed. Full of alligators. None of us try it. \r\n\r\nOur route through the swamp takes us mainly through the prairie areas -- grasses and sedges with patches of peat, water lilies starting to bloom, clumps of pitcher plants luring unsuspecting insects.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/matt-paddling.jpg\" alt=\"Matt paddling a canoe, Okefenokee Swamp\" />\r\n\r\nThe first two days we see no one. Once, as the channel swings back toward the edge of the swamp we hear distant murmur of a train whistle. The rest of the time the only sounds are the splash of paddles in the water. The cries of Red Tailed Hawks, Wood Ducks and Cowbirds. The occasional groan of an alligator.\r\n\r\nIn the evenings Ibis and Sand Hill Cranes can be heard calling in the shadows of larger islands. The silhouettes of Sand Hills glide across the horizon, their enormous wingspans black against the orange of the setting sun.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide960\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/blufflakesunset.jpg\" alt=\"Sunset at Bluff Lake, Okefenokee Swamp\" />\r\n\r\nWe paddle for six hours a day. Muscles complain. The shoulders, the triceps, the back. Something called the rotator cuff. It is hard not to suddenly wonder about the exact names of these new pinpoints of pain, muscles previously unaccounted for in daily activities. \r\n\r\nThe aches start in the shoulders and generally cascades down the back. But it's bearable. An acceptable trade off for solitude, Sand Hills and a land of trembling earth.\r\n\r\nWhen the channel narrows and weaves through the dense thickets of forest on day two, our pace slows to only one mile an hour. Otherwise we are able to do two, even three at times, depending on midday beer consumption.\r\n\r\nThe last night a smallish alligator, no bigger than your leg really, shows up right around dinner time, circling the front of the platform in what looks like a reptilian attempt to beg for food. At some point the alligator has no doubt been fed a leftover clump of cold pasta, a extra Oreo cookie or some other paddler morsel and is now attempting, as best its species can, to beg for more.\r\n\r\nStrange though it might sound, it's hard not to find the alligator (hereafter, Steve), well, scaly yes, but also somehow strangely, yes, perhaps even cute.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/alligator.jpg\" alt=\"Alligator, Roundtop Shelter, Okefenokee Swamp\" />\r\n\r\nIt's likewise difficult to not regard Steve's dark watery eyes, nearly unblinking in their stare, as quite simply curious. An alligator in the midst of teenage curiosity and rebellion. \r\n\r\nIt's hard not to anthropomorphize. It's also hard not to see any single alligator as possessing the entire history of the species. True, Steve in particular has not been alive since the Late Cretaceous Age, but the species has. It found its niche and did so well that evolution decided it was done, perfection attained, no need for further change. And it survived shifting continents, disappearing oceans, possibly comets, ice ages and all other manner of geologic apocalypse.\r\n\r\nAlligators are one of the only living links back to the dinosaurs. 100 million odd years of continuous existence on earth.\r\n\r\nThere is something Zen-like about the alligator. A creature which has not only not changed in 100 million years, but found a way to spend the majority of its day simply lying in the sun, eating when it wants, doing nothing when it wants.\r\n\r\nIt is the apex of evolution in many ways. Perhaps not the top, perhaps not the goal, but nevertheless able to be here now, then, and like the swamp itself, perhaps here forever.\r\n\r\nIn the mean time, we will have to move on.\r\n\r\n<h4 class=\"notes\">Assorted notes and further thoughts:</h4>\r\n\r\n<dl class=\"addendum\">\r\n\r\n<dt>to the person or persons who complained in the registration book at the Bluff Lake shelter that some \"jerks\" left a large bundle of plastic piled under the cooking table</dt>\r\n\r\n<dd>The \"jerks\" are the rangers who left it there so your hemp sleeping bag won't get wet should the rain become horizontal. Are you by chance the owners of the DIY wooden camper we saw in the parking lot with the license plate VEGANS?</dd>\r\n\r\n<dt>to people buying things made of alligator skin.</dt>\r\n\r\n<dd>Desist.</dd>\r\n\r\n<dt>to the only live armadillo I have ever seen, which was running at breakneck speed toward the very cars and highway that reduced its brethren to the far more familiar smear of blood and guts and flattened shell</dt>\r\n\r\n<dd>Stop.</dd>\r\n\r\n<dt>to the very loud, very drunk retirees camping in the monstrous bus-size vehicle near the water at Laura Walker state park who quite clearly were not worried what the neighbors might think</dt>\r\n\r\n<dd>Rock on.</dd>\r\n\r\n<dt>to the wonderful people of Stinton's barbecue in Lumber City, Georgia</dt>\r\n\r\n<dd>The ribs were delicious. We hope that Mrs <span>_____</span> finds a buyer for her land and that coons are not too much trouble (we can't help thinking six acres for $20,000 is a steal, inquire within). We do not, however, think that the girl sitting at the table by the windows was really old enough to get married. We are assuming this is some sort of inside joke played on passersby like ourselves. In any case, the mustard sauce was excellent.</dd>\r\n\r\n<dt>to the person or persons who erected the dogmatic, and frankly, quite alarming, religious billboards in Lumber City</dt>\r\n\r\n<dd>We are concerned about your soul and hope that your view of humanity is soon profoundly improved by something beautiful.</dd>\r\n\r\n</dl>", "dek": "A canoe trip through the Okefenokee Swamp down in the southern most corner of Georgia. Paddling the strange reddish and incredibly still waters. Begging alligators, aching muscles and the kindly folks of Stintson's Barbecue all getting their due.", "pub_date": "2010-03-13T12:50:48", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-82.1832228795992847 30.9134155184518704)", "location": 84, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": 86, "image": "images/post-images/2010/okeefenokee.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2010/okeefenokee.jpg", "meta_description": "A canoe trip through the Okefenokee swamp down in the southern most corner of Georgia, complete with begging alligators. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 99, "fields": {"title": "(There'll Be) Peace in the Valley", "slug": "death-valley", "body_html": "<div class=\"col\">\n<p>It's well before dawn when we arrive at Zabriskie Point. Stars still fill the western sky, above the snow capped Panamint Mountains. Down the hill from the roadside overlook is a short trail that cuts through the chalky, barren ground. </p>\n\n<p>The land in front of us looks like the moon. In technicolor. Multi-colored layers of rock and sand, hardly a plant to be found. It's an alien looking place, once a lake, now a sinking basin full of salt and dust. </p>\n\n\n<p>When we arrived there was only one other lone traveler standing around the point, which made it seem even more desolate, but by the time the sun begins to paint its way down the distant ridges of the Panamints, the overlook is chock full of people. </p>\n\n<p>Still, hardly anyone makes a sound, and when they do it's only the soft footfalls of boots treading the alkaline gravel or hushed whispers that fade in the empty stillness and silence of the desert.</p>\n\n</div>\n\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/dvzabriskiepoint.jpg\" alt=\"sunrise, Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park, CA\" /></p>\n<p>I lived just four hours from Death Valley for twenty-five years. I've been all over Europe and Asia, but I never made the trip out here. Until now. Now that I live clear across the country from Death Valley, I finally arrive. Sometimes you miss what's right in front of you. Sometimes you think you have to go around the world to find the exotic when in fact it's just down the road.</p>\n<p>After the sun is well up and the light on Zabriskie Point has become the even glow of mid-morning we drive down the valley to Badwater, the lowest point in the United States. </p>\n<p>There's no one around. The desert is utterly silent save the crunching of our boots as we walk out on the salt flats. Even in the morning light the salt is almost blindingly bright, by mid-afternoon it will be painful to look at. </p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/dvsaltflats.jpg\" alt=\"Salt Flats, Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park, CA\" /></p>\n<p>Only one person died to give Death Valley its name. And that was during the winter. Death Valley is also not technically a valley. Valleys have entrances and exits, streams that feed through them. Death Valley is a basin, no entrance, no exit. Whatever little rain falls in Death Valley returns back into the ground, the excess eventually making its way here to Badwater, where it mixes with the salt and slowly sinks into the rock or evaporates off into the air.</p>\n<p>Badwater is where Death Valley ends in that respect. It is the exit point, where the basin returns its water back into the earth, taking the land with it -- Badwater continues to sink down a little bit every year.</p>\n<p>But it's hard to imagine Death Valley as the lake it once was when you're standing in the middle of a salt flat feeling parched, salt caked to your shoes and nothing but pure featureless white as far as you can see.</p>\n<p><span class=\"drop-small\">T</span>he previous day we drove through Titus Canyon. The drive starts on the eastern side of the park where a four wheel drive trail veers off the main road and cuts straight through the high desert. The flat expanses of desert to the east are carpeted with yellow flowers, the product of a relatively wet (by Death Valley standards) spring.</p>\n<p>Eventually the road begins to slowly wind upward, past barren, red rock outcroppings and on toward the appropriately named Red Pass, which crosses the main ridge of the Grapevine Mountains, where the road begins the descent into Titus Canyon proper.</p>\n<p>The canyon itself is an impressive display of geology and the power of earthquakes -- massive, jagged walls of thrust up strata loom at every side. Looking down the canyon is like staring into the history of the earth. </p>\n<p>Black limestone has been thrust up through red and white layers creating a rainbow palate of rock. The dark black rock dates from the Cambrian period when Death Valley was awash in the algae that would later become the limestone that surrounds us.</p>\n<p><img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/dvtitusnarrows.jpg\" alt=\"Titus Canyon Narrows, Death Valley National Park, CA\" />The further on we go, heading west back toward Death Valley proper, the narrower the canyon becomes. The rock walls creep closer and closer, eventually squeezing the road and the dry stream bed it has been following into one single track.</p>\n<p>We get out and walk around for while. It's cool here in the narrows, the walls are too steep for the afternoon sun to penetrate. The ranger said there are hanging gardens up on the rock face above us, but the walls here are too steep to see much. </p>\n<p><span class=\"drop-small\">T</span>he next day, after watching the sunrise and seeing Badwater, we drove up to Aguereberry Point, midway up in the Panamint mountains. At the end of the road a short trail leads out to the point where the ridge line drops off into the vast basin below.</p>\n<p>Death Valley is white from above. Slat flats and borax. Once people came here to dig up borax, copper, gold and handful of other metals that have been thrust up from the depths of the earth.</p>\n<p><img class=\"postpic\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/dvaguereberry.jpg\" alt=\"View from Aguereberry Point, Death Valley National Park, CA\" />Pete Aguereberry, for whom the point is named, mined in the area until he died in 1945. But Aguereberry didn't build the road to get the mines, he built his road to the point simply because he liked the view. </p>\n<p>Today the National Park service has built a newer road (still dirt and somewhat rough) but along the way you can still catch glimpses of Aguereberry's original work snaking its way through the sagebrush.</p>\n<p>It must have been a brutal job back when Aguereberry did it. But it is a commanding view, the hills seem to fall away at your feet, offering a glimpse of the land far beyond the basin to the east and up and down it to the north and south. </p>\n<p>Far below, running along the opposite side of the salt flats, I can make out the road that will take us down to the south and eventually out of Death Valley. </p>\n<p>Later, as the car winds down that same road I stare out the window thinking that I should really go to Savannah, Georgia, a place I have heard about for years, but never, in the ten years I've lived in Georgia, have I been. Sometimes you just forget about things that are right there in front of you.</p>", "body_markdown": "<div class=\"col\">\r\n<p>It's well before dawn when we arrive at Zabriskie Point. Stars still fill the western sky, above the snow capped Panamint Mountains. Down the hill from the roadside overlook is a short trail that cuts through the chalky, barren ground. </p>\r\n\r\n<p>The land in front of us looks like the moon. In technicolor. Multi-colored layers of rock and sand, hardly a plant to be found. It's an alien looking place, once a lake, now a sinking basin full of salt and dust. </p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>When we arrived there was only one other lone traveler standing around the point, which made it seem even more desolate, but by the time the sun begins to paint its way down the distant ridges of the Panamints, the overlook is chock full of people. </p>\r\n\r\n<p>Still, hardly anyone makes a sound, and when they do it's only the soft footfalls of boots treading the alkaline gravel or hushed whispers that fade in the empty stillness and silence of the desert.</p>\r\n\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/dvzabriskiepoint.jpg\" alt=\"sunrise, Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park, CA\" />\r\n\r\n\r\nI lived just four hours from Death Valley for twenty-five years. I've been all over Europe and Asia, but I never made the trip out here. Until now. Now that I live clear across the country from Death Valley, I finally arrive. Sometimes you miss what's right in front of you. Sometimes you think you have to go around the world to find the exotic when in fact it's just down the road.\r\n\r\nAfter the sun is well up and the light on Zabriskie Point has become the even glow of mid-morning we drive down the valley to Badwater, the lowest point in the United States. \r\n\r\nThere's no one around. The desert is utterly silent save the crunching of our boots as we walk out on the salt flats. Even in the morning light the salt is almost blindingly bright, by mid-afternoon it will be painful to look at. \r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/dvsaltflats.jpg\" alt=\"Salt Flats, Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park, CA\" />\r\n\r\nOnly one person died to give Death Valley its name. And that was during the winter. Death Valley is also not technically a valley. Valleys have entrances and exits, streams that feed through them. Death Valley is a basin, no entrance, no exit. Whatever little rain falls in Death Valley returns back into the ground, the excess eventually making its way here to Badwater, where it mixes with the salt and slowly sinks into the rock or evaporates off into the air.\r\n\r\nBadwater is where Death Valley ends in that respect. It is the exit point, where the basin returns its water back into the earth, taking the land with it -- Badwater continues to sink down a little bit every year.\r\n\r\nBut it's hard to imagine Death Valley as the lake it once was when you're standing in the middle of a salt flat feeling parched, salt caked to your shoes and nothing but pure featureless white as far as you can see.\r\n\r\n<span class=\"drop-small\">T</span>he previous day we drove through Titus Canyon. The drive starts on the eastern side of the park where a four wheel drive trail veers off the main road and cuts straight through the high desert. The flat expanses of desert to the east are carpeted with yellow flowers, the product of a relatively wet (by Death Valley standards) spring.\r\n\r\nEventually the road begins to slowly wind upward, past barren, red rock outcroppings and on toward the appropriately named Red Pass, which crosses the main ridge of the Grapevine Mountains, where the road begins the descent into Titus Canyon proper.\r\n\r\nThe canyon itself is an impressive display of geology and the power of earthquakes -- massive, jagged walls of thrust up strata loom at every side. Looking down the canyon is like staring into the history of the earth. \r\n\r\nBlack limestone has been thrust up through red and white layers creating a rainbow palate of rock. The dark black rock dates from the Cambrian period when Death Valley was awash in the algae that would later become the limestone that surrounds us.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/dvtitusnarrows.jpg\" alt=\"Titus Canyon Narrows, Death Valley National Park, CA\" />The further on we go, heading west back toward Death Valley proper, the narrower the canyon becomes. The rock walls creep closer and closer, eventually squeezing the road and the dry stream bed it has been following into one single track.\r\n\r\nWe get out and walk around for while. It's cool here in the narrows, the walls are too steep for the afternoon sun to penetrate. The ranger said there are hanging gardens up on the rock face above us, but the walls here are too steep to see much. \r\n\r\n<span class=\"drop-small\">T</span>he next day, after watching the sunrise and seeing Badwater, we drove up to Aguereberry Point, midway up in the Panamint mountains. At the end of the road a short trail leads out to the point where the ridge line drops off into the vast basin below.\r\n\r\nDeath Valley is white from above. Slat flats and borax. Once people came here to dig up borax, copper, gold and handful of other metals that have been thrust up from the depths of the earth.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpic\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/dvaguereberry.jpg\" alt=\"View from Aguereberry Point, Death Valley National Park, CA\" />Pete Aguereberry, for whom the point is named, mined in the area until he died in 1945. But Aguereberry didn't build the road to get the mines, he built his road to the point simply because he liked the view. \r\n\r\nToday the National Park service has built a newer road (still dirt and somewhat rough) but along the way you can still catch glimpses of Aguereberry's original work snaking its way through the sagebrush.\r\n\r\nIt must have been a brutal job back when Aguereberry did it. But it is a commanding view, the hills seem to fall away at your feet, offering a glimpse of the land far beyond the basin to the east and up and down it to the north and south. \r\n\r\nFar below, running along the opposite side of the salt flats, I can make out the road that will take us down to the south and eventually out of Death Valley. \r\n\r\nLater, as the car winds down that same road I stare out the window thinking that I should really go to Savannah, Georgia, a place I have heard about for years, but never, in the ten years I've lived in Georgia, have I been. Sometimes you just forget about things that are right there in front of you.\r\n", "dek": "Sometimes you ignore the places close to home because, well, there's always next weekend. Which is why I never made it Death Valley in the twenty-five years I lived in California. It took being all the way across the country to get me out to Death Valley. Which might explain why I actually got up before dawn just to watch the sunrise at Zabriskie Point. ", "pub_date": "2010-04-24T11:45:59", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-116.8098592595585359 36.4209025771780688)", "location": 85, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2010/deathvalley.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2010/deathvalley.jpg", "meta_description": "Watching the sun rise over Zabriskie Point in Death Valley National Park, wondering why I have never been here before... By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 1}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 100, "fields": {"title": "Los Angeles, I'm Yours", "slug": "los-angeles-im-yours", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"numeral nfirst\">1.</span></p>\n<p>As the plane sweeps in low over eastern Los Angeles the heat of the engine exhaust smears the top portion of the view from my window. Everything warbles and blurs in the heat. It ends up looking like a natural, persistent, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt-shift_photography\" title=\"wikipedia: tilt-shift photography\" rel=nofollow\">tilt-shift</a> distortion, turning the building below into a miniature, toy world. </p>\n<p>The effect is odd, transfixing and a bit disconcerting after a while, a feeling heightened by the Hare Krishna sitting next me incessantly chanting the Maha Mantra. </p>\n<p>Later, outside the terminal a sign reads: Welcome to Los Angeles.</p>\n<p><span class=\"numeral\">2.</span></p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/launionsubway.jpg\" alt=\"Union Station Subway Stop, Los Angeles\" /></p>\n<p>Around the time I was in high school Los Angeles built a subway system. I remember it showing up on page 15 of the newspapers. The universal consensus among those of us used to living under the constant threat of earthquake was that voluntarily going underground for extended periods of time would be tantamount to suicide.</p>\n<p>Besides, Los Angeles is all about the car. Shiny, air-conditioned comfort, gliding you soundlessly from one place to another without the need to interact with anything in between.</p>\n<p>Like most, I forgot about the subway as soon as it was done. The only time the L.A. metro system entered my consciousness was when a train accidentally hit someone crossing the tracks. Again, subway == death.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>Then I moved across the country. </p>\n<p>Just before I left to visit L.A., I stumbled upon some photographs of Union Station, which might well be the pinnacle of Moderne/Art Deco architecture. I decided I must see Union Station, and what better way to arrive than by subway?<sup id=\"fnr-001\"><a href=\"#fn-001\">[1]</a></sup></p>\n<p><img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/launionticketroom.jpg\" alt=\"The Old Ticket room, Union Station, Los Angeles\" />So into the subway I went. It was uneventful, an ordinary subway -- commuters sitting stoically, staring into space, a homeless man muttering in the corner, a older woman with a small trolley full of grocery bags, a fanatic handing out flyers for some cause. But Union Station is more than ordinary.</p>\n<p>Coming up out of the subway into the passenger rail terminal at Union Station is a fantastically beautiful step back in time -- back in time to moment when trains were travel, when building were more than containers for retail stores, when architecture mattered, even in otherwise dull places like a train station. </p>\n<p>From the ceiling in the entrance to the heavy, ornate waiting room chairs, Union Station feels more like a cathedral than a train depot -- inlaid marble abounds, backlit windows glow like stained glass.</p>\n<p>L.A.'s Union Station feels like a cathedral in part because the architecture far exceeds the purely utilitarian function it serves -- you can't help feeling that there is some hidden message in its design. Walking under the magnificent heavy ceiling beams in the waiting room, you begin to feel the same sense of tiny insignificance you feel in the Gothic cathedrals of Europe.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/launionstationceiling.jpg\" alt=\"Union Station Ceiling, Los Angeles\" /></p>\n<p><span class=\"numeral\">3.</span></p>\n<p>It's a strange thing to be a tourist in the area you grew up in. I didn't grow up in L.A. proper, but many of my memories of the area are tied to L.A. because that's where everything fun happened -- live music, art shows, restaurants, movies... did I mention live music? </p>\n<p>Aside from the beach, which was closer to home, L.A. was where everything happened and so it figures larger in my memory than in actual waking hours. And yet I've never really bothered to pay any attention to Los Angeles the city, the streets, the buildings, the people.</p>\n<p>It's an easy thing to miss. Los Angeles seems designed to be unreal, a land where everything is plastic and shrunken like set pieces in a toy train set<sup id=\"fnr-002\"><a href=\"#fn-002\">[2]</a></sup>. </p>\n<p>I'm convinced that part of the reason behind the toy train illusion is to protect L.A.'s residents from certain unpleasant facts, like, for example, the fact that there is no ground below the ground in L.A -- there is no real earth. </p>\n<p>I don't mean like a bit of earth showing where the lawn has been worn by foot traffic, but actual earth, large undisturbed expanses of it. It simply isn't there.</p>\n<p>I spent most of my life in Southern California and I could never find the ground below the ground. The actual earth. The sand at the beaches is trucked in from elsewhere and everything is paved. The roads lead to driveways, to kitchen floors, to backyard patio slabs with that strange pock-marked concrete. Even the riverbeds are poured concrete. Who paves a river?</p>\n<p>You might think New york is the same way; it's not. There's plenty of earth in New York. Central Park, Prospect park, any neighborhood park. Subways leak water, betraying what is behind them, under them, around them. New Yorkers have plenty of reminders about the ground under the ground.</p>\n<p><span class=\"numeral\">4.</span></p>\n<p>I still haven't found the ground under the ground in Los Angeles (the subways don't leak, the concrete tubes under the city are still unbroken), but I have discovered that if you get out of your car and walk, the toy train set illusion reverts at least to a life size city. </p>\n<p><img class=\"postpic\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/latallestbuilding.jpg\" alt=\"Los Angeles\" />The tallest building on the west coast towers overhead; in the distance City Hall looms and the ultra-modern hideousness of the Disney Concert Hall glitters in the afternoon sun. Further up the hill the Department of Power and Water building seems to float, an island in the middle of a man-made lake.</p>\n<p>Everything is very real. We walk down to a park, the tiniest park I've ever seen, but a park nonetheless. Everything seems very real.</p>\n<p>But only for a moment. A few streets later we stop off for a pint at a pirate bar. Fake sailing detritus litters the walls -- ships wheels, heavy braided hemp ropes, portals to nowhere, flags bearing the skull and crossbones. </p>\n<p>Our table is a fake oak barrel, fake pirate insignia decorate the ceiling. The bar looks like a post-production yard sale from the <em>Pirates of the Caribbean</em>.</p>\n<p>The illusion of reality collapses.</p>\n<p>Los Angeles cultivates that aspect of itself, it enjoys the rest of the world seeing it as a completely unreal world. A world of pirate bars and movie stars. You either have to embrace it or get the hell out.</p>\n<p>I went with the latter, but I enjoy returning, trying to find little moments of the real where L.A. drops its pretense and becomes a real city.</p>\n<p><span class=\"numeral\">5.</span></p>\n<p>The next day I walk a mile or two down Wilshire Blvd to Lincoln where I catch the bus to the airport. I drop my change in the box and find a seat near the back of the bus. Someone has scratched the window, initials carved, then crossed out and more initials carved. </p>\n<p>Out of the corner of my eye the scratched window makes the view turn blurry again, the building begin to look more plastic, shrunken. I'm back on the ride. </p>\n<p>The tilt-shift world will go on without me. Nothing to do now but punch your tickets for the toy train and watch the shrunken madness as you slowly click home on the tiny plastic tracks.</p>\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\n<li id=\"fn-001\">\n<p><span class=\"note1\">1. Actually there is a better way: to arrive on some trans-continental train. Sadly, that was not an option for this trip. </span><a href=\"#fnr-001\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n<li id=\"fn-002\">\n<p><span class=\"note2\">2. I know what you're thinking, to talk about Los Angeles as singular entity is sloppy writing, sweeping generalizations being the number one fallacy of self-appointed prognosticators. Of course you're right, there is no Los Angeles. And yet there is. </span><a href=\"#fnr-002\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"numeral nfirst\">1.</span>\r\n\r\nAs the plane sweeps in low over eastern Los Angeles the heat of the engine exhaust smears the top portion of the view from my window. Everything warbles and blurs in the heat. It ends up looking like a natural, persistent, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt-shift_photography\" title=\"wikipedia: tilt-shift photography\" rel=nofollow\">tilt-shift</a> distortion, turning the building below into a miniature, toy world. \r\n\r\nThe effect is odd, transfixing and a bit disconcerting after a while, a feeling heightened by the Hare Krishna sitting next me incessantly chanting the Maha Mantra. \r\n\r\nLater, outside the terminal a sign reads: Welcome to Los Angeles.\r\n\r\n<span class=\"numeral\">2.</span>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/launionsubway.jpg\" alt=\"Union Station Subway Stop, Los Angeles\" />\r\n\r\nAround the time I was in high school Los Angeles built a subway system. I remember it showing up on page 15 of the newspapers. The universal consensus among those of us used to living under the constant threat of earthquake was that voluntarily going underground for extended periods of time would be tantamount to suicide.\r\n\r\nBesides, Los Angeles is all about the car. Shiny, air-conditioned comfort, gliding you soundlessly from one place to another without the need to interact with anything in between.\r\n\r\nLike most, I forgot about the subway as soon as it was done. The only time the L.A. metro system entered my consciousness was when a train accidentally hit someone crossing the tracks. Again, subway == death.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nThen I moved across the country. \r\n\r\nJust before I left to visit L.A., I stumbled upon some photographs of Union Station, which might well be the pinnacle of Moderne/Art Deco architecture. I decided I must see Union Station, and what better way to arrive than by subway?<sup id=\"fnr-001\"><a href=\"#fn-001\">[1]</a></sup>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/launionticketroom.jpg\" alt=\"The Old Ticket room, Union Station, Los Angeles\" />So into the subway I went. It was uneventful, an ordinary subway -- commuters sitting stoically, staring into space, a homeless man muttering in the corner, a older woman with a small trolley full of grocery bags, a fanatic handing out flyers for some cause. But Union Station is more than ordinary.\r\n\r\nComing up out of the subway into the passenger rail terminal at Union Station is a fantastically beautiful step back in time -- back in time to moment when trains were travel, when building were more than containers for retail stores, when architecture mattered, even in otherwise dull places like a train station. \r\n\r\nFrom the ceiling in the entrance to the heavy, ornate waiting room chairs, Union Station feels more like a cathedral than a train depot -- inlaid marble abounds, backlit windows glow like stained glass.\r\n\r\nL.A.'s Union Station feels like a cathedral in part because the architecture far exceeds the purely utilitarian function it serves -- you can't help feeling that there is some hidden message in its design. Walking under the magnificent heavy ceiling beams in the waiting room, you begin to feel the same sense of tiny insignificance you feel in the Gothic cathedrals of Europe.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/launionstationceiling.jpg\" alt=\"Union Station Ceiling, Los Angeles\" />\r\n\r\n<span class=\"numeral\">3.</span>\r\n\r\nIt's a strange thing to be a tourist in the area you grew up in. I didn't grow up in L.A. proper, but many of my memories of the area are tied to L.A. because that's where everything fun happened -- live music, art shows, restaurants, movies... did I mention live music? \r\n\r\nAside from the beach, which was closer to home, L.A. was where everything happened and so it figures larger in my memory than in actual waking hours. And yet I've never really bothered to pay any attention to Los Angeles the city, the streets, the buildings, the people.\r\n\r\nIt's an easy thing to miss. Los Angeles seems designed to be unreal, a land where everything is plastic and shrunken like set pieces in a toy train set<sup id=\"fnr-002\"><a href=\"#fn-002\">[2]</a></sup>. \r\n\r\nI'm convinced that part of the reason behind the toy train illusion is to protect L.A.'s residents from certain unpleasant facts, like, for example, the fact that there is no ground below the ground in L.A -- there is no real earth. \r\n\r\nI don't mean like a bit of earth showing where the lawn has been worn by foot traffic, but actual earth, large undisturbed expanses of it. It simply isn't there.\r\n\r\nI spent most of my life in Southern California and I could never find the ground below the ground. The actual earth. The sand at the beaches is trucked in from elsewhere and everything is paved. The roads lead to driveways, to kitchen floors, to backyard patio slabs with that strange pock-marked concrete. Even the riverbeds are poured concrete. Who paves a river?\r\n\r\nYou might think New york is the same way; it's not. There's plenty of earth in New York. Central Park, Prospect park, any neighborhood park. Subways leak water, betraying what is behind them, under them, around them. New Yorkers have plenty of reminders about the ground under the ground.\r\n\r\n<span class=\"numeral\">4.</span>\r\n\r\nI still haven't found the ground under the ground in Los Angeles (the subways don't leak, the concrete tubes under the city are still unbroken), but I have discovered that if you get out of your car and walk, the toy train set illusion reverts at least to a life size city. \r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpic\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/latallestbuilding.jpg\" alt=\"Los Angeles\" />The tallest building on the west coast towers overhead; in the distance City Hall looms and the ultra-modern hideousness of the Disney Concert Hall glitters in the afternoon sun. Further up the hill the Department of Power and Water building seems to float, an island in the middle of a man-made lake.\r\n\r\nEverything is very real. We walk down to a park, the tiniest park I've ever seen, but a park nonetheless. Everything seems very real.\r\n\r\nBut only for a moment. A few streets later we stop off for a pint at a pirate bar. Fake sailing detritus litters the walls -- ships wheels, heavy braided hemp ropes, portals to nowhere, flags bearing the skull and crossbones. \r\n\r\nOur table is a fake oak barrel, fake pirate insignia decorate the ceiling. The bar looks like a post-production yard sale from the *Pirates of the Caribbean*.\r\n\r\nThe illusion of reality collapses.\r\n\r\nLos Angeles cultivates that aspect of itself, it enjoys the rest of the world seeing it as a completely unreal world. A world of pirate bars and movie stars. You either have to embrace it or get the hell out.\r\n\r\nI went with the latter, but I enjoy returning, trying to find little moments of the real where L.A. drops its pretense and becomes a real city.\r\n\r\n<span class=\"numeral\">5.</span>\r\n\r\nThe next day I walk a mile or two down Wilshire Blvd to Lincoln where I catch the bus to the airport. I drop my change in the box and find a seat near the back of the bus. Someone has scratched the window, initials carved, then crossed out and more initials carved. \r\n\r\nOut of the corner of my eye the scratched window makes the view turn blurry again, the building begin to look more plastic, shrunken. I'm back on the ride. \r\n\r\nThe tilt-shift world will go on without me. Nothing to do now but punch your tickets for the toy train and watch the shrunken madness as you slowly click home on the tiny plastic tracks.\r\n\r\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\r\n<li id=\"fn-001\">\r\n<p><span class=\"note1\">1. Actually there is a better way: to arrive on some trans-continental train. Sadly, that was not an option for this trip. </span><a href=\"#fnr-001\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\r\n</li>\r\n<li id=\"fn-002\">\r\n<p><span class=\"note2\">2. I know what you're thinking, to talk about Los Angeles as singular entity is sloppy writing, sweeping generalizations being the number one fallacy of self-appointed prognosticators. Of course you're right, there is no Los Angeles. And yet there is. </span><a href=\"#fnr-002\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\r\n</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n", "dek": "Los Angeles is all about the car. Shiny, air-conditioned comfort, gliding you soundlessly from one place to another without the need to interact with anything in between. But I have discovered that if you abandon the car for the subway and your own two feet, the illusion that L.A. is just a model train set world — tiny, plastic and devoid of any ground beneath the ground — fades and you find yourself, for a time, in a real city.", "pub_date": "2010-05-17T16:43:18", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-118.2358825045514834 34.0558238743262365)", "location": 10, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": 100, "image": "images/post-images/2010/launionsubway.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2010/launiontickets.jpg", "meta_description": "Ditch the car and ride the subways of Los Angeles, the toy train world where there is no ground beneath the ground... By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 101, "fields": {"title": "Begin the Begin", "slug": "begin-the-begin", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">W</span>hen I first arrived in South Asia I stayed near a Spanish Fort in Cochin, India. The first night of this trip I found myself in Spanish Fort, Alabama. Unfortunately, while both may have been erected by the Spanish (lovers of forts the Spanish), there the similarities end.</p>\n<p><img class=\"postpic\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/gulf_shores_raibow.jpg\" alt=\"Rainbow in Gulf Shores Mississippi\" />Where Fort Cochin India had <a href=\"/2005/nov/10/vasco-de-gama-exhumed/\" title=\"Read the luxagraf entry about Fort Cochin, India\">cantilevered Chinese fishing nets, massive, ancient trees and endless thalis of fish and sauces</a>, Spanish Fort Alabama can only claim corporate chain restaurants and shoddy, overpriced motels. </p>\n<p>About the only real upside to the southern Alabama I've seen is the plethora of rainbows -- double rainbows, single rainbows, rainbows where the beginning and the end are visible, rainbows that came down and ended right in front of my truck. Sadly, not a pot of gold to be found.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>We left town on the fourth of July -- what better day to start a road trip around the United States? </p>\n<p>I'm not an especially patriotic person, but, were I patriotic about anything in the United States, it would be the land. There are few, if any, other places on the earth with the diversity and beauty you'll find in America. That is, I suppose, what we are all looking for when we travel -- beauty. Beauty in places, beauty in people, perhaps even beauty in ourselves.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/gulf_shores_morning_light.jpg\" alt=\"Union Station Subway Stop, Los Angeles\" /></p>\n<p>The first day we drove as far as Spanish Fort, near Mobile on the Alabama coast. The next morning we started out early, cutting off the interstate in favor of the coast road, down to Gulf Shores to have a last look at the beach before BP's oil spill washes ashore. </p>\n<p>Gulf Port already feels like a ghost town. Hardly anyone seemed to have spent their fourth on the coast, hotel parking lots were empty, the roads virtually deserted and we had the white sands of the beach to ourselves. At the actual port the shrimp and fishing boats sat idle, some already being pulled into dry docks, avoiding the coming oil. </p>\n<p>Further down the coast we saw the first cluster of what would be turn out to be hundreds of orange-vested people wandering the beaches, some with plastic garbage bags fluttering in the wind, others with rakes thrown over their shoulders, all waiting. There is nothing to do just yet. For now the oil is still at sea. But the weather forecasts put the oil onshore either tomorrow or the next day. </p>\n<p>Across the street from the beach are the remnants of another disaster that arrived from the sea -- hurricane Katrina. </p>\n<p>It's been nearly five years, but Gulf Port is still littered with empty lots that look like scars amidst houses that remain. Empty foundations are half-obscured in weeds, brick porches lead to nothing, empty swimming pools are cracked, plants growing out their drains. Here and there a tire swing hangs from an Oak tree, still waiting for someone no longer thinking about returning.</p>\n<p>And somewhere out at sea the next disaster is getting ready to arrive.</p>\n<p>I wander the beach for a while, watching the morning sun stream through the dark, sullen clouds that cover the horizon in every direction. I've never seen an oil spill, just pictures and video. It's hard to imagine all the what this beach will will look like when the oil and dead animals begin to wash up. </p>\n<p>For now it is just sugary white sand that squeaks under your bare feet. Small waves lap at the shore, then hiss softly as they retract back to the ocean. </p>\n<p>I return to the truck and head off again, west -- always west, into the future as it were. The road winds along the shoreline. Buses and volunteers are stationed every few miles. The shoreline will be temporarily destroyed, it is a tragedy, all the moreso because it need not have happened, but there are people here who do their best to right the wrongs. </p>\n<p>The land may be beautiful, but it's always in peril. Fortunately, there are people trying to protect it, to restore it, to preserve it. The light turns green and beach begins to fade in the rearview mirror. It's a somber, but perhaps not inappropriate, beginning for a trip around the United States. </p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">W</span>hen I first arrived in South Asia I stayed near a Spanish Fort in Cochin, India. The first night of this trip I found myself in Spanish Fort, Alabama. Unfortunately, while both may have been erected by the Spanish (lovers of forts the Spanish), there the similarities end.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpic\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/gulf_shores_raibow.jpg\" alt=\"Rainbow in Gulf Shores Mississippi\" />Where Fort Cochin India had <a href=\"/2005/nov/10/vasco-de-gama-exhumed/\" title=\"Read the luxagraf entry about Fort Cochin, India\">cantilevered Chinese fishing nets, massive, ancient trees and endless thalis of fish and sauces</a>, Spanish Fort Alabama can only claim corporate chain restaurants and shoddy, overpriced motels. \r\n\r\nAbout the only real upside to the southern Alabama I've seen is the plethora of rainbows -- double rainbows, single rainbows, rainbows where the beginning and the end are visible, rainbows that came down and ended right in front of my truck. Sadly, not a pot of gold to be found.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nWe left town on the fourth of July -- what better day to start a road trip around the United States? \r\n\r\nI'm not an especially patriotic person, but, were I patriotic about anything in the United States, it would be the land. There are few, if any, other places on the earth with the diversity and beauty you'll find in America. That is, I suppose, what we are all looking for when we travel -- beauty. Beauty in places, beauty in people, perhaps even beauty in ourselves.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/gulf_shores_morning_light.jpg\" alt=\"Union Station Subway Stop, Los Angeles\" />\r\n\r\n\r\nThe first day we drove as far as Spanish Fort, near Mobile on the Alabama coast. The next morning we started out early, cutting off the interstate in favor of the coast road, down to Gulf Shores to have a last look at the beach before BP's oil spill washes ashore. \r\n\r\nGulf Port already feels like a ghost town. Hardly anyone seemed to have spent their fourth on the coast, hotel parking lots were empty, the roads virtually deserted and we had the white sands of the beach to ourselves. At the actual port the shrimp and fishing boats sat idle, some already being pulled into dry docks, avoiding the coming oil. \r\n\r\nFurther down the coast we saw the first cluster of what would be turn out to be hundreds of orange-vested people wandering the beaches, some with plastic garbage bags fluttering in the wind, others with rakes thrown over their shoulders, all waiting. There is nothing to do just yet. For now the oil is still at sea. But the weather forecasts put the oil onshore either tomorrow or the next day. \r\n\r\nAcross the street from the beach are the remnants of another disaster that arrived from the sea -- hurricane Katrina. \r\n\r\nIt's been nearly five years, but Gulf Port is still littered with empty lots that look like scars amidst houses that remain. Empty foundations are half-obscured in weeds, brick porches lead to nothing, empty swimming pools are cracked, plants growing out their drains. Here and there a tire swing hangs from an Oak tree, still waiting for someone no longer thinking about returning.\r\n\r\nAnd somewhere out at sea the next disaster is getting ready to arrive.\r\n\r\nI wander the beach for a while, watching the morning sun stream through the dark, sullen clouds that cover the horizon in every direction. I've never seen an oil spill, just pictures and video. It's hard to imagine all the what this beach will will look like when the oil and dead animals begin to wash up. \r\n\r\nFor now it is just sugary white sand that squeaks under your bare feet. Small waves lap at the shore, then hiss softly as they retract back to the ocean. \r\n\r\nI return to the truck and head off again, west -- always west, into the future as it were. The road winds along the shoreline. Buses and volunteers are stationed every few miles. The shoreline will be temporarily destroyed, it is a tragedy, all the moreso because it need not have happened, but there are people here who do their best to right the wrongs. \r\n\r\nThe land may be beautiful, but it's always in peril. Fortunately, there are people trying to protect it, to restore it, to preserve it. The light turns green and beach begins to fade in the rearview mirror. It's a somber, but perhaps not inappropriate, beginning for a trip around the United States. ", "dek": "It's travel time again. This time I'm driving my 1969 Ford truck out west, to Texas, Colorado, Utah and more — a road trip around the western United States. The first stop is Gulf Port, Mississippi. It's hard to believe, sitting here on the deserted beaches of Gulf Shore, watching the sun break through the ominous clouds, but soon this beauty will be gone. The BP oil spill is somewhere out there, blown slowly ashore by the storm hovering over us, waiting to drown the beaches in crude.", "pub_date": "2010-07-05T22:00:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-89.0308105821659410 30.3804002965972160)", "location": 86, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2010/gulf_port_beach.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2010/gulf_port_beach_tn.jpg", "meta_description": "My trip around the United States starts with rainbows and darkness, as the BP oil spill looms off the coast of Gulf Port. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 102, "fields": {"title": "The Dixie Drug Store", "slug": "dixie-drug-store", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">N</span>ew Orleans is a blur. It started with a pint over lunch just after we arrived and then there were a few more pints at the coffeeshop down the street from our hotel, where an obnoxious group of people scouting locations for a movie eventually drove us on, to the statue of Ignatius Reilly, then a casino, a slightly lighter wallet, the best muffaletta I've ever had, some very old graves, an unlikely amount of pork, a transvestite beauty pageant and then we hit the road again.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/neworleansstreet.jpg\" alt=\"The corner of Decatur and Barracks, New Orleans, LA\" class=\"postpic\" /> Which is not to say I was drunk the whole time, just that somewhere between the beer and the stifling humidity and wholly unique character of New Orleans, everything becomes less distinct.</p>\n<p>New Orleans is only technically part of the United States, a act of map making more than anything else. For me, New Orleans has always been the one foreign country I can visit without a passport. </p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>New Orleans is it's own world. So much so that's it's impossible to put your finger on what it is that makes it different. New Orleans is a place where the line between consensus reality and private dream seems to have never fully developed. And a wonderful world it is.</p>\n<p>The New Orleans Pharmacy museum sticks out amidst the blurry series of events, perhaps because it was air conditioned, perhaps because of the Grant Lee Buffalo song from which the title of this entry is taken, or perhaps because pharmacology is simply fascinating no matter where you are, New Orleans just happens to have the perfect shrine to it.</p>\n<p>Whatever the case, the museum is a brilliant glimpse of the halcyon days of early chemical experimenters -- that early world where chemicals were understood well enough to be occasionally useful and not well enough to be occasionally dangerous. A time of self-taught chemists, enthusiastic, evangelical drug fiends, pioneers and yes, outright quacks.</p>\n<p>It seems everyone used to be mixing up some sort of medicine in the basement.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/neworleanspharmashelves.jpg\" alt=\"Pharmacy Museum shelves, New Orleans, LA\" class=\"postpicfull\" /></p>\n<p>In New Orleans there's also a strong connection between the old Vodun religious practices and the potions, cure-alls, medicines and straight quackery that used to be the local drugstore. </p>\n<p>If, like me, you've ever wondered what happened to the days when Coke actually contained cocaine, every woman kept a laudanum tin by the bedside and anyone was generally free to put whatever they liked -- for good or bad -- in their body, then you are no doubt aware of the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914.</p>\n<p>The bill, which overnight made a series of plants and their by-products illegal, is one of those lines in the sand, a marker where, on one side, is total anarchistic freedom (that would be prior to the Harrison Act) and on the other side restrictions, regulations and a government that is suddenly in charge of what you can and cannot do with your body and mind.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/neworleanssarsaparilla.jpg\" alt=\"Sarsaparilla, for what ails ya, Pharmacy Museum, New Orleans, LA\" class=\"postpicright\" />I don't have any strong opinions on the Harrison Act -- it is what it is, and it's far too late to change it. But I do think that time before it sounds like more fun. Sure, there were some wacky chemicals for sale, things that would poison and kill you, but there are still hundreds of lawsuits every year against so-called medicines that have caused people harm. </p>\n<p>The difference is that now we have a huge multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry that gets to crank out the drugs that kill us. At the end of the day the pharmaceutical industry is about as interested in your health as the smiling shysters hawking jars of god-knows-what out the back of a gaudily painted wagon.</p>\n<p>Walking the rooms of the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum with their seemingly endless shelves full of oils and sprays and pipes and potions proudly proclaiming to cure everything from hiccups to money, luck and love, was a beautiful trip back to time when people did things for themselves; when things were not simpler, they were more complicated and risky in fact, but you were in charge. It was your job to educate yourself, to make decisions, to experiment if you wished, abstain if you did not.</p>\n<p>Stepping back out into the humid heat of Rue de Chartres was like being rudely sucked back to the present world. Fortunately New Orleans is there to cushion your abrupt arrival in the present, more strangeness is right around the corner, you just have to keep walking.</p>\n<p>We walked up to the St. Louis Cemetery, not because it's especially strange, but because I had not been there for sixteen years. So much has changed between then and now it boggled my mind and I mostly walked in silence thinking about the road trip I took sixteen years ago. We had no cellphones then, we wrote on paper with pens, we used paper maps to get around. We were nineteen. The world was utterly different.</p>\n<p>Except for the graveyard. Not much changes in graveyards. The neighborhood around St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 has improved somewhat. There was a giant pyramid crypt that I don't remember from the last trip, but otherwise the graveyard looked just as it did when I was nineteen years old.</p>\n<p>I even managed to take the same picture:</p>\n<div class=\"figure\">\n <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/neworleansangel1995.jpg\" alt=\"Angel in 1995\">\n <span class=\"legend\">Angel on a crypt, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans 1995</span>\n</div>\n\n<div class=\"figure\">\n <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/neworleansangel2010.jpg\" alt=\"Angel in 2010\">\n <span class=\"legend\">Angel on a crypt, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans 2010</span>\n</div>\n\n<p>The 2010 version needed to be carefully framed to avoid some new buildings to the south and a bit of Photoshop was necessary to get rid of a stoplight that didn't use to be there, but I do find it remarkable, given how much the world around us has changed in fifteen years, that this scene is still there.</p>\n<p>No one wants to live in a world that never changes, but sometimes it's nice to know that bits of the world remain as they ever are.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">N</span>ew Orleans is a blur. It started with a pint over lunch just after we arrived and then there were a few more pints at the coffeeshop down the street from our hotel, where an obnoxious group of people scouting locations for a movie eventually drove us on, to the statue of Ignatius Reilly, then a casino, a slightly lighter wallet, the best muffaletta I've ever had, some very old graves, an unlikely amount of pork, a transvestite beauty pageant and then we hit the road again.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/neworleansstreet.jpg\" alt=\"The corner of Decatur and Barracks, New Orleans, LA\" class=\"postpic\" /> Which is not to say I was drunk the whole time, just that somewhere between the beer and the stifling humidity and wholly unique character of New Orleans, everything becomes less distinct.\r\n\r\nNew Orleans is only technically part of the United States, a act of map making more than anything else. For me, New Orleans has always been the one foreign country I can visit without a passport. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nNew Orleans is it's own world. So much so that's it's impossible to put your finger on what it is that makes it different. New Orleans is a place where the line between consensus reality and private dream seems to have never fully developed. And a wonderful world it is.\r\n\r\nThe New Orleans Pharmacy museum sticks out amidst the blurry series of events, perhaps because it was air conditioned, perhaps because of the Grant Lee Buffalo song from which the title of this entry is taken, or perhaps because pharmacology is simply fascinating no matter where you are, New Orleans just happens to have the perfect shrine to it.\r\n\r\nWhatever the case, the museum is a brilliant glimpse of the halcyon days of early chemical experimenters -- that early world where chemicals were understood well enough to be occasionally useful and not well enough to be occasionally dangerous. A time of self-taught chemists, enthusiastic, evangelical drug fiends, pioneers and yes, outright quacks.\r\n\r\nIt seems everyone used to be mixing up some sort of medicine in the basement.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/neworleanspharmashelves.jpg\" alt=\"Pharmacy Museum shelves, New Orleans, LA\" class=\"postpicfull\" />\r\n\r\nIn New Orleans there's also a strong connection between the old Vodun religious practices and the potions, cure-alls, medicines and straight quackery that used to be the local drugstore. \r\n\r\nIf, like me, you've ever wondered what happened to the days when Coke actually contained cocaine, every woman kept a laudanum tin by the bedside and anyone was generally free to put whatever they liked -- for good or bad -- in their body, then you are no doubt aware of the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914.\r\n\r\nThe bill, which overnight made a series of plants and their by-products illegal, is one of those lines in the sand, a marker where, on one side, is total anarchistic freedom (that would be prior to the Harrison Act) and on the other side restrictions, regulations and a government that is suddenly in charge of what you can and cannot do with your body and mind.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/neworleanssarsaparilla.jpg\" alt=\"Sarsaparilla, for what ails ya, Pharmacy Museum, New Orleans, LA\" class=\"postpicright\" />I don't have any strong opinions on the Harrison Act -- it is what it is, and it's far too late to change it. But I do think that time before it sounds like more fun. Sure, there were some wacky chemicals for sale, things that would poison and kill you, but there are still hundreds of lawsuits every year against so-called medicines that have caused people harm. \r\n\r\nThe difference is that now we have a huge multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry that gets to crank out the drugs that kill us. At the end of the day the pharmaceutical industry is about as interested in your health as the smiling shysters hawking jars of god-knows-what out the back of a gaudily painted wagon.\r\n\r\nWalking the rooms of the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum with their seemingly endless shelves full of oils and sprays and pipes and potions proudly proclaiming to cure everything from hiccups to money, luck and love, was a beautiful trip back to time when people did things for themselves; when things were not simpler, they were more complicated and risky in fact, but you were in charge. It was your job to educate yourself, to make decisions, to experiment if you wished, abstain if you did not.\r\n\r\nStepping back out into the humid heat of Rue de Chartres was like being rudely sucked back to the present world. Fortunately New Orleans is there to cushion your abrupt arrival in the present, more strangeness is right around the corner, you just have to keep walking.\r\n\r\nWe walked up to the St. Louis Cemetery, not because it's especially strange, but because I had not been there for sixteen years. So much has changed between then and now it boggled my mind and I mostly walked in silence thinking about the road trip I took sixteen years ago. We had no cellphones then, we wrote on paper with pens, we used paper maps to get around. We were nineteen. The world was utterly different.\r\n\r\nExcept for the graveyard. Not much changes in graveyards. The neighborhood around St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 has improved somewhat. There was a giant pyramid crypt that I don't remember from the last trip, but otherwise the graveyard looked just as it did when I was nineteen years old.\r\n\r\nI even managed to take the same picture:\r\n\r\n<div class=\"figure\">\r\n <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/neworleansangel1995.jpg\" alt=\"Angel in 1995\">\r\n <span class=\"legend\">Angel on a crypt, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans 1995</span>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"figure\">\r\n <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/neworleansangel2010.jpg\" alt=\"Angel in 2010\">\r\n <span class=\"legend\">Angel on a crypt, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans 2010</span>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\nThe 2010 version needed to be carefully framed to avoid some new buildings to the south and a bit of Photoshop was necessary to get rid of a stoplight that didn't use to be there, but I do find it remarkable, given how much the world around us has changed in fifteen years, that this scene is still there.\r\n\r\nNo one wants to live in a world that never changes, but sometimes it's nice to know that bits of the world remain as they ever are.\r\n\r\n", "dek": "New Orleans is it's own world. So much so that's it's impossible to put your finger on what it is that makes it different. New Orleans is a place where the line between consensus reality and private dream seems to have never fully developed. And a wonderful world it is.", "pub_date": "2010-07-08T17:00:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-90.0651186579252538 29.9559036138070738)", "location": 87, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": 103, "image": "images/post-images/2010/nopharmacymuseum01.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2010/nopharmacymuseum.jpg", "meta_description": "New Orleans is it's own world; one where nothing and everything is always changing. And a wonderful world it is. by Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 2}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 103, "fields": {"title": "The Legend of Billy the Kid", "slug": "legend-billy-the-kid", "body_html": "<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/billythekid.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"postpicright\" /><span class=\"drop\">T</span>he legend of Billy the Kid has a fork about midway through the story. Either Pat Garrett shot an unarmed Billy the Kid in the back to collect the $500 reward or Pat Garrett shot some other unarmed guy in the back and lied about it being Billy the Kid in order to collect the $500 reward.</p>\n<p>In the end, the story is inconclusive with regards to the fate of Billy the Kid, but one thing is clear: Pat Garrett was an asshole.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>Should you, after careful consideration of the evidence available for both possible stories, decide that you believe the former, then <a href=\"http://www.billythekidmuseumfortsumner.com/\">head to Fort Sumner, New Mexico</a>. If you decide it's the latter, then you need to see the <a href=\"http://billythekidmuseum.com/\">Billy the Kid Museum in Hico, Texas</a>. </p>\n<p>Alternately you could do what I did -- just sort of stumble into Hico, Texas looking for something to do while your sore ass recovered from five hours in a 1969 Ford pickup that no longer has even the slightest hint of padding left in the seat cushions. The obvious time killer in Hico, should you take this approach, is the Billy the Kid Museum.</p>\n<p>The museum in Hico is a testament to the survival of Billy the Kid, who, in this telling, later emerges as a man calling himself Ollie L. \"Brushy Bill\" Roberts. This scenario is particularly appealing to people who believe in redemption and the idea that, at heart, Billy the Kid was not a bad man, did not deserve to be gunned down for a reward (class act that Pat Garrett) and turned his life around.</p>\n<p>For those more fond of doomsday, judgments and reaping what you sow, there is the New Mexico museum, which holds that Billy the Kid is buried there, at the Fort Sumner cemetery, dead and done at age twenty-one.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/billythekidmuseum01.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" /> </p>\n<p>After half an hour or so at the Billy the Kid Museum in Hico, most of which of watching an old episode of Unsolved Mysteries which plays in the back room on a continuous loop, I decided that there is great evidence for both stories and, moreover, it really doesn't matter what happened to Billy the Kid. </p>\n<p>Whoever and whatever Billy the Kid was and did, he has long since passed into legend. History does not catch every story that is slowly slipping through its cracks, some things get caught up in the floorboards and become legends.</p>\n<p>Unlike novels, the stories and legends that never quite make it to anything as definitive as history don't always have neat endings. In fact, the messier, more confusing and more controversial the ending is the more of a legend it becomes. The legend of Billy the Kid is like that of Amelia Earhart or D.B. Cooper -- the less we know for sure, the more compelling the story becomes.</p>\n<p>That the events actually took place in one particular way or another is largely incidental to anyone who is not Billy the Kid, and, one thing we know for sure, like me, you are not.</p>\n<p>Eventually the Unsolved Mysteries tape came back around to the spot where I started watching. I got up and looked at the antique Winchester rifle and old Colt revolvers sitting under glass in the display case. Behind them was a tattered Civil War uniform draped over a wooden chair so old it was gray and looked like the slightest breeze would send it to splinters. </p>\n<p>Along the opposite wall were a series of laminated broadsides telling the less controversial part of Billy the Kid's story in an antique font the purveyors of the museum no doubt believed would give it a more authentic look.</p>\n<p>There wasn't much else in the room, a few other old west artifacts, an American flag, a Texas flag. I wandered back out the front room and chatted for a minute with the woman behind the counter. She was worried about the thunderstorms in Dallas. Whatever hits them ends up here eventually, she said. I agreed, though I have no idea if she was right. It was a good story anyway.</p>\n<p>[The photo of Billy the Kid is from Wikipedia. The Museum photo is copyright Mark Lynch, (via the Billy the Kid Museum), used under the <a href=\"http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html\">Fair Use provision of U.S. copyright law</a>]</p>", "body_markdown": "<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/billythekid.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"postpicright\" /><span class=\"drop\">T</span>he legend of Billy the Kid has a fork about midway through the story. Either Pat Garrett shot an unarmed Billy the Kid in the back to collect the $500 reward or Pat Garrett shot some other unarmed guy in the back and lied about it being Billy the Kid in order to collect the $500 reward.\r\n\r\nIn the end, the story is inconclusive with regards to the fate of Billy the Kid, but one thing is clear: Pat Garrett was an asshole.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nShould you, after careful consideration of the evidence available for both possible stories, decide that you believe the former, then [head to Fort Sumner, New Mexico][2]. If you decide it's the latter, then you need to see the [Billy the Kid Museum in Hico, Texas][1]. \r\n\r\nAlternately you could do what I did -- just sort of stumble into Hico, Texas looking for something to do while your sore ass recovered from five hours in a 1969 Ford pickup that no longer has even the slightest hint of padding left in the seat cushions. The obvious time killer in Hico, should you take this approach, is the Billy the Kid Museum.\r\n\r\nThe museum in Hico is a testament to the survival of Billy the Kid, who, in this telling, later emerges as a man calling himself Ollie L. \"Brushy Bill\" Roberts. This scenario is particularly appealing to people who believe in redemption and the idea that, at heart, Billy the Kid was not a bad man, did not deserve to be gunned down for a reward (class act that Pat Garrett) and turned his life around.\r\n\r\nFor those more fond of doomsday, judgments and reaping what you sow, there is the New Mexico museum, which holds that Billy the Kid is buried there, at the Fort Sumner cemetery, dead and done at age twenty-one.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/billythekidmuseum01.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" /> \r\n\r\nAfter half an hour or so at the Billy the Kid Museum in Hico, most of which of watching an old episode of Unsolved Mysteries which plays in the back room on a continuous loop, I decided that there is great evidence for both stories and, moreover, it really doesn't matter what happened to Billy the Kid. \r\n\r\nWhoever and whatever Billy the Kid was and did, he has long since passed into legend. History does not catch every story that is slowly slipping through its cracks, some things get caught up in the floorboards and become legends.\r\n\r\nUnlike novels, the stories and legends that never quite make it to anything as definitive as history don't always have neat endings. In fact, the messier, more confusing and more controversial the ending is the more of a legend it becomes. The legend of Billy the Kid is like that of Amelia Earhart or D.B. Cooper -- the less we know for sure, the more compelling the story becomes.\r\n\r\nThat the events actually took place in one particular way or another is largely incidental to anyone who is not Billy the Kid, and, one thing we know for sure, like me, you are not.\r\n\r\nEventually the Unsolved Mysteries tape came back around to the spot where I started watching. I got up and looked at the antique Winchester rifle and old Colt revolvers sitting under glass in the display case. Behind them was a tattered Civil War uniform draped over a wooden chair so old it was gray and looked like the slightest breeze would send it to splinters. \r\n\r\nAlong the opposite wall were a series of laminated broadsides telling the less controversial part of Billy the Kid's story in an antique font the purveyors of the museum no doubt believed would give it a more authentic look.\r\n\r\nThere wasn't much else in the room, a few other old west artifacts, an American flag, a Texas flag. I wandered back out the front room and chatted for a minute with the woman behind the counter. She was worried about the thunderstorms in Dallas. Whatever hits them ends up here eventually, she said. I agreed, though I have no idea if she was right. It was a good story anyway.\r\n\r\n[The photo of Billy the Kid is from Wikipedia. The Museum photo is copyright Mark Lynch, (via the Billy the Kid Museum), used under the <a href=\"http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html\">Fair Use provision of U.S. copyright law</a>]\r\n\r\n[1]: http://billythekidmuseum.com/\r\n[2]: http://www.billythekidmuseumfortsumner.com/", "dek": "History rarely offers neat, tidy stories. But the messier, more confusing and more controversial the story becomes, the more it works its way into our imaginations. The legend of Billy the Kid is like that of Amelia Earhart or D.B. Cooper — the less we know for sure, the more compelling the story becomes.", "pub_date": "2010-07-11T18:00:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-98.0308770996947914 31.9819206925824879)", "location": 88, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2010/billythekidmuseum.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2010/Billykid.jpg", "meta_description": "The legend of Billy the Kid is like that of Amelia Earhart: the less we know, the more compelling the story becomes. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 104, "fields": {"title": "Why National Parks Are Better Than State Parks", "slug": "why-national-parks-are-better-state-parks", "body_html": "<div class=\"col\">\n<p>There are many reasons actually, but here's the one I currently consider most important: National Parks never close. Take Palo Dura State Park outside of Amarillo, Texas. Were it a National Park, I would be there right now. But it's not, it's a state park and so I'm sitting in a hotel room in Amarillo. </p>\n\n<p>Of course everyone knows that nature shuts down at 10 PM, so it's not totally surprising that state parks close then. It's not just a Texas problem either, most Georgia parks close at the same time. </p>\n\n<p>Palo Dura likes to call itself \"The Grand Canyon of Texas.\" It may well be, but I'll never know. And neither will the five or so other cars that turned around and headed back to Amarillo because the park gates were shut.</p>\n\n<p>The funny thing is, the highway is littered with billboards promoting the park. For 200 miles I was enticed to detour over to the park and not once did any of them mention that it closed at 10. Here's what Palo Dura canyon looks like, should you after 10PM:</p>\n\n</div>\n\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/paloduraafterten.jpg\" alt=\"pure black image, since I never got into the park\" /></p>\n<p>So I drove on to Amarillo, got a cheap motel room and crashed out for the night.</p>\n<p>Now it's on to a national park that I know will be open no matter what time I arrive: Great Sand Dune National Park.</p>", "body_markdown": "<div class=\"col\">\r\n<p>There are many reasons actually, but here's the one I currently consider most important: National Parks never close. Take Palo Dura State Park outside of Amarillo, Texas. Were it a National Park, I would be there right now. But it's not, it's a state park and so I'm sitting in a hotel room in Amarillo. </p>\r\n\r\n<p>Of course everyone knows that nature shuts down at 10 PM, so it's not totally surprising that state parks close then. It's not just a Texas problem either, most Georgia parks close at the same time. </p>\r\n\r\n<p>Palo Dura likes to call itself \"The Grand Canyon of Texas.\" It may well be, but I'll never know. And neither will the five or so other cars that turned around and headed back to Amarillo because the park gates were shut.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>The funny thing is, the highway is littered with billboards promoting the park. For 200 miles I was enticed to detour over to the park and not once did any of them mention that it closed at 10. Here's what Palo Dura canyon looks like, should you after 10PM:</p>\r\n\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/paloduraafterten.jpg\" alt=\"pure black image, since I never got into the park\" />\r\n\r\n\r\nSo I drove on to Amarillo, got a cheap motel room and crashed out for the night.\r\n\r\nNow it's on to a national park that I know will be open no matter what time I arrive: Great Sand Dune National Park.", "dek": "There are many reasons, but here's the one I currently consider most important: National Parks never close. Take Palo Dura State park outside of Amarillo, Texas. Were it a National Park, I would be there right now. But it's not, it's a state park and so I'm sitting in a hotel room in Amarillo because everyone knows nature closes at 10PM.", "pub_date": "2010-07-15T10:00:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-101.9194793559329071 35.1885403095781584)", "location": 89, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2010/palodura.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2010/paloduratn.jpg", "meta_description": "There are many reasons, but here's the one I currently consider most important: national parks, like the nature they protect, never close. ", "template_name": 1}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 105, "fields": {"title": "Comanche National Grasslands", "slug": "comanche-national-grasslands", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">F</span>rom Amarillo I headed north, taking small county roads through the northern section of the Texas panhandle, into Oklahoma and on to Colorado, where I turned off on a dirt road that claimed it would take me to the Comanche National Grasslands. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/comanche_grasslands_wideopen.jpg\" alt=\"Comanche National Grasslands\" class=\"picfull\" /> </p>\n<p>To say the Comanche National Grasslands is off the grid would be an understatement. With the exception of Highway 50 in Nevada, I've never driven through such isolation and vast openness anywhere in the world. And it's easy to get lost. There are no signs, no road names even, just dirt paths crisscrossing a wide, perfectly flat expanses of grass. </p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>I followed what I thought was the main dirt road through some ranch lands, wheat fields and open grasslands to a cattle grate and a fork in the road where a small sign noted that the Grasslands preserve had begun. </p>\n<p>I had not seen another car since I turned off the main road. Nor would I for the rest of my time in the Comanche National Grasslands. </p>\n<p>Instead there was simply immense, wide open space. Space so big it begins to close in on you, the sky seems so endlessly massive and close that it's disconcerting. The only real limits to your field of vision are the curvature of the earth. You begin to get some sense of how small a thing you really are. If you spend too much time thinking about infinity, you can't help but feel incredibly finite.</p>\n<p>Few of the early settlers who wrote about crossing the plains failed to note the epic proportions of open space. While that space, and the original scale, are long gone, you can get some sense of what it must have been like in the Comanche National Grasslands. If you spend too much time out here, you can still get lost in the vastness of infinity.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/comanche_grasslands_ferruginoushawk.jpg\" alt=\"ferruginous hawk, Comanche National Grasslands\" class=\"postpic\" /> I distracted myself by watching the birds. There were birds everywhere -- red-tailed hawks on a telephone pole, doves lurking in the sunflower plants that lined the road and meadowlarks that took flight at the first sound of the truck, their cream-colored bellies streaking by my window as they peeled off into the open. At one point I even saw a relatively uncommon pigmy burrowing owl.</p>\n<p>Eventually the road began to drop into some lowlands, small rolling depressions cut by the now dry streams that pass though the area. Eventually I came to the head of Chisolm Canyon (which is actually labeled with a small sign), a much larger gash carved by a still flowing river. On a crest just before the road dropped into the canyon proper I stopped and ate lunch.</p>\n<p>As soon as I turned off the truck engine I was engulfed in silence. It was as utter quiet as anywhere I've been. Only the occasional chirping click of grasshoppers and the eerie moaning of the wind sweeping through the juniper bushes broke the stillness. The only other time I've been somewhere as quiet was in the backcountry of the Sierra Nevada during a snowstorm. </p>\n<p>It was quiet enough that every footstep I took seemed like thunder, the crunch of the gravel giving me away to every other living thing. I could even hear myself chewing as I ate. But the silence was peaceful too, so, not having anywhere particular to be, I climbed on the hood of the truck, leaned back against the windshield and took a nap.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/comanche_grasslands_truck.jpg\" alt=\"My 1969 Ford truck, Comanche National Grasslands\" class=\"picfull\" /> </p>\n<p>Later, rested and refreshed, I descended out of the limitless plain into Chisolm Canyon where a river has carved down some four or five hundred feet of red rock that is slowly crumbling into mesas and bluffs. Come back in a few million years and there may well be a Grand Canyon here. </p>\n<p>I pulled off near the river and went down to have a swim and sit in the shade of the Cottonwood trees. The river proved too shallow for swimming, though I dipped my shirt in it to cool off. I sat in the shade for bit, letting the truck rest and watching the Cottonwood trees' seeds drift by, little tufts of white seed casing -- the Cottonwood's namesake -- floating in the air.</p>\n<p>I continued down the canyon until it opened up into another flatland and the road began to loop back around and head east again. Eventually I came to the same spot I had started at, but since I was half lost when I got there it wasn't much help. I hadn't intended to spend much time in the grasslands, but sometimes a place just grabs you and you have to stay a while.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/comanche_grasslands_endlessroad.jpg\" alt=\"Endless Road, Comanche National Grasslands\" class=\"postpicright\" />Unfortunately I still had a good bit of ground to cover before I got to Great Sand Dunes National Park, where I was planning to stay for the night. The dirt roads around me were far too small to be on my atlas. With no cell signal I couldn't consult Google, and there were no signs to rely on. </p>\n<p>In the end I decided that, since Comanche National Grasslands is more or less a square block of land on the map, if I went in any one direction eventually I'd hit some tarmac. I picked north since that would most likely lead to highway 160, which eventually takes you to Great Sand Dunes.</p>\n<p>It proved a sound strategy. After half and hour or so I was back to a paved road, though there were still no signs indicating which way to go. Great Sand Dunes National Park was west, so I just pointed to truck toward the sun and started driving, figuring eventually I'd get somewhere.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">F</span>rom Amarillo I headed north, taking small county roads through the northern section of the Texas panhandle, into Oklahoma and on to Colorado, where I turned off on a dirt road that claimed it would take me to the Comanche National Grasslands. \r\n\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/comanche_grasslands_wideopen.jpg\" alt=\"Comanche National Grasslands\" class=\"picfull\" /> \r\n\r\nTo say the Comanche National Grasslands is off the grid would be an understatement. With the exception of Highway 50 in Nevada, I've never driven through such isolation and vast openness anywhere in the world. And it's easy to get lost. There are no signs, no road names even, just dirt paths crisscrossing a wide, perfectly flat expanses of grass. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nI followed what I thought was the main dirt road through some ranch lands, wheat fields and open grasslands to a cattle grate and a fork in the road where a small sign noted that the Grasslands preserve had begun. \r\n\r\nI had not seen another car since I turned off the main road. Nor would I for the rest of my time in the Comanche National Grasslands. \r\n\r\nInstead there was simply immense, wide open space. Space so big it begins to close in on you, the sky seems so endlessly massive and close that it's disconcerting. The only real limits to your field of vision are the curvature of the earth. You begin to get some sense of how small a thing you really are. If you spend too much time thinking about infinity, you can't help but feel incredibly finite.\r\n\r\nFew of the early settlers who wrote about crossing the plains failed to note the epic proportions of open space. While that space, and the original scale, are long gone, you can get some sense of what it must have been like in the Comanche National Grasslands. If you spend too much time out here, you can still get lost in the vastness of infinity.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/comanche_grasslands_ferruginoushawk.jpg\" alt=\"ferruginous hawk, Comanche National Grasslands\" class=\"postpic\" /> I distracted myself by watching the birds. There were birds everywhere -- red-tailed hawks on a telephone pole, doves lurking in the sunflower plants that lined the road and meadowlarks that took flight at the first sound of the truck, their cream-colored bellies streaking by my window as they peeled off into the open. At one point I even saw a relatively uncommon pigmy burrowing owl.\r\n\r\nEventually the road began to drop into some lowlands, small rolling depressions cut by the now dry streams that pass though the area. Eventually I came to the head of Chisolm Canyon (which is actually labeled with a small sign), a much larger gash carved by a still flowing river. On a crest just before the road dropped into the canyon proper I stopped and ate lunch.\r\n\r\nAs soon as I turned off the truck engine I was engulfed in silence. It was as utter quiet as anywhere I've been. Only the occasional chirping click of grasshoppers and the eerie moaning of the wind sweeping through the juniper bushes broke the stillness. The only other time I've been somewhere as quiet was in the backcountry of the Sierra Nevada during a snowstorm. \r\n\r\nIt was quiet enough that every footstep I took seemed like thunder, the crunch of the gravel giving me away to every other living thing. I could even hear myself chewing as I ate. But the silence was peaceful too, so, not having anywhere particular to be, I climbed on the hood of the truck, leaned back against the windshield and took a nap.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/comanche_grasslands_truck.jpg\" alt=\"My 1969 Ford truck, Comanche National Grasslands\" class=\"picfull\" /> \r\n\r\nLater, rested and refreshed, I descended out of the limitless plain into Chisolm Canyon where a river has carved down some four or five hundred feet of red rock that is slowly crumbling into mesas and bluffs. Come back in a few million years and there may well be a Grand Canyon here. \r\n\r\nI pulled off near the river and went down to have a swim and sit in the shade of the Cottonwood trees. The river proved too shallow for swimming, though I dipped my shirt in it to cool off. I sat in the shade for bit, letting the truck rest and watching the Cottonwood trees' seeds drift by, little tufts of white seed casing -- the Cottonwood's namesake -- floating in the air.\r\n\r\nI continued down the canyon until it opened up into another flatland and the road began to loop back around and head east again. Eventually I came to the same spot I had started at, but since I was half lost when I got there it wasn't much help. I hadn't intended to spend much time in the grasslands, but sometimes a place just grabs you and you have to stay a while.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/comanche_grasslands_endlessroad.jpg\" alt=\"Endless Road, Comanche National Grasslands\" class=\"postpicright\" />Unfortunately I still had a good bit of ground to cover before I got to Great Sand Dunes National Park, where I was planning to stay for the night. The dirt roads around me were far too small to be on my atlas. With no cell signal I couldn't consult Google, and there were no signs to rely on. \r\n\r\nIn the end I decided that, since Comanche National Grasslands is more or less a square block of land on the map, if I went in any one direction eventually I'd hit some tarmac. I picked north since that would most likely lead to highway 160, which eventually takes you to Great Sand Dunes.\r\n\r\nIt proved a sound strategy. After half and hour or so I was back to a paved road, though there were still no signs indicating which way to go. Great Sand Dunes National Park was west, so I just pointed to truck toward the sun and started driving, figuring eventually I'd get somewhere.", "dek": "To say the Comanche National Grasslands is off the grid would be an understatement. With the exception of Highway 50 in Nevada, I've never driven through such isolation and vast openness anywhere in the world. And it's easy to get lost. There are no signs, no road names even, just dirt paths crisscrossing a wide, perfectly flat expanses of grass. ", "pub_date": "2010-07-16T13:00:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-103.0095720147768930 37.1474899599904802)", "location": 91, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": 106, "image": "images/post-images/2010/comanchenationalgrasslands.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2010/comanchegrasslands.jpg", "meta_description": "Driving through the Comanche National Grasslands - no signs, no road names, just dirt paths crisscrossing a perfectly flat expanses of grass. ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 110, "fields": {"title": "Great Sand Dunes National Park", "slug": "great-sand-dunes-national-park", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>he sun is threatening to peak over the ridge before I even get to the top of the first row of dunes. I give up on making the top and sit down to watch the first rays of light slowly crest over the peaks of the Sangre de Christo Mountains and fall on the cool sand beneath my feet.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/greatsanddunesclouds.jpg\" alt=\"Mountains and Clouds Behind the Great Sand Dunes, Great Sand Dunes National Park\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>It doesn't take long for the sun to get rid of the morning chill. In half an hour's time the sand will be warm on my bare feet and by the time I make it all the way back to the truck it's too hot to hike barefoot anymore.</p>\n<p>But just as the sun comes up, most of us on the dunes, and there aren't many, are still wearing fleece jackets and wrapping our arms around our legs for warmth. I consider heading back after the sun is up, but that highest ridge of dunes is taunting me, some five hundred vertical feet of sand -- and no telling what lies beyond it, just another, higher ridge? -- that eventually gets the best of me.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>I climb it.</p>\n<p>Looking back where I came from is impressive, people look like ants scurrying over the dunes. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/greatsanddunesridge.jpg\" alt=\"Dunes ridgeline, Great Sand Dunes National Park\" class=\"postpic\" />The dunes themselves are also different up here, the sand is looser, your feet sink deeper and the patterns in the sand, the ridges and ripples shaped by the wind and avalanches are completely different here than they were down below. There are no signs of grass or any other plants up on the top of the larger dunes, just a few track marks from beetles and other creatures that somehow eek out an existence here. </p>\n<p>The view over the ridge is not what I had hoped for. Instead of a vast vista of sand dunes there is simply another higher ridge of dunes -- maybe two hundred feet up from the summit I've already reached. I sit down and enjoy the view, panting, trying to catch my breath. I'm tired, my legs are burning. Climbing in sand is not like hiking through the mountains. For every step you take up, you sink back half the distance, sometimes all of it.</p>\n<p>I rest too long. My legs seem capable of only one direction -- down. I can see the truck from here and even if I head down now I will have nearly an hour of walking before I get back.</p>\n<p>I give up.</p>\n<p>I'm tired and I've hiked through enough mountains in my life to know that there is always another ridge beyond the one you're on. There is only one true exception to this rule -- Mount Everest. As you approach the final ridge of Everest you can have the distinct and completely assured satisfaction of knowing that there is no ridge beyond it. Actually there are other exceptions as well, but they are few and far between. Usually ridges lead to more ridges.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/greatsandduneshighpoint.jpg\" alt=\"Dunes, Great Sand Dunes National Park\" class=\"postpicright\" />However, if you were the sort of person that reads signs, you would know that that slightly higher ridge I stared at before giving up on the idea of climbing is in fact the highest ridge on the dunes. </p>\n<p>If you're more like me you wouldn't read the sign until after your hike, when you're back in the parking lot again.</p>\n<p>Yes, it turns out there is no ridge beyond the one I saw, just thirty miles of endless -- lower -- dunes. It's quiet a view I am told. I wouldn't know.</p>\n<p>Some times you win. Some times the mountain wins. </p>\n<p>For minute I consider going back up, but my legs already feel like small fires have been lit inside each of my calves and I've got miles to go before I sleep.</p>\n<p>[Note: this story is park of my quest to visit every National Park in the U.S. You can check out the rest on the <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/projects/national-parks/\" title=\"National Parks Project\">National Parks Project</a> page.]</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>he sun is threatening to peak over the ridge before I even get to the top of the first row of dunes. I give up on making the top and sit down to watch the first rays of light slowly crest over the peaks of the Sangre de Christo Mountains and fall on the cool sand beneath my feet.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/greatsanddunesclouds.jpg\" alt=\"Mountains and Clouds Behind the Great Sand Dunes, Great Sand Dunes National Park\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nIt doesn't take long for the sun to get rid of the morning chill. In half an hour's time the sand will be warm on my bare feet and by the time I make it all the way back to the truck it's too hot to hike barefoot anymore.\r\n\r\nBut just as the sun comes up, most of us on the dunes, and there aren't many, are still wearing fleece jackets and wrapping our arms around our legs for warmth. I consider heading back after the sun is up, but that highest ridge of dunes is taunting me, some five hundred vertical feet of sand -- and no telling what lies beyond it, just another, higher ridge? -- that eventually gets the best of me.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nI climb it.\r\n\r\nLooking back where I came from is impressive, people look like ants scurrying over the dunes. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/greatsanddunesridge.jpg\" alt=\"Dunes ridgeline, Great Sand Dunes National Park\" class=\"postpic\" />The dunes themselves are also different up here, the sand is looser, your feet sink deeper and the patterns in the sand, the ridges and ripples shaped by the wind and avalanches are completely different here than they were down below. There are no signs of grass or any other plants up on the top of the larger dunes, just a few track marks from beetles and other creatures that somehow eek out an existence here. \r\n\r\nThe view over the ridge is not what I had hoped for. Instead of a vast vista of sand dunes there is simply another higher ridge of dunes -- maybe two hundred feet up from the summit I've already reached. I sit down and enjoy the view, panting, trying to catch my breath. I'm tired, my legs are burning. Climbing in sand is not like hiking through the mountains. For every step you take up, you sink back half the distance, sometimes all of it.\r\n\r\nI rest too long. My legs seem capable of only one direction -- down. I can see the truck from here and even if I head down now I will have nearly an hour of walking before I get back.\r\n\r\nI give up.\r\n\r\nI'm tired and I've hiked through enough mountains in my life to know that there is always another ridge beyond the one you're on. There is only one true exception to this rule -- Mount Everest. As you approach the final ridge of Everest you can have the distinct and completely assured satisfaction of knowing that there is no ridge beyond it. Actually there are other exceptions as well, but they are few and far between. Usually ridges lead to more ridges.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/greatsandduneshighpoint.jpg\" alt=\"Dunes, Great Sand Dunes National Park\" class=\"postpicright\" />However, if you were the sort of person that reads signs, you would know that that slightly higher ridge I stared at before giving up on the idea of climbing is in fact the highest ridge on the dunes. \r\n\r\nIf you're more like me you wouldn't read the sign until after your hike, when you're back in the parking lot again.\r\n\r\nYes, it turns out there is no ridge beyond the one I saw, just thirty miles of endless -- lower -- dunes. It's quiet a view I am told. I wouldn't know.\r\n\r\nSome times you win. Some times the mountain wins. \r\n\r\nFor minute I consider going back up, but my legs already feel like small fires have been lit inside each of my calves and I've got miles to go before I sleep.\r\n\r\n[Note: this story is park of my quest to visit every National Park in the U.S. You can check out the rest on the <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/projects/national-parks/\" title=\"National Parks Project\">National Parks Project</a> page.]", "dek": "Something about the desert inspires me to get up early and watch the sunrise. The cool mornings seem worth getting up for out here in the high plains of Colorado, especially when there's the chance to watch the sunrise from the largest sand dunes in North America, here in Great Sand Dune National Park.", "pub_date": "2010-07-17T09:00:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-105.5509757848711700 37.7267371802831875)", "location": 90, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": 105, "image": "images/post-images/2010/greatsanddunesh_4.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2010/greatsanddunesv_4.jpg", "meta_description": "Wandering the namesake dunes at Great Sands Dunes National Park. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 111, "fields": {"title": "Backpacking in the Grand Tetons", "slug": "backpacking-grand-tetons", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>he sun has moved behind the peaks. In the distance the light begins to retreat up the jagged, snow-patched granite walls. A soft twilight falls over the rocky meadow in front of me where a marmot is rooting through the grasses and purple lupines. Some where farther up the hillside from the granite boulder I am leaning against a pair of deer are grazing. Everything seems hushed and perfect.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/tetonshollymeadow.jpg\" alt=\"Meadow near Holly Lake, Grand Teton National Park\" class=\"picfull\" /> </p>\n<p>Further down the stream that runs through this meadow a couple of late arrivals are setting up their tents. The wind that has been blowing all afternoon has died down a bit, though it still gusts and will pick up again before night falls.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>This place feels limitless. The high alpine country of Grand Teton seems to stretch forever in every direction, the sheer granite peaks reach up into the clear blue doom overhead. The wind begins to howl again, blasting at the gnarled Whitebark Pines to my left compounding the wild feeling of the backcountry.</p>\n<p>Here in the meadow the wind is less severe, the pines block the full force of it and it slows to something more like a strong breeze. The lupines sway slightly, the light is retreating up the granite walls on the opposite side of the canyon. I eat dinner, watch the light retreat.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/tetonshollylakemouth.jpg\" alt=\"Smaller Lake near the exit of Holly Lake, Grand Teton National Park\" class=\"postpicright\" /> Just beyond the pines, over a small ridge where my tent is pitched in relative shelter from the wind, lies Holly Lake, a small, sapphire lake nestled at the base of Mount Woodring. Near the exit of Holly Lake is a smaller pond, cut off from the lake by a rocky moraine, the remnants left by retreating glaciers. To the west is Paintbrush Divide, some 2000 feet higher and still choked with snow. Beyond that lies the seemingly endless Teton Range -- wild mountains stretching clear over into Idaho.</p>\n<p>The Tetons are about as spectacular and dramatic a mountain range as you'll find. These mountains are young (in geological timescales anyway) and jagged, with majestic peaks, pristine lakes and gorgeous meadows carpeted with wildflowers even in July. The meadow in front of me is littered with the purple of lupines, yellow Balsalmroot and the occasional red tuft of paintbrush flowers.</p>\n<p>Part of the reason the Tetons are so striking is that they seem to arise from nowhere. Just a few miles east of my camp is a nearly flat sage-covered valley. There's not much in the way of foothills, the mountains simply begin. That abruptness is part of what makes the Tetons feel so utterly wild -- there is something raw and elemental about the Tetons that sets them apart from other mountains I have hiked through, only the Himalayas convey a similar sense of being in the real wild.</p>\n<p>Of course you probably won't get that sense of wildness if you stick to the paved roads. Grand Teton National Park gets very crowded in the summer. Still, as with most places on earth, if you get our of your vehicle and walk a few miles in any direction you'll quickly find yourself alone in the remarkable wilderness and beauty that exists here. </p>\n<p>That wilderness can bite though. Yesterday when I arrived a storm hung over the peaks raining hail, snow and lightening on a number of climbers trying to summit Grand Teton. All afternoon rescue helicopters flew back and forth, up and down the mountain plucking a total of 16 climbers off the peak, some of whom had been struck by lightening several times. It was the single largest rescue effort in the history of the park. Tragically, one person was killed. (For more details check out this <a href=\"http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/article.php?art_id=6281\">harrowing account of the rescue on Grand Teton</a>).</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/tetonshollytrail.jpg\" alt=\"Trail through Paintbrush Canyon, Grand Teton National Park\" class=\"postpic\" /> I used to climb, but these days I'm content to just walk. To get away from the crowded campgrounds clustered around the lake area at the base of the peaks I strapped on a pack and hiked up here, to Holly Lake, where I was, for the most part, totally alone.</p>\n<p>I'm not one for covering long distance in short periods of time. I set out early and was at Holly Lake by noon. It's only a six mile walk, though you do go up some 3000 feet. I felt no need to keep going. Part of letting the world slip away in the backcountry means you can let go of that endless need to keep pushing. The exercise is good, but so is the doing nothing. The relaxing.</p>\n<p>I set up camp and walked over to the meadow where I watched the clouds roll by, sometimes finding images in them, sometimes not. Eventually I dozed off for a while and woke up feeling refreshed. I spent the afternoon walking around the lake, exploring the hillsides and the meadow. A few day hikers came up, ate their lunches and left.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/tetonshollylakesunset.jpg\" alt=\"Sunset over Holly Lake, Grand Teton National Park\" class=\"postpicright\" />As evening fell -- late at these latitudes, it did not get completely dark until nearly ten -- I made a small dinner and sat in the meadow watching a pair of deer eat their own dinner. They watched me, perhaps a bit more warily than I them, but they did not run.</p>\n<p>By the time the stars came out it was too cold for lounging in the meadow, I retreated to my tent, crawled in my sleeping bag and stared up through the mesh top at the stars above.</p>\n<p>Hiking into the wilderness empties your mind. You fall into the silence of the mountains and you can relax in a way that's very difficult to do in the midst of civilization. The white noise that surrounds us in our everyday lives, that noise we don't even notice as it adds thin layers of stress that build up over days, weeks, years, does not seem capable of following us into the mountains. </p>\n<p>Perhaps something about the quiet of the land, the stillness of the evening, the silence of the night, something out here that makes all of that back there fade away for a time. The wilderness is a reviver, a giver of perspective, all you have to do is step out into it. </p>\n<p>[Note: this story is park of my quest to visit every National Park in the U.S. You can check out the rest on the <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/projects/national-parks/\" title=\"National Parks Project\">National Parks Project</a> page.]</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>he sun has moved behind the peaks. In the distance the light begins to retreat up the jagged, snow-patched granite walls. A soft twilight falls over the rocky meadow in front of me where a marmot is rooting through the grasses and purple lupines. Some where farther up the hillside from the granite boulder I am leaning against a pair of deer are grazing. Everything seems hushed and perfect.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/tetonshollymeadow.jpg\" alt=\"Meadow near Holly Lake, Grand Teton National Park\" class=\"picfull\" /> \r\n\r\nFurther down the stream that runs through this meadow a couple of late arrivals are setting up their tents. The wind that has been blowing all afternoon has died down a bit, though it still gusts and will pick up again before night falls.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nThis place feels limitless. The high alpine country of Grand Teton seems to stretch forever in every direction, the sheer granite peaks reach up into the clear blue doom overhead. The wind begins to howl again, blasting at the gnarled Whitebark Pines to my left compounding the wild feeling of the backcountry.\r\n\r\nHere in the meadow the wind is less severe, the pines block the full force of it and it slows to something more like a strong breeze. The lupines sway slightly, the light is retreating up the granite walls on the opposite side of the canyon. I eat dinner, watch the light retreat.\r\n\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/tetonshollylakemouth.jpg\" alt=\"Smaller Lake near the exit of Holly Lake, Grand Teton National Park\" class=\"postpicright\" /> Just beyond the pines, over a small ridge where my tent is pitched in relative shelter from the wind, lies Holly Lake, a small, sapphire lake nestled at the base of Mount Woodring. Near the exit of Holly Lake is a smaller pond, cut off from the lake by a rocky moraine, the remnants left by retreating glaciers. To the west is Paintbrush Divide, some 2000 feet higher and still choked with snow. Beyond that lies the seemingly endless Teton Range -- wild mountains stretching clear over into Idaho.\r\n\r\nThe Tetons are about as spectacular and dramatic a mountain range as you'll find. These mountains are young (in geological timescales anyway) and jagged, with majestic peaks, pristine lakes and gorgeous meadows carpeted with wildflowers even in July. The meadow in front of me is littered with the purple of lupines, yellow Balsalmroot and the occasional red tuft of paintbrush flowers.\r\n\r\nPart of the reason the Tetons are so striking is that they seem to arise from nowhere. Just a few miles east of my camp is a nearly flat sage-covered valley. There's not much in the way of foothills, the mountains simply begin. That abruptness is part of what makes the Tetons feel so utterly wild -- there is something raw and elemental about the Tetons that sets them apart from other mountains I have hiked through, only the Himalayas convey a similar sense of being in the real wild.\r\n\r\nOf course you probably won't get that sense of wildness if you stick to the paved roads. Grand Teton National Park gets very crowded in the summer. Still, as with most places on earth, if you get our of your vehicle and walk a few miles in any direction you'll quickly find yourself alone in the remarkable wilderness and beauty that exists here. \r\n\r\nThat wilderness can bite though. Yesterday when I arrived a storm hung over the peaks raining hail, snow and lightening on a number of climbers trying to summit Grand Teton. All afternoon rescue helicopters flew back and forth, up and down the mountain plucking a total of 16 climbers off the peak, some of whom had been struck by lightening several times. It was the single largest rescue effort in the history of the park. Tragically, one person was killed. (For more details check out this [harrowing account of the rescue on Grand Teton][1]).\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/tetonshollytrail.jpg\" alt=\"Trail through Paintbrush Canyon, Grand Teton National Park\" class=\"postpic\" /> I used to climb, but these days I'm content to just walk. To get away from the crowded campgrounds clustered around the lake area at the base of the peaks I strapped on a pack and hiked up here, to Holly Lake, where I was, for the most part, totally alone.\r\n\r\nI'm not one for covering long distance in short periods of time. I set out early and was at Holly Lake by noon. It's only a six mile walk, though you do go up some 3000 feet. I felt no need to keep going. Part of letting the world slip away in the backcountry means you can let go of that endless need to keep pushing. The exercise is good, but so is the doing nothing. The relaxing.\r\n\r\nI set up camp and walked over to the meadow where I watched the clouds roll by, sometimes finding images in them, sometimes not. Eventually I dozed off for a while and woke up feeling refreshed. I spent the afternoon walking around the lake, exploring the hillsides and the meadow. A few day hikers came up, ate their lunches and left.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/tetonshollylakesunset.jpg\" alt=\"Sunset over Holly Lake, Grand Teton National Park\" class=\"postpicright\" />As evening fell -- late at these latitudes, it did not get completely dark until nearly ten -- I made a small dinner and sat in the meadow watching a pair of deer eat their own dinner. They watched me, perhaps a bit more warily than I them, but they did not run.\r\n\r\nBy the time the stars came out it was too cold for lounging in the meadow, I retreated to my tent, crawled in my sleeping bag and stared up through the mesh top at the stars above.\r\n\r\nHiking into the wilderness empties your mind. You fall into the silence of the mountains and you can relax in a way that's very difficult to do in the midst of civilization. The white noise that surrounds us in our everyday lives, that noise we don't even notice as it adds thin layers of stress that build up over days, weeks, years, does not seem capable of following us into the mountains. \r\n\r\nPerhaps something about the quiet of the land, the stillness of the evening, the silence of the night, something out here that makes all of that back there fade away for a time. The wilderness is a reviver, a giver of perspective, all you have to do is step out into it. \r\n\r\n\r\n[1]: http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/article.php?art_id=6281\r\n\r\n\r\n[Note: this story is park of my quest to visit every National Park in the U.S. You can check out the rest on the <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/projects/national-parks/\" title=\"National Parks Project\">National Parks Project</a> page.]", "dek": "Hiking into the wilderness empties your mind. You fall into the silence of the mountains and you can relax in a way that's very difficult to do in the midst of civilization. The white noise that surrounds us in our everyday lives, that noise we don't even notice as it adds thin layers of stress that build up over days, weeks, years, does not seem capable of following us into the mountains. ", "pub_date": "2010-07-22T17:00:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-110.7965183103790707 43.7931543168463193)", "location": 92, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": 108, "image": "images/post-images/2010/grandtetonsh.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2010/grandtetonsv.jpg", "meta_description": "Hiking into the wilderness empties your mind. You fall into the silence of the mountains and relax in a way that isn't possible in the midst of civilization.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 112, "fields": {"title": "The Endless Crowds of Yellowstone", "slug": "endless-crowds-yellowstone", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span>t's four o'clock by the time I reach Old Faithful and, strange as it may seem, I can't help feeling like I'm back in <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2006/mar/21/angkor-wat/\">Angkor Wat</a>. Thankfully it's nowhere near as hot and humid as Siem Reap. And here in Yellowstone National Park it's geothermal weirdness, not ancient temples, that are the main draw, but the draw is similar and like few places I've ever been.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/yellowstoneoldfaithful.jpg\" alt=\"Old Faithful\" class=\"postpic\" />People. People everywhere. </p>\n<p>The crowds are a testament to the beauty of Yellowstone, but it can be overwhelming, especially if you happen to arrive fresh from <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net//2010/jul/22/backpacking-grand-tetons/\">the wilds of Grand Teton National Park</a>.</p>\n<p>Crowds can be fun though. Like Angkor Wat, every fashion faux pas you've ever dreamed of is represented somewhere in the Old Faithful vicinity. I'm partial to the plaid bermuda shorts with collared short-sleeved shirt look, but that's just because I can't figure out where people buy plaid bermuda shorts in this day and age.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>One of the things that is repeated over and over again in Ken Burns' The National Parks series is that the early park advocates wanted to ensure that Yellowstone and Yosemite (the first two parks) did not \"become another Niagara Falls.\" The over-commercialization of Niagara Falls had made America the laughing stock of Europe's late 19th century elite. </p>\n<p>One of the goals of those early parks was to make sure that didn't happen everywhere.</p>\n<p>My first thought on arriving at Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park was, well, guess we screwed that one up.</p>\n<p>There may not be the neon banners and giant lighted arrows you'll find at Niagara Falls (now itself a \"National Heritage Area\"), but it's pretty much the same idea. There's a service station, several giant hotels, half a dozen restaurants and a colossal new Visitor Center (opening August 25, 2010).</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/yellowstonetrafficjam.jpg\" alt=\"Traffic jam in Yellowstone National Park\" class=\"postpicright\" />Old Faithful is about as commercialized as it gets in the National Park system and it's a shame. But it could be worse. Before Yellowstone was protected visitors used to take an axe to Old Faithful and break off a chunk to take home as a souvenir. Stay classy America.</p>\n<p>On the plus side, you always know where the wildlife is because there will be a giant traffic jam for every buffalo, moose, elk or grizzly bear that's within visible range of the road. </p>\n<p>As it stands, at least that no longer happens, but Yellowstone is very much a \"park\" as opposed to any sort of wilderness. </p>\n<p>If you get out in the backcountry you'll find plenty of wilderness, but the geothermal pools and fountains are, for the most part, not in the backcountry. If you arrive in peak season like I did, expect crowds. Disneyland-size crowds.</p>\n<p>The key to any overly-crowded place is either give up and leave or slow down and force yourself to relax. I considered the former, but ended up doing the latter, though not necessarily by choice in the beginning. </p>\n<p>Thanks to some sort of knee strain I acquired up in the Teton backcountry, I spent most of my time in Yellowstone hobbling, limping around the pools at about half-speed. It hurt, as did the blister on my foot, but if I stopped frequently enough and walked slow enough on the downhill stretches it wasn't to bad. And it had an auxiliary benefit -- I saw more.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/yellowstonegrandprismatic.jpg\" alt=\"Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park\" class=\"picfull\" /> </p>\n<p>I saw considerably more than I might have if I had just strolled around. After all, at first glance if you've seen one geothermal pool you've essentially seen them all. But if you spend some time with them (sitting on the benches, rubbing your knee or reading the signs while standing on one leg) you start to notice the little differences -- the way the water changes the limestone structure of the pools right before your eyes or the way the colors are subtly different shades in each pool (the product of slight temperature differences or different solar exposures or the amount of sulfur in the water).</p>\n<p>The famous colors of Yellowstone's thermal pools are the result of bacteria, which, like plants, respond to changes in environment. The water color in the larger pools varies as well -- from a deep sapphire blue to bright teal. The more interesting ones are surrounded by a kaleidoscope of colors created by the bacteria. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/yellowstoneripples.jpg\" alt=\"Patterns, Yellowstone National Park\" class=\"postpicright\" />Beyond the colors, Yellowstone is a land of textures -- the bacterial mats form intricate patterns and the movement of the water sculpts them into miniature scenes that look like something from another world. </p>\n<p>In the end there is wilderness here, even if it's just inches from the boardwalks that transport thousands around the geothermal pools. It may not be wildness on a grand scale -- the sweeping mountain peaks or wild rivers of other parks -- but in some ways that makes it more enticing. As one Ranger told me, Yellowstone isn't about the big picture, the grand scenery, it's about the tiny details within each pool. To really see Yellowstone, he said, you have to take your time, move slowly and look closely. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/yellowstonefireholeriver.jpg\" alt=\"The Firehole River, Yellowstone National Park\" class=\"postpic\" />Yellowstone may be about the tiny details within the surreal world of it's geothermal pools, but for me the most surreal experience in Yellowstone is not the wild colors, but the Firehole River.</p>\n<p>To all appearances the Firehole River looks like an icy cold mountain stream cutting its way through the mountain meadows and pine forests of Yellowstone. But thanks to all the heat just below the surface, and the runoff from the fountains and pools that it flows by, when you stick your foot in the river it feels like the Gulf of Thailand -- crystal clear, lukewarm and inviting. The sensation is disconcerting, a disconnect between expectation and reality, but it's great for swimming on an otherwise mild day.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/yellowstonefireholeriveralgae.jpg\" alt=\"Algae fans in the Firehole River, Yellowstone National Park\" class=\"postpicright\" />The river betrays it's strangeness in other ways too -- look a bit closer and you'll find giant fans of algae, something you'd never expect in a typical, chilly, mountain stream. In fact the river is more like a tropical sea than something running through the mountains.</p>\n<p>Another of my favorite moments in Ken Burns' National Parks series is something the famously whimsical John Muir used to do: Muir liked to put his head down between his knees and look at the world upside down, to see what he called its \"upness.\" It's a great reminder that the world is always what you see, nothing more, nothing less. But that vision is not something static, it is something you are always taking in, always making new. That even something as simple as looking at it upside down can reveal everything all over again is remarkable when you stop and think about it.</p>\n<p>Yes, Yellowstone is crowded, so is Angkor Wat, but both are still what they are -- beautiful, fantastic, extraordinary. If you take a bit of time, slow down, ignore the bermuda shorts and just look in your own way there is always something out there that no crowds can take away from you, there is always something out there that is you. There is always something out there.</p>\n<p>[Note: this story is park of my quest to visit every National Park in the U.S. You can check out the rest on the <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/projects/national-parks/\" title=\"National Parks Project\">National Parks Project</a> page.]</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span>t's four o'clock by the time I reach Old Faithful and, strange as it may seem, I can't help feeling like I'm back in [Angkor Wat][1]. Thankfully it's nowhere near as hot and humid as Siem Reap. And here in Yellowstone National Park it's geothermal weirdness, not ancient temples, that are the main draw, but the draw is similar and like few places I've ever been.\r\n\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/yellowstoneoldfaithful.jpg\" alt=\"Old Faithful\" class=\"postpic\" />People. People everywhere. \r\n\r\nThe crowds are a testament to the beauty of Yellowstone, but it can be overwhelming, especially if you happen to arrive fresh from [the wilds of Grand Teton National Park][2].\r\n\r\nCrowds can be fun though. Like Angkor Wat, every fashion faux pas you've ever dreamed of is represented somewhere in the Old Faithful vicinity. I'm partial to the plaid bermuda shorts with collared short-sleeved shirt look, but that's just because I can't figure out where people buy plaid bermuda shorts in this day and age.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n \r\nOne of the things that is repeated over and over again in Ken Burns' The National Parks series is that the early park advocates wanted to ensure that Yellowstone and Yosemite (the first two parks) did not \"become another Niagara Falls.\" The over-commercialization of Niagara Falls had made America the laughing stock of Europe's late 19th century elite. \r\n\r\nOne of the goals of those early parks was to make sure that didn't happen everywhere.\r\n\r\nMy first thought on arriving at Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park was, well, guess we screwed that one up.\r\n\r\nThere may not be the neon banners and giant lighted arrows you'll find at Niagara Falls (now itself a \"National Heritage Area\"), but it's pretty much the same idea. There's a service station, several giant hotels, half a dozen restaurants and a colossal new Visitor Center (opening August 25, 2010).\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/yellowstonetrafficjam.jpg\" alt=\"Traffic jam in Yellowstone National Park\" class=\"postpicright\" />Old Faithful is about as commercialized as it gets in the National Park system and it's a shame. But it could be worse. Before Yellowstone was protected visitors used to take an axe to Old Faithful and break off a chunk to take home as a souvenir. Stay classy America.\r\n\r\nOn the plus side, you always know where the wildlife is because there will be a giant traffic jam for every buffalo, moose, elk or grizzly bear that's within visible range of the road. \r\n\r\nAs it stands, at least that no longer happens, but Yellowstone is very much a \"park\" as opposed to any sort of wilderness. \r\n\r\nIf you get out in the backcountry you'll find plenty of wilderness, but the geothermal pools and fountains are, for the most part, not in the backcountry. If you arrive in peak season like I did, expect crowds. Disneyland-size crowds.\r\n\r\nThe key to any overly-crowded place is either give up and leave or slow down and force yourself to relax. I considered the former, but ended up doing the latter, though not necessarily by choice in the beginning. \r\n\r\nThanks to some sort of knee strain I acquired up in the Teton backcountry, I spent most of my time in Yellowstone hobbling, limping around the pools at about half-speed. It hurt, as did the blister on my foot, but if I stopped frequently enough and walked slow enough on the downhill stretches it wasn't to bad. And it had an auxiliary benefit -- I saw more.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/yellowstonegrandprismatic.jpg\" alt=\"Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park\" class=\"picfull\" /> \r\n\r\nI saw considerably more than I might have if I had just strolled around. After all, at first glance if you've seen one geothermal pool you've essentially seen them all. But if you spend some time with them (sitting on the benches, rubbing your knee or reading the signs while standing on one leg) you start to notice the little differences -- the way the water changes the limestone structure of the pools right before your eyes or the way the colors are subtly different shades in each pool (the product of slight temperature differences or different solar exposures or the amount of sulfur in the water).\r\n\r\nThe famous colors of Yellowstone's thermal pools are the result of bacteria, which, like plants, respond to changes in environment. The water color in the larger pools varies as well -- from a deep sapphire blue to bright teal. The more interesting ones are surrounded by a kaleidoscope of colors created by the bacteria. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/yellowstoneripples.jpg\" alt=\"Patterns, Yellowstone National Park\" class=\"postpicright\" />Beyond the colors, Yellowstone is a land of textures -- the bacterial mats form intricate patterns and the movement of the water sculpts them into miniature scenes that look like something from another world. \r\n\r\nIn the end there is wilderness here, even if it's just inches from the boardwalks that transport thousands around the geothermal pools. It may not be wildness on a grand scale -- the sweeping mountain peaks or wild rivers of other parks -- but in some ways that makes it more enticing. As one Ranger told me, Yellowstone isn't about the big picture, the grand scenery, it's about the tiny details within each pool. To really see Yellowstone, he said, you have to take your time, move slowly and look closely. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/yellowstonefireholeriver.jpg\" alt=\"The Firehole River, Yellowstone National Park\" class=\"postpic\" />Yellowstone may be about the tiny details within the surreal world of it's geothermal pools, but for me the most surreal experience in Yellowstone is not the wild colors, but the Firehole River.\r\n\r\nTo all appearances the Firehole River looks like an icy cold mountain stream cutting its way through the mountain meadows and pine forests of Yellowstone. But thanks to all the heat just below the surface, and the runoff from the fountains and pools that it flows by, when you stick your foot in the river it feels like the Gulf of Thailand -- crystal clear, lukewarm and inviting. The sensation is disconcerting, a disconnect between expectation and reality, but it's great for swimming on an otherwise mild day.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/yellowstonefireholeriveralgae.jpg\" alt=\"Algae fans in the Firehole River, Yellowstone National Park\" class=\"postpicright\" />The river betrays it's strangeness in other ways too -- look a bit closer and you'll find giant fans of algae, something you'd never expect in a typical, chilly, mountain stream. In fact the river is more like a tropical sea than something running through the mountains.\r\n\r\nAnother of my favorite moments in Ken Burns' National Parks series is something the famously whimsical John Muir used to do: Muir liked to put his head down between his knees and look at the world upside down, to see what he called its \"upness.\" It's a great reminder that the world is always what you see, nothing more, nothing less. But that vision is not something static, it is something you are always taking in, always making new. That even something as simple as looking at it upside down can reveal everything all over again is remarkable when you stop and think about it.\r\n\r\nYes, Yellowstone is crowded, so is Angkor Wat, but both are still what they are -- beautiful, fantastic, extraordinary. If you take a bit of time, slow down, ignore the bermuda shorts and just look in your own way there is always something out there that no crowds can take away from you, there is always something out there that is you. There is always something out there.\r\n\r\n[Note: this story is park of my quest to visit every National Park in the U.S. You can check out the rest on the <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/projects/national-parks/\" title=\"National Parks Project\">National Parks Project</a> page.]\r\n\r\n\r\n[1]: http://luxagraf.net/2006/mar/21/angkor-wat/\r\n[2]: http://luxagraf.net//2010/jul/22/backpacking-grand-tetons/", "dek": "There is wilderness in Yellowstone, even if it's just inches from the boardwalks that transport thousands around the geothermal pools. It may not be wilderness on a grand scale — the sweeping mountain peaks or wild rivers of other parks — but in some ways that makes it more enticing. As one Ranger told me, Yellowstone isn't about the big picture, the grand scenery, it's about the tiny details within each pool. To really see Yellowstone, he said, you have to take your time, move slowly and look closely. ", "pub_date": "2010-07-25T14:00:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-110.8219697917217132 44.4618029244871309)", "location": 94, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": 109, "image": "images/post-images/2010/yellowstoneh.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2010/yellowstonev.jpg", "meta_description": "There is wilderness in Yellowstone, even if it's just inches from the boardwalks that transport thousands around the geothermal pools.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 113, "fields": {"title": "Dinosaur National Monument, Part One: Echo Park", "slug": "dinosaur-national-monument-part-one-echo-park", "body_html": "<div class=\"col\">\n<p>Damn. The steak was half-cooked before I realized I didn't have any salt and pepper. I was not at the sort of campground where there's a general store just up the road. In fact, it was twelve miles to the nearest paved road, twenty-five more until you hit something that actually had a highway number and some forty miles beyond that before you'd find anything resembling a store.</p>\n\n<p>While I weighed my options -- none really -- the corn fell off the grill and landed right on the coals. Damn.</p>\n\n<p>You make do I suppose. I pulled the corn out of the fire, gave it a quick rinse and called it done. I ate the steak straight off the grill, pioneer style -- no seasoning at all. Well, maybe not true pioneer-style. Maybe the style of pioneers with piss-poor planning skills. The sort of pioneers that probably busted on the whole \"Oregon or bust\" thing. </p>\n\n<p>Whatever the case, the steak wasn't half bad, even without salt. I was just happy enough to have found some peace and quiet. I didn't much care what I was eating.</p>\n</div>\n\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/dinoechopark.jpg\" alt=\"Evening in Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Co\" /></p>\n<p><span class=\"drop-small\">A</span>fter days of <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2010/jul/25/endless-crowds-yellowstone/\" title=\"Read about Yellowstone National Park\">wading through the crowds in Yellowstone</a> I was finally in a place where the loudest sounds were the birds and the rush of the wind through the canyon, somewhere without SUVs and obnoxious children screaming from the doorway of their parents' motorhome about the lack of stuffed bears.</p>\n\n<p>I ended up here in Dinosaur National Monument on a whim. I was planning to drive straight through to Grand Junction, but then I thought, what the heck, it's right there. I detoured off the road up to the rather ramshackle Ranger Station. It turned out the double-wide ranger station is a temporary thing. I went inside and listened to the ranger patiently explain to a very disappointed French couple, that the fossil quarry -- the namesake and main draw of Dinosaur National Monument -- was in fact closed to the public.</p>\n\n<p>That's when I decided to stay. I've never really been interested in fossils. They're pretty much just rocks at this point. There's plenty of data to be gleaned from them, I get that, but I leave it to paleontologists and geologists to put that in story form for me. Close encounters with the raw materials leave me feeling like I'm missing something -- sort of like looking at a Warhol.</p>\n\n<p>The truth is, if you really want to see dinosaur bones, you're better off heading to the Smithsonian. All the best fossils have long since been carted off to museums.</p>\n\n<p>So, in short, this is the perfect time for someone like me to visit Dinosaur National Monument, because, as it turns out, this place was poorly named. The best parts of it are not the fossils but the canyon country -- some of the best, most remote canyon country you'll find in this part of the world.</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/dinomesa.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" alt=\"the road to Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument\" /> </p>\n<p>Whether it was the the closed quarry or just the out-of-the-way nature of Dinosaur I don't know, but Dinosaur National Monument is almost completely deserted. On the drive in to Echo Park I saw only one other car in nearly fifty miles. The campground was similarly deserted, five or six other cars had staked out spots.</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/dinocliffs.jpg\" alt=\"Cliff Walls, Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument\" class=\"postpic\" /> Aside from the tributary canyon that provides vehicle access to Echo Park, the area -- maybe five acres -- is completely ringed in sheer sandstone cliffs. As dusk settles in somewhere on top of the mesas above us, Swallows and bats emerge from the cliffs to prey on the insects.</p>\n\n<p>The wind dies down and mosquitos come out. They are annoying, the most annoying I've encountered on this trip. But world travel gives you different perspective on mosquitos. Here is the U.S. mosquitos are just annoying, they do not carry malaria or dengue fever or yellow fever or any other horrifying diseases (at least for now). The worst thing that happens is you itch a little.</p>\n\n<p>A small price to pay for peace and quiet and beauty.</p>\n\n<p>Echo Park<sup id=\"fnref:1\"><a class=\"footnote-ref\" href=\"#fn:1\" rel=\"footnote\">1</a></sup> is really a sand bar that got out of hand. Just a stone's throw from here the Green and Yampa rivers meet. The confluence happens at the start of a very sharp horseshoe bend which means the excess sand and silt of both rivers ends up here, on the far side of the horseshoe.</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/dinoechoparkriver.jpg\" alt=\"River Entrance to Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument\" class=\"postpicright\" />At some point in the geologic past the sand deposit got to be too much for the river to carry away, even in floods. Then the grasses took hold, anchoring the sand and sediment. Over time the ground solidified and trees sprung up. That part of nature that needs solidity formed a semi-permanent beachhead -- Echo Park. And yes, it does echo, more on that in <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2010/aug/02/dinosaur-national-monument-part-two-down-river/\" title=\"Read about whitewater rafting in Lodore Canyon, Dinosaur National Park\">part two</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Of course there's no guarantee Echo Park will be here forever. Look at what the river did to the sandstone that surrounds Echo Park -- it's cut through thousands of feet of sandstone. If the wants its overgrown sandbar back, the river will have it. Rivers always win in the end, but for this geologic moment it's here and it's quite spectacular.</p>\n\n<p>It's also incredibly quiet and peaceful. As I write this my fingers clicking on the keys are the loudest sound in Echo Park. The songbirds have settled down for the night, the fire crackles softly. </p>\n\n<p>The people who lived here called Echo Park \"The Center of the Universe.\" It's not hard to see why, the huge, silent ring of cliff walls seem knowing, having watched over this river since the world was made. The rock walls remain whether the swallows come or go, whether the mosquitoes bite or not, whether the river floods or doesn't, whether I keep typing or stop. They simply exist as they have for millions of years -- massive and silent, watching as we, mere blips on the geologic radar, come and go, looking up at them, admiring their near eternity in our momentary passing.</p>\n\n<p>[Note: this story is part of my quest to visit every National Park in the U.S. You can check out the rest on the <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/projects/national-parks/\" title=\"National Parks Project\">National Parks Project</a> page.]</p>\n\n<div class=\"footnote\">\n<hr>\n<ol>\n<li id=\"fn:1\">\n<p>Why is every flat piece of land in Colorado called a park? (Estes Park, Echo Park, Island Park, etc) Is that a tourism board thing? Or just a quirk of naming conventions? Cause we have the same sort of things back east, we just call them meadows or valleys or canyons or whatever. But now I think we might be missing out on something... <a class=\"footnote-backref\" href=\"#fnref:1\" rev=\"footnote\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text\">\u21a9</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n</div>", "body_markdown": "<div class=\"col\">\r\n<p>Damn. The steak was half-cooked before I realized I didn't have any salt and pepper. I was not at the sort of campground where there's a general store just up the road. In fact, it was twelve miles to the nearest paved road, twenty-five more until you hit something that actually had a highway number and some forty miles beyond that before you'd find anything resembling a store.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>While I weighed my options -- none really -- the corn fell off the grill and landed right on the coals. Damn.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>You make do I suppose. I pulled the corn out of the fire, gave it a quick rinse and called it done. I ate the steak straight off the grill, pioneer style -- no seasoning at all. Well, maybe not true pioneer-style. Maybe the style of pioneers with piss-poor planning skills. The sort of pioneers that probably busted on the whole \"Oregon or bust\" thing. </p>\r\n\r\n<p>Whatever the case, the steak wasn't half bad, even without salt. I was just happy enough to have found some peace and quiet. I didn't much care what I was eating.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/dinoechopark.jpg\" alt=\"Evening in Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Co\" />\r\n\r\n<p><span class=\"drop-small\">A</span>fter days of <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2010/jul/25/endless-crowds-yellowstone/\" title=\"Read about Yellowstone National Park\">wading through the crowds in Yellowstone</a> I was finally in a place where the loudest sounds were the birds and the rush of the wind through the canyon, somewhere without SUVs and obnoxious children screaming from the doorway of their parents' motorhome about the lack of stuffed bears.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>I ended up here in Dinosaur National Monument on a whim. I was planning to drive straight through to Grand Junction, but then I thought, what the heck, it's right there. I detoured off the road up to the rather ramshackle Ranger Station. It turned out the double-wide ranger station is a temporary thing. I went inside and listened to the ranger patiently explain to a very disappointed French couple, that the fossil quarry -- the namesake and main draw of Dinosaur National Monument -- was in fact closed to the public.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>That's when I decided to stay. I've never really been interested in fossils. They're pretty much just rocks at this point. There's plenty of data to be gleaned from them, I get that, but I leave it to paleontologists and geologists to put that in story form for me. Close encounters with the raw materials leave me feeling like I'm missing something -- sort of like looking at a Warhol.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>The truth is, if you really want to see dinosaur bones, you're better off heading to the Smithsonian. All the best fossils have long since been carted off to museums.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>So, in short, this is the perfect time for someone like me to visit Dinosaur National Monument, because, as it turns out, this place was poorly named. The best parts of it are not the fossils but the canyon country -- some of the best, most remote canyon country you'll find in this part of the world.</p>\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/dinomesa.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" alt=\"the road to Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument\" /> \r\n\r\n<p>Whether it was the the closed quarry or just the out-of-the-way nature of Dinosaur I don't know, but Dinosaur National Monument is almost completely deserted. On the drive in to Echo Park I saw only one other car in nearly fifty miles. The campground was similarly deserted, five or six other cars had staked out spots.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/dinocliffs.jpg\" alt=\"Cliff Walls, Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument\" class=\"postpic\" /> Aside from the tributary canyon that provides vehicle access to Echo Park, the area -- maybe five acres -- is completely ringed in sheer sandstone cliffs. As dusk settles in somewhere on top of the mesas above us, Swallows and bats emerge from the cliffs to prey on the insects.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>The wind dies down and mosquitos come out. They are annoying, the most annoying I've encountered on this trip. But world travel gives you different perspective on mosquitos. Here is the U.S. mosquitos are just annoying, they do not carry malaria or dengue fever or yellow fever or any other horrifying diseases (at least for now). The worst thing that happens is you itch a little.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>A small price to pay for peace and quiet and beauty.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Echo Park<sup id=\"fnref:1\"><a class=\"footnote-ref\" href=\"#fn:1\" rel=\"footnote\">1</a></sup> is really a sand bar that got out of hand. Just a stone's throw from here the Green and Yampa rivers meet. The confluence happens at the start of a very sharp horseshoe bend which means the excess sand and silt of both rivers ends up here, on the far side of the horseshoe.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/dinoechoparkriver.jpg\" alt=\"River Entrance to Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument\" class=\"postpicright\" />At some point in the geologic past the sand deposit got to be too much for the river to carry away, even in floods. Then the grasses took hold, anchoring the sand and sediment. Over time the ground solidified and trees sprung up. That part of nature that needs solidity formed a semi-permanent beachhead -- Echo Park. And yes, it does echo, more on that in <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2010/aug/02/dinosaur-national-monument-part-two-down-river/\" title=\"Read about whitewater rafting in Lodore Canyon, Dinosaur National Park\">part two</a>.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Of course there's no guarantee Echo Park will be here forever. Look at what the river did to the sandstone that surrounds Echo Park -- it's cut through thousands of feet of sandstone. If the wants its overgrown sandbar back, the river will have it. Rivers always win in the end, but for this geologic moment it's here and it's quite spectacular.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>It's also incredibly quiet and peaceful. As I write this my fingers clicking on the keys are the loudest sound in Echo Park. The songbirds have settled down for the night, the fire crackles softly. </p>\r\n\r\n<p>The people who lived here called Echo Park \"The Center of the Universe.\" It's not hard to see why, the huge, silent ring of cliff walls seem knowing, having watched over this river since the world was made. The rock walls remain whether the swallows come or go, whether the mosquitoes bite or not, whether the river floods or doesn't, whether I keep typing or stop. They simply exist as they have for millions of years -- massive and silent, watching as we, mere blips on the geologic radar, come and go, looking up at them, admiring their near eternity in our momentary passing.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>[Note: this story is part of my quest to visit every National Park in the U.S. You can check out the rest on the <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/projects/national-parks/\" title=\"National Parks Project\">National Parks Project</a> page.]</p>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"footnote\">\r\n<hr>\r\n<ol>\r\n<li id=\"fn:1\">\r\n<p>Why is every flat piece of land in Colorado called a park? (Estes Park, Echo Park, Island Park, etc) Is that a tourism board thing? Or just a quirk of naming conventions? Cause we have the same sort of things back east, we just call them meadows or valleys or canyons or whatever. But now I think we might be missing out on something... <a class=\"footnote-backref\" href=\"#fnref:1\" rev=\"footnote\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text\">\u21a9</a></p>\r\n</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n</div>\r\n", "dek": "Dinosaur National Monument was poorly named. The best parts of it are not the fossils in the quarry (which is closed for 2010 anyway) but the canyon country — some of the best, most remote canyon country you'll find in this part of the world.", "pub_date": "2010-07-28T17:00:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-108.9938807331764821 40.5206340265292582)", "location": 95, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": 111, "image": "images/post-images/2010/dinosaurh.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2010/dinosaurv.jpg", "meta_description": "Dinosaur National Monument was poorly named. The best part is not the fossils but the remote and wild canyon country. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 1}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 114, "fields": {"title": "Dinosaur National Monument, Part Two: Down the River", "slug": "dinosaur-national-monument-part-two-down-river", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>he Gates of Lodore rise up on either side of the river, the massive red sandstone cliffs reminiscent of something out of Tolkien, but less fantastical, more majestic. The large boats are already loaded and waiting, we are inflating the smaller boats while Ranger Dave talks about the skunk problems down river. \n\\\nWe're off by noon, a little over an hour after we arrived at the put in. This stretch of the Green River is calm, but moving fast enough that I don't need to paddle much to keep pace with the larger boats. After a half mile of open land, the river passes through the Gates and plunges into Lodore Canyon proper, carving its way through some 3000 vertical feet of dramatic red sandstone.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/lodoregates.jpg\" title=\"Adventure Bound raft at the Gates of Lodore, Colorado\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>This is the only real way to see Dinosaur National Monument. Part of what makes Dinosaur National Monument compelling is its remoteness. The nearest major city is over 100 miles away and once you get to the park there aren't many roads, nor even trails. To really see the park you've got to get down in the canyon and to see the canyons up close you must journey down the river.</p>\n<p>There are two major rivers running through Dinosaur National Monument, the Yampa, which carves through Yampa Canyon, and the Green, which cuts through Lodore. Numerous rafting companies run trips of varying lengths through both canyons, though if you want to do the Yampa you'll need to arrive early in the season<sup id=\"fnref:1\"><a class=\"footnote-ref\" href=\"#fn:1\" rel=\"footnote\">1</a></sup>, by mid-July the dam-fed Green River is your only option in Dinosaur National Park.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/lodoregreenriver.jpg\" title=\"Lodore Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado\" alt=\"\" class=\"postpic\" />The first day is largely devoid of rapids, a few rough spots where the river tumbles over a garden of rocks, but it does nothing more than splash a little water into the boat. Near the end we run Disaster Falls, which is not nearly as bad as its name might imply. Of course if you're <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley_Powell\">John Wesley Powell</a> and you're running the Green River for the very first time, pre-dam, in 1869, in wooden boats, you might have a slightly different perspective. </p>\n<p>In fact, Powell portaged most of the rapids he encountered. There is simply no way through them in wooden boats (though honestly, hauling huge wooden boats through the canyon almost sounds worse). However, one of his boats did not see Disaster Falls approaching and went through it with, well, disastrous results. Like most of the names Powell bestowed on the river, Disaster Falls stuck.</p>\n<p>According to legend, after everyone from the smashed boat was safely ashore, the boatmen went back into the river to try to retrieve some of the lost equipment. Powell, thinking the were going to get his lost barometers encouraged them on, but the boatmen were after the barrel of whiskey, which they managed to find. Presumably the barometers are still there somewhere, buried under nearly 150 years of mud and silt.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/lodoresunset.jpg\" title=\"Sunset Pot 1 Camp, Lodore Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado\" alt=\"\" class=\"postpicright\" />We reach our camp, Pot 1, just downstream from Disaster, by mid-afternoon and, after a quick lesson in using a groover<sup id=\"fnref:2\"><a class=\"footnote-ref\" href=\"#fn:2\" rel=\"footnote\">2</a></sup>, we set up some horseshoes and whiled away the evening drinking beer and throwing horseshoes. Pot 1 and its downstream sibling, Pot 2, were also named by Powell who lost most of his pots and pans in the area. Powell was fearless (especially considering he only had one arm) and an incredible explorer, but he wasn't always creative with his names. So it goes.</p>\n<p>The second day we start off by having to prove we could right the inflatable kayaks under the watchful eyes of our guides. We all managed to do it, though it was in nice calm water. I have my doubts about how well I would have done in a real rapid -- like the ominous-sounding Hell's Half Mile which was waiting for us just a few miles downstream.</p>\n<p>Before we got to Hell's Half Mile, we had to make it through the much more benign-sounding Triplet. As the name implies there are three drops, but the real trick to Triplet is making a hard left turn away from the right bank at the end. The cut-away rocky alcove you're avoiding is like a yawning mouth waiting to suck you in and, most likely, pin you there.</p>\n<div class=\"figure\">\n <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/lodoretripletrapid.jpg\" alt=\"Triplet Rapid, Lodore Canyon, Colorado\" />\n <span class=\"legend\">The lower portion of Triplet Rapid.</span>\n</div>\n\n<div class=\"figure\">\n <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/lodorescouting.jpg\" alt=\"Scouting Triplet Rapid, Lodore Canyon, Colorado\" />\n <span class=\"legend\">Everything looks easy from the banks.</span>\n</div>\n\n<p>All of us made it through Triplet without any issues. About a mile further downstream we stopped to scout Hell's Half Mile. It doesn't look like much from the shore, but few rapids do. Depending on the water level Hell's is somewhere between a class III and class IV rapid. Everything started off just fine, I was paddling with Jim, the other guide's father who was a very good kayaker and we made it through without issue.</p>\n<p>Greg, one of the three paying customers on our little trip did not fare as well. He went directly over a boulder known as Lucifer (possibly Powell was reading Dante when he ran the river, or he just loved fire and brimstone names). The drop wasn't really the problem though. It was the landing and the whirlpool in front of Lucifer that did Greg in. I missed the actual flip, by the time I turned around I just saw a helmet and a pair of sandals bobbing through the lower portion of Hell's.</p>\n<p>I don't have a waterproof camera, so I don't have any photos of Hell's Half Mile from the water, but I did find this video on YouTube. The water seems a bit higher than when we were there, but otherwise it's about the same:</p>\n<div class='embed-wrapper'><div class='embed-container'><iframe src='https://www.youtube.com/v/SHroMqYoCSQ?hl=en_US' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe></div></div>\n\n<p>After the whitewater fun we did a few miles of flat water and came back round down into <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2010/jul/28/dinosaur-national-monument-part-one-echo-park/\">Echo Park</a>, where I had been a few days before. The view of Steamboat rock from the river is one of the more impressive mastiffs of sandstone I've seen. If you want something bigger you'll likely have to head all the way over to Zion.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/lodoresteamboatrock.jpg\" alt=\"Steamboat Rock, Lodore Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado\" class=\"postpic\" />We ate lunch on a sandbar at the confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers and discovered why it's called Echo Park -- if you yell into Steamboat Rock at just the right spot your echo will reverberate back up both Lodore and Yampa Canyons creating a weird strobe echo effect that's unlike anything you've heard before. Natural reverb on steroids -- if Radiohead had known they'd have recorded an album here.</p>\n<p>While our guides were setting up lunch I waded across the Yampa and out into the confluence, which forms an almost perfect line in the water -- the muddy brown Yampa takes quite a while to fully merge with the much clearer Green River. The strangest thing is temperature difference between the two. Because the water in the Green is coming out of the bottom of a dam, it's much colder than the Yampa, like 10-20 degrees colder. Standing right in the middle of the two is bit like having one half of your body in the pool and the other half in a jacuzzi.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/lodoreconfluence.jpg\" alt=\"Confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers, Lodore Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado\" class=\"postpicright\" />The river after the confluence was mainly flat. I rode on the lead raft for a while, just staring up at the canyon walls, watching the red rock shift to lighter sandstone as we went on. We made camp by four again and the paying customers set off on a short hike to what's known as Butt Plug Falls, because you can plug it up by sitting down in the narrow channel just above the falls (presumably Powell did not give it that name).</p>\n<p>I skipped the hike and spent the evening lazing around the river, swimming, and watching the evening light fade across the canyon walls. True to Ranger Dave's word, come nightfall we were defending our camp from several very aggressive skunks that seemed totally unconcerned about humans being around. One was half way in the trash bag when we noticed him and others had no problem marching up to the fire. Luckily none of them felt the need to spray anything.</p>\n<p>The final day we ran several rapids early -- Moonshine rapid and S.O.B. One of the paying customers got hung up on a rock for a few minutes, but otherwise we ran through them like we'd all been doing it for years. Then we slipped out of Lodore Canyon and into Island Park, a long, slow and rather hot stretch of flat water before you pass through Split Mountain.</p>\n<p>Split Mountain is one of the most unusual examples of geology I've ever seen -- the Green River actually splits a mountain in half, rather than going around it as rivers generally do. Split Mountain is one of those strange quirks of the planet, though there is actually a logical explanation. It's all the Grand Canyon's fault. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2010/lodoresplitmountain.jpg\" alt=\"Split Mountain, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>The flow of a river is largely determined by the terrain it crosses, but there are other factors, like the base level -- the elevation of the river's terminus.</p>\n<p>As the Grand Canyon formed, the terminal elevation for the entire Colorado River basin -- and consequently the Green River -- was lowered. The Green River was, once upon a time, running well over the top of Split Mountain. When the base level changed -- the elevation where the Green runs into the Colorado -- the Green simply cut down through what we call Split Mountain.</p>\n<p>The results are rather striking.</p>\n<p>Just on the far side of Split Mountain was the end of our river journey. We took out near the Dinosaur Quarry (currently closed) and headed back to Grand Junction. Or rather our boats did. I went with the customers back to Steamboat Springs and from there, on to Rocky Mountain National Park.</p>\n<p><strong>Notes</strong>: You may have noticed I referred to paying customers a couple of times above. It's true, I was free loading. Rafting trips aren't cheap. Luckily for me, my friend Mike (who also dragged me to the <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2010/mar/13/so-far-i-have-not-found-science/\">Okefenokee Swamp</a>) happens to work for Adventure Bound Rafting out of Grand Junction, Colorado. </p>\n<p>When I mentioned I'd be in the area, he insisted I come out on the river. I'm probably biased, but having seen a couple other commercial companies on the river, I wouldn't hesitate to say that <a href=\"http://www.adventureboundusa.com/\">Adventure Bound runs the best whitewater rafting trips in Colorado</a>. I also, having now done a trip, and being aware of the costs, wouldn't hesitate to pay for another.</p>\n<p>[Note: this story is part of my quest to visit every National Park in the U.S. You can check out the rest on the <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/projects/national-parks/\" title=\"National Parks Project\">National Parks Project</a> page.]</p>\n<div class=\"footnote\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n<li id=\"fn:1\">\n<p>The Yampa River is that last undammed major tributary in the Colorado River system. Because it isn't dammed, it's only runnable with big boats early in the year when the snowmelt is generating high enough water levels. Canoes and kayaks can do it year round (well, kayaks anyway, a canoe at high water might be a mistake), but if you want a guided trip you'll need to do it before mid-July. Water levels do vary each year, generally speaking the Yampa is runnable into mid-July. <a class=\"footnote-backref\" href=\"#fnref:1\" rev=\"footnote\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n<li id=\"fn:2\">\n<p>The groover is so named because once upon a time it was simply an old ammo can and thus, left grooves in your legs when you sat on it. Technology has improved over the years, groovers now have toilet seats. Sort of. <a class=\"footnote-backref\" href=\"#fnref:2\" rev=\"footnote\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n</div>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>he Gates of Lodore rise up on either side of the river, the massive red sandstone cliffs reminiscent of something out of Tolkien, but less fantastical, more majestic. The large boats are already loaded and waiting, we are inflating the smaller boats while Ranger Dave talks about the skunk problems down river. \r\n\\\r\nWe're off by noon, a little over an hour after we arrived at the put in. This stretch of the Green River is calm, but moving fast enough that I don't need to paddle much to keep pace with the larger boats. After a half mile of open land, the river passes through the Gates and plunges into Lodore Canyon proper, carving its way through some 3000 vertical feet of dramatic red sandstone.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/lodoregates.jpg\" title=\"Adventure Bound raft at the Gates of Lodore, Colorado\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nThis is the only real way to see Dinosaur National Monument. Part of what makes Dinosaur National Monument compelling is its remoteness. The nearest major city is over 100 miles away and once you get to the park there aren't many roads, nor even trails. To really see the park you've got to get down in the canyon and to see the canyons up close you must journey down the river.\r\n\r\nThere are two major rivers running through Dinosaur National Monument, the Yampa, which carves through Yampa Canyon, and the Green, which cuts through Lodore. Numerous rafting companies run trips of varying lengths through both canyons, though if you want to do the Yampa you'll need to arrive early in the season[^1], by mid-July the dam-fed Green River is your only option in Dinosaur National Park.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/lodoregreenriver.jpg\" title=\"Lodore Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado\" alt=\"\" class=\"postpic\" />The first day is largely devoid of rapids, a few rough spots where the river tumbles over a garden of rocks, but it does nothing more than splash a little water into the boat. Near the end we run Disaster Falls, which is not nearly as bad as its name might imply. Of course if you're [John Wesley Powell][3] and you're running the Green River for the very first time, pre-dam, in 1869, in wooden boats, you might have a slightly different perspective. \r\n\r\nIn fact, Powell portaged most of the rapids he encountered. There is simply no way through them in wooden boats (though honestly, hauling huge wooden boats through the canyon almost sounds worse). However, one of his boats did not see Disaster Falls approaching and went through it with, well, disastrous results. Like most of the names Powell bestowed on the river, Disaster Falls stuck.\r\n\r\nAccording to legend, after everyone from the smashed boat was safely ashore, the boatmen went back into the river to try to retrieve some of the lost equipment. Powell, thinking the were going to get his lost barometers encouraged them on, but the boatmen were after the barrel of whiskey, which they managed to find. Presumably the barometers are still there somewhere, buried under nearly 150 years of mud and silt.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/lodoresunset.jpg\" title=\"Sunset Pot 1 Camp, Lodore Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado\" alt=\"\" class=\"postpicright\" />We reach our camp, Pot 1, just downstream from Disaster, by mid-afternoon and, after a quick lesson in using a groover[^2], we set up some horseshoes and whiled away the evening drinking beer and throwing horseshoes. Pot 1 and its downstream sibling, Pot 2, were also named by Powell who lost most of his pots and pans in the area. Powell was fearless (especially considering he only had one arm) and an incredible explorer, but he wasn't always creative with his names. So it goes.\r\n\r\nThe second day we start off by having to prove we could right the inflatable kayaks under the watchful eyes of our guides. We all managed to do it, though it was in nice calm water. I have my doubts about how well I would have done in a real rapid -- like the ominous-sounding Hell's Half Mile which was waiting for us just a few miles downstream.\r\n\r\nBefore we got to Hell's Half Mile, we had to make it through the much more benign-sounding Triplet. As the name implies there are three drops, but the real trick to Triplet is making a hard left turn away from the right bank at the end. The cut-away rocky alcove you're avoiding is like a yawning mouth waiting to suck you in and, most likely, pin you there.\r\n\r\n<div class=\"figure\">\r\n <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/lodoretripletrapid.jpg\" alt=\"Triplet Rapid, Lodore Canyon, Colorado\" />\r\n <span class=\"legend\">The lower portion of Triplet Rapid.</span>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"figure\">\r\n <img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/lodorescouting.jpg\" alt=\"Scouting Triplet Rapid, Lodore Canyon, Colorado\" />\r\n <span class=\"legend\">Everything looks easy from the banks.</span>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\nAll of us made it through Triplet without any issues. About a mile further downstream we stopped to scout Hell's Half Mile. It doesn't look like much from the shore, but few rapids do. Depending on the water level Hell's is somewhere between a class III and class IV rapid. Everything started off just fine, I was paddling with Jim, the other guide's father who was a very good kayaker and we made it through without issue.\r\n\r\nGreg, one of the three paying customers on our little trip did not fare as well. He went directly over a boulder known as Lucifer (possibly Powell was reading Dante when he ran the river, or he just loved fire and brimstone names). The drop wasn't really the problem though. It was the landing and the whirlpool in front of Lucifer that did Greg in. I missed the actual flip, by the time I turned around I just saw a helmet and a pair of sandals bobbing through the lower portion of Hell's.\r\n\r\nI don't have a waterproof camera, so I don't have any photos of Hell's Half Mile from the water, but I did find this video on YouTube. The water seems a bit higher than when we were there, but otherwise it's about the same:\r\n\r\n\r\n<div class='embed-wrapper'><div class='embed-container'><iframe src='https://www.youtube.com/v/SHroMqYoCSQ?hl=en_US' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe></div></div>\r\n\r\nAfter the whitewater fun we did a few miles of flat water and came back round down into [Echo Park][4], where I had been a few days before. The view of Steamboat rock from the river is one of the more impressive mastiffs of sandstone I've seen. If you want something bigger you'll likely have to head all the way over to Zion.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/lodoresteamboatrock.jpg\" alt=\"Steamboat Rock, Lodore Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado\" class=\"postpic\" />We ate lunch on a sandbar at the confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers and discovered why it's called Echo Park -- if you yell into Steamboat Rock at just the right spot your echo will reverberate back up both Lodore and Yampa Canyons creating a weird strobe echo effect that's unlike anything you've heard before. Natural reverb on steroids -- if Radiohead had known they'd have recorded an album here.\r\n\r\nWhile our guides were setting up lunch I waded across the Yampa and out into the confluence, which forms an almost perfect line in the water -- the muddy brown Yampa takes quite a while to fully merge with the much clearer Green River. The strangest thing is temperature difference between the two. Because the water in the Green is coming out of the bottom of a dam, it's much colder than the Yampa, like 10-20 degrees colder. Standing right in the middle of the two is bit like having one half of your body in the pool and the other half in a jacuzzi.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/lodoreconfluence.jpg\" alt=\"Confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers, Lodore Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado\" class=\"postpicright\" />The river after the confluence was mainly flat. I rode on the lead raft for a while, just staring up at the canyon walls, watching the red rock shift to lighter sandstone as we went on. We made camp by four again and the paying customers set off on a short hike to what's known as Butt Plug Falls, because you can plug it up by sitting down in the narrow channel just above the falls (presumably Powell did not give it that name).\r\n\r\nI skipped the hike and spent the evening lazing around the river, swimming, and watching the evening light fade across the canyon walls. True to Ranger Dave's word, come nightfall we were defending our camp from several very aggressive skunks that seemed totally unconcerned about humans being around. One was half way in the trash bag when we noticed him and others had no problem marching up to the fire. Luckily none of them felt the need to spray anything.\r\n\r\nThe final day we ran several rapids early -- Moonshine rapid and S.O.B. One of the paying customers got hung up on a rock for a few minutes, but otherwise we ran through them like we'd all been doing it for years. Then we slipped out of Lodore Canyon and into Island Park, a long, slow and rather hot stretch of flat water before you pass through Split Mountain.\r\n\r\nSplit Mountain is one of the most unusual examples of geology I've ever seen -- the Green River actually splits a mountain in half, rather than going around it as rivers generally do. Split Mountain is one of those strange quirks of the planet, though there is actually a logical explanation. It's all the Grand Canyon's fault. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2010/lodoresplitmountain.jpg\" alt=\"Split Mountain, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nThe flow of a river is largely determined by the terrain it crosses, but there are other factors, like the base level -- the elevation of the river's terminus.\r\n\r\nAs the Grand Canyon formed, the terminal elevation for the entire Colorado River basin -- and consequently the Green River -- was lowered. The Green River was, once upon a time, running well over the top of Split Mountain. When the base level changed -- the elevation where the Green runs into the Colorado -- the Green simply cut down through what we call Split Mountain.\r\n\r\nThe results are rather striking.\r\n\r\nJust on the far side of Split Mountain was the end of our river journey. We took out near the Dinosaur Quarry (currently closed) and headed back to Grand Junction. Or rather our boats did. I went with the customers back to Steamboat Springs and from there, on to Rocky Mountain National Park.\r\n\r\n<strong>Notes</strong>: You may have noticed I referred to paying customers a couple of times above. It's true, I was free loading. Rafting trips aren't cheap. Luckily for me, my friend Mike (who also dragged me to the [Okefenokee Swamp][2]) happens to work for Adventure Bound Rafting out of Grand Junction, Colorado. \r\n\r\nWhen I mentioned I'd be in the area, he insisted I come out on the river. I'm probably biased, but having seen a couple other commercial companies on the river, I wouldn't hesitate to say that [Adventure Bound runs the best whitewater rafting trips in Colorado][1]. I also, having now done a trip, and being aware of the costs, wouldn't hesitate to pay for another.\r\n\r\n[Note: this story is part of my quest to visit every National Park in the U.S. You can check out the rest on the <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/projects/national-parks/\" title=\"National Parks Project\">National Parks Project</a> page.]\r\n\r\n[1]: http://www.adventureboundusa.com/\r\n[2]: http://luxagraf.net/2010/mar/13/so-far-i-have-not-found-science/\r\n[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley_Powell\r\n[4]: http://luxagraf.net/2010/jul/28/dinosaur-national-monument-part-one-echo-park/\r\n\r\n\r\n[^1]: The Yampa River is that last undammed major tributary in the Colorado River system. Because it isn't dammed, it's only runnable with big boats early in the year when the snowmelt is generating high enough water levels. Canoes and kayaks can do it year round (well, kayaks anyway, a canoe at high water might be a mistake), but if you want a guided trip you'll need to do it before mid-July. Water levels do vary each year, generally speaking the Yampa is runnable into mid-July.\r\n[^2]: The groover is so named because once upon a time it was simply an old ammo can and thus, left grooves in your legs when you sat on it. Technology has improved over the years, groovers now have toilet seats. Sort of.", "dek": "This is the only real way to see Dinosaur National Monument — you must journey down the river. There are two major rivers running through Dinosaur, the Yampa, which carves through Yampa Canyon, and the Green, which cuts through Lodore. <a href=\"http://www.adventureboundusa.com/\" title=\"Adventure Bound Rafting\">Adventure Bound Rafting</a> runs some of the best whitewater rafting trips in Colorado and I was lucky enough to go down the Green River with them, through the majestic Lodore Canyon.", "pub_date": "2010-08-02T09:00:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-109.2584323726974560 40.4574623906270006)", "location": 95, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": 113, "image": "images/post-images/2010/lodorecanyonh.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2010/lodorecanyonv.jpg", "meta_description": "The best way to experience Dinosaur National Monument is from the bottom - on the river, deep in the canyon country. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 115, "fields": {"title": "Charleston A-Z", "slug": "charleston-a-z", "body_html": "<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/charleston-aiken-rhett.jpg\" alt=\"Aiken Rhett House, Charleston, SC\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><strong>A</strong> is for the Aiken Rhett house, one of the few surviving antebellum houses in Charleston. It retains the kitchen, stables, furnishings and even wallpaper from the 1830s. It also retains quite a few misconceptions. Like the idea, repeated several times in the audio tour, that the house gives us a glimpse of \"how the people of Charleston lived in the nineteenth century.\" Sort of the way future historians will proclaim Bill Gates' house to be a reminder of life in the twentieth century.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>B</strong> is for Battery and White Point Park where a massive statue pays tribute to the racist slave owners who committed treason against the United States. Or, maybe I misread the sign.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p><break></p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><strong>C</strong> is for the Circular Congregational Church graveyard, which has some of the oldest graves in Charleston, many of them adorned with winged skulls (see below). I mean come on, this is luxagraf, of course I went to the graveyard. <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/charleston-circulargraves.jpg\" alt=\"Circular Congregational Church graveyard, Charleston, SC\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>D</strong> is for Doh! Imagine you wanted to steal a sailboat. You creep around the docks at night looking for open cabins. You find one. Score. You sail out of Charleston harbor headed south. The only problem is you just stole one of the most recognizable sailboats in the northern hemisphere. Doh. Here's <a href=\"http://www.thehulltruth.com/boating-forum/5981-57-foot-sailing-yacht-stolen-charleston.html\">the story of the initial heist</a>. Alas Charleston's local paper doesn't understand URLs and so the story of the <a href=\"http://archives.postandcourier.com/archive/arch04/0104/arc01301561276.shtml\">the recovery</a> and <a href=\"http://archives.postandcourier.com/archive/arch04/0404/arc04301708081.shtml\">arrests</a> have disappeared (dead links left as a reminder of how fragile the web is).</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>E</strong> is for expensive. Charleston is. And yet, from what I've ever been able to tell, there is no real economy here, so where does the money come from? Is everyone here either a lawyer or old money? Still can't figure it out. What do you people <em>do</em> all day?</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>F</strong> is for Fast and French, a kind of French lunch-counter style restaurant that could have been pulled straight out of a Godard film. In fact, the only thing missing was Anna Karina<sup id=\"fnref:1\"><a class=\"footnote-ref\" href=\"#fn:1\" rel=\"footnote\">1</a></sup>. Not, in my experience, fast, but definitely as French as I've seen outside of Paris. Awesome homemade pate. I also love that it's called Fast and French because apparently no one in Charleston can pronounce the actual name -- Gaulart & Maliclet.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>G</strong> is for the ghetto, where my wife used to live, brass knuckles in her dresser drawer. Do not go to Columbus Street. </p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>H</strong> is for is for the Club Habana cigar bar, which looks like a set from Mad Men -- dark wood paneling, smoke-soaked leather chairs and sofas, dim lighting that creates plenty of dark corners and the best Scotch selection in Charleston. </p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>I</strong> is for indulgent. Like say, eating four dozen oysters in a single setting. Yes. We did. And it was awesome.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>J</strong> is for just didn't make it. Again. I've been to Charleston five times now and I've still never made the trip out to Fort Sumter. One day.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>K</strong> is for King Street. Sure, half of it is full of Apple Stores, Banana Republics and the like, but further down it still manages to retain some, if slightly gentrified, charm. And you can pick up a seersucker suit so you too can look like an idiot.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>L</strong> is for the Library Society, one of the oldest libraries on the country. Created in 1748, the <a href=\"http://www.charlestonlibrarysociety.org/\">Charleston Library Society</a> paved the way for the founding of the College of Charleston in 1770 and provided the core collection of natural history artifacts for the first museum in America -- the Charleston Museum, founded in 1773. </p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>M</strong> is for mansions, Charleston has a lot of them. Ridiculous, huge mansions that could house multiple families (and did back in the dark days of slavery).</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>N</strong> is for nap. Naps are good when you're traveling. They remind you that you don't <em>have</em> to do anything. Take one.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>O</strong> is for Oyster Bar, specifically Pearlz, which, despite drawing a high percentage of tourists, has the best oysters in town. And the oyster-buyer knew his stuff. When I asked him if he had read The Big Oyster he responded, without a second's hesitation, \"history on the half shell.\"</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>P</strong> is for People Wearing Fur. For some reason there were a lot of them in Charleston. Including a man wearing a fluffy fur shawl that looked like an ermine had stuck its paw in a light socket and wrapped itself around his neck. Awful, but not terribly surprising for a place that gave us the seersucker and other insults to fashion.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/charleston-quietstreets.jpg\" alt=\"Quiet Streets, Charleston, SC\" class=\"postpic\" /><strong>Q</strong> is for quiet, Charleston has a lot of it. Just head down to the Battery area, walk through the park and starting walking down the side streets. Take one of the many alleys and walkways that weave between the massive, stately houses. Get lost. It doesn't take much to find a quiet place of your own.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>R</strong> is for restoration, let's have less of it. The Aiken Rhett house was by far the coolest old building I've seen in the south simply because it has not been restored. It's been shored up here and there, but for the most part the decay of it is the appeal of it. The peeling wallpaper, the threadbare furniture, the dusty paintings, the rotting timbers. The termites. The worms. The wood fungi. Decay always wins in the end. </p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>S</strong> is for seersucker suit. Didn't see any this time; thank god for cold weather.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>T</strong> is for highway 26, the craziest road I've driven in the U.S. People drive the 26 fast, stupid fast and the minute you move into the slow lane you're stuck there forever. It's insane.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>U</strong> is for the Unitarian Church Garden, a beautiful, but little-visited cemetery/garden that's overgrown with wildflowers, trees and vines. It's also reportedly haunted by Annabel Lee, purportedly the the subject of Edgar Allen Poe's poem of the same name. </p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>V</strong> is for very cold, something I don't normally associate with Charleston, but there was snow on the ground all the way into South Carolina. Not quite to Charleston, but pretty close.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>W</strong> is for the winged skulls, which adorn many of the oldest gravestones in the Circular Church graveyard. The skulls, which symbolize the soul's ascension into heaven, recall a time when death was somehow more familiar, less threatening perhaps -- look mum, skulls with wings <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/charleston-wingedgraves.jpg\" alt=\"Circular Congregational Church graveyard, Charleston, SC\" class=\"picfull\" />.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>X</strong> is for xylophone. Because there aren't many words that start with x. Every plan has a flaw.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Y</strong> is for Yacht. I want one. Some of the nicest boats I've ever seen are in the Charleston harbor. If you have any interest in boats, it's worth walking around the docks for a bit. Who knows, you might even be able to hitch a ride out of Charleston harbor if you know what you're doing. Just don't steal anything.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Z</strong> is for zero, the number of times I have been to the Bubba Shrimp Company restaurant. Fuck you Hollywood.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<div class=\"footnote\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n<li id=\"fn:1\">\n<p>Technically Anna Karina was Danish, but I always think of her as French since she mainly appeared in French films. <a class=\"footnote-backref\" href=\"#fnref:1\" rev=\"footnote\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n</div>", "body_markdown": "<img src=\"[[base_url]]2011/charleston-aiken-rhett.jpg\" alt=\"Aiken Rhett House, Charleston, SC\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\n* **A** is for the Aiken Rhett house, one of the few surviving antebellum houses in Charleston. It retains the kitchen, stables, furnishings and even wallpaper from the 1830s. It also retains quite a few misconceptions. Like the idea, repeated several times in the audio tour, that the house gives us a glimpse of \"how the people of Charleston lived in the nineteenth century.\" Sort of the way future historians will proclaim Bill Gates' house to be a reminder of life in the twentieth century.\r\n\r\n*\t**B** is for Battery and White Point Park where a massive statue pays tribute to the racist slave owners who committed treason against the United States. Or, maybe I misread the sign.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\n*\t**C** is for the Circular Congregational Church graveyard, which has some of the oldest graves in Charleston, many of them adorned with winged skulls (see below). I mean come on, this is luxagraf, of course I went to the graveyard. <img src=\"[[base_url]]2011/charleston-circulargraves.jpg\" alt=\"Circular Congregational Church graveyard, Charleston, SC\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\n\r\n*\t**D** is for Doh! Imagine you wanted to steal a sailboat. You creep around the docks at night looking for open cabins. You find one. Score. You sail out of Charleston harbor headed south. The only problem is you just stole one of the most recognizable sailboats in the northern hemisphere. Doh. Here's [the story of the initial heist][1]. Alas Charleston's local paper doesn't understand URLs and so the story of the [the recovery][2] and [arrests][3] have disappeared (dead links left as a reminder of how fragile the web is).\r\n\r\n[1]: http://www.thehulltruth.com/boating-forum/5981-57-foot-sailing-yacht-stolen-charleston.html\r\n[2]: http://archives.postandcourier.com/archive/arch04/0104/arc01301561276.shtml\r\n[3]: http://archives.postandcourier.com/archive/arch04/0404/arc04301708081.shtml\r\n\r\n*\t**E** is for expensive. Charleston is. And yet, from what I've ever been able to tell, there is no real economy here, so where does the money come from? Is everyone here either a lawyer or old money? Still can't figure it out. What do you people *do* all day?\r\n\r\n*\t**F** is for Fast and French, a kind of French lunch-counter style restaurant that could have been pulled straight out of a Godard film. In fact, the only thing missing was Anna Karina[^1]. Not, in my experience, fast, but definitely as French as I've seen outside of Paris. Awesome homemade pate. I also love that it's called Fast and French because apparently no one in Charleston can pronounce the actual name -- Gaulart & Maliclet.\r\n\r\n*\t**G** is for the ghetto, where my wife used to live, brass knuckles in her dresser drawer. Do not go to Columbus Street. \r\n\r\n*\t**H** is for is for the Club Habana cigar bar, which looks like a set from Mad Men -- dark wood paneling, smoke-soaked leather chairs and sofas, dim lighting that creates plenty of dark corners and the best Scotch selection in Charleston. \r\n\r\n*\t**I** is for indulgent. Like say, eating four dozen oysters in a single setting. Yes. We did. And it was awesome.\r\n\r\n*\t**J** is for just didn't make it. Again. I've been to Charleston five times now and I've still never made the trip out to Fort Sumter. One day.\r\n\r\n*\t**K** is for King Street. Sure, half of it is full of Apple Stores, Banana Republics and the like, but further down it still manages to retain some, if slightly gentrified, charm. And you can pick up a seersucker suit so you too can look like an idiot.\r\n\r\n*\t**L** is for the Library Society, one of the oldest libraries on the country. Created in 1748, the [Charleston Library Society][5] paved the way for the founding of the College of Charleston in 1770 and provided the core collection of natural history artifacts for the first museum in America -- the Charleston Museum, founded in 1773. \r\n\r\n[5]: http://www.charlestonlibrarysociety.org/\r\n\r\n*\t**M** is for mansions, Charleston has a lot of them. Ridiculous, huge mansions that could house multiple families (and did back in the dark days of slavery).\r\n\r\n*\t**N** is for nap. Naps are good when you're traveling. They remind you that you don't *have* to do anything. Take one.\r\n\r\n*\t**O** is for Oyster Bar, specifically Pearlz, which, despite drawing a high percentage of tourists, has the best oysters in town. And the oyster-buyer knew his stuff. When I asked him if he had read The Big Oyster he responded, without a second's hesitation, \"history on the half shell.\"\r\n\r\n*\t**P** is for People Wearing Fur. For some reason there were a lot of them in Charleston. Including a man wearing a fluffy fur shawl that looked like an ermine had stuck its paw in a light socket and wrapped itself around his neck. Awful, but not terribly surprising for a place that gave us the seersucker and other insults to fashion.\r\n\r\n*\t<img src=\"[[base_url]]2011/charleston-quietstreets.jpg\" alt=\"Quiet Streets, Charleston, SC\" class=\"postpic\" />**Q** is for quiet, Charleston has a lot of it. Just head down to the Battery area, walk through the park and starting walking down the side streets. Take one of the many alleys and walkways that weave between the massive, stately houses. Get lost. It doesn't take much to find a quiet place of your own.\r\n\r\n*\t**R** is for restoration, let's have less of it. The Aiken Rhett house was by far the coolest old building I've seen in the south simply because it has not been restored. It's been shored up here and there, but for the most part the decay of it is the appeal of it. The peeling wallpaper, the threadbare furniture, the dusty paintings, the rotting timbers. The termites. The worms. The wood fungi. Decay always wins in the end. \r\n\r\n*\t**S** is for seersucker suit. Didn't see any this time; thank god for cold weather.\r\n\r\n*\t**T** is for highway 26, the craziest road I've driven in the U.S. People drive the 26 fast, stupid fast and the minute you move into the slow lane you're stuck there forever. It's insane.\r\n\r\n*\t**U** is for the Unitarian Church Garden, a beautiful, but little-visited cemetery/garden that's overgrown with wildflowers, trees and vines. It's also reportedly haunted by Annabel Lee, purportedly the the subject of Edgar Allen Poe's poem of the same name. \r\n\r\n*\t**V** is for very cold, something I don't normally associate with Charleston, but there was snow on the ground all the way into South Carolina. Not quite to Charleston, but pretty close.\r\n\r\n*\t**W** is for the winged skulls, which adorn many of the oldest gravestones in the Circular Church graveyard. The skulls, which symbolize the soul's ascension into heaven, recall a time when death was somehow more familiar, less threatening perhaps -- look mum, skulls with wings <img src=\"[[base_url]]2011/charleston-wingedgraves.jpg\" alt=\"Circular Congregational Church graveyard, Charleston, SC\" class=\"picfull\" />.\r\n\r\n*\t**X** is for xylophone. Because there aren't many words that start with x. Every plan has a flaw.\r\n\r\n*\t**Y** is for Yacht. I want one. Some of the nicest boats I've ever seen are in the Charleston harbor. If you have any interest in boats, it's worth walking around the docks for a bit. Who knows, you might even be able to hitch a ride out of Charleston harbor if you know what you're doing. Just don't steal anything.\r\n\r\n*\t**Z** is for zero, the number of times I have been to the Bubba Shrimp Company restaurant. Fuck you Hollywood.\r\n\r\n\r\n[^1]: Technically Anna Karina was Danish, but I always think of her as French since she mainly appeared in French films.", "dek": "Charleston alphabetically. For example, <strong>Q</strong> is for quiet, Charleston has a lot of it. Just head down to the Battery area, walk through the park and starting walking down the side streets. Take one of the many alleys and walkways that weave between the massive, stately houses. Get lost. It doesn't take much to find a quiet place of your own.", "pub_date": "2011-01-18T15:29:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-79.9366307147336954 32.7859576527260970)", "location": 9, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2011/charleston-h_1.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2011/charleston-v.jpg", "meta_description": "An alphabetical guide to Charleston, South Carolina. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 116, "fields": {"title": "The World Outside", "slug": "world-outside", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>he world outside the house is blanketed in snow, a monochrome of white interrupted only by the dark, wet trunks of trees, the red brick of chimneys, the occasional green of shrubs poking through. The roads are unbroken expanses of smooth white, no one is out yet, no footprints track their way through the snowy sidewalk.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/snow-1.jpg\" alt=\"Snow, Athens, GA\" class=\"postpic\" />The world outside is the same as it was last night, before the snow began, and yet, it feels totally different. Extraordinary. As if the whole town of Athens, all of us, our streets, our buildings, our lives had be transported elsewhere, as if we were all on some great holiday in another part of the world.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>Even in places where snow is routine, where snow turns black from cars, piles in shopping centers and chokes street corners all winter long, there is something special about that first day of snow -- a reminder that the world is transmutable.</p>\n<p>When the world transforms around us we transform ourselves. I could, on any given morning get up and walk through the neighborhood, down to the main street and get a cup of coffee at one of several coffee shops. I don't. But throw a little snow on the world -- a little novelty -- and suddenly it seems natural to break your habits, do something new.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/snow-2.jpg\" alt=\"Snow, Athens, GA\" class=\"postpicright\" />The snow crunches under our feet, a rim of ice has already formed on the top, a thin sheen of water that makes everything look like a frosted cake. Halfway to the coffee shop we noticed others. Groups of people approaching from every nearby neighborhood, some carrying sleds or trash can lids, some with dogs and children in tow. Everything is different and new, everyone wants a part of it.</p>\n<p>The snow was on the ground for a week, longer in the shady slopes and shadow of the trees. Several nights later we were at a friend's birthday party, standing outside in the snow, gathered around a fire for warmth. Even at night, even when it's well below freezing, novelty draws you out. Cold is a small price for a new world.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>he world outside the house is blanketed in snow, a monochrome of white interrupted only by the dark, wet trunks of trees, the red brick of chimneys, the occasional green of shrubs poking through. The roads are unbroken expanses of smooth white, no one is out yet, no footprints track their way through the snowy sidewalk.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2011/snow-1.jpg\" alt=\"Snow, Athens, GA\" class=\"postpic\" />The world outside is the same as it was last night, before the snow began, and yet, it feels totally different. Extraordinary. As if the whole town of Athens, all of us, our streets, our buildings, our lives had be transported elsewhere, as if we were all on some great holiday in another part of the world.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nEven in places where snow is routine, where snow turns black from cars, piles in shopping centers and chokes street corners all winter long, there is something special about that first day of snow -- a reminder that the world is transmutable.\r\n\r\nWhen the world transforms around us we transform ourselves. I could, on any given morning get up and walk through the neighborhood, down to the main street and get a cup of coffee at one of several coffee shops. I don't. But throw a little snow on the world -- a little novelty -- and suddenly it seems natural to break your habits, do something new.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2011/snow-2.jpg\" alt=\"Snow, Athens, GA\" class=\"postpicright\" />The snow crunches under our feet, a rim of ice has already formed on the top, a thin sheen of water that makes everything look like a frosted cake. Halfway to the coffee shop we noticed others. Groups of people approaching from every nearby neighborhood, some carrying sleds or trash can lids, some with dogs and children in tow. Everything is different and new, everyone wants a part of it.\r\n\r\nThe snow was on the ground for a week, longer in the shady slopes and shadow of the trees. Several nights later we were at a friend's birthday party, standing outside in the snow, gathered around a fire for warmth. Even at night, even when it's well below freezing, novelty draws you out. Cold is a small price for a new world.", "dek": "The world outside the house is blanketed in snow, a monochrome of white interrupted only by the dark, wet trunks of trees, the red brick of chimneys, the occasional green of shrubs poking through. The roads are unbroken expanses of smooth white, no one is out yet, no footprints track their way through the snowy sidewalk. The world outside is the same as it was last night, before the snow began, and yet, it feels totally different. ", "pub_date": "2011-01-26T11:56:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.4028816107044975 33.9601624931455319)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2011/snowh.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2011/snowv.jpg", "meta_description": "The world outside is the same as it was last night, before the snow began, and yet, it feels totally different. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 117, "fields": {"title": "We Used to Wait For It", "slug": "we-used-wait-it", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span><em>his building was originally part of the financial district</em>, Bill gestures around the room. <em>It was a bank or maybe some sort of trading company, the old Los Angeles stock exchange building is just down the street. Then in the fifties or so it became part of the garment district, then it was pretty much abandoned.</em></p>\n<p>That's when we first came here, when there was nothing. When downtown Los Angeles was an empty husk of a place, fifteen years ago. </p>\n<p>Bill takes a sip of beer. We stare out the window at the wall opposite his loft, enormous levered windows are folded open, a damp breeze that smells of city and ocean, of age, of death and rebirth and more death, moves through the room. </p>\n<p>There is something old in the walls here, something lost in the bricks, something in the concrete, the marble. Something you don't find anymore. Something of the hard-boiled film world popularized by Sam Spade still lingers here. The streets nine floors below still look like lost set pieces from <em>The Maltese Falcon</em>. </p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/losangeles11-1.jpg\" alt=\"Eastern Columbia building, Downtown LA\" class=\"postpic\" />The next day we walk around downtown. Bill is an encyclopedia of architectural history in downtown. I don't know where he learned it, but it's obvious he didn't just read it in a book, he absorbed it the way you do when you love something, when you care enough about something to dig deep into it. </p>\n<p>It depresses me, this glimpse of what once was. It makes me afraid of where we are, where we are going. Our path does not feel right. There is something here that we lost, something that we ignored, but should not have. <em>It's like we just don't care about our buildings anymore</em>. </p>\n<p>The Eastern Columbia building glistens, a monolithic temple of Art Deco, aquamarine spines reaching for the sky. Love it or hate it, it screams <em>someone cared</em>. Even something as simple as the facade of the old Wurlitzer piano building is a work of art, meticulously detailed plaster sculptures covering the columns -- lions mouths, lyre crests and harps -- creating a miniature world of the imagination tattooed in concrete. The theatre marquees still hold long lost fonts and synchronized flash bulbs ready to draw in the crowds, except that there are no shows, nothing save a sign that reads We Buy Gold. Compramos Oro. </p>\n<p>I don't know anything about architecture, the history of architecture or where architecture is today. But I, like you, can tell when someone cares and when someone is just looking to compramos oro.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/losangeles11-2.jpg\" alt=\"Old Wurlitzer building, Downtown LA\" class=\"picfull\" />Everything around us seems created for the sole purpose of showcasing what was possible. There is no reason to add the details in the concrete facades, save to show off, to say not just, I made this, but I made this beautiful. Not profitable. Beautiful.</p>\n<p>Bill used to work as a project manager for large, modern construction projects in the area. His employers bought gold. Tore it down and sold it for more gold. Bill doesn't work for them anymore. They went out of business. Compramos Oro. So it goes. </p>\n<p>He doesn't respond to my sweeping generalization about modern buildings right away. We stand in the sidewalk, stare the Wurlitzer building in silence for a while. <em>No. All the projects I've worked on started out with the attention to detail that you see in these buildings, but it was all cut out, too expensive, wasteful. A beautiful facade doesn't make the building worth any more to the companies that build it.</em></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/losangeles11-3.jpg\" alt=\"Detail, Eastern Columbia building, Downtown LA\" class=\"postpicright\" />That's when I realized that the problem is not simply that we have come to value money above all else, but that we have removed ourselves from the equation. Compramos oro all you want. Pero recuerde que el mundo quiere la belleza. </p>\n<p>The problem is not the money that's being made or not made, but that our buildings are created by companies. We are not men. We are not women. We are not Devo. We are no longer personal, we are no longer connected. </p>\n<p>We are companies. Companies are shells created to protect us, to help us. But there is always a cost. Companies have become little more than shells that funnel money from one shell to another, like the street hustler with seashells atop his cardboard box. We build boxes to shuffle money between shells.</p>\n<p>Yet it makes no sense to pine for the past. There is no retracing of steps. Build something Art Deco today and it will feel cheap, tawdry, sentimental. There is nothing to be gained in sentimentality. Wallace Stevens was right, sentimentality is a failure of feeling. It's not sentimental nostalgia you feel on the streets of downtown Los Angeles. It's loss. </p>\n<p>We do not pine for a return to the past, we pine for a reality that has the vitality of what we can see in the past. What has failed us is the reality we have created. It feels devoid of imagination. Reality and imagination, Steven once wrote, are not opposed. They are the same thing. Imagination \"has the strength of reality or none at all.\" None at all. </p>\n<p>That's what hurts when you look at the modern buildings down here, not that they are not as beautiful as what came before, but that you can feel the loss of beauty, stripped away day by day, year after year until all that remained was the company's bottom line. The bottom line is not a firm foundation on which to build. We have created a reality where beauty and pride in one's work have been wrenched away and replaced with mere shells shuffled atop the cardboard remains of our imagination.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>*his building was originally part of the financial district*, Bill gestures around the room. *It was a bank or maybe some sort of trading company, the old Los Angeles stock exchange building is just down the street. Then in the fifties or so it became part of the garment district, then it was pretty much abandoned.*\r\n\r\nThat's when we first came here, when there was nothing. When downtown Los Angeles was an empty husk of a place, fifteen years ago. \r\n\r\nBill takes a sip of beer. We stare out the window at the wall opposite his loft, enormous levered windows are folded open, a damp breeze that smells of city and ocean, of age, of death and rebirth and more death, moves through the room. \r\n\r\nThere is something old in the walls here, something lost in the bricks, something in the concrete, the marble. Something you don't find anymore. Something of the hard-boiled film world popularized by Sam Spade still lingers here. The streets nine floors below still look like lost set pieces from *The Maltese Falcon*. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2011/losangeles11-1.jpg\" alt=\"Eastern Columbia building, Downtown LA\" class=\"postpic\" />The next day we walk around downtown. Bill is an encyclopedia of architectural history in downtown. I don't know where he learned it, but it's obvious he didn't just read it in a book, he absorbed it the way you do when you love something, when you care enough about something to dig deep into it. \r\n\r\nIt depresses me, this glimpse of what once was. It makes me afraid of where we are, where we are going. Our path does not feel right. There is something here that we lost, something that we ignored, but should not have. *It's like we just don't care about our buildings anymore*. \r\n\r\nThe Eastern Columbia building glistens, a monolithic temple of Art Deco, aquamarine spines reaching for the sky. Love it or hate it, it screams *someone cared*. Even something as simple as the facade of the old Wurlitzer piano building is a work of art, meticulously detailed plaster sculptures covering the columns -- lions mouths, lyre crests and harps -- creating a miniature world of the imagination tattooed in concrete. The theatre marquees still hold long lost fonts and synchronized flash bulbs ready to draw in the crowds, except that there are no shows, nothing save a sign that reads We Buy Gold. Compramos Oro. \r\n\r\nI don't know anything about architecture, the history of architecture or where architecture is today. But I, like you, can tell when someone cares and when someone is just looking to compramos oro.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2011/losangeles11-2.jpg\" alt=\"Old Wurlitzer building, Downtown LA\" class=\"picfull\" />Everything around us seems created for the sole purpose of showcasing what was possible. There is no reason to add the details in the concrete facades, save to show off, to say not just, I made this, but I made this beautiful. Not profitable. Beautiful.\r\n\r\nBill used to work as a project manager for large, modern construction projects in the area. His employers bought gold. Tore it down and sold it for more gold. Bill doesn't work for them anymore. They went out of business. Compramos Oro. So it goes. \r\n\r\nHe doesn't respond to my sweeping generalization about modern buildings right away. We stand in the sidewalk, stare the Wurlitzer building in silence for a while. *No. All the projects I've worked on started out with the attention to detail that you see in these buildings, but it was all cut out, too expensive, wasteful. A beautiful facade doesn't make the building worth any more to the companies that build it.*\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2011/losangeles11-3.jpg\" alt=\"Detail, Eastern Columbia building, Downtown LA\" class=\"postpicright\" />That's when I realized that the problem is not simply that we have come to value money above all else, but that we have removed ourselves from the equation. Compramos oro all you want. Pero recuerde que el mundo quiere la belleza. \r\n\r\nThe problem is not the money that's being made or not made, but that our buildings are created by companies. We are not men. We are not women. We are not Devo. We are no longer personal, we are no longer connected. \r\n\r\nWe are companies. Companies are shells created to protect us, to help us. But there is always a cost. Companies have become little more than shells that funnel money from one shell to another, like the street hustler with seashells atop his cardboard box. We build boxes to shuffle money between shells.\r\n\r\nYet it makes no sense to pine for the past. There is no retracing of steps. Build something Art Deco today and it will feel cheap, tawdry, sentimental. There is nothing to be gained in sentimentality. Wallace Stevens was right, sentimentality is a failure of feeling. It's not sentimental nostalgia you feel on the streets of downtown Los Angeles. It's loss. \r\n\r\nWe do not pine for a return to the past, we pine for a reality that has the vitality of what we can see in the past. What has failed us is the reality we have created. It feels devoid of imagination. Reality and imagination, Steven once wrote, are not opposed. They are the same thing. Imagination \"has the strength of reality or none at all.\" None at all. \r\n\r\nThat's what hurts when you look at the modern buildings down here, not that they are not as beautiful as what came before, but that you can feel the loss of beauty, stripped away day by day, year after year until all that remained was the company's bottom line. The bottom line is not a firm foundation on which to build. We have created a reality where beauty and pride in one's work have been wrenched away and replaced with mere shells shuffled atop the cardboard remains of our imagination.", "dek": "When we first came here, there was nothing. Downtown Los Angeles was an empty husk of a place fifteen years ago. Now it's reborn, alive and kicking. Yet there is something in the older buildings, something in the old walls, something lost in the bricks, something in the concrete, the marble. Something you don\u2019t find anymore. Something we need to find again.", "pub_date": "2011-03-28T21:50:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-118.2520462106661370 34.0447717133746721)", "location": 10, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2011/losangeles11h.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2011/losangeles11v.jpg", "meta_description": "Architecture has become all about the bottom line, but the bottom line is not a firm foundation on which to build. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 120, "fields": {"title": "From Here We Go Sublime", "slug": "from-here-we-go-sublime", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">J</span>ust arrived Dullles-Reykjavik-Paris, just arrived, 26-hour trip, no sleep. I see things. I see a grizzly looking Spaniard selling old railway lanterns at the flea market, I see muslim men playing basketball in skull caps, I see a Michael Faraday experiment with glowing orange bulbs and copper wires enclosed in glass that turns out to be just an elevator. I see a stout Frenchwoman closing the gates of Pere Lachaise, no more dead, we've had enough of you.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>I see the cars on boulevard de M\u00e9nilmontant, I see the people at the cafes, from the cafes, have a seat, have a beer, have a moment to think, we could have this moment whenever we stop caring, giving a little bit less of shit about the abstract, a little bit more about the actual. Trade your paper tickets for food and know that you came out ahead, know that that the food is the point.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/madworld.jpg\" /></p>\n<p>I smell fresh bread, the warm fecund of cheese, the acrid smell of cigarette smoke on the street. I hear the whine of mopeds, distinct and distant from the rushing wind of passing cars, or the roar of buses blasting by this park bench.</p>\n<p>I feel the subway rumble the bench beneath me, I feel the tremble of the aircraft in pockets of turbulence, the tremor of the wing jolts you out of sleep. I feel the flutter of pigeon wings looking for a roost. I feel the present, I feel the past, I don't feel the future. I feel better. </p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">J</span>ust arrived Dullles-Reykjavik-Paris, just arrived, 26-hour trip, no sleep. I see things. I see a grizzly looking Spaniard selling old railway lanterns at the flea market, I see muslim men playing basketball in skull caps, I see a Michael Faraday experiment with glowing orange bulbs and copper wires enclosed in glass that turns out to be just an elevator. I see a stout Frenchwoman closing the gates of Pere Lachaise, no more dead, we've had enough of you.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nI see the cars on boulevard de M\u00e9nilmontant, I see the people at the cafes, from the cafes, have a seat, have a beer, have a moment to think, we could have this moment whenever we stop caring, giving a little bit less of shit about the abstract, a little bit more about the actual. Trade your paper tickets for food and know that you came out ahead, know that that the food is the point.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/madworld.jpg\" />\r\n\r\nI smell fresh bread, the warm fecund of cheese, the acrid smell of cigarette smoke on the street. I hear the whine of mopeds, distinct and distant from the rushing wind of passing cars, or the roar of buses blasting by this park bench.\r\n\r\nI feel the subway rumble the bench beneath me, I feel the tremble of the aircraft in pockets of turbulence, the tremor of the wing jolts you out of sleep. I feel the flutter of pigeon wings looking for a roost. I feel the present, I feel the past, I don't feel the future. I feel better. \r\n\r\n[1]: http://luxagraf.net/2005/oct/24/living-railway-car/", "dek": "Just arrived Dulles-Reykjavik-Paris, 26-hour trip, no sleep. I see things. I see a grizzly looking Spaniard selling old railway lanterns at the flea market, I see muslim men playing basketball in skull caps, I see a Michael Faraday experiment with bulbs and wires enclosed in glass that turns out to be just an elevator. I see a stout Frenchwoman closing the gates of Pere Lachaise, no more dead, we've had enough of you.", "pub_date": "2011-05-29T02:35:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (2.3879055928465687 48.8612911921227138)", "location": 11, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2011/iceland.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2011/iceland-v.jpg", "meta_description": "It's a mad world. Just arrived Dulles-Reykjavik-Paris, 26-hour trip, no sleep. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 121, "fields": {"title": "The Language of Cities", "slug": "language-cities", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">P</span>aris wants me out. It knows I didn't come here for it, I came here to see some friends, none of them even from Paris, and to show my wife a world I knew before we were married. I never came for Paris itself and the city knows it. And it's angry.</p>\n<p>Cities can get angry at you. This isn't the first time it's happened to me. New York threw me out once. Los Angeles and I left on mutually hostile terms, though we've since made up. Cities have personalities just like people, and to really be part of a city your personalities have to mesh, you have to find each other on your own terms everyday<sup id=\"fnref:1\"><a class=\"footnote-ref\" href=\"#fn:1\" rel=\"footnote\">1</a></sup>.</p>\n<p>Paris is jealous and possessive, wants you all to itself. This time around I set out to see all the things I had seen before, <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2005/oct/28/sainte-chapelle/\">St. Chapelle</a>, my favorite cafes in the Marais, the Louvre, Pere Lachaise. There was very little new ground broken. Which is not to say <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2008/jun/30/you-cant-go-home-again/\">you can't go back again</a>. You can if you do it right, so long as you realize that while a place may be familiar, it is always something new. Sometimes it's even just like the last time, but the danger is that your agenda gets in the way of what the place is trying to say. What you hear today is not what you heard yesterday, not what you might hear tomorrow. When you repeat too much you fail to give more of yourself, you're asking the city to perform for you like a trained seal.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/stchappelle.jpg\" alt=\"Stained glass, St. Chapelle, Paris, France\" /></p>\n<p>When you fail to give them everything, cities bite back. In Paris it started with stomach sickness, a day alternating between the bed and toilet. Then it moved on to headaches, but it wasn't until a cop kicked us off the Pont Des Arts bridge for drinking beer that I realized the problem wasn't me, it was that the city was unhappy with me. </p>\n<p>Sure there are probably causal explanations for the runs, something I ate perhaps, or the headaches -- allergies, a stiff mattress -- but if you think causality explains the sum total of the world, your life will never be very interesting.</p>\n<p>For me the truth is this: I went to Paris with my own agenda -- repeat what I had loved about it six years ago -- and that's just a recipe for personal disaster. Even though Paris did deliver everything I asked of it, it exacted a price on me. My most memorable moments of this visit will be the shower stall opposite the toilet in our (very lovely by the way) apartment, which I spent far too much time staring at.</p>\n<p>That's not how you want to travel the world. What you want is irrelevant to the world. You ask for greatest hits and the world will give you toilets to hug. Ask nothing and it will give you everything. Paris wanted me and my agenda disrupted, brought around to the larger agenda, the world's agenda.</p>\n<p>Unfortunately it took until nearly the last minute before I realized this essential truth. But the minute the plane to Rome tucked its landing gear into the fuselage I started to feel better. Too little, too late. Next time Paris, next time, I will remember what you have taught me.</p>\n<div class=\"footnote\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n<li id=\"fn:1\">\n<p>If you've never seen <cite>The Cruise</cite>, go rent/netflix it. Tim Levich, odd though he made seem on film, knows about these things. <a class=\"footnote-backref\" href=\"#fnref:1\" rev=\"footnote\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n</div>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">P</span>aris wants me out. It knows I didn't come here for it, I came here to see some friends, none of them even from Paris, and to show my wife a world I knew before we were married. I never came for Paris itself and the city knows it. And it's angry.\r\n\r\nCities can get angry at you. This isn't the first time it's happened to me. New York threw me out once. Los Angeles and I left on mutually hostile terms, though we've since made up. Cities have personalities just like people, and to really be part of a city your personalities have to mesh, you have to find each other on your own terms everyday[^1].\r\n\r\nParis is jealous and possessive, wants you all to itself. This time around I set out to see all the things I had seen before, [St. Chapelle][1], my favorite cafes in the Marais, the Louvre, Pere Lachaise. There was very little new ground broken. Which is not to say [you can't go back again][2]. You can if you do it right, so long as you realize that while a place may be familiar, it is always something new. Sometimes it's even just like the last time, but the danger is that your agenda gets in the way of what the place is trying to say. What you hear today is not what you heard yesterday, not what you might hear tomorrow. When you repeat too much you fail to give more of yourself, you're asking the city to perform for you like a trained seal.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/stchappelle.jpg\" alt=\"Stained glass, St. Chapelle, Paris, France\" />\r\n\r\nWhen you fail to give them everything, cities bite back. In Paris it started with stomach sickness, a day alternating between the bed and toilet. Then it moved on to headaches, but it wasn't until a cop kicked us off the Pont Des Arts bridge for drinking beer that I realized the problem wasn't me, it was that the city was unhappy with me. \r\n\r\nSure there are probably causal explanations for the runs, something I ate perhaps, or the headaches -- allergies, a stiff mattress -- but if you think causality explains the sum total of the world, your life will never be very interesting.\r\n\r\nFor me the truth is this: I went to Paris with my own agenda -- repeat what I had loved about it six years ago -- and that's just a recipe for personal disaster. Even though Paris did deliver everything I asked of it, it exacted a price on me. My most memorable moments of this visit will be the shower stall opposite the toilet in our (very lovely by the way) apartment, which I spent far too much time staring at.\r\n\r\nThat's not how you want to travel the world. What you want is irrelevant to the world. You ask for greatest hits and the world will give you toilets to hug. Ask nothing and it will give you everything. Paris wanted me and my agenda disrupted, brought around to the larger agenda, the world's agenda.\r\n\r\nUnfortunately it took until nearly the last minute before I realized this essential truth. But the minute the plane to Rome tucked its landing gear into the fuselage I started to feel better. Too little, too late. Next time Paris, next time, I will remember what you have taught me.\r\n\r\n[1]: http://luxagraf.net/2005/oct/28/sainte-chapelle/\r\n[2]: http://luxagraf.net/2008/jun/30/you-cant-go-home-again/\r\n\r\n[^1]: If you've never seen <cite>The Cruise</cite>, go rent/netflix it. Tim Levich, odd though he made seem on film, knows about these things.", "dek": "Paris is angry. Cities can get angry. This isn't the first time it's happened to me. New York threw me out once. Los Angeles and I left on mutually hostile terms, though we've since made up. Cities have personalities just like people, and to really be part of a city your personalities have to mesh, you have to find each other on your own terms everyday.", "pub_date": "2011-06-04T00:05:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (2.3375712584730377 48.8584624857537193)", "location": 11, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2011/stchappelle.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2011/chatnoir.jpg", "meta_description": "Paris is angry. That happens sometimes. Cities get angry at you. Right now, Paris wants me out. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 2}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 122, "fields": {"title": "The New Pollution", "slug": "new-pollution", "body_html": "<p>Naples is a big, crowded, graffiti-filled city. It's an intimidating place that is by turns a bit like Philadelphia, a bit Mumbai, a bit some post-apocalyptic video game and, in the end, something else entirely. </p>\n<p>The rest of the world abandoned Naples long ago, left it to find its own way, fumbling through some darkness of its own making toward a light it can't yet see.</p>\n<p>The old Centro Storico area is a maze of narrow stone streets swarming with scooters dodging shoppers at the morning markets where fresh fruit and dried pasta hang alongside lanterns and trinkets, fishmongers crowd the sidewalks and the smell of pastries and coffee choke the air.</p>\n<p><img class=\"postpic\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/naples-market.jpg\" alt=\"Street, Naples, Italy\" /></p>\n<p>The sun rarely makes it down through the five and six story facades to the streets below. The shadowy world of dark granite streets gives the impression that you're strolling through canyons of carefully cut stone blocks and marble doorways. There are no trees down here, hardly any plants at all. Higher up,, on the second and third stories, a few ferns, some moss and grasses grow on the balconies of abandoned buildings.</p>\n<p><img class=\"postpic\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/naples-street.jpg\" alt=\"Street, Naples, Italy\" />Even if there were light, there's no room for trees. There's hardly any room to move, save when a street opens up into a piazza, where in the evening crowds gather to drink beer or wine, or perhaps to eat in the restaurants that line the edges of the larger squares.</p>\n<p>Naples is it's own world. I sit outside the hotel watching as people on a balcony down the street lower a bucket down from the fifth story with a few euro inside. The man at the nearby tabac runs over, retrieves the euro and throws a pack of cigarettes inside. The bucket retreats back up into the heights of the buildings, disappearing into a tiny sliver of night sky. Naples, the city time forgot.</p>\n<p>Naples is not tourist friendly, it's not even pretty. It's just a city. Most of it is covered in graffiti, and, thanks to strikes and general city mismanagement (read: mob control), garbage. Or at least the city proper is, the old town area is largely trash-free, if only because the streets are so narrow there's simply no room for any trash. The graffiti though is universal, perhaps the one thing that links the old town and the newer portions together. </p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/naples-graffiti.jpg\" alt=\"graffiti on the street, Naples, Italy\" /></p>\n<p>Pompeii, just thirty minutes away and 2600 years older, was also once covered in ancient Roman graffiti. It's just how they do things here apparently, it's in the blood, in the soil, in the wind. Speak your mind with spray cans -- or whatever might be the tool of the era -- out in the open, for everyone to see.</p>\n<p>The main reason any tourist, myself included, comes to Naples is its proximity to Pompeii. Beyond the quick and cheap train out to Pompeii, Naples doesn't have a lot to offer. That's part of it's appeal. Perhaps best appreciated in hindsight, but appeal nonetheless. Still, given the tourist epidemic that sweeps Italy every summer, Naples is a place worth appreciating for what it is not, even if what is isn't, perhaps, enough to ever bring you back.</p>", "body_markdown": "Naples is a big, crowded, graffiti-filled city. It's an intimidating place that is by turns a bit like Philadelphia, a bit Mumbai, a bit some post-apocalyptic video game and, in the end, something else entirely. \r\n\r\nThe rest of the world abandoned Naples long ago, left it to find its own way, fumbling through some darkness of its own making toward a light it can't yet see.\r\n\r\nThe old Centro Storico area is a maze of narrow stone streets swarming with scooters dodging shoppers at the morning markets where fresh fruit and dried pasta hang alongside lanterns and trinkets, fishmongers crowd the sidewalks and the smell of pastries and coffee choke the air.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpic\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/naples-market.jpg\" alt=\"Street, Naples, Italy\" />\r\n\r\nThe sun rarely makes it down through the five and six story facades to the streets below. The shadowy world of dark granite streets gives the impression that you're strolling through canyons of carefully cut stone blocks and marble doorways. There are no trees down here, hardly any plants at all. Higher up,, on the second and third stories, a few ferns, some moss and grasses grow on the balconies of abandoned buildings.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpic\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/naples-street.jpg\" alt=\"Street, Naples, Italy\" />Even if there were light, there's no room for trees. There's hardly any room to move, save when a street opens up into a piazza, where in the evening crowds gather to drink beer or wine, or perhaps to eat in the restaurants that line the edges of the larger squares.\r\n\r\nNaples is it's own world. I sit outside the hotel watching as people on a balcony down the street lower a bucket down from the fifth story with a few euro inside. The man at the nearby tabac runs over, retrieves the euro and throws a pack of cigarettes inside. The bucket retreats back up into the heights of the buildings, disappearing into a tiny sliver of night sky. Naples, the city time forgot.\r\n\r\nNaples is not tourist friendly, it's not even pretty. It's just a city. Most of it is covered in graffiti, and, thanks to strikes and general city mismanagement (read: mob control), garbage. Or at least the city proper is, the old town area is largely trash-free, if only because the streets are so narrow there's simply no room for any trash. The graffiti though is universal, perhaps the one thing that links the old town and the newer portions together. \r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/naples-graffiti.jpg\" alt=\"graffiti on the street, Naples, Italy\" />\r\n\r\nPompeii, just thirty minutes away and 2600 years older, was also once covered in ancient Roman graffiti. It's just how they do things here apparently, it's in the blood, in the soil, in the wind. Speak your mind with spray cans -- or whatever might be the tool of the era -- out in the open, for everyone to see.\r\n\r\nThe main reason any tourist, myself included, comes to Naples is its proximity to Pompeii. Beyond the quick and cheap train out to Pompeii, Naples doesn't have a lot to offer. That's part of it's appeal. Perhaps best appreciated in hindsight, but appeal nonetheless. Still, given the tourist epidemic that sweeps Italy every summer, Naples is a place worth appreciating for what it is not, even if what is isn't, perhaps, enough to ever bring you back.", "dek": "Naples Italy is a big, crowded, graffiti-filled city. It's an intimidating place that is by turns a bit like Philadelphia, a bit Mumbai, a bit some post-apocalyptic video game and, in the end, something else entirely. Still, given the tourist epidemic that sweeps Italy every summer, Naples is a place worth appreciating for what it is not, even if what is isn't, perhaps, enough to ever bring you back.", "pub_date": "2011-06-06T08:17:00", "enable_comments": false, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (14.2557578016857942 40.8448401624922326)", "location": 97, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2011/naplesh.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2011/naplesv.jpg", "meta_description": "Naples Italy is a place worth appreciating for what it is not, even if what is isn\u2019t, perhaps, enough to ever bring you back. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 123, "fields": {"title": "Forever Today", "slug": "forever-today", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>here is something utterly amazing about walking down streets that are millennia old. Your feet are stepping on the same stones that someone more or less just like you stepped on thousands of years earlier, hurrying to work, or out for an evening stroll, perhaps stopping into some restaurant, some shop, some market, some temple. </p>\n<p>I've been fortunate enough to wander such streets in several places, <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2006/mar/21/angkor-wat/\">Angkor Wat</a> in Cambodia, Teotihuac\u00e1n in Mexico City and now Pompeii here in Italy. What's remarkable about the experience is not the age, but the gap between then and now, which feels simultaneously immense and yet very small at the same time.</p>\n<p>It feels small because when you wander around places like Pompeii you realize that human beings have changed very little over what seems like, to us anyway, vast expanses of time. Pompeii had the same elements of cities today, a central square, markets, temples, government offices, even fast food. Not much has changed over the years, though togas aren't much in vogue these days.</p>\n<div class=\"figure\">\n <img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/pompeiifastfood.jpg\" alt=\"Fast food restaurant cric 79 AD, Pompeii, Italy\" />\n <span class=\"legend\">Fast food, Pompeii style.</span>\n</div>\n\n<p><break></p>\n<p>At the same time you can't help but notice the chariot ruts in the stones, the smooth polish of well-worn streets that obviously saw centuries of use even before they were buried. </p>\n<p>Chariot ruts. That was a long time ago. So close, and yet so very far away.</p>\n<p>There are two remarkable things about Pompeii that make it different from the crumbling ruins of other civilizations I've been to. The first is that Pompeii was not some religious site, not a sacred place at all. It was just a town. Something of a resort town, but still a commercial center. People made and sold wine and garum. Government offices kept track of grain and fish and people frequented fast food joints and brothels. In a word, Pompeii was ordinary, and when it comes to archeological sites open to the public, that's unusual.</p>\n<p>The other reason Pompeii is different is of course that it was preserved by the very thing that destroyed it. Pompeii lay buried under ash for nearly 2000 years, preserved just as it was on the morning of August 24, 79 AD when Mount Vesuvius erupted.</p>\n<p>The vast majority of the some 20,000 people that once lived in the city were able to escape the blast. Around 2,000 people, for whatever reason, did not run away and were killed by poisonous gases from the eruption. When the ash descended it buried them where they lay, under twenty five feet of debris. </p>\n<p><img class=\"postpic\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/pompeiiplaster.jpg\" alt=\"plaster body cast, Pompeii, Italy\" />Thanks to an ingenious idea by an Italian archaeologist in the mid 19th century, their final poses have been preserved in plaster. When the bodies at Pompeii were buried they decayed, eventually turning to mostly dust, as all of us will, but that left empty spaces in the hardening ash. Archaeologists found those empty spaces, poured in plaster, let it set, and then excavated around it -- a perfect mold of the dead body. </p>\n<p>The creepy thing about the plaster casts is how perfectly they capture the expressions of terror, horror, and sometimes, what looks like resignation, on people's faces. It's yet another bizarre way that Pompeii manages to both bridge time and remind you how vast that bridge between then and now really is. The casts are people, nearly 2000 year old people, but they could easily have been formed in some disaster today.</p>\n<p>Sadly, the perfectly perserved version of Pompeii that archeologists found in 1748 has been in steady decline ever since. The minute they began excavating it, Pompeii began to fall victim to the forces of time that it had so neatly avoided under all that ash. Weathering, erosion, light exposure, water damage, poor methods of excavation and reconstruction and introduced plants and animals have all taken their toll, to say nothing of tourism, vandalism and theft. </p>\n<p>Italy being Italy, Pompeii is in a steady state of decline. Just last year an entire house -- admittedly, not one open to the public -- collapsed thanks to water seeping under it. </p>\n<p>That's why, at this point, Pompeii is largely just walls, stone roads and a handful of marble structures. The frescos, statues and even most of the plaster death molds have long since been carted off to the archeological museum in Naples where you can see elaborate mosaics and the ever-popular \"Gabinetto Segreto\", otherwise known as the erotic art of Pompeii.</p>\n<p><img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/pompeiierotic.jpg\" alt=\"plaster body cast, Pompeii, Italy\" />Some of the erotic frescos and sculptures were pulled out of the brothels, while others were in private homes and baths. To say the ancient Romans were a sex-obsessed bunch would be to, as most guides at Pompeii seem to do, apply current sexual mores to ancient times. There were brothels in Pompeii, that much is indisputable. But beyond that, to suggest, as many guides I overheard did, that the more (currently) taboo frescos of gay and lesbian sex (or the sculpture of a man having sex with a goat) were jokes intended to make brothel patrons chuckle, seems a stretch -- pure conjecture really. Who knows what they were for? </p>\n<p>It's all guess work at this point. Even if you turn to writing from the time, well now you have one more opinion, one author's take on the times, but still no real sense of what the culture thought. It is a long way from here to there, there's just no getting around that.</p>\n<p>Yet, maybe it isn't. Beliefs change, morals change, but people, they seem to stay basically the same. Suppose <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2011/jan/18/charleston-a-z/\">Charleston</a> or even New York were buried under ash tomorrow, left as they are today for an eternity. Would people 2000 years from now accurately reconstruct our way of life? </p>\n<p>They might get the gist of it -- we lived in buildings, we had other buildings for worshiping gods and still others for buying kebabs, but they would miss the finer points. Yet, even without the subtleties they would know one thing for sure: these were people, human beings, and they lived more or less like us. </p>\n<p>Whether you drive chariots or scooters doesn't matter, something is always marking our passing, something is always making ruts in the road. And sometimes that's all you need to know.</p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">T</span>here is something utterly amazing about walking down streets that are millennia old. Your feet are stepping on the same stones that someone more or less just like you stepped on thousands of years earlier, hurrying to work, or out for an evening stroll, perhaps stopping into some restaurant, some shop, some market, some temple. \r\n\r\nI've been fortunate enough to wander such streets in several places, [Angkor Wat][1] in Cambodia, Teotihuac\u00e1n in Mexico City and now Pompeii here in Italy. What's remarkable about the experience is not the age, but the gap between then and now, which feels simultaneously immense and yet very small at the same time.\r\n\r\nIt feels small because when you wander around places like Pompeii you realize that human beings have changed very little over what seems like, to us anyway, vast expanses of time. Pompeii had the same elements of cities today, a central square, markets, temples, government offices, even fast food. Not much has changed over the years, though togas aren't much in vogue these days.\r\n\r\n<div class=\"figure\">\r\n <img src=\"[[base_url]]2011/pompeiifastfood.jpg\" alt=\"Fast food restaurant cric 79 AD, Pompeii, Italy\" />\r\n <span class=\"legend\">Fast food, Pompeii style.</span>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nAt the same time you can't help but notice the chariot ruts in the stones, the smooth polish of well-worn streets that obviously saw centuries of use even before they were buried. \r\n\r\nChariot ruts. That was a long time ago. So close, and yet so very far away.\r\n\r\nThere are two remarkable things about Pompeii that make it different from the crumbling ruins of other civilizations I've been to. The first is that Pompeii was not some religious site, not a sacred place at all. It was just a town. Something of a resort town, but still a commercial center. People made and sold wine and garum. Government offices kept track of grain and fish and people frequented fast food joints and brothels. In a word, Pompeii was ordinary, and when it comes to archeological sites open to the public, that's unusual.\r\n\r\nThe other reason Pompeii is different is of course that it was preserved by the very thing that destroyed it. Pompeii lay buried under ash for nearly 2000 years, preserved just as it was on the morning of August 24, 79 AD when Mount Vesuvius erupted.\r\n\r\nThe vast majority of the some 20,000 people that once lived in the city were able to escape the blast. Around 2,000 people, for whatever reason, did not run away and were killed by poisonous gases from the eruption. When the ash descended it buried them where they lay, under twenty five feet of debris. \r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpic\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/pompeiiplaster.jpg\" alt=\"plaster body cast, Pompeii, Italy\" />Thanks to an ingenious idea by an Italian archaeologist in the mid 19th century, their final poses have been preserved in plaster. When the bodies at Pompeii were buried they decayed, eventually turning to mostly dust, as all of us will, but that left empty spaces in the hardening ash. Archaeologists found those empty spaces, poured in plaster, let it set, and then excavated around it -- a perfect mold of the dead body. \r\n\r\nThe creepy thing about the plaster casts is how perfectly they capture the expressions of terror, horror, and sometimes, what looks like resignation, on people's faces. It's yet another bizarre way that Pompeii manages to both bridge time and remind you how vast that bridge between then and now really is. The casts are people, nearly 2000 year old people, but they could easily have been formed in some disaster today.\r\n\r\nSadly, the perfectly perserved version of Pompeii that archeologists found in 1748 has been in steady decline ever since. The minute they began excavating it, Pompeii began to fall victim to the forces of time that it had so neatly avoided under all that ash. Weathering, erosion, light exposure, water damage, poor methods of excavation and reconstruction and introduced plants and animals have all taken their toll, to say nothing of tourism, vandalism and theft. \r\n\r\nItaly being Italy, Pompeii is in a steady state of decline. Just last year an entire house -- admittedly, not one open to the public -- collapsed thanks to water seeping under it. \r\n\r\nThat's why, at this point, Pompeii is largely just walls, stone roads and a handful of marble structures. The frescos, statues and even most of the plaster death molds have long since been carted off to the archeological museum in Naples where you can see elaborate mosaics and the ever-popular \"Gabinetto Segreto\", otherwise known as the erotic art of Pompeii.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/pompeiierotic.jpg\" alt=\"plaster body cast, Pompeii, Italy\" />Some of the erotic frescos and sculptures were pulled out of the brothels, while others were in private homes and baths. To say the ancient Romans were a sex-obsessed bunch would be to, as most guides at Pompeii seem to do, apply current sexual mores to ancient times. There were brothels in Pompeii, that much is indisputable. But beyond that, to suggest, as many guides I overheard did, that the more (currently) taboo frescos of gay and lesbian sex (or the sculpture of a man having sex with a goat) were jokes intended to make brothel patrons chuckle, seems a stretch -- pure conjecture really. Who knows what they were for? \r\n\r\nIt's all guess work at this point. Even if you turn to writing from the time, well now you have one more opinion, one author's take on the times, but still no real sense of what the culture thought. It is a long way from here to there, there's just no getting around that.\r\n\r\nYet, maybe it isn't. Beliefs change, morals change, but people, they seem to stay basically the same. Suppose [Charleston][2] or even New York were buried under ash tomorrow, left as they are today for an eternity. Would people 2000 years from now accurately reconstruct our way of life? \r\n\r\nThey might get the gist of it -- we lived in buildings, we had other buildings for worshiping gods and still others for buying kebabs, but they would miss the finer points. Yet, even without the subtleties they would know one thing for sure: these were people, human beings, and they lived more or less like us. \r\n\r\nWhether you drive chariots or scooters doesn't matter, something is always marking our passing, something is always making ruts in the road. And sometimes that's all you need to know.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n[1]: http://luxagraf.net/2006/mar/21/angkor-wat/\r\n[2]: http://luxagraf.net/2011/jan/18/charleston-a-z/", "dek": "Pompeii feels both very old and not that different from the modern cities that surround it now. The gap between then and now feels small because when you wander around places like Pompeii you realize that human beings have changed very little over vast expanses of time. Pompeii had the same elements of cities today, a central square, markets, temples, government offices, even fast food. Not much has changed over the years, though togas aren\u2019t much in vogue these days.", "pub_date": "2011-06-07T17:50:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (14.4802855183065731 40.7521149182178917)", "location": 98, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2011/pompeiih.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2011/pompeiiv.jpg", "meta_description": "Pompeii feels both very old and timelessly human, not that different from the modern cities that surround it now. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 124, "fields": {"title": "Natural Science", "slug": "natural-science", "body_html": "<div class=\"col\">\n<p>There's no way around it; Florence is crowded. It may well be that <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2011/jun/06/new-pollution/\" title=\"Naples the only Italian city without tourists\">Naples is the only Italian city that isn't overrun with tourists</a> in the summer, but after three days of hardly seeing another traveler, I wasn't really prepared for the crowds in Florence.</p>\n\n<p>Florence is, admittedly, more of what tourists expect Italy to be. There's no graffiti, the streets are free of trash and the city looks like something out of a fairy tale clich\u00e9 -- narrow, winding streets, beautiful river walks and plenty of English-speaking waiters. And so they come.</p>\n</div>\n\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/florence-river.jpg\" alt=\"Afternoon light on the river, Firenze (Florence), Italy\" /></p>\n<p><img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/florence-emptystreets.jpg\" alt=\"Early morning streets, Firenze (Florence), Italy\" /><span class=\"drop-small\">L</span>uckily it's never that hard to dodge crowds. Sometimes you head out to <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2006/mar/21/angkor-wat/\">Angkor Wat in the sweltering midday heat</a>. In Florence you just need to get up early and the streets will be deserted. Once everyone else is up, head over to \"La Specola\", the Museum of Zoology, which is part of the Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze. Zoology isn't something near the top of most must-see lists and in my experience, you'll pretty much have the place to yourself.</p>\n\n<p>Of course how much you'll enjoy La Specola depends a little bit on how much you enjoy wandering through rooms filled with dead animals. My father taught biology and zoology for many years, so I grew up around dead animals, but clearly, La Specola is not for everyone. </p>\n\n<p>Part of the appeal of the museum is simply the antique wooden cabinets used to house the various lions, leopards, monkeys, birds and butterflies. The old, uneven and warped glass ripples as you pass, distorts the view from the corner of your eye, giving all the animals a shimmering hint of movement, as if there were still a bit of life left somewhere behind the glass.</p>\n\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/florence-museum-birds.jpg\" alt=\"Birds at La Specola, Firenze (Florence), Italy\" /></p>\n\n<p>Beautiful glass aside, what makes La Specola special is how amazingly old the specimens are. La Specola records the very beginnings of natural science as we know it. The visible specimen tags I could read ranged from the early 1700s up through the late 1800s and into the 1900s. A few specimens come from the Medici family's private collection and are even older. That means the vast majority of the animals in La Specola date from well before Darwin's voyage on the Beagle, and some were brought to Florence even before Linnaeus had come up with the means of organizing them. </p>\n\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/florence-museum-cats.jpg\" alt=\"Big cats at La Specola, Firenze (Florence), Italy\" /></p>\n\n<p>Of course stuffed specimens from 300 years ago aren't going to be in the best of shape. Feathers have fallen off many of the birds, scales have dropped from the fish, the large mammals have badly dried and cracked hides and the natural coloring has long since faded from many. </p>\n\n<p>What's fascinating isn't so much the specimens themselves, but the glimpse they offer into the curious minds of the time. When La Specola was founded in 1771, western culture was just beginning to shrug off thousands of years of religious dogma, dropping a vision of the world where everything was the province of god, for a vision of the world in which the human mind could explore on its own. La Specola hails from the very beginning of that yearning to know more about the world, to reject doctrine and discover first hand the creatures that share our planet. </p>\n\n<p>In the late 17th and early 18th century there was an explosion of exploration, travel and discovery. The \"age of discovery\" as it's commonly called in hindsight, was the age of people like you and me, curious about the world and determined to see it for themselves, stumbling around, finding what they found. In the case of zoologists much of what they found was sent back here, to La Specola. It was a unique time, there were no professional scientists yet, no authorities or academic review boards, everything was new, everything was a discovery. </p>\n\n<p>Yes, there's something perverse about heading out into the world, discovering exotic and fascinating animals and then killing, gutting and stuffing them. It's gruesome business if you go into the details. There's no reason to do it now, but circa 1700 it was the only link between those who could go into the field and those who stayed behind to make sense of it all.</p>\n\n<p>La Specola is a link between then and now. A record of the conversation between those who discovered and those who took discoveries and turned them into something meaningful. Stuffed carcasses are not particularly meaningful in and of themselves. Colorful perhaps, exotic and even alien in some cases, but finding and recording is only half of what creates the store of human understanding. La Specola lays that conversation open for anyone to walk through and experience.</p>\n\n<p>If stuffed and canned dead animals aren't enough to keep the tourists at bay, then the last two rooms certainly are. The last section of La Specola is nothing but wax models of dissected human bodies, flayed open to varying degrees to show muscle structure, viens, organs and even nerves. The models were created in the 1800s from real human bodies and were used to teach anatomy to medical students. The models are remarkably life-like and cover the entire spectrum of human existence from stillborn, syphilis-riddled fetuses to otherwise healthy adults and even larger-than-life skeletons.</p>\n\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/florence-museum-meat.jpg\" alt=\"Wax model of human innards at La Specola, Firenze (Florence), Italy\" /></p>\n\n<p>At first glance the wax models are a touch disturbing, not necessarily because they're life-like, but because they put us on the same shelves, in the same warped glass cases. Otherwise, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? We are after all just one more animal roaming the planet. But a curious, inquisitive animal that can dream anything it wants, including a natural science to explain how curious inquisitive animals can dream anything they want... just remember, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Turtle\" title=\"Wikipedia entry on the World Turtle\">it's turtles all the way down</a>.</p>", "body_markdown": "<div class=\"col\">\r\n<p>There's no way around it; Florence is crowded. It may well be that <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2011/jun/06/new-pollution/\" title=\"Naples the only Italian city without tourists\">Naples is the only Italian city that isn't overrun with tourists</a> in the summer, but after three days of hardly seeing another traveler, I wasn't really prepared for the crowds in Florence.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Florence is, admittedly, more of what tourists expect Italy to be. There's no graffiti, the streets are free of trash and the city looks like something out of a fairy tale clich\u00e9 -- narrow, winding streets, beautiful river walks and plenty of English-speaking waiters. And so they come.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/florence-river.jpg\" alt=\"Afternoon light on the river, Firenze (Florence), Italy\" />\r\n\r\n<p><img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/florence-emptystreets.jpg\" alt=\"Early morning streets, Firenze (Florence), Italy\" /><span class=\"drop-small\">L</span>uckily it's never that hard to dodge crowds. Sometimes you head out to <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2006/mar/21/angkor-wat/\">Angkor Wat in the sweltering midday heat</a>. In Florence you just need to get up early and the streets will be deserted. Once everyone else is up, head over to \"La Specola\", the Museum of Zoology, which is part of the Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze. Zoology isn't something near the top of most must-see lists and in my experience, you'll pretty much have the place to yourself.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Of course how much you'll enjoy La Specola depends a little bit on how much you enjoy wandering through rooms filled with dead animals. My father taught biology and zoology for many years, so I grew up around dead animals, but clearly, La Specola is not for everyone. </p>\r\n\r\n<p>Part of the appeal of the museum is simply the antique wooden cabinets used to house the various lions, leopards, monkeys, birds and butterflies. The old, uneven and warped glass ripples as you pass, distorts the view from the corner of your eye, giving all the animals a shimmering hint of movement, as if there were still a bit of life left somewhere behind the glass.</p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/florence-museum-birds.jpg\" alt=\"Birds at La Specola, Firenze (Florence), Italy\" /></p>\r\n\r\n<p>Beautiful glass aside, what makes La Specola special is how amazingly old the specimens are. La Specola records the very beginnings of natural science as we know it. The visible specimen tags I could read ranged from the early 1700s up through the late 1800s and into the 1900s. A few specimens come from the Medici family's private collection and are even older. That means the vast majority of the animals in La Specola date from well before Darwin's voyage on the Beagle, and some were brought to Florence even before Linnaeus had come up with the means of organizing them. </p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/florence-museum-cats.jpg\" alt=\"Big cats at La Specola, Firenze (Florence), Italy\" /></p>\r\n\r\n<p>Of course stuffed specimens from 300 years ago aren't going to be in the best of shape. Feathers have fallen off many of the birds, scales have dropped from the fish, the large mammals have badly dried and cracked hides and the natural coloring has long since faded from many. </p>\r\n\r\n<p>What's fascinating isn't so much the specimens themselves, but the glimpse they offer into the curious minds of the time. When La Specola was founded in 1771, western culture was just beginning to shrug off thousands of years of religious dogma, dropping a vision of the world where everything was the province of god, for a vision of the world in which the human mind could explore on its own. La Specola hails from the very beginning of that yearning to know more about the world, to reject doctrine and discover first hand the creatures that share our planet. </p>\r\n\r\n<p>In the late 17th and early 18th century there was an explosion of exploration, travel and discovery. The \"age of discovery\" as it's commonly called in hindsight, was the age of people like you and me, curious about the world and determined to see it for themselves, stumbling around, finding what they found. In the case of zoologists much of what they found was sent back here, to La Specola. It was a unique time, there were no professional scientists yet, no authorities or academic review boards, everything was new, everything was a discovery. </p>\r\n\r\n<p>Yes, there's something perverse about heading out into the world, discovering exotic and fascinating animals and then killing, gutting and stuffing them. It's gruesome business if you go into the details. There's no reason to do it now, but circa 1700 it was the only link between those who could go into the field and those who stayed behind to make sense of it all.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>La Specola is a link between then and now. A record of the conversation between those who discovered and those who took discoveries and turned them into something meaningful. Stuffed carcasses are not particularly meaningful in and of themselves. Colorful perhaps, exotic and even alien in some cases, but finding and recording is only half of what creates the store of human understanding. La Specola lays that conversation open for anyone to walk through and experience.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>If stuffed and canned dead animals aren't enough to keep the tourists at bay, then the last two rooms certainly are. The last section of La Specola is nothing but wax models of dissected human bodies, flayed open to varying degrees to show muscle structure, viens, organs and even nerves. The models were created in the 1800s from real human bodies and were used to teach anatomy to medical students. The models are remarkably life-like and cover the entire spectrum of human existence from stillborn, syphilis-riddled fetuses to otherwise healthy adults and even larger-than-life skeletons.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/florence-museum-meat.jpg\" alt=\"Wax model of human innards at La Specola, Firenze (Florence), Italy\" /></p>\r\n\r\n<p>At first glance the wax models are a touch disturbing, not necessarily because they're life-like, but because they put us on the same shelves, in the same warped glass cases. Otherwise, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? We are after all just one more animal roaming the planet. But a curious, inquisitive animal that can dream anything it wants, including a natural science to explain how curious inquisitive animals can dream anything they want... just remember, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Turtle\" title=\"Wikipedia entry on the World Turtle\">it's turtles all the way down</a>.</p>\r\n", "dek": "There's no way around it; Florence is crowded. It may well be that Naples is the only Italian city that isn't overrun with tourists in the summer, but after three days of hardly seeing another traveler, I wasn't prepared for the crowds. Luckily it isn't hard to avoid the tourist hordes, just get up early and then when everyone else is starting to stir, head for obscure museums like La Specola, part of the Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze.", "pub_date": "2011-06-10T20:54:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (11.2546180422548652 43.7698712205059266)", "location": 99, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2011/florenceh.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2011/florencev.jpg", "meta_description": "There's no way around it; Florence is crowded. Fortunately less well know museums like La Specola, rarely see visitors. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 1}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 125, "fields": {"title": "Cooking in Rome", "slug": "cooking-rome", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">R</span>ome exists on a scope that I've never encountered before in a city. It's big and massively spread out. There's really no downtown and everything you might want to see is miles from wherever you are. And it has all the attendant traffic, noise and confusion of humanity you would expect from a big city. It also spans several millennia of history with ancient Roman ruins butted up against Gucci and Armani stores.</p>\n<p>I'm pretty sure Rome is a great city. I'm pretty sure you could have an awesome time exploring Rome, but by the time I got there I was already done with Italy. Done with Europe. I was ready for the beaches of Bali, our next stop on this quick jaunt around the world.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>My exploratory motivation was low by the time I got to Rome. We went to the Colosseum and marveled for a moment before an ATM machine ate my card on a Sunday afternoon<sup id=\"fnr-001\"><a href=\"#fn-001\">[1]</a></sup>. We didn't quite have the money to get in and even if we did there was no way we were going to wait in the line that wrapped nearly all the way around the Colosseum. Ancient sites are pretty amazing in my opinion, but that amazingness diminishes considerably when the line to get in is five hours long. If I'm going to wait in a five hour line (and I'm not, ever, but if I were) I want a new iPad at the end of the experience.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/rome-colosseum.jpg\" alt=\"Colosseum, Rome,s Italy\" /></p>\n<p>When you're burned out on traveling the best thing to do is nothing. Which is what we did for three days. We explored a little, wandered the Trastevere area, ate some cacio e pepe (simple noodles with a sauce of pecorino and black pepper), a bit of pizza and even made it out to the Pantheon, which was an utterly disgusting experience. I know the Catholic Church is pretty much like the Borg in Star Trek, absorbing and destroying everything in its path, but to turn a place whose name literally translates as \"many gods\" into a catholic church is the sort of bullshit that just makes me despair about the future of humanity.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/rome-cynical-pantheon.jpg\" alt=\"Self portrait of cynicism, Pantheon Rome, Italy\" /></p>\n<p>So instead of really getting into the sights of Rome we got into the food. Not the kind you get in restaurants, but the kind you find at the local market. Every afternoon we walked half a block down the street from our apartment to a small produce stand. It wasn't even a nice produce market, just an ordinary produce stand in a residential neighborhood with a mediocre selection. And it was the best damn produce I've ever purchased. </p>\n<p>Each afternoon we bought nearly 2 kilos worth of zucchini, eggplant, lemon and greens. For under 2 euro. At the worst exchange rates that's about $2.80 for 4 pounds of produce. You can hardly buy a dozen bananas for that price in the U.S.</p>\n<p>The only spices at the apartment where we stayed were salt and pepper. There was also some ordinary, cheap olive oil, which happens to be ten times better than the most expensive olive oil I've seen in the United States. But you don't need extensive spices and fancy oils when the ingredients you start with are high quality. I sauteed everything in a generous splash of olive oil with a bit of salt and pepper and it was the best zucchini, eggplant and beef I've ever made, or had for that matter.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/rome-cooking.jpg\" alt=\"zuchinni, eggplant, greens, Rome, Italy\" /></p>\n<p>And I'm far from a great cook. I learned a few things working under talented cooks like <a href=\"http://www.fiveandten.com/chef.html\">Hugh Acheson</a> and Chuck Ramsey, but even if you barely know how to scramble eggs, you could make the same thing I made in Rome. Good ingredients are all you really need, and the raw cooking materials of Italy are the best I've seen in all my travels.</p>\n<p>In the end Italy and I didn't really get along, but the food redeemed it for me. The restaurants are good, but if you really want to experience the glory of Italian food you need to head to the market, grab some utterly amazing raw ingredients and whip up something yourself. This is what food is supposed to be, simple, fresh and great. </p>\n<p>Now hold my calls, I'm off to lie in a hammock somewhere in Indonesia.</p>\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\n<li id=\"fn-001\">\n<p><span class=\"note1\">1. I know I know. Terrible. Never use your ATM card after hours. The lesson here is that even if you spend years wandering the globe, you're still, at the end of the day, an idiot. Luckily I got it back the next day without too much hassle.</span><a href=\"#fnr-001\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">R</span>ome exists on a scope that I've never encountered before in a city. It's big and massively spread out. There's really no downtown and everything you might want to see is miles from wherever you are. And it has all the attendant traffic, noise and confusion of humanity you would expect from a big city. It also spans several millennia of history with ancient Roman ruins butted up against Gucci and Armani stores.\r\n\r\nI'm pretty sure Rome is a great city. I'm pretty sure you could have an awesome time exploring Rome, but by the time I got there I was already done with Italy. Done with Europe. I was ready for the beaches of Bali, our next stop on this quick jaunt around the world.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nMy exploratory motivation was low by the time I got to Rome. We went to the Colosseum and marveled for a moment before an ATM machine ate my card on a Sunday afternoon<sup id=\"fnr-001\"><a href=\"#fn-001\">[1]</a></sup>. We didn't quite have the money to get in and even if we did there was no way we were going to wait in the line that wrapped nearly all the way around the Colosseum. Ancient sites are pretty amazing in my opinion, but that amazingness diminishes considerably when the line to get in is five hours long. If I'm going to wait in a five hour line (and I'm not, ever, but if I were) I want a new iPad at the end of the experience.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/rome-colosseum.jpg\" alt=\"Colosseum, Rome,s Italy\" />\r\n\r\nWhen you're burned out on traveling the best thing to do is nothing. Which is what we did for three days. We explored a little, wandered the Trastevere area, ate some cacio e pepe (simple noodles with a sauce of pecorino and black pepper), a bit of pizza and even made it out to the Pantheon, which was an utterly disgusting experience. I know the Catholic Church is pretty much like the Borg in Star Trek, absorbing and destroying everything in its path, but to turn a place whose name literally translates as \"many gods\" into a catholic church is the sort of bullshit that just makes me despair about the future of humanity.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/rome-cynical-pantheon.jpg\" alt=\"Self portrait of cynicism, Pantheon Rome, Italy\" />\r\n\r\nSo instead of really getting into the sights of Rome we got into the food. Not the kind you get in restaurants, but the kind you find at the local market. Every afternoon we walked half a block down the street from our apartment to a small produce stand. It wasn't even a nice produce market, just an ordinary produce stand in a residential neighborhood with a mediocre selection. And it was the best damn produce I've ever purchased. \r\n\r\nEach afternoon we bought nearly 2 kilos worth of zucchini, eggplant, lemon and greens. For under 2 euro. At the worst exchange rates that's about $2.80 for 4 pounds of produce. You can hardly buy a dozen bananas for that price in the U.S.\r\n\r\nThe only spices at the apartment where we stayed were salt and pepper. There was also some ordinary, cheap olive oil, which happens to be ten times better than the most expensive olive oil I've seen in the United States. But you don't need extensive spices and fancy oils when the ingredients you start with are high quality. I sauteed everything in a generous splash of olive oil with a bit of salt and pepper and it was the best zucchini, eggplant and beef I've ever made, or had for that matter.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/rome-cooking.jpg\" alt=\"zuchinni, eggplant, greens, Rome, Italy\" />\r\n\r\nAnd I'm far from a great cook. I learned a few things working under talented cooks like <a href=\"http://www.fiveandten.com/chef.html\">Hugh Acheson</a> and Chuck Ramsey, but even if you barely know how to scramble eggs, you could make the same thing I made in Rome. Good ingredients are all you really need, and the raw cooking materials of Italy are the best I've seen in all my travels.\r\n\r\nIn the end Italy and I didn't really get along, but the food redeemed it for me. The restaurants are good, but if you really want to experience the glory of Italian food you need to head to the market, grab some utterly amazing raw ingredients and whip up something yourself. This is what food is supposed to be, simple, fresh and great. \r\n\r\nNow hold my calls, I'm off to lie in a hammock somewhere in Indonesia.\r\n\r\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\r\n<li id=\"fn-001\">\r\n<p><span class=\"note1\">1. I know I know. Terrible. Never use your ATM card after hours. The lesson here is that even if you spend years wandering the globe, you're still, at the end of the day, an idiot. Luckily I got it back the next day without too much hassle.</span><a href=\"#fnr-001\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\r\n</li>\r\n</ol>", "dek": "In the end Italy and I didn't really get along, but the food redeemed it for me. The restaurants are good, but if you really want to experience the glory of Italian food you need to head to the market, grab some utterly amazing raw ingredients and whip up something yourself. This is what food is supposed to be, simple, fresh and great. ", "pub_date": "2011-06-14T17:18:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (12.4610112838812839 41.8654556931411648)", "location": 100, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2011/rome-h.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2011/rome-v.jpg", "meta_description": "Italy has some of the best produce and meat in the world. This is what food is supposed to be, simple, fresh and great. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 126, "fields": {"title": "Motor City is Burning", "slug": "motor-city-burning", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span>’ve been out all afternoon on a motorbike. Now I'm sitting on a marble balcony, sipping lukewarm beer, listening to the gregarious chatter of various European languages, all of which could only mean one thing -- I've finally made it back to Southeast Asia.</p>\n<p>It was a 36-hour plane flight to get from Rome to here. Or rather a 36-hour series of plane flights and layovers, including considerable time spent in the lovely Qatar airport, all of which meant that, thanks to the wonder of layovers and planetary rotation, we got to see the sun rise and set twice in one day. It'll do a number to your head, that.</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>We arrived in Bali in a jet-lagged daze and promptly hired a cab for Ubud the so-called cultural center of Bali, halfway up into the hills that fall away from Mt. Agung, the volcano that dominates the southern half of Bali, down to the seaside somewhere south of Ubud.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/ubud-ricepaddies1.jpg\" alt=\"Rice paddies outside of Ubud, Bali, Indonesia\" /></p>\n<p>Ubud was probably once a small village in the hills, but these days its more of a tourist mecca, thanks to some really awful western travel books that shall not be named. Ubud now sprawls out from the central crossroads up into neighboring villages pretty much erasing any discernible difference between Ubud and the dozen or so villages that surround it. </p>\n<p>I won't lie to you. Ubud is crowded, in fact, all of Bali is crowded, with traffic like I've never seen anywhere else in Asia. Snarled roads mean incessant horns and shouts are the primary sounds of Bali. Interestingly, Ubud isn't nearly as crowded with tourists as I had expected, at least it wasn't while we were there. During the days the streets would fill up with tourists on day trips from the resorts down south in Kuta and Seminyak, both about 20-30km from Ubud (if you want some idea of the traffic in Bali consider that a 20-30km distance will take anywhere from one to two hours by car or motorbike), but in the evening, after the resort goers were safely back beach-side, Ubud seemed nearly empty.</p>\n<p>The traffic and congestion of Bali isn't something you can blame on tourists, it's mainly just the Balinese going about their lives. It made for hectic bike riding, at least until you could get out of the center of Ubud. There was a lot of choking on diesel fumes and waiting or weaving through, traffic. </p>\n<p>Once I got through the two main intersections of Ubud the traffic mostly gave way and I had the road to myself, save other motorbikes and heavily loaded down trucks. The countryside around Ubud is well worth riding through, beautiful terraced rice paddies that spill down the mountain sides, glowing a verdant green in the evening light. Over the course of four days I think I rode about 120K, in one case halfway up the side of Mt. Agung. </p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/ubud-ricepaddies2.jpg\" alt=\"Rice paddies outside of Ubud, Bali, Indonesia\" /></p>\n<p>The smoky wind alternates between choking and enticing as it whips about my helmet. But any choking is offset by the gorgeous soft twilight of the tropics, which kept me riding through village after village, each with it's own craft theme. One village would be all stone work, concrete fountains, sculptures of Buddha and countless pots and urns. The next might be wood carving, intricate masks, totem pole-like sculptures and ornate arched doors. The best were the weaving villages, brilliantly colored fabrics flowing out of a dozen small stone buildings, all of them eventually making their way down to Ubud for sale.</p>\n<p>But awesome as it was to be back on the Asian version of a motorbike, it wasn't quite the relaxing riding I did in Laos and elsewhere. You can never recapture the magic, and I wasn't trying.... Okay, maybe I was, but it didn't work. regrettably Honda seems to have phased out the Dream in the last five years, replacing it with something called the Nitro, which just doesn't have the same ring to it. But the bike is irrelevant, was always irrelevant. I missed my friends, especially because I just saw Debi in Paris. It just wasn't the same riding by myself. Debi, Matt, where are you? There are roads to be ridden, locals with ten people on a bike to be humbled by. Six fingered men to be seen, <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2006/mar/07/ticket-ride/\">by some</a>. </p>\n<p>It wasn't the same. It never is. But you know what, it's amazing anyway. </p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span>’ve been out all afternoon on a motorbike. Now I'm sitting on a marble balcony, sipping lukewarm beer, listening to the gregarious chatter of various European languages, all of which could only mean one thing -- I've finally made it back to Southeast Asia.\r\n\r\nIt was a 36-hour plane flight to get from Rome to here. Or rather a 36-hour series of plane flights and layovers, including considerable time spent in the lovely Qatar airport, all of which meant that, thanks to the wonder of layovers and planetary rotation, we got to see the sun rise and set twice in one day. It'll do a number to your head, that.\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nWe arrived in Bali in a jet-lagged daze and promptly hired a cab for Ubud the so-called cultural center of Bali, halfway up into the hills that fall away from Mt. Agung, the volcano that dominates the southern half of Bali, down to the seaside somewhere south of Ubud.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/ubud-ricepaddies1.jpg\" alt=\"Rice paddies outside of Ubud, Bali, Indonesia\" />\r\n\r\nUbud was probably once a small village in the hills, but these days its more of a tourist mecca, thanks to some really awful western travel books that shall not be named. Ubud now sprawls out from the central crossroads up into neighboring villages pretty much erasing any discernible difference between Ubud and the dozen or so villages that surround it. \r\n\r\nI won't lie to you. Ubud is crowded, in fact, all of Bali is crowded, with traffic like I've never seen anywhere else in Asia. Snarled roads mean incessant horns and shouts are the primary sounds of Bali. Interestingly, Ubud isn't nearly as crowded with tourists as I had expected, at least it wasn't while we were there. During the days the streets would fill up with tourists on day trips from the resorts down south in Kuta and Seminyak, both about 20-30km from Ubud (if you want some idea of the traffic in Bali consider that a 20-30km distance will take anywhere from one to two hours by car or motorbike), but in the evening, after the resort goers were safely back beach-side, Ubud seemed nearly empty.\r\n\r\nThe traffic and congestion of Bali isn't something you can blame on tourists, it's mainly just the Balinese going about their lives. It made for hectic bike riding, at least until you could get out of the center of Ubud. There was a lot of choking on diesel fumes and waiting or weaving through, traffic. \r\n\r\nOnce I got through the two main intersections of Ubud the traffic mostly gave way and I had the road to myself, save other motorbikes and heavily loaded down trucks. The countryside around Ubud is well worth riding through, beautiful terraced rice paddies that spill down the mountain sides, glowing a verdant green in the evening light. Over the course of four days I think I rode about 120K, in one case halfway up the side of Mt. Agung. \r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/ubud-ricepaddies2.jpg\" alt=\"Rice paddies outside of Ubud, Bali, Indonesia\" />\r\n\r\nThe smoky wind alternates between choking and enticing as it whips about my helmet. But any choking is offset by the gorgeous soft twilight of the tropics, which kept me riding through village after village, each with it's own craft theme. One village would be all stone work, concrete fountains, sculptures of Buddha and countless pots and urns. The next might be wood carving, intricate masks, totem pole-like sculptures and ornate arched doors. The best were the weaving villages, brilliantly colored fabrics flowing out of a dozen small stone buildings, all of them eventually making their way down to Ubud for sale.\r\n\r\nBut awesome as it was to be back on the Asian version of a motorbike, it wasn't quite the relaxing riding I did in Laos and elsewhere. You can never recapture the magic, and I wasn't trying.... Okay, maybe I was, but it didn't work. regrettably Honda seems to have phased out the Dream in the last five years, replacing it with something called the Nitro, which just doesn't have the same ring to it. But the bike is irrelevant, was always irrelevant. I missed my friends, especially because I just saw Debi in Paris. It just wasn't the same riding by myself. Debi, Matt, where are you? There are roads to be ridden, locals with ten people on a bike to be humbled by. Six fingered men to be seen, <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2006/mar/07/ticket-ride/\">by some</a>. \r\n\r\nIt wasn't the same. It never is. But you know what, it's amazing anyway. ", "dek": "Awesome as it was to be back on the Asian version of a motorbike, it wasn't quite the relaxing riding I did in Laos and elsewhere. You can never recapture the magic, and I wasn't trying.... Okay, maybe I was, but it didn't work. regrettably Honda seems to have phased out the Dream in the last five years, replacing it with something called the Nitro, which just doesn't have the same ring to it. But the bike is irrelevant, was always irrelevant. I missed my friends. It just wasn't the same by myself. Debi, Matt, where are you? There are roads to be ridden, locals with ten people on a bike to be humbled by. Six fingered men to be seen, by some. ", "pub_date": "2011-06-16T20:05:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (115.2611932359405387 -8.5129421063211570)", "location": 101, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2011/ricepaddies-h.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2011/ricepaddies-v.jpg", "meta_description": "Awesome as it was to be back on a motorbike, riding Bali wasn't quite as relaxing as I what did in Laos and elsewhere. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 127, "fields": {"title": "The Balinese Temple Ceremony", "slug": "temple-ceremony-ubud", "body_html": "<div class=\"col\"><p>Everything in Bali is two hundred meters from here. The island itself may in fact only be two hundred meters wide and two hundred meters long. To get from here to wherever we are staying? Two hundred meters. To get from here to the temple ceremony we were supposed to be at twenty minutes ago? Just two hundred meters more. The Balinese are either really bad at judging distance or unclear on the English words for numbers larger than two hundred.</p>\n\n<p>We've been walking up this hill for at least 2km and we still haven't caught sight of the temple, though now we can hear the drums, which is encouraging. One last local walks by, \"Excuse me, it this the road to Tegallantang? Yes. How much farther is it? \"Just up the road. Maybe two hundred meters.\"</p>\n\n<p>As it turns out, he's the only one to say two hundred meters and literally be right about it.</p>\n\n</div>\n\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/ubud-elephant-caves.jpg\" alt=\"Elephant Caves, Ubud, Bali\" /></p>\n<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>wo days earlier we were out wandering the streets when it started to rain. We ducked into the nearest restaurant for lunch. Toward the end of the meal, as the rain was dying down and we were getting ready to leave, the owner came over and started talking to us about Ubud. We ordered another beer and in the end he invited us out to his temple to see the temple's anniversary ceremony and procession through the city.</p>\n\n<p>At the time we were thinking of leaving for the islands east of Bali, but we decided to stick around for a couple of extra days to see the temple ceremony. </p>\n\n<p>Ubud grows on you. Sure, it has a lot of traffic and touristy elements and most of the shops sell things at prices roughly equal to what you'd expect in the States, but despite all that there's something about the place. Maybe it's the way every morning the streets are littered with tiny offerings, small banana leaf trays filled with flowers, bits of rice and other food, along with a few sticks of burning incense. Maybe it's the immaculate, constantly tended gardens that grace the courtyards of every restaurant and guesthouse you enter. Maybe it's the really awful, overpriced beer. No. Probably not that, but it does grow on you. Ubud that is, not the beer.</p>\n\n<p><img class=\"postpicleft\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/ubud-monkey-forest.jpg\" alt=\"Gray Macaques, Ubud, Bali\" />With a few extra days on our hands <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2011/jun/16/motor-city-burning/\" title=\"Riding a motorbike in Bali\">we rode the motor bike</a> around some more. We also walked around the temples of the sacred monkey forest where we saw one of the namesake gray-haired Macaques (small monkeys) re-enact the opening scene of 2001 with a battered old aerosol can. Eventually it stopped banging the can on the ground and just turned it around, upside down, shook it, bit it, threw it and otherwise seemed to be saying, <a href=\"http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/05/051106.html\" title=\"Ze Frank: How do you work this thing?\">how do you work this thing</a>?</p>\n\n<p>After four and half days though I'll admit I wasn't expecting much when we walked a couple of kilometers out of Ubud to the village of Tegallantang where we, along with a couple friends we met a few days earlier, met up with our friend from the restaurant.</p>\n\n<p>I've been to <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2005/nov/30/around-udaipur/\" title=\"Luxagraf in Udaipur\">a lot of Hindu temples</a>. Enough in fact that I don't feel the need to see any more, but Balinese temples are considerably different than Hindu temples in India. While Balinese temples look partly like Hindu temples in India, there are other elements that come from older religions. Bali is what happens when Hindu beliefs collide with animism. The Balinese seem to embrace the basic tenants of traditional Hinduism, but then add plenty of their own animist flourishes to the mix -- like frequent and elaborate temple ceremonies.</p>\n\n<p><img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/ubud-ceremony-boys.jpg\" alt=\"Boys waiting for ceremony procession, Tegallantang, Bali\" />By the time we arrived the temple portion of the ceremony was already over, which is just as well because it felt vaguely intrusive to be the only white people standing outside the temple, and would have felt even more so if they had invited us in. And I have no doubt they would have, as we seemed to be the only people uneasy with our presence. I'm always wary of being <em>that guy</em>, the obnoxious tourist thrusting a camera in everyone's face. I even carry a long telephoto lens just so I can avoid being that guy.</p>\n\n<p>However, despite the fact that the ceremony was not a public spectacle by any means, the procession most definitely was, since it was headed for the heart of Ubud, down to the meeting of the two rivers which is both a sacred sight for the locals and tourist central for the city. Perhaps that's why no one seemed to mind us standing around the temple.</p>\n\n<p><img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/ubud-effigies.jpg\" alt=\"Effigies, ceremony procession, Tegallantang, Bali\" />When we arrived only the men were at the temple. Most of them were turned out in immaculate white sarongs crisply tied without a fold out of place, topped with white shirts. Boys as young as five or six on up to teenagers were lined up to carry giant umbrellas, flags and various silk emblems which towered high above their heads on bamboo poles. The brigade of youngsters and the fluttering banners made up the front of the procession back to Ubud. The umbrellas and banners were used to shade the effigies of gods and demons that made up the middle of the procession.</p>\n\n<p>The older men came next split into two groups, those warming up on drums, flutes and other musical instruments, and those still inside the temple, loading up the various offerings and even stone shrines, all of which they carried in groups, the weight slung between two long bamboo poles that rested on the shoulders of eight and sometimes ten men.</p>\n\n<p>Once the men had all taken their places, as if on cue (though more likely via the walkie talkies some of the elders carried), the women arrived dressed in elaborate sarongs of rich gold and red silk. Most of the women, even the very young girls, wore thick coats of makeup on their faces, giving them a doll-like appearance reminiscent of Japanese geishas, though I'm pretty sure that wasn't the image they had in mind.</p>\n\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/ubud-procession-start.jpg\" alt=\"Temple ceremony procession, Tegallantang, Bali\" /></p>\n\n<p>Then, as with any parade you've ever seen, the band struck up a song. The children moved out in front, the older women placed their baskets on their heads, the men picked up their offerings and shrines and the whole affair began the slow walking march through the hills down into Ubud. We brought up the rear, the token tourists trailing the procession through the rice paddies and down the hill, past shops and restaurants, houses and even a resort or two until the street widened and eventually reached the main road through Ubud. </p>\n\n<p>At that point we broke off and went up to a second story restaurant to have a beer and a bit of a snack, content to watch from a distance. As we sat upstairs in the fading light we watched as the river of white shirts hit the main road and flowed right, turning toward the city center, gradually growing smaller until the last white shirts disappeared down the hill.</p>\n\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/ubud-procession-end.jpg\" alt=\"Temple ceremony procession, Tegallantang, Bali\" /></p>", "body_markdown": "<div class=\"col\"><p>Everything in Bali is two hundred meters from here. The island itself may in fact only be two hundred meters wide and two hundred meters long. To get from here to wherever we are staying? Two hundred meters. To get from here to the temple ceremony we were supposed to be at twenty minutes ago? Just two hundred meters more. The Balinese are either really bad at judging distance or unclear on the English words for numbers larger than two hundred.</p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>We've been walking up this hill for at least 2km and we still haven't caught sight of the temple, though now we can hear the drums, which is encouraging. One last local walks by, \"Excuse me, it this the road to Tegallantang? Yes. How much farther is it? \"Just up the road. Maybe two hundred meters.\"</p>\r\n\r\n<p>As it turns out, he's the only one to say two hundred meters and literally be right about it.</p>\r\n\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/ubud-elephant-caves.jpg\" alt=\"Elephant Caves, Ubud, Bali\" />\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><span class=\"drop\">T</span>wo days earlier we were out wandering the streets when it started to rain. We ducked into the nearest restaurant for lunch. Toward the end of the meal, as the rain was dying down and we were getting ready to leave, the owner came over and started talking to us about Ubud. We ordered another beer and in the end he invited us out to his temple to see the temple's anniversary ceremony and procession through the city.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>At the time we were thinking of leaving for the islands east of Bali, but we decided to stick around for a couple of extra days to see the temple ceremony. </p>\r\n\r\n<p>Ubud grows on you. Sure, it has a lot of traffic and touristy elements and most of the shops sell things at prices roughly equal to what you'd expect in the States, but despite all that there's something about the place. Maybe it's the way every morning the streets are littered with tiny offerings, small banana leaf trays filled with flowers, bits of rice and other food, along with a few sticks of burning incense. Maybe it's the immaculate, constantly tended gardens that grace the courtyards of every restaurant and guesthouse you enter. Maybe it's the really awful, overpriced beer. No. Probably not that, but it does grow on you. Ubud that is, not the beer.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img class=\"postpicleft\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/ubud-monkey-forest.jpg\" alt=\"Gray Macaques, Ubud, Bali\" />With a few extra days on our hands <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2011/jun/16/motor-city-burning/\" title=\"Riding a motorbike in Bali\">we rode the motor bike</a> around some more. We also walked around the temples of the sacred monkey forest where we saw one of the namesake gray-haired Macaques (small monkeys) re-enact the opening scene of 2001 with a battered old aerosol can. Eventually it stopped banging the can on the ground and just turned it around, upside down, shook it, bit it, threw it and otherwise seemed to be saying, <a href=\"http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/05/051106.html\" title=\"Ze Frank: How do you work this thing?\">how do you work this thing</a>?</p>\r\n\r\n<p>After four and half days though I'll admit I wasn't expecting much when we walked a couple of kilometers out of Ubud to the village of Tegallantang where we, along with a couple friends we met a few days earlier, met up with our friend from the restaurant.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>I've been to <a href=\"http://luxagraf.net/2005/nov/30/around-udaipur/\" title=\"Luxagraf in Udaipur\">a lot of Hindu temples</a>. Enough in fact that I don't feel the need to see any more, but Balinese temples are considerably different than Hindu temples in India. While Balinese temples look partly like Hindu temples in India, there are other elements that come from older religions. Bali is what happens when Hindu beliefs collide with animism. The Balinese seem to embrace the basic tenants of traditional Hinduism, but then add plenty of their own animist flourishes to the mix -- like frequent and elaborate temple ceremonies.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/ubud-ceremony-boys.jpg\" alt=\"Boys waiting for ceremony procession, Tegallantang, Bali\" />By the time we arrived the temple portion of the ceremony was already over, which is just as well because it felt vaguely intrusive to be the only white people standing outside the temple, and would have felt even more so if they had invited us in. And I have no doubt they would have, as we seemed to be the only people uneasy with our presence. I'm always wary of being <em>that guy</em>, the obnoxious tourist thrusting a camera in everyone's face. I even carry a long telephoto lens just so I can avoid being that guy.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>However, despite the fact that the ceremony was not a public spectacle by any means, the procession most definitely was, since it was headed for the heart of Ubud, down to the meeting of the two rivers which is both a sacred sight for the locals and tourist central for the city. Perhaps that's why no one seemed to mind us standing around the temple.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/ubud-effigies.jpg\" alt=\"Effigies, ceremony procession, Tegallantang, Bali\" />When we arrived only the men were at the temple. Most of them were turned out in immaculate white sarongs crisply tied without a fold out of place, topped with white shirts. Boys as young as five or six on up to teenagers were lined up to carry giant umbrellas, flags and various silk emblems which towered high above their heads on bamboo poles. The brigade of youngsters and the fluttering banners made up the front of the procession back to Ubud. The umbrellas and banners were used to shade the effigies of gods and demons that made up the middle of the procession.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>The older men came next split into two groups, those warming up on drums, flutes and other musical instruments, and those still inside the temple, loading up the various offerings and even stone shrines, all of which they carried in groups, the weight slung between two long bamboo poles that rested on the shoulders of eight and sometimes ten men.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Once the men had all taken their places, as if on cue (though more likely via the walkie talkies some of the elders carried), the women arrived dressed in elaborate sarongs of rich gold and red silk. Most of the women, even the very young girls, wore thick coats of makeup on their faces, giving them a doll-like appearance reminiscent of Japanese geishas, though I'm pretty sure that wasn't the image they had in mind.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/ubud-procession-start.jpg\" alt=\"Temple ceremony procession, Tegallantang, Bali\" /></p>\r\n\r\n<p>Then, as with any parade you've ever seen, the band struck up a song. The children moved out in front, the older women placed their baskets on their heads, the men picked up their offerings and shrines and the whole affair began the slow walking march through the hills down into Ubud. We brought up the rear, the token tourists trailing the procession through the rice paddies and down the hill, past shops and restaurants, houses and even a resort or two until the street widened and eventually reached the main road through Ubud. </p>\r\n\r\n<p>At that point we broke off and went up to a second story restaurant to have a beer and a bit of a snack, content to watch from a distance. As we sat upstairs in the fading light we watched as the river of white shirts hit the main road and flowed right, turning toward the city center, gradually growing smaller until the last white shirts disappeared down the hill.</p>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/ubud-procession-end.jpg\" alt=\"Temple ceremony procession, Tegallantang, Bali\" />\r\n", "dek": "While Balinese temples look partly like Hindu temples in India, there are other elements that come from older religions. Bali is what happens when Hindu beliefs collide with animism. The Balinese seem to embrace the basic tenants of traditional Hinduism, but then add plenty of their own animist flourishes to the mix -- like frequent and elaborate temple ceremonies. We were lucky enough to be invited to a temple ceremony in Tegallantang, Bali.", "pub_date": "2011-06-19T10:25:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (115.2658280930830443 -8.4805570936485513)", "location": 101, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2011/ubud-ceremony.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2011/ubud-ceremony-v.jpg", "meta_description": "We were fortunate enough to be invited to a temple ceremony in Tegallantang, Bali and then followed the procession back into Ubud. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 1}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 128, "fields": {"title": "The Best Snorkeling in the World", "slug": "best-snorkeling-world", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">N</span>usa Lembongan is only a few miles off the southwestern coast of Bali, but it might as well be another universe. Here there are few people and no cars, only a few motorbikes that navigate the narrow dirt roads, none more than two meters wide, and your own feet are the dominant way to get around. There's still tourism, but there's also a local fishing and seaweed industry. </p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 60em) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/lembongan-boats-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/lembongan-boats.jpg 1120w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/lembongan-boats-2240.jpg 2280w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/lembongan-boats.jpg\" alt=\"Nusa Lembongan boats\"></p>\n<p>From Ubud we caught a bus south to Sanur, a beachside town where we thought we might spend a night or two. Unimpressed by the trash strewn beaches and overpriced resorts we went ahead and caught the afternoon boat out to Nusa Lembongan, one of three small islands off the coast of southwest Bali.</p>\n<p>The pace here is more my speed. Little seems to happen. People work. People fly kites. People eat. People sit in the shade.</p>\n<p>Most of Lembongan's inhabitants are seaweed farmers. At low tide dozens of farmers make their way down to the shoreline where they load their partially dried seaweed in small outriggers and flat-bottomed boats which they pole out through the shallows to the seaweed fields that line the inland the edge of the reef half a mile from shore. At low tide the seaweed plots are often above the waterline, and even at high tide the expanse of water between the shore and reef is rarely more than a meter deep.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide960\" sizes=\"(max-width: 60em) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/lembongan-seaweedfarmers-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/lembongan-seaweedfarmers.jpg 960w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/lembongan-seaweedfarmers-1920.jpg 1920w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/lembongan-boats.jpg\" alt=\"Seaweed farmers at sunset, Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia\"></p>\n<p>While the farmers are out planting and harvesting seaweed (most of which I'm told ends up in Japan, used as a binding agent in various cosmetics), old women walk the shallows gathering up dropped bits of seaweed or prowl the shoreline plucking worms -- which are sold as fish bait back on Bali -- from the wet sand.</p>\n<p><img class=\"postpic\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/lembongan-kites.jpg\" alt=\"Kites over Nusa Lembongan, Bali, Indonesia\" />In the evenings, when the sun dips into the clouds and the air begins to cool, the villagers come down to the beach to fly kites in the evening breeze. Kites are something of an obsession for the Balinese, nearly everyone has a kite and you see dozens littering the sky from any vantage point on the island. There are fewer kites here on Lembongan, but only because there are fewer people here.</p>\n<p>These are not the kites you grew up with, small triangular affairs with a bit of ribbon on the tail and a few meters of string. Balinese kites are massive, some with tails hundreds of meters long and they fly them so high the government had to ban them around the Denpasar airport for fear they would clog the engines of 747s. The Balinese are serious about their kites. </p>\n<p>Of course flying kites is fun too, but there's also a religious aspect stemming from the belief that the Indian god Indra was a kite flying aficionado. Legend holds that Indra taught local farmers how to fly kites and today the Balinese believe the kites to be whispered prayers to the gods, which explains why they fly them so high (well, that and the fact that actually getting a kite 200-300 meters in the air is just cool).</p>\n<p>While Lembongan is a relaxing place to pass a few days, or even weeks, the main appeal of the island for most visitors is either the surfing or the snorkeling (and diving, but I've never had the patience or desire to learn how to dive, the vast majority of what I find interesting in the ocean is in the first 3 meters of water anyway). I went on two snorkeling trips out of Lembongan, neither of which spent much time at Lembongan's reefs, opting for the far superior reefs around the two neighboring islands, tiny Nusa Ceningan and the much larger Nusa Penida.</p>\n<p>The first stop was a mediocre reef just off the dense mangrove forests of Nusa Lembongan. The reef was okay, but the water was murky and crowded with a dozen other boats also dropping snorkelers. After maybe ten minutes in the water the two Australians also on the trip and I asked the boatman if there was anything better to be found. He kept saying drift snorkel, which left us scratching our heads, but we agreed and set off for another ten minute boat ride to the eastern coast of Nusa Penida.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/39891373@N07/4163166033/\"><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/scuba_nusa_lembongan_ccFlickr.jpg\" alt=\"Fish and reef off Nusa Lembongan, Bali. Image by Ilse Reijs and Jan-Noud Hutten, Flickr\" /></a></p>\n<p>The backside of Nusa Penida is separated from its much smaller neighbor, Nusa Ceningan by a narrow swath of water maybe a kilometer across at its widest. To the south is the open ocean, to the north is the Lombok straight, a very strong current that moves between Bali and Lombok at speeds of up to eight knots. The shallow reef-covered shelfs just off Nusa Penida, have similar currents where the water is suddenly forced through the narrow channel between islands.</p>\n<p>Drift snorkeling is a bit like snorkeling in a river. The boat drops you off at one end of the current and you drift for a couple of kilometers down to the end of the current, where the island swings to the west and there's a small beach where the boat can pick you up again.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbailliez/4826601501/\"><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/starfishovercoral_by_Stephane_Bailliez_flickr.jpg\" alt=\"Fish and reef off Nusa Lembongan, Bali. Image by Stephane Bailliez, Flickr\" /></a></p>\n<p>In the mean time you drift, like tubing down a river. The shoreline is a limestone cliff, carved inward by the sea. Underwater a shelf slopes off sharply. The first tier is maybe two meters, the second more like four and then finally the shelf drops off into the unknown deep, a rich turquoise blue that is alive with fish. Fish I have previously seen perhaps two or three at a time are swimming in massive schools. Dozens of Moorish Idols, schools of deep purple tangs, so dark they look black until you get up close, parrotfish in clusters, munching on the coral, bright, powder blue tangs, yellow-masked angelfish, countless butterfly fish, wrasses, triggerfish, pufferfish and even bright blue starfish that crawl slowly over the reef. The deep blue depths are filled with myriad triggerfish, angelfish, clownfish and hundreds of others swimming slowly along in the current. There are huge schools of fish that I have only previously seen in books or aquariums back in the States. In fact there are so many fish that just last month a survey done not far from here <a href=\"http://bit.ly/kTfvMS\">discovered eight new species of fish</a>. </p>\n<p>And I just drift along, occasionally kicking to slow down. Drift snorkeling is like watching fish float by the window of an underwater train. When something catches my eye, like a massive, meter-long lobster tucked back in a small cave of jagged limestone and red brown coral, I kick as hard as I can simply to stay in place and watch.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/39891373@N07/4177198655/\"><img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/scuba_nusa_lembongan2_ccFlickr.jpg\" alt=\"Fish and reef off Nusa Lembongan, Bali. Image by Ilse Reijs and Jan-Noud Hutten, Flickr\" /></a>All too soon it is over. I am too amazed by what is without a doubt the best snorkeling I've ever done to even ask if we can do it again. Only some time later, as the boat rounds the corner of Lembongan and begins the treacherous journey back through the seaweed farm shallows, does it occur to me that perhaps we could have asked for another drift. But by then it is too late, and perhaps it would be too greedy, too much all at once, to do it twice in a row.</p>\n<p>I am, however, a greedy person, so the next day I signed on to another snorkeling trip, this time out to Manta Point to see the namesake Manta Rays. This time it's a much longer boat ride all the way around to the southern shores of Nusa Penida. Contrary to what you might think, the waters of Indonesia are not particularly warm, so long boat rides mean a lot of chilly salt spray, and, despite the name, I was not optimistic about our chances of seeing any Manta Rays. But I was wrong.</p>\n<p>When we arrive there are a half a dozen of the huge creatures, with their massive rippling wings, circling around a cove, surrounded by shear limestone cliffs. The water is rough, three foot swells blow in from the south, breaking against the cliffs, but in spite of the slight murkiness, it's impossible to miss the Manta Rays. Mantas are massive things, more than a meter across and at least as long, they don't so much swim as fly, slowly flapping their wings through the water with a sense of timing and grace that few animals possess. There is something hypnotic about their movements. </p>\n<p>Once again I simply floated, bobbing about on the surface of the sea, beaten around a bit by the swell, while the mantas rather gracefully swam through, under and around us, like some proud eagles investigating these curious new onlookers. The rays themselves are so massive, so foreign in shape that it takes some time to come to terms with them. You think at first that they have no eyes. Or no eyes where you might think there should be eyes. Their bodies are black and it is difficult to make out the eyes -- which are also black -- amidst the darkness of their skin, but then some ray of sunlight breaks through the choppy water and you see the unmistakable glint of a dark eyeball, not at all where you thought it might be and then it dawns on you that they have been watching you all this time, never doubting for a moment where your eyes are. And then the way they have been swimming, the curious pattern of back and forth, becomes clear and you realize these are not simply fish, but something else, something very curious, inquisitive even. They swim at you head on, slowing as they approach, as if they are perhaps near sighted and need a closer look at your floating form, and then they dive about three feet down and slide under you. Once they are clear of you they turn around and repeat the process. Sometimes I dive under them, watching from below as their vast white bellies move overhead, white wings beating slowly, rhythmically through the water.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_road_ahead/131911626/\"><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/mantaray_by_Motoya_Kawasaki_Flickr.jpg\" alt=\"Fish and reef off Nusa Lembongan, Bali. Image by Motoya Kawasaki, Flickr\" /></a></p>\n<p>Mantas are creatures of great grace, they move with poise, like underwater dancers, slowly flapping their way through the depths. If you ever have opportunity to swim with mantas don't pass it up there is little else in the world like it.</p>\n<p>After a half hour or so with the Mantas we head back, stopping off at Crystal Bay, which doesn't have as many fish as the drift snorkeling area, but has never been fished using dynamite or cyanide -- two coral-destroying problems that have ruined many a reef in Asia -- and has more coral and intact reef than anywhere else I've been.</p>\n<p>We spent a mere four days on Lembongan, but in hindsight it was worth much more. In fact, we should probably still be there, since where we went afterward was truly awful, but that's traveling, you never know what's up around the corner -- sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, you never know until you arrive. I feel lucky to have enjoyed Nusa Lembongan and its neighbors while I had the chance.</p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 90%; clear: both; display: block; border-top: #333 1px dotted; padding-top: 8px;\">Note: Sadly, I don't have a waterproof camera, so all the underwater images above were taken by others. The school fish along the shelf and the flish in the coral are both by <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/39891373@N07/4163166033/\">Ilse Reijs and Jan-Noud Hutten, Flickr</a>. The blue starfish image comes from <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbailliez/4826601501/\">Stephane Bailliez, Flickr</a> and the manta ray image is by <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_road_ahead/131911626/\">Motoya Kawasaki, Flickr</a>. All are reproduced under the fair use provision of U.S. copyright law.</span></p>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">N</span>usa Lembongan is only a few miles off the southwestern coast of Bali, but it might as well be another universe. Here there are few people and no cars, only a few motorbikes that navigate the narrow dirt roads, none more than two meters wide, and your own feet are the dominant way to get around. There's still tourism, but there's also a local fishing and seaweed industry. \r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 60em) 100vw\"\r\n\tsrcset=\"[[base_url]]2011/lembongan-boats-640.jpg 640w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2011/lembongan-boats.jpg 1120w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2011/lembongan-boats-2240.jpg 2280w\"\r\n\tsrc=\"[[base_url]]2011/lembongan-boats.jpg\" alt=\"Nusa Lembongan boats\">\r\n\r\nFrom Ubud we caught a bus south to Sanur, a beachside town where we thought we might spend a night or two. Unimpressed by the trash strewn beaches and overpriced resorts we went ahead and caught the afternoon boat out to Nusa Lembongan, one of three small islands off the coast of southwest Bali.\r\n\r\nThe pace here is more my speed. Little seems to happen. People work. People fly kites. People eat. People sit in the shade.\r\n\r\nMost of Lembongan's inhabitants are seaweed farmers. At low tide dozens of farmers make their way down to the shoreline where they load their partially dried seaweed in small outriggers and flat-bottomed boats which they pole out through the shallows to the seaweed fields that line the inland the edge of the reef half a mile from shore. At low tide the seaweed plots are often above the waterline, and even at high tide the expanse of water between the shore and reef is rarely more than a meter deep.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide960\" sizes=\"(max-width: 60em) 100vw\"\r\n\tsrcset=\"[[base_url]]2011/lembongan-seaweedfarmers-640.jpg 640w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2011/lembongan-seaweedfarmers.jpg 960w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2011/lembongan-seaweedfarmers-1920.jpg 1920w\"\r\n\tsrc=\"[[base_url]]2011/lembongan-boats.jpg\" alt=\"Seaweed farmers at sunset, Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia\">\r\n\r\nWhile the farmers are out planting and harvesting seaweed (most of which I'm told ends up in Japan, used as a binding agent in various cosmetics), old women walk the shallows gathering up dropped bits of seaweed or prowl the shoreline plucking worms -- which are sold as fish bait back on Bali -- from the wet sand.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpic\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/lembongan-kites.jpg\" alt=\"Kites over Nusa Lembongan, Bali, Indonesia\" />In the evenings, when the sun dips into the clouds and the air begins to cool, the villagers come down to the beach to fly kites in the evening breeze. Kites are something of an obsession for the Balinese, nearly everyone has a kite and you see dozens littering the sky from any vantage point on the island. There are fewer kites here on Lembongan, but only because there are fewer people here.\r\n\r\nThese are not the kites you grew up with, small triangular affairs with a bit of ribbon on the tail and a few meters of string. Balinese kites are massive, some with tails hundreds of meters long and they fly them so high the government had to ban them around the Denpasar airport for fear they would clog the engines of 747s. The Balinese are serious about their kites. \r\n\r\nOf course flying kites is fun too, but there's also a religious aspect stemming from the belief that the Indian god Indra was a kite flying aficionado. Legend holds that Indra taught local farmers how to fly kites and today the Balinese believe the kites to be whispered prayers to the gods, which explains why they fly them so high (well, that and the fact that actually getting a kite 200-300 meters in the air is just cool).\r\n\r\nWhile Lembongan is a relaxing place to pass a few days, or even weeks, the main appeal of the island for most visitors is either the surfing or the snorkeling (and diving, but I've never had the patience or desire to learn how to dive, the vast majority of what I find interesting in the ocean is in the first 3 meters of water anyway). I went on two snorkeling trips out of Lembongan, neither of which spent much time at Lembongan's reefs, opting for the far superior reefs around the two neighboring islands, tiny Nusa Ceningan and the much larger Nusa Penida.\r\n\r\nThe first stop was a mediocre reef just off the dense mangrove forests of Nusa Lembongan. The reef was okay, but the water was murky and crowded with a dozen other boats also dropping snorkelers. After maybe ten minutes in the water the two Australians also on the trip and I asked the boatman if there was anything better to be found. He kept saying drift snorkel, which left us scratching our heads, but we agreed and set off for another ten minute boat ride to the eastern coast of Nusa Penida.\r\n\r\n[<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/scuba_nusa_lembongan_ccFlickr.jpg\" alt=\"Fish and reef off Nusa Lembongan, Bali. Image by Ilse Reijs and Jan-Noud Hutten, Flickr\" />][2]\r\n\r\nThe backside of Nusa Penida is separated from its much smaller neighbor, Nusa Ceningan by a narrow swath of water maybe a kilometer across at its widest. To the south is the open ocean, to the north is the Lombok straight, a very strong current that moves between Bali and Lombok at speeds of up to eight knots. The shallow reef-covered shelfs just off Nusa Penida, have similar currents where the water is suddenly forced through the narrow channel between islands.\r\n\r\nDrift snorkeling is a bit like snorkeling in a river. The boat drops you off at one end of the current and you drift for a couple of kilometers down to the end of the current, where the island swings to the west and there's a small beach where the boat can pick you up again.\r\n\r\n[<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/starfishovercoral_by_Stephane_Bailliez_flickr.jpg\" alt=\"Fish and reef off Nusa Lembongan, Bali. Image by Stephane Bailliez, Flickr\" />][3]\r\n\r\nIn the mean time you drift, like tubing down a river. The shoreline is a limestone cliff, carved inward by the sea. Underwater a shelf slopes off sharply. The first tier is maybe two meters, the second more like four and then finally the shelf drops off into the unknown deep, a rich turquoise blue that is alive with fish. Fish I have previously seen perhaps two or three at a time are swimming in massive schools. Dozens of Moorish Idols, schools of deep purple tangs, so dark they look black until you get up close, parrotfish in clusters, munching on the coral, bright, powder blue tangs, yellow-masked angelfish, countless butterfly fish, wrasses, triggerfish, pufferfish and even bright blue starfish that crawl slowly over the reef. The deep blue depths are filled with myriad triggerfish, angelfish, clownfish and hundreds of others swimming slowly along in the current. There are huge schools of fish that I have only previously seen in books or aquariums back in the States. In fact there are so many fish that just last month a survey done not far from here [discovered eight new species of fish][1]. \r\n\r\nAnd I just drift along, occasionally kicking to slow down. Drift snorkeling is like watching fish float by the window of an underwater train. When something catches my eye, like a massive, meter-long lobster tucked back in a small cave of jagged limestone and red brown coral, I kick as hard as I can simply to stay in place and watch.\r\n\r\n[<img class=\"postpicright\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/scuba_nusa_lembongan2_ccFlickr.jpg\" alt=\"Fish and reef off Nusa Lembongan, Bali. Image by Ilse Reijs and Jan-Noud Hutten, Flickr\" />][5]All too soon it is over. I am too amazed by what is without a doubt the best snorkeling I've ever done to even ask if we can do it again. Only some time later, as the boat rounds the corner of Lembongan and begins the treacherous journey back through the seaweed farm shallows, does it occur to me that perhaps we could have asked for another drift. But by then it is too late, and perhaps it would be too greedy, too much all at once, to do it twice in a row.\r\n\r\nI am, however, a greedy person, so the next day I signed on to another snorkeling trip, this time out to Manta Point to see the namesake Manta Rays. This time it's a much longer boat ride all the way around to the southern shores of Nusa Penida. Contrary to what you might think, the waters of Indonesia are not particularly warm, so long boat rides mean a lot of chilly salt spray, and, despite the name, I was not optimistic about our chances of seeing any Manta Rays. But I was wrong.\r\n\r\nWhen we arrive there are a half a dozen of the huge creatures, with their massive rippling wings, circling around a cove, surrounded by shear limestone cliffs. The water is rough, three foot swells blow in from the south, breaking against the cliffs, but in spite of the slight murkiness, it's impossible to miss the Manta Rays. Mantas are massive things, more than a meter across and at least as long, they don't so much swim as fly, slowly flapping their wings through the water with a sense of timing and grace that few animals possess. There is something hypnotic about their movements. \r\n\r\nOnce again I simply floated, bobbing about on the surface of the sea, beaten around a bit by the swell, while the mantas rather gracefully swam through, under and around us, like some proud eagles investigating these curious new onlookers. The rays themselves are so massive, so foreign in shape that it takes some time to come to terms with them. You think at first that they have no eyes. Or no eyes where you might think there should be eyes. Their bodies are black and it is difficult to make out the eyes -- which are also black -- amidst the darkness of their skin, but then some ray of sunlight breaks through the choppy water and you see the unmistakable glint of a dark eyeball, not at all where you thought it might be and then it dawns on you that they have been watching you all this time, never doubting for a moment where your eyes are. And then the way they have been swimming, the curious pattern of back and forth, becomes clear and you realize these are not simply fish, but something else, something very curious, inquisitive even. They swim at you head on, slowing as they approach, as if they are perhaps near sighted and need a closer look at your floating form, and then they dive about three feet down and slide under you. Once they are clear of you they turn around and repeat the process. Sometimes I dive under them, watching from below as their vast white bellies move overhead, white wings beating slowly, rhythmically through the water.\r\n\r\n[<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/mantaray_by_Motoya_Kawasaki_Flickr.jpg\" alt=\"Fish and reef off Nusa Lembongan, Bali. Image by Motoya Kawasaki, Flickr\" />][4]\r\n\r\nMantas are creatures of great grace, they move with poise, like underwater dancers, slowly flapping their way through the depths. If you ever have opportunity to swim with mantas don't pass it up there is little else in the world like it.\r\n\r\nAfter a half hour or so with the Mantas we head back, stopping off at Crystal Bay, which doesn't have as many fish as the drift snorkeling area, but has never been fished using dynamite or cyanide -- two coral-destroying problems that have ruined many a reef in Asia -- and has more coral and intact reef than anywhere else I've been.\r\n\r\nWe spent a mere four days on Lembongan, but in hindsight it was worth much more. In fact, we should probably still be there, since where we went afterward was truly awful, but that's traveling, you never know what's up around the corner -- sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, you never know until you arrive. I feel lucky to have enjoyed Nusa Lembongan and its neighbors while I had the chance.\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-size: 90%; clear: both; display: block; border-top: #333 1px dotted; padding-top: 8px;\">Note: Sadly, I don't have a waterproof camera, so all the underwater images above were taken by others. The school fish along the shelf and the flish in the coral are both by [Ilse Reijs and Jan-Noud Hutten, Flickr][2]. The blue starfish image comes from [Stephane Bailliez, Flickr][3] and the manta ray image is by [Motoya Kawasaki, Flickr][4]. All are reproduced under the fair use provision of U.S. copyright law.</span>\r\n\r\n[1]: http://bit.ly/kTfvMS\r\n[2]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39891373@N07/4163166033/\r\n[3]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbailliez/4826601501/\r\n[4]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_road_ahead/131911626/\r\n[5]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39891373@N07/4177198655/", "dek": "Drift snorkeling is like watching fish float by the window of an underwater train. And Indonesia has more marine life than anywhere I've ever been. Fish I have previously seen perhaps two or three at a time are swimming in massive schools. The blue depths are filled with dozens of Moorish Idols, schools of deep purple tangs, so dark they look black until you get up close, parrotfish in clusters, munching on the coral, bright, powder blue tangs, yellow-masked angelfish, countless butterfly fish, wrasses, triggerfish, pufferfish and even bright blue starfish that crawl slowly over the reef. ", "pub_date": "2011-06-23T12:54:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (115.4483255944119975 -8.6676030483308875)", "location": 102, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2011/scuba_nusa_lembongan_ccFlickr.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2011/scuba_nusa_lembongan_ccFlickrv.jpg", "meta_description": "Drift snorkeling is like watching fish float by the window of an underwater train. And Indonesia has more marine life than anywhere I've ever seen. by Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 129, "fields": {"title": "The Worst Place on Earth", "slug": "worst-place-on-earth", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">I</span>t was nearly two in the morning. It was hot, but I had been jumping in the salt water shower every half hour or so and that, combined with the oscillating fan on the floor at the foot of the bed, made the heat tolerable. </p>\n<p>I lay on the bed, legs sticking to sheets. I had been lying there for several hours, with my tiny laptop on the bed next to me, trying to figure out why the Gili Islands disturbed me so much, trying to put my finger on what about this place made me so uncomfortable. I never came up with a precise answer, which is why I've never written anything about Gili Trawangan. </p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>I tried writing about everything I thought was wrong with the Gilis, but in the end it wasn't the hordes of hippie tourists, the Australians behaving badly, the ridiculously overpriced food and lodging or even the cats -- the only thing I'm really allergic to -- everywhere on the island, nor was it even all of those things combined that bothered me.</p>\n<p>On the face of it Gili Trawangan is quite nice. It's small enough to walk around in a day and is surrounded by crystal clear water with a reef that could, with a bit of conservation effort, be quite remarkable. Sadly, it isn't remarkable<sup id=\"fnr-001\"><a href=\"#fn-001\">[1]</a></sup>, but the few moments I did enjoy on Gili Trawangan were all moments when my head was underwater and I could willfully ignore everything on the beach behind me.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2011/gilitrawangan.jpg\" alt=\"Lombok as Viewed from Gili Trawangan, Indonesia\"></p>\n<p>It's taken me months to realize what bothered me, but in the end it was clear. The problem with the Gili Islands is that they don't really exist.</p>\n<p>What I mean by that is that the Gilis are not islands you go to and experience, rather they are ideas about what islands ought to be brought to life. The Gili Islands exist as a backdrop on which tourists can act out their fantasies about what \"paradise\" ought to be.</p>\n<p>It's tempting to say there's nothing wrong with that, and maybe there isn't, but it isn't what I look for when I travel. Don't get me wrong, I didn't mind the crowds of the Gilis. The Gilis certainly aren't off the beaten path, but that's also something I've never been too interested in. </p>\n<p>What interests me when I travel is the normal. It's been my experience that while the world is huge, it happens in very small, ordinary moments. I'm interested in seeing how things are done in all nooks and crooks of the planet. I enjoy seeing the daily life that happens on every street everywhere around the world. It's been my experience that every street, every park, every square has it's own form of ordinary and that any of it exists at all is extraordinary.</p>\n<p>Looking for the ordinary has shaped the way I travel over the years. It's taught me to avoid the guesthouse when possible, to rent apartments where I can and to try to get to know blocks rather than neighborhoods, neighborhoods rather than cities. It's taught me that guidebooks are generally wrong and what you'll remember afterward are usually not things you'd planned to do. </p>\n<p>I have no problem with popular tourist destinations, some of them are quite amazing -- there's a reason Pompeii and Angkor Wat are popular, because they're amazing places -- but they aren't what motivate me to leave home. </p>\n<p>I realized months after I'd left the Gilis that I've never really been interested in the quest to find paradise. I own a house in what I consider a paradise. Athens GA is not perfect, but it's pretty near to paradise for me. If I were looking for paradise I wouldn't leave town much<sup id=\"fnr-002\"><a href=\"#fn-002\">[2]</a></sup></p>\n<p>And that in the end is what the Gili Islands have to offer, a collective idea of what paradise looks like. The Gilis are a collection of paradise fantasies culled from decades of hippie travelers, scuba divers, honeymooners, and the rich, lost children of the West. </p>\n<p>I eventually realized that the thing that made me uncomfortable, the thing that kept me up on what turned out to be our last night on Gili Trawangan, was the realization that <em>this exists because I am here. I am, however much against my will, now responsible for this. My money has now helped perpetuate this place.</em> I would not want to deny any paradise seeker the opportunity to act out their fantasy on the Gilis, but I prefer to be left out of it. Places like the Gilis can get along just fine without me. </p>\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\n<li id=\"fn-001\">\n<p><span class=\"note1\">Constantly dropping anchors on coral destroys reefs and, despite no shortage of mooring, nearly every boat that I saw pull into Gili Trawangan dropped anchor.</span><a href=\"#fnr-001\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n<li id=\"fn-002\">\n<p><span class=\"note2\">By the same token if there comes a day when I no longer think Athens is a paradise I will pick up and leave.</span><a href=\"#fnr-002\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">I</span>t was nearly two in the morning. It was hot, but I had been jumping in the salt water shower every half hour or so and that, combined with the oscillating fan on the floor at the foot of the bed, made the heat tolerable. \r\n\r\nI lay on the bed, legs sticking to sheets. I had been lying there for several hours, with my tiny laptop on the bed next to me, trying to figure out why the Gili Islands disturbed me so much, trying to put my finger on what about this place made me so uncomfortable. I never came up with a precise answer, which is why I've never written anything about Gili Trawangan. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nI tried writing about everything I thought was wrong with the Gilis, but in the end it wasn't the hordes of hippie tourists, the Australians behaving badly, the ridiculously overpriced food and lodging or even the cats -- the only thing I'm really allergic to -- everywhere on the island, nor was it even all of those things combined that bothered me.\r\n\r\nOn the face of it Gili Trawangan is quite nice. It's small enough to walk around in a day and is surrounded by crystal clear water with a reef that could, with a bit of conservation effort, be quite remarkable. Sadly, it isn't remarkable<sup id=\"fnr-001\"><a href=\"#fn-001\">[1]</a></sup>, but the few moments I did enjoy on Gili Trawangan were all moments when my head was underwater and I could willfully ignore everything on the beach behind me.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" src=\"[[base_url]]2011/gilitrawangan.jpg\" alt=\"Lombok as Viewed from Gili Trawangan, Indonesia\">\r\n\r\nIt's taken me months to realize what bothered me, but in the end it was clear. The problem with the Gili Islands is that they don't really exist.\r\n\r\nWhat I mean by that is that the Gilis are not islands you go to and experience, rather they are ideas about what islands ought to be brought to life. The Gili Islands exist as a backdrop on which tourists can act out their fantasies about what \"paradise\" ought to be.\r\n\r\nIt's tempting to say there's nothing wrong with that, and maybe there isn't, but it isn't what I look for when I travel. Don't get me wrong, I didn't mind the crowds of the Gilis. The Gilis certainly aren't off the beaten path, but that's also something I've never been too interested in. \r\n\r\nWhat interests me when I travel is the normal. It's been my experience that while the world is huge, it happens in very small, ordinary moments. I'm interested in seeing how things are done in all nooks and crooks of the planet. I enjoy seeing the daily life that happens on every street everywhere around the world. It's been my experience that every street, every park, every square has it's own form of ordinary and that any of it exists at all is extraordinary.\r\n\r\nLooking for the ordinary has shaped the way I travel over the years. It's taught me to avoid the guesthouse when possible, to rent apartments where I can and to try to get to know blocks rather than neighborhoods, neighborhoods rather than cities. It's taught me that guidebooks are generally wrong and what you'll remember afterward are usually not things you'd planned to do. \r\n\r\nI have no problem with popular tourist destinations, some of them are quite amazing -- there's a reason Pompeii and Angkor Wat are popular, because they're amazing places -- but they aren't what motivate me to leave home. \r\n\r\nI realized months after I'd left the Gilis that I've never really been interested in the quest to find paradise. I own a house in what I consider a paradise. Athens GA is not perfect, but it's pretty near to paradise for me. If I were looking for paradise I wouldn't leave town much<sup id=\"fnr-002\"><a href=\"#fn-002\">[2]</a></sup>\r\n\r\nAnd that in the end is what the Gili Islands have to offer, a collective idea of what paradise looks like. The Gilis are a collection of paradise fantasies culled from decades of hippie travelers, scuba divers, honeymooners, and the rich, lost children of the West. \r\n\r\nI eventually realized that the thing that made me uncomfortable, the thing that kept me up on what turned out to be our last night on Gili Trawangan, was the realization that *this exists because I am here. I am, however much against my will, now responsible for this. My money has now helped perpetuate this place.* I would not want to deny any paradise seeker the opportunity to act out their fantasy on the Gilis, but I prefer to be left out of it. Places like the Gilis can get along just fine without me. \r\n\r\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\r\n<li id=\"fn-001\">\r\n<p><span class=\"note1\">Constantly dropping anchors on coral destroys reefs and, despite no shortage of mooring, nearly every boat that I saw pull into Gili Trawangan dropped anchor.</span><a href=\"#fnr-001\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\r\n</li>\r\n<li id=\"fn-002\">\r\n<p><span class=\"note2\">By the same token if there comes a day when I no longer think Athens is a paradise I will pick up and leave.</span><a href=\"#fnr-002\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\r\n</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n", "dek": "They aren't really the worst place on Earth (everyone knows that's Yuma, AZ), but the Gili Islands would top my list of places you should never go to. In the end they're not even a real place, just a collection of paradise fantasies culled from decades of hippie travelers, scuba divers, honeymooners, and the rich, lost children of the West.", "pub_date": "2011-10-17T22:33:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (116.0405144294601030 -8.3482723793746150)", "location": 103, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2011/gilitrawangan.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2011/gilitrawanganv.jpg", "meta_description": "The Gili Islands. Don't go there. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 130, "fields": {"title": "Street Food in Athens Georgia", "slug": "street-food-athens-georgia", "body_html": "<p><span class=\"drop\">W</span>e went downtown today to the first (so far as I know) <a href=\"http://athensfoodcartfest.wordpress.com/\">Athens Food Cart Festival</a>. Athens is not a huge place. It's not what I'd call a small town either, though the downtown area manages to retain, for now, that feel. That, combined with the U.S. Government's seeming dislike for street vendors in general means that there are, to the best of my knowledge only two or three street vendors in town and none of them have anything like a regular presence anywhere.</p>\n<p>It used to be different. There used to at least be JB, who had a sausage cart that could be counted on to be outside the 40 Watt every Friday and Saturday night. Sometimes JB would even follow the crowds to house parties, slinging sausage, beans and \"comeback\" sauce into the wee hours of the morning. I miss JB. I <a href=\"http://one.longshotmag.com/article/going-for-seconds\">wrote about my experience with JB</a> for Longshot Magazine a while back.</p>\n<p>JB was irreplaceable. He left a vacuum that's never been properly filled. There is a 24 hour diner downtown, but there's something about eating on the street at night. It draws you out, makes you part of the city. It's a shared experience, street food. More communal and more intimate at the same time. </p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>Cheap food, made fresh, in front of you. Served hot, wrapped in newspaper. Street food is the people's food, it removes the mystery of the kitchen, lays the process bare. It's the staple diet of people around the world. </p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2012/foodcart-1.jpg\" alt=\"Fish tacos, street food, athens GA\" /> </p>\n<p>I've had everything from fish and chips to deep fried water beetles from street vendors and it was all good. Yes, even the beetles. Part of the beauty of street food is you can see it all before you commit, so if it looks bad, well, on to the next cart. </p>\n<p>For me places often come to be defined in large part by the food I ate. Especially looking back. Sites rarely stand out in my memory, but that delicious mystery meat I ate on the banks of the Mekong? Clear as day. When I think of India now I think of trains and chai. I think of little red clay cups piled beside the tracks, slowly dissolving in an afternoon thundershower. I think of little push carts clattering by, selling samosas and Chaats. </p>\n<p>In Bangkok I lived for a month eating almost exclusively skewered meat grilled in a tiny cart with only a handful of glowing charcoal, tended by an old woman who spoke no English, but knew my order after two nights<sup id=\"fnref:1\"><a href=\"#fn:1\" rel=\"footnote\">1</a></sup>. Six pork, six beef, spicy sauce, one bag of sticky rice.</p>\n<p>In Paris I ate oysters from street vendors. In London fish and chips. In Laos noodle bowls. In Nicaragua empanadas and plantains. At home in Athens there used to be JB. Now there\u2019s pretty much nothing.</p>\n<p>In Athens this weekend that changed, if only for a meal or two. The deep friend Korean Hot Dog from <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/pages/Streets-Cafe/145003412180488\">Streets Caf\u00e9</a> was amazing. As was the sausage from <a href=\"http://www.lafondadawgs.com/\">La Fonda</a>. Several of the Atlanta-based trucks were great as well. But none of it will be there tomorrow. In fact it probably won't be there ever again. That's what was sad about the experience, it was great big tease. It was a reminder: you could have this. But you don't.</p>\n<p>On some level my love of street food isn't really even about the food. The food is just the catalyst for something more. It's the common tether that brings us all to the same table in the end. There are huge gulfs between cultures, beliefs differ in ways that you\u2019re never going to move beyond, but everyone understands food. </p>\n<p>If you want to get to know someone, eat with them. It\u2019s the universal social language.</p>\n<p>And that's what makes a community, people coming together in collective spaces -- owned by no one -- and setting aside whatever might divide them for long enough to share a table, a taco, a noodle bowl, some rice. </p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2012/foodcart-2.jpg\" alt=\"People and food come together, athens GA\" /> </p>\n<p>In order for people to come together, in order to establish the kind of commons that form the basis of a healthy community, you need some kind of anchor. You need something to tether the whole thing to the ground. Street food carts and trucks offer that anchor, that basis for bringing people together in a communal space. </p>\n<p>That\u2019s missing in Athens and it has been ever since JB stopped pulling into the 40 Watt parking lot. Athens has world class restaurants. Athens has world famous music venues and more bars than many cities twice its size. That's all great, but none of it brings us together the way street food could if we let it.</p>\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\n<li id=\"fn:1\">\n<p>According to a friend who was in Bangkok last week she's still there, plying her trade.<a href=\"#fnref:1\" rev=\"footnote\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>", "body_markdown": "<span class=\"drop\">W</span>e went downtown today to the first (so far as I know) [Athens Food Cart Festival][4]. Athens is not a huge place. It's not what I'd call a small town either, though the downtown area manages to retain, for now, that feel. That, combined with the U.S. Government's seeming dislike for street vendors in general means that there are, to the best of my knowledge only two or three street vendors in town and none of them have anything like a regular presence anywhere.\r\n\r\nIt used to be different. There used to at least be JB, who had a sausage cart that could be counted on to be outside the 40 Watt every Friday and Saturday night. Sometimes JB would even follow the crowds to house parties, slinging sausage, beans and \"comeback\" sauce into the wee hours of the morning. I miss JB. I [wrote about my experience with JB][3] for Longshot Magazine a while back.\r\n\r\nJB was irreplaceable. He left a vacuum that's never been properly filled. There is a 24 hour diner downtown, but there's something about eating on the street at night. It draws you out, makes you part of the city. It's a shared experience, street food. More communal and more intimate at the same time. \r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nCheap food, made fresh, in front of you. Served hot, wrapped in newspaper. Street food is the people's food, it removes the mystery of the kitchen, lays the process bare. It's the staple diet of people around the world. \r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]2012/foodcart-1.jpg\" alt=\"Fish tacos, street food, athens GA\" /> \r\n\r\nI've had everything from fish and chips to deep fried water beetles from street vendors and it was all good. Yes, even the beetles. Part of the beauty of street food is you can see it all before you commit, so if it looks bad, well, on to the next cart. \r\n\r\nFor me places often come to be defined in large part by the food I ate. Especially looking back. Sites rarely stand out in my memory, but that delicious mystery meat I ate on the banks of the Mekong? Clear as day. When I think of India now I think of trains and chai. I think of little red clay cups piled beside the tracks, slowly dissolving in an afternoon thundershower. I think of little push carts clattering by, selling samosas and Chaats. \r\n\r\nIn Bangkok I lived for a month eating almost exclusively skewered meat grilled in a tiny cart with only a handful of glowing charcoal, tended by an old woman who spoke no English, but knew my order after two nights<sup id=\"fnref:1\"><a href=\"#fn:1\" rel=\"footnote\">1</a></sup>. Six pork, six beef, spicy sauce, one bag of sticky rice.\r\n\r\nIn Paris I ate oysters from street vendors. In London fish and chips. In Laos noodle bowls. In Nicaragua empanadas and plantains. At home in Athens there used to be JB. Now there\u2019s pretty much nothing.\r\n\r\nIn Athens this weekend that changed, if only for a meal or two. The deep friend Korean Hot Dog from [Streets Caf\u00e9][1] was amazing. As was the sausage from [La Fonda][2]. Several of the Atlanta-based trucks were great as well. But none of it will be there tomorrow. In fact it probably won't be there ever again. That's what was sad about the experience, it was great big tease. It was a reminder: you could have this. But you don't.\r\n\r\nOn some level my love of street food isn't really even about the food. The food is just the catalyst for something more. It's the common tether that brings us all to the same table in the end. There are huge gulfs between cultures, beliefs differ in ways that you\u2019re never going to move beyond, but everyone understands food. \r\n\r\nIf you want to get to know someone, eat with them. It\u2019s the universal social language.\r\n\r\nAnd that's what makes a community, people coming together in collective spaces -- owned by no one -- and setting aside whatever might divide them for long enough to share a table, a taco, a noodle bowl, some rice. \r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]2012/foodcart-2.jpg\" alt=\"People and food come together, athens GA\" /> \r\n\r\nIn order for people to come together, in order to establish the kind of commons that form the basis of a healthy community, you need some kind of anchor. You need something to tether the whole thing to the ground. Street food carts and trucks offer that anchor, that basis for bringing people together in a communal space. \r\n\r\nThat\u2019s missing in Athens and it has been ever since JB stopped pulling into the 40 Watt parking lot. Athens has world class restaurants. Athens has world famous music venues and more bars than many cities twice its size. That's all great, but none of it brings us together the way street food could if we let it.\r\n\r\n[1]: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Streets-Cafe/145003412180488\r\n[2]: http://www.lafondadawgs.com/\r\n[3]: http://one.longshotmag.com/article/going-for-seconds\r\n[4]: http://athensfoodcartfest.wordpress.com/\r\n\r\n<ol class=\"footnote\">\r\n<li id=\"fn:1\">\r\n<p>According to a friend who was in Bangkok last week she's still there, plying her trade.<a href=\"#fnref:1\" rev=\"footnote\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩</a></p>\r\n</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n", "dek": "Cheap food, made fresh, in front of you. Served hot, wrapped in newspaper. Street food is the people's food, it removes the mystery of the kitchen, lays the process bare. It's also the staple diet of people around the world. ", "pub_date": "2012-03-31T21:56:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.3760119571345086 33.9598616669042741)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2012/foodcart1.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2012/foodcartv.jpg", "meta_description": "If you want to get to know someone, eat with them. It\u2019s the universal social language.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 131, "fields": {"title": "Things Behind the Sun", "slug": "things-behind-sun", "body_html": "<p><img class=\"picwide\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2012/tucsonblur.jpg\" alt=\"twilight, Tucson, image modified from one by kevin dooley, Flickr.\" /></p>\n<p>My grandparents left the home they lived in for 60 years today. They can no longer afford to live at home with the level of care they now require. </p>\n<p>I don't know how much of my life was spent in that house, probably well over a year if you added up all the holidays and family gatherings.</p>\n<p>I can smell the house, I can see the bedrooms though I haven't actually walked down the hall in many, many years. I remember trying to fall asleep in the front room to the red glow of the candle bulbs my grandmother put up at Christmas. I remember listening to Neil Diamond 8 tracks in the same room. I remember my cousin walking around the kitchen with the fantastically long, coiled phone cord trailing behind her (still the longest phone cord I've ever seen).</p>\n<p><break></p>\n<p>And now I'm thousands of miles away and someone is clearing out the house. Moving out the furniture, dividing up a few possessions among children and grandchildren and all I can think about is that I've never even taken a picture of the house. </p>\n<p>I'd like to stand in the street one last time and look at the low, brick house, the curved curb and the perpetually dead lawn, to take a picture, not to remember it, I'll never forget it anyway, but simply to have done it. To have taken the time to do it because I recognized it meant something to me; but I didn't.</p>\n<p>I'd like it to be evening when I take the picture, the sort of desert evening that is pure relief, when the sky sighs a light grey-blue glow at twilight and the temperature finally falls below a hundred. The dry air is still, the clouds silent in the distance, behind the mountains. I'd like to frame the photo on the left with the junipers that aren't there any more, but were when I was younger. In the center I'd like to see the old brown Datsun truck (long since sold) that used to meet us in Utah, Arizona, Colorado to go camping for a week each spring. Zion National Park, Canyonlands, Arches, Natural Bridges, the wild southwest desert. The small brown truck with its white camper shell, tent and stove tucked in the back, fishing poles in long tubes hanging from the roof inside the shell, the silver washpan my grandfather poured scalding water into every morning to shave, a little mirror hanging from the camper shell hinge. My grandparents slept in cots in a tent. They were well into their sixties by then.</p>\n<p>I'd like to get Pepper in the picture. I only saw him a few weeks of the year, but he was the closest thing I ever had to a dog when I was young. And perhaps Honcho, the ornery cat I never really liked, but he was tough and I always respected him. </p>\n<p>I can see this image in my mind, see it quite clearly, but I'll never be able to take it. It's just a house, a structure made of brick and wood. Nothing more. Everything else is your mind, where you can keep it forever. I'm not sure if I keep saying that to myself because I believe it or because I want to. It's true either way. Everything else is in your mind. Even if you didn't think to remember it until the memories were all you had. </p>\n<p><small>Image adapted from <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/5174263185/\">Dusk</a> by Kevin Dooley, Flickr</small></p>", "body_markdown": "<img class=\"picwide\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2012/tucsonblur.jpg\" alt=\"twilight, Tucson, image modified from one by kevin dooley, Flickr.\" />\r\n\r\nMy grandparents left the home they lived in for 60 years today. They can no longer afford to live at home with the level of care they now require. \r\n\r\nI don't know how much of my life was spent in that house, probably well over a year if you added up all the holidays and family gatherings.\r\n\r\nI can smell the house, I can see the bedrooms though I haven't actually walked down the hall in many, many years. I remember trying to fall asleep in the front room to the red glow of the candle bulbs my grandmother put up at Christmas. I remember listening to Neil Diamond 8 tracks in the same room. I remember my cousin walking around the kitchen with the fantastically long, coiled phone cord trailing behind her (still the longest phone cord I've ever seen).\r\n\r\n<break>\r\n\r\nAnd now I'm thousands of miles away and someone is clearing out the house. Moving out the furniture, dividing up a few possessions among children and grandchildren and all I can think about is that I've never even taken a picture of the house. \r\n\r\nI'd like to stand in the street one last time and look at the low, brick house, the curved curb and the perpetually dead lawn, to take a picture, not to remember it, I'll never forget it anyway, but simply to have done it. To have taken the time to do it because I recognized it meant something to me; but I didn't.\r\n\r\nI'd like it to be evening when I take the picture, the sort of desert evening that is pure relief, when the sky sighs a light grey-blue glow at twilight and the temperature finally falls below a hundred. The dry air is still, the clouds silent in the distance, behind the mountains. I'd like to frame the photo on the left with the junipers that aren't there any more, but were when I was younger. In the center I'd like to see the old brown Datsun truck (long since sold) that used to meet us in Utah, Arizona, Colorado to go camping for a week each spring. Zion National Park, Canyonlands, Arches, Natural Bridges, the wild southwest desert. The small brown truck with its white camper shell, tent and stove tucked in the back, fishing poles in long tubes hanging from the roof inside the shell, the silver washpan my grandfather poured scalding water into every morning to shave, a little mirror hanging from the camper shell hinge. My grandparents slept in cots in a tent. They were well into their sixties by then.\r\n\r\nI'd like to get Pepper in the picture. I only saw him a few weeks of the year, but he was the closest thing I ever had to a dog when I was young. And perhaps Honcho, the ornery cat I never really liked, but he was tough and I always respected him. \r\n\r\nI can see this image in my mind, see it quite clearly, but I'll never be able to take it. It's just a house, a structure made of brick and wood. Nothing more. Everything else is your mind, where you can keep it forever. I'm not sure if I keep saying that to myself because I believe it or because I want to. It's true either way. Everything else is in your mind. Even if you didn't think to remember it until the memories were all you had. \r\n\r\n<small>Image adapted from [Dusk][1] by Kevin Dooley, Flickr</small>\r\n\r\n[1]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/5174263185/", "dek": "My grandparents left the home they lived in for 60 years today. I don't know how much of my life was spent in that house, probably well over a year if you added up all the holidays and family gatherings. And now I'm thousands of miles away and someone is clearing out the house. ", "pub_date": "2012-05-20T22:47:00", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.3759261264598450 33.9567425771964224)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2012/tucsonblur.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2012/tucsonblurv.jpg", "meta_description": "Everything else is in your mind. Even if you didn't think to remember it until the memories were all you had. by Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 132, "fields": {"title": "Consider the Apalachicola Oyster", "slug": "consider-the-apalachicola-oyster", "body_html": "<p><img class=\"picwide\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/oyster1.jpg\" alt=\"Apalachicola Oyster, raw, on the half shell.\" /></p>\n<p>Just below the rough, wooden bar currently holding up my beer are four boat slips, one of which holds a 28-foot boat I could actually afford to buy. Technically. Provided I didn't also need food and shelter for my family. Beyond the boat is the junction of river and bay, where the bay narrows back into a river channel which, based on my hour or so of observing, is used mainly by shrimping vessels headed somewhere further upstream. Downstream the reeds thicken and marsh proper begins and beyond that the water broadens out to form Apalachicola Bay with its endless shallows and oysterbeds.</p>\n<p>The slightly dilapidated boat down on the docks below looks like a better and better deal with every passing beer. So far though the half dozen raw Apalachicola oysters I've downed have provided enough sustenance to prevent me from emptying my savings. I am not yet the new owner, but should the oyster fields run dry, who knows?</p>\n<p>If there is a simultaneously gluttonous and yet clean, light food to match the oyster I have not found it. One part light sweetness, one part salty smoothness, oysters are a just about perfect food for those who've acquired the taste. Not cooked, though cooked, especially an oyster roast done over an open fire with some sheet metal and damp burlap, can be an amazing thing. But no, not cooked. Embrace gluttony and slurp them down raw. In front of me are half a dozen empty shells, calcified evidence of a flagrantly gluttonous afternoon. </p>\n<p>Out across the water, just beyond where the reeds of the estuary give way to the shallow, oyster-laden expanses of the Apalachicola Bay, a blue-hulled, single-masted boat is anchored, two people lounge in the cockpit, shirtless, lazing in the sun, reminding me that I too ought to have a boat. Not a big boat. Certainly not a ship. Just something for coastal cruising that can still stand up to the occasional ocean crossing. A boat. My gaze drifts down to the docks in front of me, the for sale sign still threaded through the mainmast rigging of what really is a not all that bad looking boat... But first, more oysters.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/viewofmarsh.jpg\" alt=\"Shrimp boat headed upstream; Apalachicola River and Marsh.\" /></p>\n<p>If you know the name Apalachicola at all it's likely because of its eponymous oysters. Very few things, let alone culinary things, are as attached to place as oysters. In fact, once you get beyond the Rockefeller, ordering \"oysters\" is akin to walking in a bar and ordering \"a beer.\" But unlike beer, oysters don't have brands, they have places -- Pemaquid, Wellfleet, Blue Point, Apalachicola. </p>\n<p><img class=\"postpic\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/famous_apalachicola_bay_oysters.jpg\" alt=\"One gallon can of Apalachicola Oysters.\" />Ask a marine biologist and they will point out that there are really only a handful of oyster species in the world and many of them, like those that produce pearls, aren't part of our culinary repertoire. In fact, in the U.S. there are really only three species of oysters consumed -- Pacific (<i class=\"scientific\">Crassostrea gigas</i>), Kumamoto (<i class=\"scientific\">Crassostrea sikamea</i>) and Eastern, sometimes called Atlantic or Gulf oysters (<i class=\"scientific\">Crassostrea virginica</i>). It's the difference in place and environment -- water temperature, sea floor conditions, available nutrients and so on -- not species that produce the different sizes and shapes of oysters you see. That's why, with a handful of exceptions, almost every variety of oyster you've ever seen in a restaurant is named after its point of origin and is not actually a separate species or even subspecies.</p>\n<p>An oyster's point of origin is not just the determining factor in how it tastes, it's also the best place to eat one. Oysters are sometimes treated as a fine dining item, but I've always thought of them more of the street food of wharves and marinas, or, as in Paris, actual street food. Oysters are simple -- there's not even any cooking involved -- eating them should be simple too.</p>\n<p>My favorite way to eat oysters is at an open air raw bar, preferably on the docks somewhere and preferably within view of the oyster boats and the waters they ply. Oysters are best served on a tray with some crackers on the side, which are best politely handed back to your server or, if you're doing it right, tossed in the water for the fish to consume. If you must put something on them, try a little of the local hot sauce (in Apalachicola that would be <a href=\"http://edsred.com/\">Ed's Red</a>).</p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/pemaquidmainedocks.jpg\" alt=\"Docks in Pemaquid, Maine, waiting on an oyster boat.\" /></p>\n<p>My best oyster experience was in Pemaquid, Maine where I actually got to watch an oysterman tie up the boat, exchange a few hand gestures with the bartender and bring up two buckets of fresh oysters pulled straight out of the hold all while I sat sipping a beer, waiting on another dozen. In Wellfleet there were no boats in, but there was still plenty of salt air, rough pine tables and a good view of the oyster flats just beyond the harbor. In Paris I just stood there and slurped before walking on again.</p>\n<p>If Apalachicola has such a setup it's hidden well enough that I never found it. </p>\n<p>Instead we settled for a raw bar/restaurant which I would never have entered under normal circumstances. The sort of purposefully tacky place designed to entice tourists with deliberate misspellings and references to parrotheads painted on the stairs. It was almost enough to send me retreating back to the car, but the sign promised views of the marsh, and, frankly, I'd already driven the wharf area once and this place was, as best I could tell, our only hope. As it turned out the covered upstairs deck had a lovely view of the marshes and the staff was friendly enough. </p>\n<p>Half a dozen oysters later I'd changed my tune a bit on Apalachicola oysters. Apalachicola oysters have something of a lowly status among your oyster connoisseurs. Here the waters are warmer and the oysters therefore larger and somewhat more risky to eat than colder water varieties. Of course bigger is relative. In his book <cite><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Oyster:_History_on_the_Half_Shell\">The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell</a></cite>, Mark Kurlansky describes how the once mighty oyster trade of New York used to bring in oysters the size of dinner plates. Quite frankly, though I love oysters, that sounds repulsive.</p>\n<p>Oysters are good things, but dinner plate sized oysters would most definitely be too much of a good thing. And while I enjoyed my Apalachicola oysters I do still think there are better oysters out there -- Beausoleils remain my personal favorite (and are one of the few varieties I know of not named after their place of origin -- New Brunswick). That said, I regret waiting until my third trip to the area to sample the local bivalves. Only a fool would pass on the chance to eat an oyster plucked from waters you can watch while eating it and thankfully, I am no longer that fool.</p>\n<p>Sadly I am also not yet the owner of a boat. Not the one down on the docks in front of me nor any other. But one day I will be. I don't know where I'll go exactly, don't know what I'll do, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there will be some harbors, most likely some marinas, some wharves where the oyster boats might also tie up in the evenings and where I might find a cold beer or two and some lovely, gluttonous, yet so light and clean, little oysters to make sure the beer doesn't send everything cockeyed, to make sure the world stays nicely on keel even without a boat.</p>", "body_markdown": "<img class=\"picwide\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2013/oyster1.jpg\" alt=\"Apalachicola Oyster, raw, on the half shell.\" />\r\n\r\nJust below the rough, wooden bar currently holding up my beer are four boat slips, one of which holds a 28-foot boat I could actually afford to buy. Technically. Provided I didn't also need food and shelter for my family. Beyond the boat is the junction of river and bay, where the bay narrows back into a river channel which, based on my hour or so of observing, is used mainly by shrimping vessels headed somewhere further upstream. Downstream the reeds thicken and marsh proper begins and beyond that the water broadens out to form Apalachicola Bay with its endless shallows and oysterbeds.\r\n\r\nThe slightly dilapidated boat down on the docks below looks like a better and better deal with every passing beer. So far though the half dozen raw Apalachicola oysters I've downed have provided enough sustenance to prevent me from emptying my savings. I am not yet the new owner, but should the oyster fields run dry, who knows?\r\n\r\nIf there is a simultaneously gluttonous and yet clean, light food to match the oyster I have not found it. One part light sweetness, one part salty smoothness, oysters are a just about perfect food for those who've acquired the taste. Not cooked, though cooked, especially an oyster roast done over an open fire with some sheet metal and damp burlap, can be an amazing thing. But no, not cooked. Embrace gluttony and slurp them down raw. In front of me are half a dozen empty shells, calcified evidence of a flagrantly gluttonous afternoon. \r\n\r\nOut across the water, just beyond where the reeds of the estuary give way to the shallow, oyster-laden expanses of the Apalachicola Bay, a blue-hulled, single-masted boat is anchored, two people lounge in the cockpit, shirtless, lazing in the sun, reminding me that I too ought to have a boat. Not a big boat. Certainly not a ship. Just something for coastal cruising that can still stand up to the occasional ocean crossing. A boat. My gaze drifts down to the docks in front of me, the for sale sign still threaded through the mainmast rigging of what really is a not all that bad looking boat... But first, more oysters.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2013/viewofmarsh.jpg\" alt=\"Shrimp boat headed upstream; Apalachicola River and Marsh.\" />\r\n\r\nIf you know the name Apalachicola at all it's likely because of its eponymous oysters. Very few things, let alone culinary things, are as attached to place as oysters. In fact, once you get beyond the Rockefeller, ordering \"oysters\" is akin to walking in a bar and ordering \"a beer.\" But unlike beer, oysters don't have brands, they have places -- Pemaquid, Wellfleet, Blue Point, Apalachicola. \r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpic\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2013/famous_apalachicola_bay_oysters.jpg\" alt=\"One gallon can of Apalachicola Oysters.\" />Ask a marine biologist and they will point out that there are really only a handful of oyster species in the world and many of them, like those that produce pearls, aren't part of our culinary repertoire. In fact, in the U.S. there are really only three species of oysters consumed -- Pacific (<i class=\"scientific\">Crassostrea gigas</i>), Kumamoto (<i class=\"scientific\">Crassostrea sikamea</i>) and Eastern, sometimes called Atlantic or Gulf oysters (<i class=\"scientific\">Crassostrea virginica</i>). It's the difference in place and environment -- water temperature, sea floor conditions, available nutrients and so on -- not species that produce the different sizes and shapes of oysters you see. That's why, with a handful of exceptions, almost every variety of oyster you've ever seen in a restaurant is named after its point of origin and is not actually a separate species or even subspecies.\r\n\r\nAn oyster's point of origin is not just the determining factor in how it tastes, it's also the best place to eat one. Oysters are sometimes treated as a fine dining item, but I've always thought of them more of the street food of wharves and marinas, or, as in Paris, actual street food. Oysters are simple -- there's not even any cooking involved -- eating them should be simple too.\r\n\r\nMy favorite way to eat oysters is at an open air raw bar, preferably on the docks somewhere and preferably within view of the oyster boats and the waters they ply. Oysters are best served on a tray with some crackers on the side, which are best politely handed back to your server or, if you're doing it right, tossed in the water for the fish to consume. If you must put something on them, try a little of the local hot sauce (in Apalachicola that would be <a href=\"http://edsred.com/\">Ed's Red</a>).\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2013/pemaquidmainedocks.jpg\" alt=\"Docks in Pemaquid, Maine, waiting on an oyster boat.\" />\r\n\r\nMy best oyster experience was in Pemaquid, Maine where I actually got to watch an oysterman tie up the boat, exchange a few hand gestures with the bartender and bring up two buckets of fresh oysters pulled straight out of the hold all while I sat sipping a beer, waiting on another dozen. In Wellfleet there were no boats in, but there was still plenty of salt air, rough pine tables and a good view of the oyster flats just beyond the harbor. In Paris I just stood there and slurped before walking on again.\r\n\r\nIf Apalachicola has such a setup it's hidden well enough that I never found it. \r\n\r\nInstead we settled for a raw bar/restaurant which I would never have entered under normal circumstances. The sort of purposefully tacky place designed to entice tourists with deliberate misspellings and references to parrotheads painted on the stairs. It was almost enough to send me retreating back to the car, but the sign promised views of the marsh, and, frankly, I'd already driven the wharf area once and this place was, as best I could tell, our only hope. As it turned out the covered upstairs deck had a lovely view of the marshes and the staff was friendly enough. \r\n\r\nHalf a dozen oysters later I'd changed my tune a bit on Apalachicola oysters. Apalachicola oysters have something of a lowly status among your oyster connoisseurs. Here the waters are warmer and the oysters therefore larger and somewhat more risky to eat than colder water varieties. Of course bigger is relative. In his book <cite>[The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell][1]</cite>, Mark Kurlansky describes how the once mighty oyster trade of New York used to bring in oysters the size of dinner plates. Quite frankly, though I love oysters, that sounds repulsive.\r\n\r\nOysters are good things, but dinner plate sized oysters would most definitely be too much of a good thing. And while I enjoyed my Apalachicola oysters I do still think there are better oysters out there -- Beausoleils remain my personal favorite (and are one of the few varieties I know of not named after their place of origin -- New Brunswick). That said, I regret waiting until my third trip to the area to sample the local bivalves. Only a fool would pass on the chance to eat an oyster plucked from waters you can watch while eating it and thankfully, I am no longer that fool.\r\n\r\nSadly I am also not yet the owner of a boat. Not the one down on the docks in front of me nor any other. But one day I will be. I don't know where I'll go exactly, don't know what I'll do, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there will be some harbors, most likely some marinas, some wharves where the oyster boats might also tie up in the evenings and where I might find a cold beer or two and some lovely, gluttonous, yet so light and clean, little oysters to make sure the beer doesn't send everything cockeyed, to make sure the world stays nicely on keel even without a boat.\r\n\r\n[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Oyster:_History_on_the_Half_Shell\r\n", "dek": "If you know the name Apalachicola at all it\u2019s likely because of its eponymous oysters. Very few things, let alone culinary things, are as attached to place as oysters. In fact, once you get beyond the Rockefeller, ordering \u201coysters\u201d is akin to walking in a bar and ordering \u201ca beer.\u201d But unlike beer, oysters don\u2019t have brands, they have places \u2014 Pemaquid, Wellfleet, Blue Point, Apalachicola. ", "pub_date": "2013-05-22T19:43:23", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-84.9837897312466026 29.7286720564808782)", "location": 104, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2013/considertheoyster.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2013/considertheoyster-sm.jpg", "meta_description": "If you know the name Apalachicola at all it\u2019s likely because of its eponymous oysters.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 133, "fields": {"title": "All the Pretty Beaches", "slug": "all-the-pretty-beaches", "body_html": "<p><img class=\"picwide\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/stgeorgeislandbeach01.jpg\" alt=\"Beach, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson\" /></p>\n<p>I was lucky; I grew up by the ocean. Surprisingly, or at least surprising to me, I never reached that point where I took it for granted. When something is right there for so long sometimes it blends into the background noise and you stop noticing it. Familiarity breeds contempt. Or at least complacency. But I've never felt complacent about my proximity to the sea. It's the one thing I miss living in Athens. How could you not? It's too big a thing to take for granted; it's were we came from. And it remains the one of the last true boundaries between the known and the unknown.</p>\n<p>Boundary lands are always the most interesting places -- the seashore, the edge of timberline, where the city starts to give way to the country. These are the fringes of our world, the peripheral edges of our collective vision where everything is less certain, but more possible, more inviting. Boundaries are the gray areas where life feels most real, most truly momentary because the boundaries themselves are ever in flux. </p>\n<p>The seashore is also just plain fun. Lounging in a hammock strung between two palm trees, sipping cocktails and enjoying the sunshine seems to be high on most people's list of things they think they would do if they won the lottery. </p>\n<p>I've spent a good bit of my time traveling either at or around the seashore, from <a href=\"/writing/thailand/\">Thailand</a> to <a href=\"/writing/india/\">India</a>, to <a href=\"/writing/nicaragua/\">Nicaragua</a> and <a href=\"/writing/indonesia/\">Indonesia</a>. The ocean may well be the only constant there is when you're traveling. I've been to plenty of places simply to see what the beaches were like -- <a href=\"/2005/nov/20/fish-story/\">Goa, India</a>; <a href=\"/2011/jun/23/best-snorkeling-world/\">Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia</a>; <a href=\"/2008/apr/05/little-island-sun/\">Little Corn Island, Nicaragua</a> and plenty more I haven't written about.</p>\n<p>These days though I'm less inclined to travel somewhere solely for the promise of nice beaches because I found St. George Island. </p>\n<p><img class=\"postpic\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/stgeorgeislandbeach02.jpg\" alt=\"Beach, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson\" />I stumbled upon St. George Island a couple years ago. St. George is just off the Gulf Coast of northwest Florida, only about 7 hours from where I live (9 with babies). There are better places if you're looking to dive or snorkel. Ditto if it's nightlife you're after. But if you're looking for a seemingly endless amount of gorgeous white sand beaches you'll share with only a few migratory birds, St. George is among the best boundary land in the world. </p>\n<p>I first arrived here largely by accident. My wife and I tagged along on an invitation to share a cheap beach house someone else had rented. We came back a year later. And again six months after that. And we hope to be back for a fourth visit before the year is over.</p>\n<p>St. George is more than just a nice beach though, it's a little backwater in time. It's a little slice of the world as it used to be, the world I grew up in, before the proliferation of mega-resorts and all-inclusive vacation package extravaganzas. St. George doesn't offer anything like that. There's little more to St. George than a store, a gas station and a couple of seafood trailers offering up fresh shrimp, snapper and scallops from nearby Apalachicola. There are some condos, but the two motels are rundown affairs that look like backwater holdouts from the early 1980s. There's nothing about this place that even hints at the world of resorts and all-inclusive packages. And that's the way I like it.</p>\n<p>It's entirely possible that by the time the mid-summer tourism peak rolls around at Independence Day St. George Island is unbearably crowded with north Florida rednecks, but, having only been here in the shoulder months of May, September and October, I have trouble picturing it. For the most part there's rarely been another person on the beach, let alone a crowd, when we're here. The surprising thing though is that by all rights it <em>should</em> be crowded, even in the off season, but it's not.</p>\n<p>St. George is long and narrow, some thirty miles from one end to the other, but rarely more than a half mile across. It's part of a barrier island chain, along with Dog Island and St Vincent Island, that provide shelter from the Gulf seas and help create the Apalachicola Bay. </p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/stgeorgeislandbeach03.jpg\" alt=\"Beach, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson\" /></p>\n<p>Roughly a third of the island, the entire western end, is closed off to a private, gated community. To karmically balance that the entire eastern half of the island is protected from development by the <a href=\"http://www.floridastateparks.org/stgeorgeisland/\">Dr. Julian Bruce St. George Island State Park</a>. If we weren't fortunate enough to know someone willing to rent us a beach house on the cheap, we'd be <a href=\"http://www.floridastateparks.org/stgeorgeisland/activities.cfm#12\">camping here</a>. Even if you're not camping the park is worth a visit. Hardly anyone seems to stray much beyond the beach parking lots so if you walk for a bit you'll easily find miles of beach you'll only have to share with a few plovers, sandpipers and the occasional Great Blue Heron standing atop the dunes behind you.</p>\n<p>One day I rented a crappy bike and rode out through the state park to the very eastern tip of the island where a small channel of water separates St. George from the uninhabited Dog Island. Aside from a few fishermen clustered around the leeward side of the channel, there was no one around. </p>\n<p>St. George was once little more than rolling sand dunes covered in sea oats and tall grasses. Dunes still occupy the central portion of the island, particularly here in the state park where the dunes have been spared development. On the windward side the dunes turn to beaches which look out on the Gulf of Mexico. St. George acts as a barrier island for Apalachicola Bay, but most of the time there's little to protect against. The Gulf is typically about as calm of waters as you could hope for. Of course when the storms come, they really come. Hurricanes have been rearranging St George ever since it was created, even splitting it into two islands and then bringing it back together again. The fishermen ended up liking that extra entrance to the bay. What was originally the doing of a hurricane is now a properly dredged channel, though it's certainly within a storm's power to change that again.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/great-blue-heron-stgeorgeisland.jpg\" alt=\"Great Blue Heron, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson\" /></p>\n<p>I spent some time exploring the dunes along the east end, watching the herons standing tall and silent while Laughing Gulls cried in the air overhead. A pair of ospreys made lazy circles above the cluster of fishermen and pelicans occasionally dive bombed into the sea to pluck out an unlucky fish. After a while it got hot in the wind-sheltered, sun-baked sand dunes so I walked back to the shore for a swim before making the questionable decision to ride back along the beach. Florida sand is sugary fine stuff, not particularly supportive when you put a fair amount of weight on it. There were stretches where I could ride, but I ended up walking a good few miles as well, stopping for a swim whenever I got tired. </p>\n<p>Back at the state park entrance I briefly detoured across the island to the leeward shore. The back side of the island is a totally different beast. Here the dunes give way to actual soil which supports a band of pine and palmetto forest that eventually opens up to wide, reed-filled tidal marshes. The marshlands are interspersed with what is locally known as hammocks -- slightly raised bits of porous humus capable of sustaining of Live Oaks, Cedars and the occasional Cypress tree, small deciduous islands is a sea of reeds. The marshes overlook the <a href=\"/2013/may/22/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster/\">oyster fields of the Apalachicola Bay</a> and, on a clear day, the mainland of Florida two or three miles away. Apalachicola Bay is so shallow it's tempting to think you could walk back to the mainland, though I've no idea why you would want to do that. </p>\n<p>There's not much to St. George, but it's all I need. Were it not for the need to earn the bio-survival tickets necessary for obtaining food and shelter in this country I would rarely leave this place. A house with a view of the water, perhaps a boat for fishing and getting around the bay, and, to my mind anyway, you'd be well set for life. In the mean time, I'll take what I can get of St. George.</p>", "body_markdown": "<img class=\"picwide\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2013/stgeorgeislandbeach01.jpg\" alt=\"Beach, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson\" />\r\n\r\nI was lucky; I grew up by the ocean. Surprisingly, or at least surprising to me, I never reached that point where I took it for granted. When something is right there for so long sometimes it blends into the background noise and you stop noticing it. Familiarity breeds contempt. Or at least complacency. But I've never felt complacent about my proximity to the sea. It's the one thing I miss living in Athens. How could you not? It's too big a thing to take for granted; it's were we came from. And it remains the one of the last true boundaries between the known and the unknown.\r\n\r\nBoundary lands are always the most interesting places -- the seashore, the edge of timberline, where the city starts to give way to the country. These are the fringes of our world, the peripheral edges of our collective vision where everything is less certain, but more possible, more inviting. Boundaries are the gray areas where life feels most real, most truly momentary because the boundaries themselves are ever in flux. \r\n\r\nThe seashore is also just plain fun. Lounging in a hammock strung between two palm trees, sipping cocktails and enjoying the sunshine seems to be high on most people's list of things they think they would do if they won the lottery. \r\n\r\nI've spent a good bit of my time traveling either at or around the seashore, from [Thailand][1] to [India][2], to [Nicaragua][3] and [Indonesia][4]. The ocean may well be the only constant there is when you're traveling. I've been to plenty of places simply to see what the beaches were like -- [Goa, India][8]; [Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia][9]; [Little Corn Island, Nicaragua][10] and plenty more I haven't written about.\r\n\r\nThese days though I'm less inclined to travel somewhere solely for the promise of nice beaches because I found St. George Island. \r\n\r\n<img class=\"postpic\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2013/stgeorgeislandbeach02.jpg\" alt=\"Beach, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson\" />I stumbled upon St. George Island a couple years ago. St. George is just off the Gulf Coast of northwest Florida, only about 7 hours from where I live (9 with babies). There are better places if you're looking to dive or snorkel. Ditto if it's nightlife you're after. But if you're looking for a seemingly endless amount of gorgeous white sand beaches you'll share with only a few migratory birds, St. George is among the best boundary land in the world. \r\n\r\nI first arrived here largely by accident. My wife and I tagged along on an invitation to share a cheap beach house someone else had rented. We came back a year later. And again six months after that. And we hope to be back for a fourth visit before the year is over.\r\n\r\nSt. George is more than just a nice beach though, it's a little backwater in time. It's a little slice of the world as it used to be, the world I grew up in, before the proliferation of mega-resorts and all-inclusive vacation package extravaganzas. St. George doesn't offer anything like that. There's little more to St. George than a store, a gas station and a couple of seafood trailers offering up fresh shrimp, snapper and scallops from nearby Apalachicola. There are some condos, but the two motels are rundown affairs that look like backwater holdouts from the early 1980s. There's nothing about this place that even hints at the world of resorts and all-inclusive packages. And that's the way I like it.\r\n\r\nIt's entirely possible that by the time the mid-summer tourism peak rolls around at Independence Day St. George Island is unbearably crowded with north Florida rednecks, but, having only been here in the shoulder months of May, September and October, I have trouble picturing it. For the most part there's rarely been another person on the beach, let alone a crowd, when we're here. The surprising thing though is that by all rights it *should* be crowded, even in the off season, but it's not.\r\n\r\nSt. George is long and narrow, some thirty miles from one end to the other, but rarely more than a half mile across. It's part of a barrier island chain, along with Dog Island and St Vincent Island, that provide shelter from the Gulf seas and help create the Apalachicola Bay. \r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2013/stgeorgeislandbeach03.jpg\" alt=\"Beach, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson\" />\r\n\r\nRoughly a third of the island, the entire western end, is closed off to a private, gated community. To karmically balance that the entire eastern half of the island is protected from development by the [Dr. Julian Bruce St. George Island State Park][5]. If we weren't fortunate enough to know someone willing to rent us a beach house on the cheap, we'd be [camping here][7]. Even if you're not camping the park is worth a visit. Hardly anyone seems to stray much beyond the beach parking lots so if you walk for a bit you'll easily find miles of beach you'll only have to share with a few plovers, sandpipers and the occasional Great Blue Heron standing atop the dunes behind you.\r\n\r\nOne day I rented a crappy bike and rode out through the state park to the very eastern tip of the island where a small channel of water separates St. George from the uninhabited Dog Island. Aside from a few fishermen clustered around the leeward side of the channel, there was no one around. \r\n\r\nSt. George was once little more than rolling sand dunes covered in sea oats and tall grasses. Dunes still occupy the central portion of the island, particularly here in the state park where the dunes have been spared development. On the windward side the dunes turn to beaches which look out on the Gulf of Mexico. St. George acts as a barrier island for Apalachicola Bay, but most of the time there's little to protect against. The Gulf is typically about as calm of waters as you could hope for. Of course when the storms come, they really come. Hurricanes have been rearranging St George ever since it was created, even splitting it into two islands and then bringing it back together again. The fishermen ended up liking that extra entrance to the bay. What was originally the doing of a hurricane is now a properly dredged channel, though it's certainly within a storm's power to change that again.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2013/great-blue-heron-stgeorgeisland.jpg\" alt=\"Great Blue Heron, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson\" />\r\n\r\nI spent some time exploring the dunes along the east end, watching the herons standing tall and silent while Laughing Gulls cried in the air overhead. A pair of ospreys made lazy circles above the cluster of fishermen and pelicans occasionally dive bombed into the sea to pluck out an unlucky fish. After a while it got hot in the wind-sheltered, sun-baked sand dunes so I walked back to the shore for a swim before making the questionable decision to ride back along the beach. Florida sand is sugary fine stuff, not particularly supportive when you put a fair amount of weight on it. There were stretches where I could ride, but I ended up walking a good few miles as well, stopping for a swim whenever I got tired. \r\n\r\nBack at the state park entrance I briefly detoured across the island to the leeward shore. The back side of the island is a totally different beast. Here the dunes give way to actual soil which supports a band of pine and palmetto forest that eventually opens up to wide, reed-filled tidal marshes. The marshlands are interspersed with what is locally known as hammocks -- slightly raised bits of porous humus capable of sustaining of Live Oaks, Cedars and the occasional Cypress tree, small deciduous islands is a sea of reeds. The marshes overlook the [oyster fields of the Apalachicola Bay][6] and, on a clear day, the mainland of Florida two or three miles away. Apalachicola Bay is so shallow it's tempting to think you could walk back to the mainland, though I've no idea why you would want to do that. \r\n\r\nThere's not much to St. George, but it's all I need. Were it not for the need to earn the bio-survival tickets necessary for obtaining food and shelter in this country I would rarely leave this place. A house with a view of the water, perhaps a boat for fishing and getting around the bay, and, to my mind anyway, you'd be well set for life. In the mean time, I'll take what I can get of St. George.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n[1]: /writing/thailand/\r\n[2]: /writing/india/\r\n[3]: /writing/nicaragua/\r\n[4]: /writing/indonesia/\r\n[5]: http://www.floridastateparks.org/stgeorgeisland/\r\n[6]: /2013/may/22/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster/\r\n[7]: http://www.floridastateparks.org/stgeorgeisland/activities.cfm#12\r\n[8]: /2005/nov/20/fish-story/\r\n[9]: /2011/jun/23/best-snorkeling-world/\r\n[10]: /2008/apr/05/little-island-sun/\r\n", "dek": "St. George is just off the Gulf Coast of northwest Florida, only about 7 hours from where I live. There are better places if you're looking to dive or snorkel. Ditto if it's nightlife you're after. But if you're looking for a seemingly endless amount of gorgeous white sand beaches you'll share with only a few migratory birds, St. George is the place to be.", "pub_date": "2013-05-26T22:43:23", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-84.8704744470038719 29.6598180625906807)", "location": 105, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2013/stgeorgeisland_1.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2013/stgeorgeisland-v.jpg", "meta_description": "St. George Island Florida offers some of the best white sand beaches in the world. By Scott Gilbertson", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 134, "fields": {"title": "Oysterman Wanted", "slug": "oysterman-wanted", "body_html": "<p><img class=\"picwide\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/theoldships.jpg \" alt=\"Old, rotting oyster boat, Apalachicola FL.\" /></p>\n<p>Doug's Seafood trailer is just that, an unassuming yellow trailer with red trim and lettering that reads, appropriately, <em>Doug's Seafood</em>. Doug arrives on St. George Island every morning and parks in a vacant lot just west of the bridge. Come 5 P.M., Doug heads back to Eastpoint. In the mean time Doug and his trailer sit in the vacant lot, which is, like all vacant lots and driveways in the area, covered with the local version of gravel -- oyster shells. </p>\n<p>The shells give off a blinding white glare in the midday sun, driving you to the shade of the small awning Doug extends out to make the trailer more welcoming. As your eyes adjust to the shadows you'll notice Doug himself sitting on a red plastic folding chair, perched amongst half a dozen white plastic coolers stocked full of local shrimp, scallops, oysters, snapper, grouper and even local favorites like mullet, if you ask for it.</p>\n<p>I first met Doug while on a quest for shrimp. Not a lot was said, though I do remember Doug offering his thoughts on the weather, which were wrong. In fact Doug's thoughts on the weather have been wrong pretty much every time I've heard them. But there aren't a lot of locals found on St. George and even most of the permanent residents aren't originally from the area. So I started talking to Doug in hopes of learning about the island and Apalachicola. I've gleaned a few things, but mostly I know a lot about Doug's bypass surgery or the liver trouble that made him stop eating raw oysters. Whatever the case I've noticed my trips to Doug's Seafood have become progressively longer and longer the more time I spend on the island.</p>\n<p>Even if you never bother to talk to Doug you'll get to know a few of his thoughts just from standing there under the awning, reading what's scrawled across the side of the trailer. Thin permanent marker has been used to create a kind of unsolicited FAQ for potential customers -- \"yes it's raw seafood\", \"yes you have to cook it first\" and \"no it's not ready to eat.\" There are probably half a dozen phrases altogether. None exactly rude, but all carrying a sense of exasperation and all pointed enough to make you stop and think about what you're about to ask before you ask it.</p>\n<p>These are necessary, according to Doug, to make sure no one gets sick. They also probably help discourage the sort of poorly thought out questions that might irritate the sole proprietor of Doug's Seafood.</p>\n<p>It seems to work. Doug manages to smile to nearly everyone and never so much as roles his eyes -- visibly anyway -- in the face of what I can only assume is a Herculean confrontation with <em>Tourist Americanus</em> that would leave many a lesser man indignantly scrawling even more magic marker across the side of the trailer. Or worse.</p>\n<p>Doug does, if you talk about something other than the weather or his heart, come rather quickly around to the problems of the local area, which are unsurprisingly, all a result of tourism. He's never exactly moaned about tourists, but he does very nearly spit when he says the word, something I recognize from <a href=\"/2005/oct/20/twenty-more-minutes-go/\">growing up in a seaside town</a> full of people who also simltaneously needed and disliked tourists. But of course here I'm a stranger here like the rest. I may know that I have to cook the shrimp, but otherwise I'm as much a part of Doug's problems as anyone else on St. George Island.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/shrimpboatatthedocks.jpg\" alt=\"Shrimp trawler, Apalachicola, FL\" /></p>\n<p>The problem is we've all become tourists. None of us are shrimpers or oystermen anymore. </p>\n<p>That's why all coastal towns will eventually convert from real industries like fishing or shipping ports, to tourism-based economies. There's no stopping it. If your patch of coast hasn't done it yet, and this one is still holding out hope, it will. Best get your sarcastic FAQ boards painted now, before the tide of tourism washes the last of industry out to sea.</p>\n<p>There's another sign I think about, just over the bridge in Eastpoint, <em>Oysterman Wanted</em> it reads. Every time I drive by I find myself wondering, will anyone ever call that number? <a href=\"/2013/may/22/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster/\">I love oysters</a>, especially fresh off the boat, but it seems like you might as well hang out a sign asking for cobblers or loom workers. </p>\n<p>Part of me thinks that the sign is just there to bolster the local spirit. Apalachicola is doing an admirable job of fighting tooth and nail to keep things as they once were, when the Bay was full of oystermen and the horizon at night lit up with trawlers dragging their nets. But even people like Doug seem to know that world is doomed. Even the people resisting the transition know they're no longer fighting for their way of life. Nor are they even fighting to give their children some small slice of the life they loved. They're just fighting to keep the thinnest resemblance of what they've always known around until they leave this world. They're fighting to keep from having to watch the death of everything they know.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/stormoverthedocks.jpg\" alt=\"Storm over the docks, Apalachicola FL.\" /></p>\n<p>The world of oystermen and local fishing industry will fade away though. How could it not? Once there were loom workers, now there are not. Once there was a seemingly endless shoreline to dock a boat beside, soon there will be nothing but condos. Economies change; people change. And so it goes. </p>\n<p>And yet, and yet. There's something that feels different about the way tourism grinds other things to dust. I think it's the finality of it. Once a place makes that transition, once the economy crosses that invisible threshold and goes full tourism there seems to be no coming back. So long as the tourists come everyone loves their new tourist economy. And then one day the tourists stop and the town dies. Ask the residents of the Salton Sea. Ask Mystic, Connecticut. Ask the Adirondacks. Coral Gables. Niagara Falls.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picfull\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/buoys.jpg\" alt=\"Colorful buoys, Apalachicola, FL\" /></p>\n<p>Tourism is a fickle thing, but that's not really the long term problem if you live in a tourist economy. The problem is that tourism does not create a demand for useful things. Oysters are useful things. Shrimp are useful things. Colorful buoys and a finely sanded boardwalk for strolling are only useful things so long as there are tourists to buy and occupy them. </p>\n<p>In the beginning there are always tourists, and in some places there seemingly always will be, but tourism is a marketing-driven economy and eventually someone else comes along with <a href=\"http://www.notesfromtheroad.com/dryworld/bahia-palace_05.html\">better marketing and more money</a>. The hotels go vacant. Restaurant tables stand empty. Buildings fall into disrepair and soon all that's left are the facades, the boardwalks with faux pilings too weak to actually tie up a trawler and no one left who know how to sail one anyway.</p>\n<p>It's hard work fishing; even harder to be an oysterman. I wouldn't do it; I doubt I could do it. Far easier to open a bar, build a new hotel or maybe sell trinkets just across from that really nice and shiny new boardwalk. </p>\n<p>And so it goes.</p>", "body_markdown": "<img class=\"picwide\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2013/theoldships.jpg \" alt=\"Old, rotting oyster boat, Apalachicola FL.\" />\r\n\r\nDoug's Seafood trailer is just that, an unassuming yellow trailer with red trim and lettering that reads, appropriately, *Doug's Seafood*. Doug arrives on St. George Island every morning and parks in a vacant lot just west of the bridge. Come 5 P.M., Doug heads back to Eastpoint. In the mean time Doug and his trailer sit in the vacant lot, which is, like all vacant lots and driveways in the area, covered with the local version of gravel -- oyster shells. \r\n\r\nThe shells give off a blinding white glare in the midday sun, driving you to the shade of the small awning Doug extends out to make the trailer more welcoming. As your eyes adjust to the shadows you'll notice Doug himself sitting on a red plastic folding chair, perched amongst half a dozen white plastic coolers stocked full of local shrimp, scallops, oysters, snapper, grouper and even local favorites like mullet, if you ask for it.\r\n\r\nI first met Doug while on a quest for shrimp. Not a lot was said, though I do remember Doug offering his thoughts on the weather, which were wrong. In fact Doug's thoughts on the weather have been wrong pretty much every time I've heard them. But there aren't a lot of locals found on St. George and even most of the permanent residents aren't originally from the area. So I started talking to Doug in hopes of learning about the island and Apalachicola. I've gleaned a few things, but mostly I know a lot about Doug's bypass surgery or the liver trouble that made him stop eating raw oysters. Whatever the case I've noticed my trips to Doug's Seafood have become progressively longer and longer the more time I spend on the island.\r\n\r\nEven if you never bother to talk to Doug you'll get to know a few of his thoughts just from standing there under the awning, reading what's scrawled across the side of the trailer. Thin permanent marker has been used to create a kind of unsolicited FAQ for potential customers -- \"yes it's raw seafood\", \"yes you have to cook it first\" and \"no it's not ready to eat.\" There are probably half a dozen phrases altogether. None exactly rude, but all carrying a sense of exasperation and all pointed enough to make you stop and think about what you're about to ask before you ask it.\r\n\r\nThese are necessary, according to Doug, to make sure no one gets sick. They also probably help discourage the sort of poorly thought out questions that might irritate the sole proprietor of Doug's Seafood.\r\n\r\nIt seems to work. Doug manages to smile to nearly everyone and never so much as roles his eyes -- visibly anyway -- in the face of what I can only assume is a Herculean confrontation with *Tourist Americanus* that would leave many a lesser man indignantly scrawling even more magic marker across the side of the trailer. Or worse.\r\n\r\nDoug does, if you talk about something other than the weather or his heart, come rather quickly around to the problems of the local area, which are unsurprisingly, all a result of tourism. He's never exactly moaned about tourists, but he does very nearly spit when he says the word, something I recognize from [growing up in a seaside town][2] full of people who also simltaneously needed and disliked tourists. But of course here I'm a stranger here like the rest. I may know that I have to cook the shrimp, but otherwise I'm as much a part of Doug's problems as anyone else on St. George Island.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2013/shrimpboatatthedocks.jpg\" alt=\"Shrimp trawler, Apalachicola, FL\" />\r\n\r\nThe problem is we've all become tourists. None of us are shrimpers or oystermen anymore. \r\n\r\nThat's why all coastal towns will eventually convert from real industries like fishing or shipping ports, to tourism-based economies. There's no stopping it. If your patch of coast hasn't done it yet, and this one is still holding out hope, it will. Best get your sarcastic FAQ boards painted now, before the tide of tourism washes the last of industry out to sea.\r\n\r\nThere's another sign I think about, just over the bridge in Eastpoint, *Oysterman Wanted* it reads. Every time I drive by I find myself wondering, will anyone ever call that number? [I love oysters][1], especially fresh off the boat, but it seems like you might as well hang out a sign asking for cobblers or loom workers. \r\n\r\nPart of me thinks that the sign is just there to bolster the local spirit. Apalachicola is doing an admirable job of fighting tooth and nail to keep things as they once were, when the Bay was full of oystermen and the horizon at night lit up with trawlers dragging their nets. But even people like Doug seem to know that world is doomed. Even the people resisting the transition know they're no longer fighting for their way of life. Nor are they even fighting to give their children some small slice of the life they loved. They're just fighting to keep the thinnest resemblance of what they've always known around until they leave this world. They're fighting to keep from having to watch the death of everything they know.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2013/stormoverthedocks.jpg\" alt=\"Storm over the docks, Apalachicola FL.\" />\r\n\r\nThe world of oystermen and local fishing industry will fade away though. How could it not? Once there were loom workers, now there are not. Once there was a seemingly endless shoreline to dock a boat beside, soon there will be nothing but condos. Economies change; people change. And so it goes. \r\n\r\nAnd yet, and yet. There's something that feels different about the way tourism grinds other things to dust. I think it's the finality of it. Once a place makes that transition, once the economy crosses that invisible threshold and goes full tourism there seems to be no coming back. So long as the tourists come everyone loves their new tourist economy. And then one day the tourists stop and the town dies. Ask the residents of the Salton Sea. Ask Mystic, Connecticut. Ask the Adirondacks. Coral Gables. Niagara Falls.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picfull\" src=\"[[base_url]]/2013/buoys.jpg\" alt=\"Colorful buoys, Apalachicola, FL\" />\r\n\r\nTourism is a fickle thing, but that's not really the long term problem if you live in a tourist economy. The problem is that tourism does not create a demand for useful things. Oysters are useful things. Shrimp are useful things. Colorful buoys and a finely sanded boardwalk for strolling are only useful things so long as there are tourists to buy and occupy them. \r\n\r\nIn the beginning there are always tourists, and in some places there seemingly always will be, but tourism is a marketing-driven economy and eventually someone else comes along with [better marketing and more money][3]. The hotels go vacant. Restaurant tables stand empty. Buildings fall into disrepair and soon all that's left are the facades, the boardwalks with faux pilings too weak to actually tie up a trawler and no one left who know how to sail one anyway.\r\n\r\nIt's hard work fishing; even harder to be an oysterman. I wouldn't do it; I doubt I could do it. Far easier to open a bar, build a new hotel or maybe sell trinkets just across from that really nice and shiny new boardwalk. \r\n\r\nAnd so it goes.\r\n\r\n[1]: /2013/may/22/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster/\r\n[2]: /2005/oct/20/twenty-more-minutes-go/\r\n[3]: http://www.notesfromtheroad.com/dryworld/bahia-palace_05.html\r\n", "dek": "The world of oystermen and local fishing industry is doomed. Even the people resisting the transition know they\u2019re no longer fighting for their way of life. They\u2019re just fighting to keep the thinnest resemblance of what they\u2019ve always known around until they leave this world. They\u2019re fighting to keep from having to watch the death of everything they know.", "pub_date": "2013-05-29T19:43:23", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-84.8656679284544566 29.6640947249067786)", "location": 105, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2013/abandonedboat.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2013/bouys-v.jpg", "meta_description": "Tourism does not create a demand for useful things. Oysters are useful things. Shrimp are useful things. Colorful buoys and boardwalks are not. ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 135, "fields": {"title": "Halloween", "slug": "halloween", "body_html": "<p>Me: What do you want to be for Halloween?</p>\n<p>O: A bird?</p>\n<p>L: A bird.</p>\n<p>C: What kind of bird?</p>\n<p>O: uh, um, an owl?</p>\n<p>L: An owl.</p>\n<p>C: An owl? Okay.</p>\n<p>Ten hours of sewing later, C has created two owls:</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141029_Nov_31_halloween_003.jpg\" alt=\"owl costume\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141029_Nov_31_halloween_009.jpg\" alt=\"owl costume\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141029_Nov_31_halloween_021.jpg\" alt=\"owl costume\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p>A couple days before Halloween, <a href=\"http://www.athensclarkecounty.com/Facilities/Facility/Details/1\">Bear Hollow Zoo</a> always puts together a thing called \"Boo in the Zoo\" for kids. It's mostly older kid stuff, learning about the animals and so on, but the girls love running around the zoo so we went. L is getting new molars, so she mostly chewed her hands, but as luck would have it the animal they had out for the kids when we were there was... an owl.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141029_Nov_31_halloween_027.jpg\" alt=\"bear hollow halloween\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141029_Nov_31_halloween_032.jpg\" alt=\"bear hollow halloween\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141029_Nov_31_halloween_033.jpg\" alt=\"bear hollow halloween\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141029_Nov_31_halloween_053.jpg\" alt=\"bear hollow halloween\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p>For Halloween we went over to the Boulevard area where a few of our friends live. We stopped in at a kids party and then walked the neighborhood. L and O quickly discovered that encountering strangers is easier to overcome when they give you candy. Halloween, delivering the life lessons. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_060.jpg\" alt=\"halloween in blvd\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_072.jpg\" alt=\"halloween in blvd\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_075.jpg\" alt=\"halloween in blvd\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_086.jpg\" alt=\"halloween in blvd\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_107.jpg\" alt=\"halloween in blvd\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_139.jpg\" alt=\"halloween in blvd\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_142.jpg\" alt=\"halloween in blvd\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p>Down the street from our friends there's a \"ghost\" band, the Ghosties, that plays every year. It just wouldn't be Halloween music without a Theremin. Pretty sure there are some well-known Athens musicians under those sheets.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_158.jpg\" alt=\"halloween in blvd\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<div class=\"embed-wrapper\"><div class='embed-container'><iframe src='https://player.vimeo.com/video/110661420' frameborder='0' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div></div>", "body_markdown": "Me: What do you want to be for Halloween?\r\n\r\nO: A bird?\r\n\r\nL: A bird.\r\n\r\nC: What kind of bird?\r\n\r\nO: uh, um, an owl?\r\n\r\nL: An owl.\r\n\r\nC: An owl? Okay.\r\n\r\nTen hours of sewing later, C has created two owls:\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141029_Nov_31_halloween_003.jpg\" alt=\"owl costume\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141029_Nov_31_halloween_009.jpg\" alt=\"owl costume\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141029_Nov_31_halloween_021.jpg\" alt=\"owl costume\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\nA couple days before Halloween, [Bear Hollow Zoo][1] always puts together a thing called \"Boo in the Zoo\" for kids. It's mostly older kid stuff, learning about the animals and so on, but the girls love running around the zoo so we went. L is getting new molars, so she mostly chewed her hands, but as luck would have it the animal they had out for the kids when we were there was... an owl.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141029_Nov_31_halloween_027.jpg\" alt=\"bear hollow halloween\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141029_Nov_31_halloween_032.jpg\" alt=\"bear hollow halloween\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141029_Nov_31_halloween_033.jpg\" alt=\"bear hollow halloween\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141029_Nov_31_halloween_053.jpg\" alt=\"bear hollow halloween\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\nFor Halloween we went over to the Boulevard area where a few of our friends live. We stopped in at a kids party and then walked the neighborhood. L and O quickly discovered that encountering strangers is easier to overcome when they give you candy. Halloween, delivering the life lessons. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_060.jpg\" alt=\"halloween in blvd\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_072.jpg\" alt=\"halloween in blvd\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_075.jpg\" alt=\"halloween in blvd\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_086.jpg\" alt=\"halloween in blvd\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_107.jpg\" alt=\"halloween in blvd\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_139.jpg\" alt=\"halloween in blvd\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_142.jpg\" alt=\"halloween in blvd\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\nDown the street from our friends there's a \"ghost\" band, the Ghosties, that plays every year. It just wouldn't be Halloween music without a Theremin. Pretty sure there are some well-known Athens musicians under those sheets.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_158.jpg\" alt=\"halloween in blvd\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n\r\n<div class=\"embed-wrapper\"><div class='embed-container'><iframe src='https://player.vimeo.com/video/110661420' frameborder='0' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div></div>\r\n\r\n\r\n[1]: http://www.athensclarkecounty.com/Facilities/Facility/Details/1", "dek": "Halloween with three owls, a Theremin-wielding ghost band and a zoo full of ghouls.", "pub_date": "2014-11-01T13:52:22", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.3742689544660465 33.9555074425143175)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2014/20141031_Nov_31_halloween_086.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2014/halloween-v.jpg", "meta_description": "Celebrating Halloween in Athens, GA", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 136, "fields": {"title": "Memorial Park", "slug": "memorial-park", "body_html": "<p>The first time I ever heard a loon was canoe camping beside a pond in Baxter State Park, Maine. When you have no idea what <em>that sound</em> is (<em>what that sound is?</em> -L and O), a loon call in the dark is terrifying. </p>\n<p>It's a been a long time since then, but I'll never forget that sound. I think about it every time we walk around the pond at Memorial Park. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/pond-in-maine-baxter-state-park.jpg\" alt=\"Pond in Baxter State Park Maine\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>\n<p>The pond at Memorial Park looks nothing like this one, which is the one I camped by in Maine, but memory is a funny thing. For whatever reason the little pond at Memorial Park reminds me of that one in Maine. There is no physical resemblance at all. Baxter is a wild place with few people around. The pond at Memorial Park is the opposite. There's even a fountain in the middle. Still, something about it.</p>\n<p>L and O have never heard a loon, never been to Baxter State Park. Yet. </p>\n<p>They're happy with the swings and the slides and the ducks. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141102_Nov_07_memorial-park_002.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141102_Nov_07_memorial-park_013.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfullv\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141107_Nov_07_memorial-park_024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141102_Nov_07_memorial-park_016.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141107_Nov_07_memorial-park_050.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141107_Nov_07_memorial-park_058.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p>Geese they are not such big fans of, but last week the geese weren't around. Just ducks.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141107_Nov_07_memorial-park_061.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p>And climbing, you can never climb atop too many rocks.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/20141107_Nov_07_memorial-park_093.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>", "body_markdown": "The first time I ever heard a loon was canoe camping beside a pond in Baxter State Park, Maine. When you have no idea what *that sound* is (*what that sound is?* -L and O), a loon call in the dark is terrifying. \r\n\r\nIt's a been a long time since then, but I'll never forget that sound. I think about it every time we walk around the pond at Memorial Park. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/pond-in-maine-baxter-state-park.jpg\" alt=\"Pond in Baxter State Park Maine\" class=\"picwide\" />\r\n\r\nThe pond at Memorial Park looks nothing like this one, which is the one I camped by in Maine, but memory is a funny thing. For whatever reason the little pond at Memorial Park reminds me of that one in Maine. There is no physical resemblance at all. Baxter is a wild place with few people around. The pond at Memorial Park is the opposite. There's even a fountain in the middle. Still, something about it.\r\n\r\nL and O have never heard a loon, never been to Baxter State Park. Yet. \r\n\r\nThey're happy with the swings and the slides and the ducks. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/20141102_Nov_07_memorial-park_002.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/20141102_Nov_07_memorial-park_013.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfullv\" />\r\n\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/20141107_Nov_07_memorial-park_024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/20141102_Nov_07_memorial-park_016.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/20141107_Nov_07_memorial-park_050.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/20141107_Nov_07_memorial-park_058.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\nGeese they are not such big fans of, but last week the geese weren't around. Just ducks.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/20141107_Nov_07_memorial-park_061.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\nAnd climbing, you can never climb atop too many rocks.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/20141107_Nov_07_memorial-park_093.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />", "dek": "Loons, Maine, Memorial Park. *What that sound is?*", "pub_date": "2014-11-09T20:30:48", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.3854269439668059 33.9266043996035336)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2014/baxter-maine.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2014/baxter-maine-v.jpg", "meta_description": "Loons, Maine, Memorial Park", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 137, "fields": {"title": "Muffins", "slug": "muffins", "body_html": "<p>When you're two years old everything in the world is new every day. Even things you saw yesterday look different, feel different, <em>are</em>, inexplicably, different today. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/muffins1.jpg\" alt=\"mischievous muffin eater\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>\n<p>The world is chaos. The patterns we live our lives by are things we have discovered for ourselves, created for ourselves -- sometimes consciously, sometimes not.</p>\n<p>When you're two years old you have far fewer of these self-made patterns in your world. Each one you discover, each one that is imposed on you has far more importance and power than than any one will when you're twenty, forty, sixty, eighty. </p>\n<p>Current patterns. Tuesdays we go to Gymnastics. Sunday mornings we hike Sandy Creek Nature Center. Saturdays we eat muffins. Because muffins are awesome (awesome enough that Captain Beefheart has <a href=\"//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptoN-5QE0Lw\">a song about muffins</a>). </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/muffins2.jpg\" alt=\"O eating muffins\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>\n<p>O insisted that I take pictures of her and L eating muffins. I snapped a few shots and put the camera away, but she complained. Eventually I was made to understand that for her, <em>take pictures of eating muffins</em> was a literal statement. I had foolishly just taken picture of her <em>with</em> muffins. So...</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/muffins3.jpg\" alt=\"O eating muffins, mouth open\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/muffins4.jpg\" alt=\"L eating muffins, mouth open\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>\n<p>I also caused great distress when I forgot to photograph my coffee, so I let O do it. Okay, I held the camera, but she pushed the shutter and said cheese. Authorship is always a little fuzzy. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/muffins5.jpg\" alt=\"espresso\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>", "body_markdown": "When you're two years old everything in the world is new every day. Even things you saw yesterday look different, feel different, *are*, inexplicably, different today. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/muffins1.jpg\" alt=\"mischievous muffin eater\" class=\"picwide\" />\r\n\r\nThe world is chaos. The patterns we live our lives by are things we have discovered for ourselves, created for ourselves -- sometimes consciously, sometimes not.\r\n\r\nWhen you're two years old you have far fewer of these self-made patterns in your world. Each one you discover, each one that is imposed on you has far more importance and power than than any one will when you're twenty, forty, sixty, eighty. \r\n\r\nCurrent patterns. Tuesdays we go to Gymnastics. Sunday mornings we hike Sandy Creek Nature Center. Saturdays we eat muffins. Because muffins are awesome (awesome enough that Captain Beefheart has [a song about muffins](//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptoN-5QE0Lw)). \r\n\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/muffins2.jpg\" alt=\"O eating muffins\" class=\"picwide\" />\r\n\r\nO insisted that I take pictures of her and L eating muffins. I snapped a few shots and put the camera away, but she complained. Eventually I was made to understand that for her, *take pictures of eating muffins* was a literal statement. I had foolishly just taken picture of her *with* muffins. So...\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/muffins3.jpg\" alt=\"O eating muffins, mouth open\" class=\"picwide\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/muffins4.jpg\" alt=\"L eating muffins, mouth open\" class=\"picwide\" />\r\n\r\nI also caused great distress when I forgot to photograph my coffee, so I let O do it. Okay, I held the camera, but she pushed the shutter and said cheese. Authorship is always a little fuzzy. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/muffins5.jpg\" alt=\"espresso\" class=\"picwide\" />", "dek": "When you're two years old everything in the world is new every day. Even things you saw yesterday look different, feel different, *are*, inexplicably, different today. ", "pub_date": "2014-11-16T14:45:03", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.4012841636595681 33.9638011526460488)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2014/muffins.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2014/muffins-v.jpg", "meta_description": "When you're two years old everything in the world is new every day. Even things you saw yesterday look different, feel different, *are*, inexplicably, different today. ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 138, "fields": {"title": "Colors", "slug": "colors", "body_html": "<p>The best thing to do after <a href=\"/jrnl/2014/11/muffins\">eating some muffins</a> is head to the park.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/leaf-01.jpg\" alt=\"swings\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>\n<p>Here in the South autumn is never as spectacular as is in New England. The colors here are neither as intense nor as long lasting. But still, it is our autumn, our season, our reminder. And this is by far the most colorful year of leaves that I've seen in 15 years.</p>\n<p>I've spent a good deal of time watching this particular tree next to the swing sets. I've watched it progress from just a faint hint of red at the outer fringes, to something more, as it the red borderline crept toward the center, eventually swallowing the whole tree. The green is pushed inward, back down into the trunk where it will lie waiting through the cold of winter.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/leaf-02.jpg\" alt=\"swings\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p>The day I took these pictures I noticed that this red progression inward also happens on the individual leaves, which start with a bit of red at edge and slowly get swallowed up into redness before they fall.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/leaf-03.jpg\" alt=\"swings\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/leaf-04.jpg\" alt=\"swings\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/leaf-05.jpg\" alt=\"swings\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p>These images are a couple of weeks old though. We braved the cold and wind again this morning. The tree was bare. Winter. </p>\n<p>And so it goes.</p>", "body_markdown": "The best thing to do after [eating some muffins][1] is head to the park.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/leaf-01.jpg\" alt=\"swings\" class=\"picwide\" />\r\n\r\nHere in the South autumn is never as spectacular as is in New England. The colors here are neither as intense nor as long lasting. But still, it is our autumn, our season, our reminder. And this is by far the most colorful year of leaves that I've seen in 15 years.\r\n\r\nI've spent a good deal of time watching this particular tree next to the swing sets. I've watched it progress from just a faint hint of red at the outer fringes, to something more, as it the red borderline crept toward the center, eventually swallowing the whole tree. The green is pushed inward, back down into the trunk where it will lie waiting through the cold of winter.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/leaf-02.jpg\" alt=\"swings\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\nThe day I took these pictures I noticed that this red progression inward also happens on the individual leaves, which start with a bit of red at edge and slowly get swallowed up into redness before they fall.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/leaf-03.jpg\" alt=\"swings\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/leaf-04.jpg\" alt=\"swings\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/leaf-05.jpg\" alt=\"swings\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\nThese images are a couple of weeks old though. We braved the cold and wind again this morning. The tree was bare. Winter. \r\n\r\nAnd so it goes.\r\n\r\n[1]: /jrnl/2014/11/muffins", "dek": "Autumn in the South is never as spectacular as is in New England. The colors here are neither as intense nor as long lasting. But still, it is our autumn, our season, our reminder. And this is by far the most colorful year of leaves that we\u2019ve seen in 15 years.", "pub_date": "2014-11-22T20:47:06", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.4123777801458033 33.9666841843602896)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2014/leaf.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2014/leaf-v.jpg", "meta_description": "Autumn in the South is never as spectacular as is in New England. But still, it is our autumn, our season, our reminder...", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 139, "fields": {"title": "Creamed Corn", "slug": "creamed-corn", "body_html": "<p>I am thankful for my family, for electricity, clean water, vaccines and everything else that keeps me and my family alive, that allowed us to evolve out of the tree canopy, walk out in to the tall grass and keep walking, slowly on, for millennia. And who will hopefully keep walking slowly, long after I am gone.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/cousins.jpg\" alt=\"cousins\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p>I'm also thankful for the web. This right here. The best form of communication and non-local connection that we've come up with since the beginning of time. I am very grateful to have my health and thankful for the privilege of being born into a life that allows me the free time and opportunity to partake in the web. I am thankful for the wealth of human knowledge, understanding and connection that that exists out here between the 1s and 0s and corporate owned routers that log it all for, ahem, <em>backup purposes</em>.</p>\n<p>Most of all I'm thankful for being alive. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/creamed-corn.jpg\" alt=\"creamed corn\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p>And for creamed corn, which doesn't look like much in a pot, but it is, trust me. </p>\n<p>And for William Burroughs, who <a href=\"http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/modlang/carasi/thanksgivingprayer.htm\">summed it up best</a>.</p>", "body_markdown": "I am thankful for my family, for electricity, clean water, vaccines and everything else that keeps me and my family alive, that allowed us to evolve out of the tree canopy, walk out in to the tall grass and keep walking, slowly on, for millennia. And who will hopefully keep walking slowly, long after I am gone.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/cousins.jpg\" alt=\"cousins\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\nI'm also thankful for the web. This right here. The best form of communication and non-local connection that we've come up with since the beginning of time. I am very grateful to have my health and thankful for the privilege of being born into a life that allows me the free time and opportunity to partake in the web. I am thankful for the wealth of human knowledge, understanding and connection that that exists out here between the 1s and 0s and corporate owned routers that log it all for, ahem, *backup purposes*.\r\n\r\nMost of all I'm thankful for being alive. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/creamed-corn.jpg\" alt=\"creamed corn\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\nAnd for creamed corn, which doesn't look like much in a pot, but it is, trust me. \r\n\r\nAnd for William Burroughs, who [summed it up best][1].\r\n\r\n[1]: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/modlang/carasi/thanksgivingprayer.htm", "dek": "Creamed corn doesn't lend itself to showy food photography, but then neither do most Thanksgiving dishes. Strange holiday that one.", "pub_date": "2014-11-27T09:36:46", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.4005331451380130 33.9532292003355778)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2014/creamed-corn-sm.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2014/creamed-corn-sm-v.jpg", "meta_description": "Creamed corn doesn't lend itself to showy food photography, but then neither do most Thanksgiving dishes. Strange holiday that one.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 140, "fields": {"title": "Bourbon Bacon Bark", "slug": "bourbon-bacon-bark", "body_html": "<p><a href=\"http://www.visitdenmark.com/en-us/denmark/culture/art-danish-hygge\">Hygge</a> is a Danish word. There is no real English translation. Approximations apparently include \"togetherness\", \"well-being\" and something like \"coziness\" if coziness were a word we applied not to physical things, but mental ones. </p>\n<p>It is in other words, more or less impossible to pin down in English, but here's what's easy to understand -- the feeling the word is meant to describe. Abandon words and picture your ideal day spent with your favorite people, eating the best food you've ever had and so on. Notice the feeling that produces in you. That, as I understand it, is more or less Hygge. </p>\n<p>It's a hard thing to come by most of the time in our culture. Most people work all day and most people do not have Hygge-inducing jobs. It also seem to be pretty near impossible to manufacture Hygge out of thin air.</p>\n<p>The only way I know how to manufacture something like Hygge out of thin air is to take a few of my favorite people and make something wonderful like Bourbon Bacon Bark.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/bourbon-bacon-bark.jpg\" alt=\"bourbon bacon toffee bark\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p>I am a pretty good cook, but a terrible baker. The rest of the year I avoid baking. The precision necessary for good results just doesn't appeal to me most of the time. But this time of year is all about sugar so I give it shot anyway. Besides, my wife makes a fantastic fudge which can pick up the slack when my efforts fall short. </p>\n<p>I stick with simpler things I'm not likely to screw up, like sugar cookies. Or my more recent addition, Bourbon Bacon Bark.</p>\n<p>It started last year when I ran across this <a href=\"http://www.nwedible.com/2013/12/bourbon-pecan-toffee-bark.html\">amazing recipe over at NWEdible</a>. As good as that recipe is I'm completely unable to follow a recipe without injecting my own ideas in there somewhere. About half a second after I saw the title of that recipe I knew it was missing just one small, alliterative ingredient -- bacon.</p>\n<p>Bourbon Bacon Bark. The words just feel right -- there's a rhythm there that almost guarantees the results will be great. This is what happens when writers cook.</p>\n<p>If you'd like to make my version, follow NWEdible's recipe, but when you're melting the butter, toss in a tablespoon or two of bacon fat.</p>\n<p>Then, when you stir in the pecans at the end, go ahead and add in a couple nice thick slices of bacon cooked up extra crispy and crumbled. Without the chocolate it isn't all that pretty.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/bourbon-bacon-bark-bare.jpg\" alt=\"bourbon bacon toffee bark unchocolated\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>The point of course is get everyone involved. I finished off dozens of cr\u00e8me br\u00fbl\u00e9es a night in my time at the <a href=\"http://fiveandten.com/\">5 & 10</a> dessert station, so I know very well how badly melted sugar burns. Suffice to say kids would not enjoy it, so I kept the girls back a bit, which earned me this look.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/l-fake-scorn.jpg\" alt=\"fake scorn\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>Chocolate on the other hand is pretty harmless. And the girls are big on stirring things. Even things that don't need to be stirred.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/chocolate-stir.jpg\" alt=\"chocolate stir\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/l-chocolate.jpg\" alt=\"chocolate face\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>Until of course the chocolate is gone. You're making more right? What?</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/chocolate-gone.jpg\" alt=\"chocolate face\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>Plenty of Bourbon Bacon Bark left though.</p>", "body_markdown": "[Hygge][1] is a Danish word. There is no real English translation. Approximations apparently include \"togetherness\", \"well-being\" and something like \"coziness\" if coziness were a word we applied not to physical things, but mental ones. \r\n\r\nIt is in other words, more or less impossible to pin down in English, but here's what's easy to understand -- the feeling the word is meant to describe. Abandon words and picture your ideal day spent with your favorite people, eating the best food you've ever had and so on. Notice the feeling that produces in you. That, as I understand it, is more or less Hygge. \r\n\r\nIt's a hard thing to come by most of the time in our culture. Most people work all day and most people do not have Hygge-inducing jobs. It also seem to be pretty near impossible to manufacture Hygge out of thin air.\r\n\r\nThe only way I know how to manufacture something like Hygge out of thin air is to take a few of my favorite people and make something wonderful like Bourbon Bacon Bark.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/bourbon-bacon-bark.jpg\" alt=\"bourbon bacon toffee bark\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\nI am a pretty good cook, but a terrible baker. The rest of the year I avoid baking. The precision necessary for good results just doesn't appeal to me most of the time. But this time of year is all about sugar so I give it shot anyway. Besides, my wife makes a fantastic fudge which can pick up the slack when my efforts fall short. \r\n\r\nI stick with simpler things I'm not likely to screw up, like sugar cookies. Or my more recent addition, Bourbon Bacon Bark.\r\n\r\nIt started last year when I ran across this [amazing recipe over at NWEdible](http://www.nwedible.com/2013/12/bourbon-pecan-toffee-bark.html). As good as that recipe is I'm completely unable to follow a recipe without injecting my own ideas in there somewhere. About half a second after I saw the title of that recipe I knew it was missing just one small, alliterative ingredient -- bacon.\r\n\r\nBourbon Bacon Bark. The words just feel right -- there's a rhythm there that almost guarantees the results will be great. This is what happens when writers cook.\r\n\r\nIf you'd like to make my version, follow NWEdible's recipe, but when you're melting the butter, toss in a tablespoon or two of bacon fat.\r\n\r\nThen, when you stir in the pecans at the end, go ahead and add in a couple nice thick slices of bacon cooked up extra crispy and crumbled. Without the chocolate it isn't all that pretty.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/bourbon-bacon-bark-bare.jpg\" alt=\"bourbon bacon toffee bark unchocolated\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nThe point of course is get everyone involved. I finished off dozens of cr\u00e8me br\u00fbl\u00e9es a night in my time at the [5 & 10][2] dessert station, so I know very well how badly melted sugar burns. Suffice to say kids would not enjoy it, so I kept the girls back a bit, which earned me this look.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/l-fake-scorn.jpg\" alt=\"fake scorn\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nChocolate on the other hand is pretty harmless. And the girls are big on stirring things. Even things that don't need to be stirred.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/chocolate-stir.jpg\" alt=\"chocolate stir\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/l-chocolate.jpg\" alt=\"chocolate face\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nUntil of course the chocolate is gone. You're making more right? What?\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/chocolate-gone.jpg\" alt=\"chocolate face\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nPlenty of Bourbon Bacon Bark left though.\r\n\r\n[1]: http://www.visitdenmark.com/en-us/denmark/culture/art-danish-hygge\r\n[2]: http://fiveandten.com/\r\n", "dek": "Searching for what the Danes call Hygge in the sugar deliciousness that is Bourbon Bacon Bark. Because you rarely go wrong with alliteration.", "pub_date": "2014-12-18T20:40:31", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.3737539703335102 33.9498117226991170)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2014/bbbark.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2014/bbbark-v.jpg", "meta_description": "Searching for what the Danes call Hygge in the sugar deliciousness that is Bourbon Bacon Bark. Because you rarely go wrong with alliteration.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 141, "fields": {"title": "The Night Before", "slug": "night-before", "body_html": "<p>Every voyage has a night before. These quiet hours of darkness before the journey begins.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/milky-way-by-john-fowler-flickr-cc.jpg\" alt=\"Milky Way, by John Fowler, flickr cc licensed\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>\n<p>We tend to remember the excitement of the next morning, when our senses are on edge, hyper-aware and it's easy to be anchored in the now. This is why we remember so clearly the smell of salt on the air, the soft pad of bare feet on the deck, the sound of water slapping the hull. Or maybe it's clatter of wheels on the rails, the soft sway of sleeper cars in the early morning light, the hum of jet engine, the first light as you pop up above the clouds. </p>\n<p>All of these things mark beginnings.</p>\n<p>Me, I like that night before. I like when you're still imagining what it might be like. Still trying to picture it all in your head, fit yourself into your own imagination. You're still the one at the helm. Tomorrow life will take over, steer you where it will, but that night before everything is possible.</p>\n<p>The hardest voyage for me to imagine is my children. My son will come forth out of the world tomorrow. I try to picture what he looks like. It's marginally easier than it was with my daughters, since I can imagine he might look like they did. But he won't. Not really. Because it's impossible to conceive of what someone will look like before you meet them. Impossible, but fun to try.</p>\n<p>It's likewise impossible to imagine what your life with them will be like, beyond knowing that it will be inconceivably great.</p>\n<p>That's why there are these nights before, to reflect, to imagine, to remember that we are here to go. Forward. Onward. Always.</p>\n<p>[Milky Way image by <a href=\"https://www.flickr.com/photos/snowpeak/14351894398/\">John Fowler, Flickr CC</a>]</p>", "body_markdown": "Every voyage has a night before. These quiet hours of darkness before the journey begins.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]2014/milky-way-by-john-fowler-flickr-cc.jpg\" alt=\"Milky Way, by John Fowler, flickr cc licensed\" class=\"picwide\" />\r\n\r\nWe tend to remember the excitement of the next morning, when our senses are on edge, hyper-aware and it's easy to be anchored in the now. This is why we remember so clearly the smell of salt on the air, the soft pad of bare feet on the deck, the sound of water slapping the hull. Or maybe it's clatter of wheels on the rails, the soft sway of sleeper cars in the early morning light, the hum of jet engine, the first light as you pop up above the clouds. \r\n\r\nAll of these things mark beginnings.\r\n\r\nMe, I like that night before. I like when you're still imagining what it might be like. Still trying to picture it all in your head, fit yourself into your own imagination. You're still the one at the helm. Tomorrow life will take over, steer you where it will, but that night before everything is possible.\r\n\r\nThe hardest voyage for me to imagine is my children. My son will come forth out of the world tomorrow. I try to picture what he looks like. It's marginally easier than it was with my daughters, since I can imagine he might look like they did. But he won't. Not really. Because it's impossible to conceive of what someone will look like before you meet them. Impossible, but fun to try.\r\n\r\nIt's likewise impossible to imagine what your life with them will be like, beyond knowing that it will be inconceivably great.\r\n\r\nThat's why there are these nights before, to reflect, to imagine, to remember that we are here to go. Forward. Onward. Always.\r\n\r\n\r\n[Milky Way image by [John Fowler, Flickr CC][1]]\r\n\r\n[1]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/snowpeak/14351894398/", "dek": "Every voyage has a night before. We tend to remember the excitement of the next morning, when our senses are on edge, hyper-aware and it's easy to be anchored in the now. But me, I like that night before. I like when you're still imagining what it might be like. Still trying to picture it all in your head, fit yourself into your own imagination.", "pub_date": "2014-12-19T19:02:23", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.4049105102492234 33.9473197254026147)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2014/night-before.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2014/night-before-v.jpg", "meta_description": "Every voyage has a night before. We tend to remember the excitement of the next morning, when our senses are on edge, hyper-aware and it's easy to be anchored in the now. But me, I like that night before. ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 142, "fields": {"title": "Our New 1969 Yellowstone Trailer", "slug": "1969-yellowstone-trailer", "body_html": "<p>There was very little under our Christmas tree this year. Of course the girls got some gifts (balance bikes from us, plus the grandparents' gifts), but my wife and I didn't exchange gifts. Or rather we gave ourselves some things that didn't belong under the Christmas tree. The big one was our son, who was born a few days before. </p>\n<p>The other was a new (well, new to us) 1969 Yellowstone travel trailer. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/yellowstone-trailer-1969.jpg\" alt=\"our new 1969 yellowstone travel trailer\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>\n<p>It's 16ft long, single axle and in desperate need of some restoration. Still, thanks to some friends, we managed to tow it home without too much trouble. It's currently at my in-laws' house since we need to sell off our 1969 truck before we have room at the side of our house.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/yellowstone-trailer-1969-interior-orig.jpg\" alt=\"1969 yellowstone travel trailer unrestored interior\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>The plan is to gut the trailer, reframe, re-wire and re-plumb everything. I plan to keep the stove, the light fixtures and the drawer and cabinet handles. That's about it from what I've seen so far. It would be cool to try building it back as close to the original as possible, but I've yet to find another like this model, which has a rear door. I'm also not so concerned with authenticity as practicality and comfort.</p>\n<p>Plus I plan to get rid of the extraneous unnecessaries like the air conditioning and heater and instead install some solar panels and batteries so we don't need shore power. We like to avoid campgrounds full of RVs and trailers packed like sardines in a tin. We're more drawn to BLM and National Forest land where the camping is (often) free, the amenities few and the people fewer. </p>\n<p>That's the plan anyway. I'd be lying if I didn't admit it seems a little overwhelming at times. I saw a quote somewhere, I think it was on one of the Dodge Travco forums, but it was something to the effect of, there's no camper more expensive than the one you get for free. This one wasn't free, but it wasn't much either.</p>\n<p>I've never restored anything before, but I know I'll figure out. I also have a lot of very skilled friends who have already volunteered to help with some of the stuff I'm not as knowledgable about, like 12V wiring. And yes, I know what I'm getting into, thanks. That doesn't make it any less daunting though. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/yellowstone-trailer-1969-l.jpg\" alt=\"1969 yellowstone travel trailer and my daughter\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>\n<p>Still, it's like any long journey, you just put one foot in front of the other. Unscrew the drawer handles one day, rip out the carpet another, pry out the interior paneling, gut the cabinets and so on until next thing you know the bones of the thing are there in front of you. Then you slowly put it all back together again, one foot in front of the other, back up the mountain. </p>\n<p>In the mean time, in the evenings, after the kids are in bed, I cover the kitchen table in old maps and plot routes through the cities and into the dark expanses of green, brown and white unknowns. There are no real blank parts of the map anymore, to misquote Joseph Conrad, but there sure are a lot of empty spaces left. And miles to go before I sleep.</p>\n<p>[If there's interest, I'll post up some restoration photos once we get rolling on the project.]</p>", "body_markdown": "There was very little under our Christmas tree this year. Of course the girls got some gifts (balance bikes from us, plus the grandparents' gifts), but my wife and I didn't exchange gifts. Or rather we gave ourselves some things that didn't belong under the Christmas tree. The big one was our son, who was born a few days before. \r\n\r\nThe other was a new (well, new to us) 1969 Yellowstone travel trailer. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/yellowstone-trailer-1969.jpg\" alt=\"our new 1969 yellowstone travel trailer\" class=\"picwide\" />\r\n\r\nIt's 16ft long, single axle and in desperate need of some restoration. Still, thanks to some friends, we managed to tow it home without too much trouble. It's currently at my in-laws' house since we need to sell off our 1969 truck before we have room at the side of our house.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/yellowstone-trailer-1969-interior-orig.jpg\" alt=\"1969 yellowstone travel trailer unrestored interior\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nThe plan is to gut the trailer, reframe, re-wire and re-plumb everything. I plan to keep the stove, the light fixtures and the drawer and cabinet handles. That's about it from what I've seen so far. It would be cool to try building it back as close to the original as possible, but I've yet to find another like this model, which has a rear door. I'm also not so concerned with authenticity as practicality and comfort.\r\n\r\nPlus I plan to get rid of the extraneous unnecessaries like the air conditioning and heater and instead install some solar panels and batteries so we don't need shore power. We like to avoid campgrounds full of RVs and trailers packed like sardines in a tin. We're more drawn to BLM and National Forest land where the camping is (often) free, the amenities few and the people fewer. \r\n\r\nThat's the plan anyway. I'd be lying if I didn't admit it seems a little overwhelming at times. I saw a quote somewhere, I think it was on one of the Dodge Travco forums, but it was something to the effect of, there's no camper more expensive than the one you get for free. This one wasn't free, but it wasn't much either.\r\n\r\nI've never restored anything before, but I know I'll figure out. I also have a lot of very skilled friends who have already volunteered to help with some of the stuff I'm not as knowledgable about, like 12V wiring. And yes, I know what I'm getting into, thanks. That doesn't make it any less daunting though. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2014/yellowstone-trailer-1969-l.jpg\" alt=\"1969 yellowstone travel trailer and my daughter\" class=\"picwide\" />\r\n\r\nStill, it's like any long journey, you just put one foot in front of the other. Unscrew the drawer handles one day, rip out the carpet another, pry out the interior paneling, gut the cabinets and so on until next thing you know the bones of the thing are there in front of you. Then you slowly put it all back together again, one foot in front of the other, back up the mountain. \r\n\r\nIn the mean time, in the evenings, after the kids are in bed, I cover the kitchen table in old maps and plot routes through the cities and into the dark expanses of green, brown and white unknowns. There are no real blank parts of the map anymore, to misquote Joseph Conrad, but there sure are a lot of empty spaces left. And miles to go before I sleep.\r\n\r\n[If there's interest, I'll post up some restoration photos once we get rolling on the project.]", "dek": "There are no real blank parts of the map anymore, to misquote Conrad, but there sure are a lot of empty spaces left. We intend to see some of them in our new (to us anyway) 1969 Yellowstone travel trailer. ", "pub_date": "2014-12-29T13:29:19", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.3929800445514786 33.9555074425150849)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2014/yellowstone-trailer-1969-tn.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2014/yellowstone-trailer-1969-v.jpg", "meta_description": "There are no real blank parts of the map anymore, to misquote Conrad, but there sure are a lot of empty spaces left. We intend to see some of them in our new (to us anyway) 1969 Yellowstone travel trailer. ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 143, "fields": {"title": "Hoppin' John", "slug": "hoppin-john", "body_html": "<p>I used to be a cynic about New Year's Day. It's kind of asking for it really. It's an arbitrary day after all, no different than the one before or after it. Nothing really changes on New Year's Day. </p>\n<p>It's not even a day recognized universally throughout the world. As with everything, when you declare the end of one year and the start of another is entirely dependent on your culture and its calendar. The whole notion of picking a day in the middle winter, calling it the start of a new year and making some half-hearted attempt to become the person we dream we are for a few weeks after, is, well, pretty laughable really.</p>\n<p>Still, it's what we've got. Cynics are boring anyway. What they miss is that, sure, the only meaning in New Year's is what you bring to the table, <em>but that's true of every day you exist on this planet</em>. </p>\n<p>Bring something to the table damn it.</p>\n<p>For New Year's Day might I suggest, in addition to anything personal you want to bring to the table, that you bring a bit of black eyed peas and collard greens. The superstition here in the South is that eating the former will bring you good luck while the latter will bring wealth. I don't always go in for the local superstitions, but when they involve food, why not?</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/hoppinjohn.jpg\" alt=\"Hoppin John with Salsa\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>\n<p>So Hoppin' John and greens it is, but naturally I couldn't just serve up Hoppin' John as is, that would be following a recipe, which <a href=\"https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2014/12/bourbon-bacon-bark\">I just can't do</a>, so I put a little tomato, onion and cilantro salsa on top for a bit of color and spice. Everything is better with salsa.</p>\n<p>Before I deviate from norms though, I like to know what those norms are. It turns out the history of Hoppin' John and its association with New Year's luck is murky, but over at Serious Eats they dug deep into the <a href=\"http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/12/southern-hoppin-john-new-years-tradition.html\">history</a>. Apparently Hoppin' John started out with a red bean and a very different, much toothier version of rice. Today's black eyed peas and white rice is, like American culture at large, just a watered down version. </p>\n<p>On the plus side, it appears that you can actually track down those <a href=\"http://ansonmills.com/products/41\">beans</a> and <a href=\"http://www.ansonmills.com/products\">rice</a> through the farmers at Anson Mills in South Carolina, which I just might do for next year, if I can remember.</p>\n<p>In the mean time, black eyed peas, collard greens and fried chicken seems -- authentic or not -- like a pretty good way to start the new year. I'll let you know how the superstitions hold up.</p>", "body_markdown": "I used to be a cynic about New Year's Day. It's kind of asking for it really. It's an arbitrary day after all, no different than the one before or after it. Nothing really changes on New Year's Day. \r\n\r\nIt's not even a day recognized universally throughout the world. As with everything, when you declare the end of one year and the start of another is entirely dependent on your culture and its calendar. The whole notion of picking a day in the middle winter, calling it the start of a new year and making some half-hearted attempt to become the person we dream we are for a few weeks after, is, well, pretty laughable really.\r\n\r\nStill, it's what we've got. Cynics are boring anyway. What they miss is that, sure, the only meaning in New Year's is what you bring to the table, *but that's true of every day you exist on this planet*. \r\n\r\nBring something to the table damn it.\r\n\r\nFor New Year's Day might I suggest, in addition to anything personal you want to bring to the table, that you bring a bit of black eyed peas and collard greens. The superstition here in the South is that eating the former will bring you good luck while the latter will bring wealth. I don't always go in for the local superstitions, but when they involve food, why not?\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/hoppinjohn.jpg\" alt=\"Hoppin John with Salsa\" class=\"picwide\" />\r\n\r\nSo Hoppin' John and greens it is, but naturally I couldn't just serve up Hoppin' John as is, that would be following a recipe, which [I just can't do](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2014/12/bourbon-bacon-bark), so I put a little tomato, onion and cilantro salsa on top for a bit of color and spice. Everything is better with salsa.\r\n\r\nBefore I deviate from norms though, I like to know what those norms are. It turns out the history of Hoppin' John and its association with New Year's luck is murky, but over at Serious Eats they dug deep into the [history](http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/12/southern-hoppin-john-new-years-tradition.html). Apparently Hoppin' John started out with a red bean and a very different, much toothier version of rice. Today's black eyed peas and white rice is, like American culture at large, just a watered down version. \r\n\r\nOn the plus side, it appears that you can actually track down those [beans](http://ansonmills.com/products/41) and [rice](http://www.ansonmills.com/products) through the farmers at Anson Mills in South Carolina, which I just might do for next year, if I can remember.\r\n\r\nIn the mean time, black eyed peas, collard greens and fried chicken seems -- authentic or not -- like a pretty good way to start the new year. I'll let you know how the superstitions hold up.\r\n", "dek": "New Year's cynics are boring. What they miss is that, sure, the only meaning in New Years is what you bring to the table, but that\u2019s true of every day you exist on this planet. So bring something to the table damn it.", "pub_date": "2015-01-02T13:49:46", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.3857702667203284 33.9392736360824472)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/hoppinjohn-tn.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/hoppinjohn-tn-v.jpg", "meta_description": "New Year's cynics are boring. What they miss is that, sure, the only meaning in New Years is what you bring to the table, but that\u2019s true of every day you exist on this planet. So bring something to the table damn it.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 144, "fields": {"title": "New Adventures in HiFi Text", "slug": "new-adventures-hifi-text", "body_html": "<h3>2014 Addendum</h3>\n<p><strong>This post is very old, most of the links are dead and none of it is necessary anymore thanks to projects like <a href=\"http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/\">Pandoc</a> which can take Markdown use it to create LaTeX and a dozen other types of files.</strong></p>\n<p><strong>When I wrote this in 2006 there was no Pandoc. I guess I was a pioneer in some sense.</strong></p>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>In praise of plain text</h3>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>In praise of formatted text</h3>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>The Best of Both Worlds (Maybe)</h3>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>Installation and RTFM suggestions</h3>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<pre><code>\\section{Heading}\n\\font\\a=\"Bell MT\" at 12pt \n\\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.\n</code></pre>\n<p>Or this:</p>\n<pre><code>###Heading\nsome 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.\n</code></pre>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>using Perl and Applescript to generate XeTeX</h3>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>Technical Details</h3>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<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>\n<h3>Am I insane?</h3>\n<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>\n<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>", "body_markdown": "### 2014 Addendum\r\n\r\n**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.**\r\n\r\n**When I wrote this in 2006 there was no Pandoc. I guess I was a pioneer in some sense.**\r\n\r\n**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.**\r\n\r\n**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.**\r\n\r\n###In praise of plain text\r\n\r\nI 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.]\r\n\r\nThat 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. \r\n\r\nWord 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.\r\n\r\nYet 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]). \r\n\r\nThese 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.\r\n\r\nIn 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.\r\n\r\n###In praise of formatted text\r\n\r\nBut 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. \r\n\r\nOf 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).\r\n\r\nBut 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.\r\n\r\n###The Best of Both Worlds (Maybe)\r\n\r\nIn 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.\r\n\r\nNow 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.\r\n\r\nBut 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.)\r\n\r\nSo, 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.\r\n\r\n###Installation and RTFM suggestions\r\n\r\nSo 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.\r\n\r\nI 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].\r\n\r\nSo 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.\r\n\r\nBut 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:\r\n\r\n\t\\section{Heading}\r\n\t\\font\\a=\"Bell MT\" at 12pt \t\r\n \\a some text some text some text some text, for the love of god\tI 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.\r\n\r\nOr this:\r\n\r\n\t###Heading\r\n 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.\r\n \r\nIn 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.\r\n\r\nLaTeX 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.\r\n\r\n###using Perl and Applescript to generate XeTeX\r\n\r\nHere'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.\r\n\r\nYes 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.\r\n\r\n###Technical Details\r\n\r\nI 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. \r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\nHere'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.\r\n\r\nThat'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: `\\{`). \r\n\r\nNext 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.\r\n\r\nConvoluted? 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.\r\n\r\nThe 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 :)\r\n\r\n###Am I insane?\r\n\r\nI 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.\r\n\r\nNote 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.\r\n\r\n[1]: http://www.luxagraf.com/archives/flash/software_sucks \"Why Software sucks. Sometimes.\"\r\n[2]: http://www.snopes.com/photos/people/gates.asp \"Bill Gates gets sexy for the teens--yes, that is a mac in the background\"\r\n[3]: http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/texshop.html \"TeXShop for Mac OS X\"\r\n[4]: http://www.mecheng.adelaide.edu.au/~will/texstart/ \"TeX on Mac OS X: The most simple beginner's guide\"\r\n[5]: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=xetex_texshop \"Using XeTeX with TexShop\"\r\n[6]: http://www.math.hkbu.edu.hk/TeX/ \"online LaTeX manual\"\r\n[7]: http://www.math.hkbu.edu.hk/TeX/lshort.pdf \"Not so Short introduction to LaTeX\"\r\n[8]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ \"Markdown\"\r\n[9]: http://www.luxagraf.com/pdf/hifitext.pdf \"this article as an XeTeX generated pdf\"\r\n[10]: http://www1.appstate.edu/~clarkne/hatemicro.html \"Microsoft Word Suicide Note help\"\r\n[11]: http://www.redlers.com/ \"Mellel, great software and a bargin at $39\"\r\n[12]: http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/ \"Apple's Pages, part of the new iWork suite\"\r\n[13]: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=xetex&_sc=1 \"The XeTeX typesetting system\"\r\n", "dek": "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. It's just here as an historical artifact of my own amusement.", "pub_date": "2005-05-12T21:21:44", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-72.6277088592236169 42.3227221699356306)", "location": 44, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/latex.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/latex-v.jpg", "meta_description": "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. It's just here as an historical artifact of my own amusement.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 145, "fields": {"title": "Sunrise", "slug": "sunrise", "body_html": "<p>My daughter woke me up this morning, as she usually does, yelling, \"<em>Come see, come see. Daddy comes see, come see the sunrise... so orange and blue. comes see. Daddy look, daddy look...</em>\" She chants <em>come see come see</em> until I finally throw off the warm blankets and brave the morning chill, sloshing my feet through the cold drafts of air that lie like puddles on the creaking wood floor. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/sunrise_01.jpg\" alt=\"Sunrise\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>\n<p>It's still dark outside so I trip and stumble on half a dozen toys the girls did not put away last night, but eventually I make it to the back door where they're both now standing, looking out at the sunrise, pointing so I don't miss it. We all three stand there, staring at the coming sun for a few minutes. </p>\n<p>At some point I usually take a break to make coffee. We take turns cranking the hand grinder. Sometimes the girls wander off and start to play, but once I get the moka pot on the stove and start Corrinne's drip brewer, we go back to the table by the back door and sit down in a small, but thus far sturdy, wooden chair and my daughters climb up into my lap, one straddling each leg, and we watch the sky turn pink and then fade to yellow as the first rays of actual sun break through the skeletal trees.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/sunrise_02.jpg\" alt=\"Sunrise\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>\n<p>By then the coffee is ready, but there's no way to get to it without disrupting the balance of things. So we listen to it bubbling away on the stove and watch the light come into the world.</p>", "body_markdown": "My daughter woke me up this morning, as she usually does, yelling, \"*Come see, come see. Daddy comes see, come see the sunrise... so orange and blue. comes see. Daddy look, daddy look...*\" She chants *come see come see* until I finally throw off the warm blankets and brave the morning chill, sloshing my feet through the cold drafts of air that lie like puddles on the creaking wood floor. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/sunrise_01.jpg\" alt=\"Sunrise\" class=\"picwide\" />\r\n\r\nIt's still dark outside so I trip and stumble on half a dozen toys the girls did not put away last night, but eventually I make it to the back door where they're both now standing, looking out at the sunrise, pointing so I don't miss it. We all three stand there, staring at the coming sun for a few minutes. \r\n\r\nAt some point I usually take a break to make coffee. We take turns cranking the hand grinder. Sometimes the girls wander off and start to play, but once I get the moka pot on the stove and start Corrinne's drip brewer, we go back to the table by the back door and sit down in a small, but thus far sturdy, wooden chair and my daughters climb up into my lap, one straddling each leg, and we watch the sky turn pink and then fade to yellow as the first rays of actual sun break through the skeletal trees.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/sunrise_02.jpg\" alt=\"Sunrise\" class=\"picwide\" />\r\n\r\nBy then the coffee is ready, but there's no way to get to it without disrupting the balance of things. So we listen to it bubbling away on the stove and watch the light come into the world.\r\n", "dek": "Watching the sun rise, coffee on the stove, light in the world.", "pub_date": "2015-01-17T22:03:27", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.3785604888891356 33.9472485244072288)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/sunrise_tn.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/sunrise_tn-v.jpg", "meta_description": "Watching the sun rise, coffee on the stove, light in the world.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 146, "fields": {"title": "Purcell Wooden Toys", "slug": "purcell-wooden-toys", "body_html": "<p>The temperature outside was barely above freezing. The girls' cheeks flushed pink in the cold, their faces fogged in clouds of breath. Our fingers went numb; our noses ran and we didn't even feel it. I held the baby, leaching warmth from him. Corrinne and Chris kick the balls with the girls. </p>\n<p>Later the gray sky turned darker. A monochrome sunset quickly faded to black.</p>\n<p>Our friend Chris was in town. Once upon a time Chris was always around. Then he went north. It happens sometimes, even to me.</p>\n<p>Chris is a toy maker, a craftsman of the sort of toys that simply do not exist much anymore. </p>\n<p>He brought some gifts for the girls (and the baby). Genuine <a href=\"https://www.etsy.com/shop/PurcellToys\">Purcell Toys handcrafted wooden cars and trucks</a>. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/purcelltoys-01.jpg\" alt=\"Purcell Toys\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>\n<p>The girls think they're the best toys ever. Even I play with these things. I mean come on, the dump truck has moving parts. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/purcelltoys-02.jpg\" alt=\"Purcell Toys\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/purcelltoys-03.jpg\" alt=\"Purcell Toys\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>\n<p>I think the evolution of toys starts with what is still the greatest of all toys -- the stick. Then the stick gets refined, carved into more fixed forms. Suddenly there is no longer the endless possibilities of the stick, but a kind of craftsmanship begins to emerge. Fast-forward and you have the beautiful craftsmanship you see in these images. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/purcelltoys-04.jpg\" alt=\"Purcell Toys\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>\n<p>These toys are at the apex of a toy family tree that goes back literally to the roots. </p>\n<p>Because without roots you have nothing. </p>\n<p>Stainless steel, plastic and glass get all the attention these days, especially glass that glows. Everything these days feel either cheap like the crap at the big box store or slick and cold like the crap at the Apple store. Then again, when pressed, even the most gadget obsessed among us turn out to still love wood, <a href=\"http://archive.wired.com/geekdad/2011/01/the-5-best-toys-of-all-time/\">the humble stick</a>.</p>\n<p>Wood has warmth. Wood lends itself to the kind of heirloom things like these trucks and cars. I've always been fascinated by wood. The textures, grains, colors. Every piece of wood is a map of history. The rings, the width of the grain, the spacing of the knots, all the records of a tree, but also the world around it. Every piece of wood is its own story.</p>\n<p>A short memory of wood: Great wood has a way of sticking out. To me anyway. I remember very few details about the Southwest Research Station in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona which my father's friend Wade ran for many years. I don't remember what the nearby campground looked like, have only the dimmest recollection of the mess hall where we occasionally had dinner with Wade and all the visiting scientists doing research there... I do, however, have a crystal clear memory of the coffee table in Wade's house. </p>\n<p>The coffee table was an overturned stump of black walnut whose roots spread out like dark, obsidian eels beneath the glass table surface. The tallest of the roots held the glass up. What really blew me away though was that each individual root had been sanded to a glassy smoothness. Some of the roots were as thick as my arm and several feet long, others were no bigger than my pinky. It didn't matter, all of them had been sanded smooth as glass.</p>\n<p>I remember being somewhat spellbound, trying to wrap my head around the skill, craftsmanship and effort it must have take to create that table. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/purcelltoys-05.jpg\" alt=\"Purcell Toys\" class=\"picwide\" /></p>\n<p>I feel the same way about Chris's toys. I feel that way because I've watched him make them, but I think anyone who see one or handles one will feel the same way. These are stories in wood. The beginnings of stories. You get to write the rest.</p>\n<p>Get one for your kids and they'll give it to their kids and their kids will give it to theirs and so on, like roots spreading out across the soil.</p>", "body_markdown": "The temperature outside was barely above freezing. The girls' cheeks flushed pink in the cold, their faces fogged in clouds of breath. Our fingers went numb; our noses ran and we didn't even feel it. I held the baby, leaching warmth from him. Corrinne and Chris kick the balls with the girls. \r\n\r\nLater the gray sky turned darker. A monochrome sunset quickly faded to black.\r\n\r\nOur friend Chris was in town. Once upon a time Chris was always around. Then he went north. It happens sometimes, even to me.\r\n\r\nChris is a toy maker, a craftsman of the sort of toys that simply do not exist much anymore. \r\n\r\nHe brought some gifts for the girls (and the baby). Genuine [Purcell Toys handcrafted wooden cars and trucks][1]. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/purcelltoys-01.jpg\" alt=\"Purcell Toys\" class=\"picwide\" />\r\n\r\nThe girls think they're the best toys ever. Even I play with these things. I mean come on, the dump truck has moving parts. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/purcelltoys-02.jpg\" alt=\"Purcell Toys\" class=\"picwide\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/purcelltoys-03.jpg\" alt=\"Purcell Toys\" class=\"picwide\" />\r\n\r\nI think the evolution of toys starts with what is still the greatest of all toys -- the stick. Then the stick gets refined, carved into more fixed forms. Suddenly there is no longer the endless possibilities of the stick, but a kind of craftsmanship begins to emerge. Fast-forward and you have the beautiful craftsmanship you see in these images. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/purcelltoys-04.jpg\" alt=\"Purcell Toys\" class=\"picwide\" />\r\n\r\nThese toys are at the apex of a toy family tree that goes back literally to the roots. \r\n\r\nBecause without roots you have nothing. \r\n\r\nStainless steel, plastic and glass get all the attention these days, especially glass that glows. Everything these days feel either cheap like the crap at the big box store or slick and cold like the crap at the Apple store. Then again, when pressed, even the most gadget obsessed among us turn out to still love wood, [the humble stick][2].\r\n\r\nWood has warmth. Wood lends itself to the kind of heirloom things like these trucks and cars. I've always been fascinated by wood. The textures, grains, colors. Every piece of wood is a map of history. The rings, the width of the grain, the spacing of the knots, all the records of a tree, but also the world around it. Every piece of wood is its own story.\r\n\r\nA short memory of wood: Great wood has a way of sticking out. To me anyway. I remember very few details about the Southwest Research Station in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona which my father's friend Wade ran for many years. I don't remember what the nearby campground looked like, have only the dimmest recollection of the mess hall where we occasionally had dinner with Wade and all the visiting scientists doing research there... I do, however, have a crystal clear memory of the coffee table in Wade's house. \r\n\r\nThe coffee table was an overturned stump of black walnut whose roots spread out like dark, obsidian eels beneath the glass table surface. The tallest of the roots held the glass up. What really blew me away though was that each individual root had been sanded to a glassy smoothness. Some of the roots were as thick as my arm and several feet long, others were no bigger than my pinky. It didn't matter, all of them had been sanded smooth as glass.\r\n\r\nI remember being somewhat spellbound, trying to wrap my head around the skill, craftsmanship and effort it must have take to create that table. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/purcelltoys-05.jpg\" alt=\"Purcell Toys\" class=\"picwide\" />\r\n\r\nI feel the same way about Chris's toys. I feel that way because I've watched him make them, but I think anyone who see one or handles one will feel the same way. These are stories in wood. The beginnings of stories. You get to write the rest.\r\n\r\nGet one for your kids and they'll give it to their kids and their kids will give it to theirs and so on, like roots spreading out across the soil.\r\n\r\n[1]: https://www.etsy.com/shop/PurcellToys\r\n[2]: http://archive.wired.com/geekdad/2011/01/the-5-best-toys-of-all-time/\r\n", "dek": "The evolution of toys in my opinion starts with what is still the greatest of all toys -- the stick. After that, I suggest my friend Chris's handcrafted wooden toys.", "pub_date": "2015-01-22T21:20:10", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.3782171661346894 33.9503813118353364)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/purcelltoys-tn.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/purcelltoys-v.jpg", "meta_description": "The evolution of toys in my opinion starts with what is still the greatest of all toys -- the stick. After that, I suggest my friend Chris's handcrafted wooden toys.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 147, "fields": {"title": "Walking in the Woods", "slug": "walking-in-the-woods", "body_html": "<p>It's always struck me as strange that we have a separate word for walking in nature, <em>hiking</em>, as opposed to just walking. Is walking too mundane? Maybe.</p>\n<p>I was hoping Rebecca Solnit's excellent book <cite><a href=\"http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1419449-wanderlust-a-history-of-walking\">Wanderlust</a></cite> might have an answer, but in fact it never comes up.</p>\n<p>So why \"hike\"? My 1913 Webster's offers \"tramp\" and \"march\" as alternatives, but certainly at this point tramp feels colloquial. And unless you're in the military you aren't marching. Which leaves hiking. The word is curiously absent from my 1972 copy of the <abbr title=\"Oxford English Dictionary\">OED</abbr>. An online etymology dictionary traces the usage to 1809: \"hyke 'to walk vigorously', an English dialectal word of unknown origin\". </p>\n<p>Hyke. Hike. So be it. Or not. I think I'll stick with walking, it's in the tag line of this site after all.</p>\n<p>I was thinking about that tag line on a recent walk in the woods. The <em>Walk Slowly</em> bit up there in the masthead is there as a personal admonishment. I tend to rush things. I eat too fast. I talk too fast. I used to drive too fast. About the only thing I have never rushed is walking. As anyone who's walked with me will tell you, my walk is more of a leisurely saunter. At best. That's not to say I can't cover ground if I have to, but I prefer to walk slowly. The tag line is there to remind me to apply that same slowness to everything else.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/hiking-00.jpg\" alt=\"branches in the sky\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>That said, I do not by nature walk quite as slowly as a two-year-old. Now I do though. Of necessity. I don't know if it's from observing me or just some innate thing I handed down, but the girls take after me in that respect. Hands thrust in pockets because of the chilly air, they \"hike\" like I do, sauntering along, taking their time. </p>\n<p>They look much cuter than I do doing it though.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/hiking-01.jpg\" alt=\"girls walking\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>We recently went on our first hike of the season. I think hiking in the balmy 68 of February may be akin to burying our heads in the sand -- we should really be shopping Arctic Circle real estate while the demand is still low. The poles are the future.</p>\n<p>It's always disconcerting to return to a familiar place having skipped a season. We had not been hiking at Sandy Creek Nature Center since summer. We missed the long slow transition from lush wetlands to bare woods. I had forgotten how much quieter every thing is in Winter. No cicadas, no crickets, no frogs. With no foliage to dampen it and no insects to drown it out, the roar of the nearby highway is more noticeable. Winter makes our little patch of nature feel smaller and more hemmed in.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 60em) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/hiking-02-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/hiking-02-1120.jpg 1120w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/hiking-02-2240.jpg 2280w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/hiking-02-1140.jpg\" alt=\"Trees\"></p>\n<p>It's what we have though. Plunge your head in the sand and walk. Slowly. Along the ridge then to the left down into the wooded plain that precedes the wetlands that spill out from the pond. Down here Cardinals shadow us along the trail, flitting though the otherwise silent, bare trees. Red streaks of feather followed by the familiar short, thin <em>chip</em> song fading into the deeper recesses of the woods. In winter the bright red stands out easily among the tans, browns and grays of wilted foliage. </p>\n<p>As always there is no one out at the nice birding blind donated by the Audubon society. There never is. In fact, despite hiking dozens of Sunday mornings out here, we have only once encountered anyone else beyond the first 50 meters of trail.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 60em) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/hiking-03-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/hiking-03-1120.jpg 1120w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/hiking-03-2240.jpg 2280w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/hiking-03-1140.jpg\" alt=\"pond\"></p>\n<p>The blind is at the east edge of the pond, which is where Winter makes itself even more starkly felt. There are no dragonflies or skimmers darting among the lily pads. There are no lily pads. The pond is bare, quiet. The wind ripples the surface and Olivia says the water is coming toward us. And of course it is, the tiny waves begin to lap the shore, tossing a lone water strider deeper into the recess of moss and twigs. A orange and yellow Weaver Spider scampers out of the low hanging bowl of its web, seeking shelter higher up where web is attached to a reed.</p>\n<p>We eat trail mix, not because we are particularly hungry, but because, <em>hiking!</em> Later we walk along the pond to the wooden staircase that leads back up to the pine covered ridge and home.</p>\n<p><span class=\"break\"></span></p>\n<p>The next Saturday I get up just before dawn and check the temperature. 22 degrees F. That's the sort of cold, calorie burning weather that calls for a plate of <a href=\"http://ikeandjane.com/\">doughnuts</a>. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/hiking-04.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>By the time we hit the trail it's above freezing and not bad at all when you're out of the wind, which we are in the woods. We're late though and for the first time there are other people out and about. There's even someone in the blind despite the fact that there aren't many birds out this morning -- not a Cardinal to be heard. We see a Ruby-Crowned Kinglet or something similarly small and greenish, but otherwise the woods are devoid of life. It's amazing what difference an hour and a few people makes to wildlife even here, in the only marginally wild.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 60em) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/hiking-05-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/hiking-05-1120.jpg 1120w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/hiking-05-2240.jpg 2280w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/hiking-05-1140.jpg\" alt=\"canadian goose\"></p>\n<p>As we near the pond Corrinne spots a Canadian Goose cruising the wetlands just before the pond. We stop and watch a while as it ducks its head to strain the silty mud along the opposite shore.</p>\n<p>When we get to the pond there are two more Canadian Geese. We pick our way slowly through a maze of roots to the bench where we usually take a break. The geese swim right by, headed for the other end of the pond. I pull out the trail mix, because, well, <em>hiking!</em> But I swear the minute the sound of the ziplock bag opening breaks the relative silence, the geese whip their heads around and do an about face, heading back out way.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/hiking-06.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>They take their time, eyeing us the whole way, but it's pretty clear they're hoping for handouts. Not the strangest animal I've had beg for food (that would be <a href=\"/jrnl/2010/03/so-far-i-have-not-found-science\">an alligator</a>. Seriously.), but it certainly isn't what I expected when we first spotted them. They get so close I have to take the zoom lens off my camera. </p>\n<p>Lilah of course wants to hug them. They seemed okay with idea even if we aren't.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/hiking-07.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>The geese make sure to keep an eye on the bag of trail mix, but we never give them anything. They seem content to just hang out and dig in the mud for algae and whatever else they're finding. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/hiking-08.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>Soon the trail mix is gone and the girls want to climb the stairs again, take the shortcut back up to the Pine Ridge trail that leads back to the car. Because they love stairs. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/hiking-09.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>Of course when you get to the top of anything you have to shout <em>I did it</em> and give some kind of victory salute.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 60em) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/hiking-10-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/hiking-10-1120.jpg 1120w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/hiking-10-2240.jpg 2280w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/hiking-10-1140.jpg\" alt=\"pond\"></p>", "body_markdown": "It's always struck me as strange that we have a separate word for walking in nature, *hiking*, as opposed to just walking. Is walking too mundane? Maybe.\r\n\r\nI was hoping Rebecca Solnit's excellent book <cite>[Wanderlust](http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1419449-wanderlust-a-history-of-walking)</cite> might have an answer, but in fact it never comes up.\r\n\r\nSo why \"hike\"? My 1913 Webster's offers \"tramp\" and \"march\" as alternatives, but certainly at this point tramp feels colloquial. And unless you're in the military you aren't marching. Which leaves hiking. The word is curiously absent from my 1972 copy of the <abbr title=\"Oxford English Dictionary\">OED</abbr>. An online etymology dictionary traces the usage to 1809: \"hyke 'to walk vigorously', an English dialectal word of unknown origin\". \r\n\r\nHyke. Hike. So be it. Or not. I think I'll stick with walking, it's in the tag line of this site after all.\r\n\r\nI was thinking about that tag line on a recent walk in the woods. The *Walk Slowly* bit up there in the masthead is there as a personal admonishment. I tend to rush things. I eat too fast. I talk too fast. I used to drive too fast. About the only thing I have never rushed is walking. As anyone who's walked with me will tell you, my walk is more of a leisurely saunter. At best. That's not to say I can't cover ground if I have to, but I prefer to walk slowly. The tag line is there to remind me to apply that same slowness to everything else.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/hiking-00.jpg\" alt=\"branches in the sky\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nThat said, I do not by nature walk quite as slowly as a two-year-old. Now I do though. Of necessity. I don't know if it's from observing me or just some innate thing I handed down, but the girls take after me in that respect. Hands thrust in pockets because of the chilly air, they \"hike\" like I do, sauntering along, taking their time. \r\n\r\nThey look much cuter than I do doing it though.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/hiking-01.jpg\" alt=\"girls walking\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nWe recently went on our first hike of the season. I think hiking in the balmy 68 of February may be akin to burying our heads in the sand -- we should really be shopping Arctic Circle real estate while the demand is still low. The poles are the future.\r\n\r\nIt's always disconcerting to return to a familiar place having skipped a season. We had not been hiking at Sandy Creek Nature Center since summer. We missed the long slow transition from lush wetlands to bare woods. I had forgotten how much quieter every thing is in Winter. No cicadas, no crickets, no frogs. With no foliage to dampen it and no insects to drown it out, the roar of the nearby highway is more noticeable. Winter makes our little patch of nature feel smaller and more hemmed in.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 60em) 100vw\"\r\n\tsrcset=\"[[base_url]]2015/hiking-02-640.jpg 640w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2015/hiking-02-1120.jpg 1120w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2015/hiking-02-2240.jpg 2280w\"\r\n\tsrc=\"[[base_url]]2015/hiking-02-1140.jpg\" alt=\"Trees\">\r\n\r\nIt's what we have though. Plunge your head in the sand and walk. Slowly. Along the ridge then to the left down into the wooded plain that precedes the wetlands that spill out from the pond. Down here Cardinals shadow us along the trail, flitting though the otherwise silent, bare trees. Red streaks of feather followed by the familiar short, thin *chip* song fading into the deeper recesses of the woods. In winter the bright red stands out easily among the tans, browns and grays of wilted foliage. \r\n\r\nAs always there is no one out at the nice birding blind donated by the Audubon society. There never is. In fact, despite hiking dozens of Sunday mornings out here, we have only once encountered anyone else beyond the first 50 meters of trail.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 60em) 100vw\"\r\n\tsrcset=\"[[base_url]]2015/hiking-03-640.jpg 640w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2015/hiking-03-1120.jpg 1120w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2015/hiking-03-2240.jpg 2280w\"\r\n\tsrc=\"[[base_url]]2015/hiking-03-1140.jpg\" alt=\"pond\">\r\n\r\nThe blind is at the east edge of the pond, which is where Winter makes itself even more starkly felt. There are no dragonflies or skimmers darting among the lily pads. There are no lily pads. The pond is bare, quiet. The wind ripples the surface and Olivia says the water is coming toward us. And of course it is, the tiny waves begin to lap the shore, tossing a lone water strider deeper into the recess of moss and twigs. A orange and yellow Weaver Spider scampers out of the low hanging bowl of its web, seeking shelter higher up where web is attached to a reed.\r\n\r\nWe eat trail mix, not because we are particularly hungry, but because, *hiking!* Later we walk along the pond to the wooden staircase that leads back up to the pine covered ridge and home.\r\n\r\n<span class=\"break\"></span>\r\n\r\nThe next Saturday I get up just before dawn and check the temperature. 22 degrees F. That's the sort of cold, calorie burning weather that calls for a plate of [doughnuts](http://ikeandjane.com/). \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/hiking-04.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nBy the time we hit the trail it's above freezing and not bad at all when you're out of the wind, which we are in the woods. We're late though and for the first time there are other people out and about. There's even someone in the blind despite the fact that there aren't many birds out this morning -- not a Cardinal to be heard. We see a Ruby-Crowned Kinglet or something similarly small and greenish, but otherwise the woods are devoid of life. It's amazing what difference an hour and a few people makes to wildlife even here, in the only marginally wild.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 60em) 100vw\"\r\n\tsrcset=\"[[base_url]]2015/hiking-05-640.jpg 640w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2015/hiking-05-1120.jpg 1120w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2015/hiking-05-2240.jpg 2280w\"\r\n\tsrc=\"[[base_url]]2015/hiking-05-1140.jpg\" alt=\"canadian goose\">\r\n\r\nAs we near the pond Corrinne spots a Canadian Goose cruising the wetlands just before the pond. We stop and watch a while as it ducks its head to strain the silty mud along the opposite shore.\r\n\r\nWhen we get to the pond there are two more Canadian Geese. We pick our way slowly through a maze of roots to the bench where we usually take a break. The geese swim right by, headed for the other end of the pond. I pull out the trail mix, because, well, *hiking!* But I swear the minute the sound of the ziplock bag opening breaks the relative silence, the geese whip their heads around and do an about face, heading back out way.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/hiking-06.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nThey take their time, eyeing us the whole way, but it's pretty clear they're hoping for handouts. Not the strangest animal I've had beg for food (that would be [an alligator](/jrnl/2010/03/so-far-i-have-not-found-science). Seriously.), but it certainly isn't what I expected when we first spotted them. They get so close I have to take the zoom lens off my camera. \r\n\r\nLilah of course wants to hug them. They seemed okay with idea even if we aren't.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/hiking-07.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nThe geese make sure to keep an eye on the bag of trail mix, but we never give them anything. They seem content to just hang out and dig in the mud for algae and whatever else they're finding. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/hiking-08.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nSoon the trail mix is gone and the girls want to climb the stairs again, take the shortcut back up to the Pine Ridge trail that leads back to the car. Because they love stairs. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/hiking-09.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nOf course when you get to the top of anything you have to shout *I did it* and give some kind of victory salute.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 60em) 100vw\"\r\n\tsrcset=\"[[base_url]]2015/hiking-10-640.jpg 640w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2015/hiking-10-1120.jpg 1120w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2015/hiking-10-2240.jpg 2280w\"\r\n\tsrc=\"[[base_url]]2015/hiking-10-1140.jpg\" alt=\"pond\">\r\n\r\n", "dek": "It\u2019s always struck me as strange that we have a separate word for walking in nature, hiking, as opposed to just walking. Is walking just too mundane? ", "pub_date": "2015-02-16T22:20:04", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.3813875371917703 33.9843673098189996)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/hiking.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/hiking-v.jpg", "meta_description": "It\u2019s always struck me as strange that we have a separate word for walking in nature, hiking, as opposed to just walking. Is walking too mundane? ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 148, "fields": {"title": "Ice Storm", "slug": "ice-storm", "body_html": "<p>I love storms, preferably summer storms with plenty of warm humid wind, lightning and the attendant thunder, though I love winter storms too. One of the best things about this area is that we get our share of storms. Spectacular thunderstorms roll in on lazy summer afternoons and winter has its share of cold rainy days. There's even the occasional snow storm every few years. This week we had my favorite kind of southern winter storm -- an ice storm.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/ice-01-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/ice-01.jpg 1180w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/ice-01-2240.jpg 2280w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/ice-01.jpg\" alt=\"Icicles on branches\"></p>\n<p>Snow storms get all the glory when it comes to winter storms. I didn't even know what an ice storm was when I first came to town in 1999. That winter produced one of the biggest ice storms on record.</p>\n<p>Ice storms turn the world to glass. You don't want to drive in them if you can help it, even walking in treacherous, not just because the ground is slick, but because everything starts to collapse under the extra weight of frozen water. </p>\n<p>When we moved in six years ago (yeah, long stopover) there were roughly double the number of trees in our neighborhood. Six years of storms, ice, wind, snow, have taken their toll on the aging water oaks that shade our street. Trees don't go quietly, but like everything else, they do go. Usually it's wind, though the weight of snow has been responsible for some of the biggest coming down.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/ice-02-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/ice-02.jpg 1180w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/ice-02-2360.jpg 2360w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/ice-02.jpg\" alt=\"Icicles on branches\"></p>\n<p>As with nearly all things that have modicum of danger involved, ice storms are beautiful. This was a small storm, but it's a amazing how such a small thing can utterly transform the ordinary into extraordinary. Even something you see everyday, like the sun rising out the back window, looks otherworldly when everything is coated in a thin layer of glittering ice.</p>\n<p>And true to form, the water oaks continue to shed their branches. We spent the morning enjoying the ice and listening to tree limbs falling around the neighborhood. Trees never go quietly, but they do keep going.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/ice-03-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/ice-03.jpg 1180w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/ice-03-2360.jpg 2360w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/ice-03.jpg\" alt=\"Icicles on branches\"></p>", "body_markdown": "I love storms, preferably summer storms with plenty of warm humid wind, lightning and the attendant thunder, though I love winter storms too. One of the best things about this area is that we get our share of storms. Spectacular thunderstorms roll in on lazy summer afternoons and winter has its share of cold rainy days. There's even the occasional snow storm every few years. This week we had my favorite kind of southern winter storm -- an ice storm.\r\n\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\r\n\tsrcset=\"[[base_url]]2015/ice-01-640.jpg 640w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2015/ice-01.jpg 1180w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2015/ice-01-2240.jpg 2280w\"\r\n\tsrc=\"[[base_url]]2015/ice-01.jpg\" alt=\"Icicles on branches\">\r\n\r\nSnow storms get all the glory when it comes to winter storms. I didn't even know what an ice storm was when I first came to town in 1999. That winter produced one of the biggest ice storms on record.\r\n\r\nIce storms turn the world to glass. You don't want to drive in them if you can help it, even walking in treacherous, not just because the ground is slick, but because everything starts to collapse under the extra weight of frozen water. \r\n\r\nWhen we moved in six years ago (yeah, long stopover) there were roughly double the number of trees in our neighborhood. Six years of storms, ice, wind, snow, have taken their toll on the aging water oaks that shade our street. Trees don't go quietly, but like everything else, they do go. Usually it's wind, though the weight of snow has been responsible for some of the biggest coming down.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\r\n\tsrcset=\"[[base_url]]2015/ice-02-640.jpg 640w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2015/ice-02.jpg 1180w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2015/ice-02-2360.jpg 2360w\"\r\n\tsrc=\"[[base_url]]2015/ice-02.jpg\" alt=\"Icicles on branches\">\r\n\r\nAs with nearly all things that have modicum of danger involved, ice storms are beautiful. This was a small storm, but it's a amazing how such a small thing can utterly transform the ordinary into extraordinary. Even something you see everyday, like the sun rising out the back window, looks otherworldly when everything is coated in a thin layer of glittering ice.\r\n\r\nAnd true to form, the water oaks continue to shed their branches. We spent the morning enjoying the ice and listening to tree limbs falling around the neighborhood. Trees never go quietly, but they do keep going.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\r\n\tsrcset=\"[[base_url]]2015/ice-03-640.jpg 640w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2015/ice-03.jpg 1180w,\r\n\t\t\t[[base_url]]2015/ice-03-2360.jpg 2360w\"\r\n\tsrc=\"[[base_url]]2015/ice-03.jpg\" alt=\"Icicles on branches\">", "dek": "I love storms, preferably summer storms with plenty of warm humid wind, lightning and the attendant thunder, but winter storms are nice too.", "pub_date": "2015-02-26T11:13:55", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.3761572296117777 33.9451124668654671)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/ice.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/ice-v.jpg", "meta_description": "I love storms, preferably summer storms with plenty of warm humid wind, lightning and the attendant thunder, but winter storms are nice too.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 149, "fields": {"title": "Schoolhouse", "slug": "schoolhouse", "body_html": "<p>There's something called Touch-a-Truck that rolls through town, or just south of town, at a place called Heritage Park, every year. It turns out to be pretty much what it sounds like: a place where kids can touch trucks. Semi-trucks, fire engines, ambulances even a bomb squad truck with the world's most boring robot. Seriously bomb squad guy, kids don't care about how slowly and delicately your robot can pick up an empty piece of PVC pipe. Next time bring a real bomb and detonate it or at least make the robot <em>do</em> something.</p>\n<p>The girls loved the fire engine and the ambulance, but were not so crazy about the semi and its horn. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/touch-a-truck.jpg\" alt=\"Touch a truck ambulance\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>The far and away favorite though was the tractor ride. Because who wants to touch a truck when you can ride on one?</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/touch-a-tractor.jpg\" alt=\"Touch a truck tractor ride\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>We hopped off the ride at the halfway point to check out the old schoolhouse that we see every time we head out of town for points south, but had never been inside before. The schoolhouse, particularly the old upstairs auditorium and stage, complete with original, tattered curtains, trumped Touch-a-Truck I think. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/schoolhouse-01-barrelman-productions.jpg\" alt=\"Heritage Park Schoolhouse, image by www.barrelmanproductions.com\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/schoolhouse-02.jpg\" alt=\"Heritage Park Schoolhouse upstairs\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/schoolhouse-03.jpg\" alt=\"Heritage Park Schoolhouse\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>This is about as close to school as our kids will ever get. Actually, school might not be so bad if it consisted of letting children run around and play in abandoned buildings. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/schoolhouse-04.jpg\" alt=\"Heritage Park Schoolhouse\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/schoolhouse-05.jpg\" alt=\"Heritage Park Schoolhouse\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>The bouncy house was also popular, if somewhat less photogenic.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/schoolhouse-06.jpg\" alt=\"Touch a truck ambulance\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p><small>[Note, the aerial image above was taken by <a href=\"http://www.barrelmanproductions.com/\">custom aerial photography experts</a>, Barrelman Productions.]</small></p>", "body_markdown": "There's something called Touch-a-Truck that rolls through town, or just south of town, at a place called Heritage Park, every year. It turns out to be pretty much what it sounds like: a place where kids can touch trucks. Semi-trucks, fire engines, ambulances even a bomb squad truck with the world's most boring robot. Seriously bomb squad guy, kids don't care about how slowly and delicately your robot can pick up an empty piece of PVC pipe. Next time bring a real bomb and detonate it or at least make the robot *do* something.\r\n\r\nThe girls loved the fire engine and the ambulance, but were not so crazy about the semi and its horn. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/touch-a-truck.jpg\" alt=\"Touch a truck ambulance\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nThe far and away favorite though was the tractor ride. Because who wants to touch a truck when you can ride on one?\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/touch-a-tractor.jpg\" alt=\"Touch a truck tractor ride\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nWe hopped off the ride at the halfway point to check out the old schoolhouse that we see every time we head out of town for points south, but had never been inside before. The schoolhouse, particularly the old upstairs auditorium and stage, complete with original, tattered curtains, trumped Touch-a-Truck I think. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/schoolhouse-01-barrelman-productions.jpg\" alt=\"Heritage Park Schoolhouse, image by www.barrelmanproductions.com\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/schoolhouse-02.jpg\" alt=\"Heritage Park Schoolhouse upstairs\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/schoolhouse-03.jpg\" alt=\"Heritage Park Schoolhouse\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nThis is about as close to school as our kids will ever get. Actually, school might not be so bad if it consisted of letting children run around and play in abandoned buildings. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/schoolhouse-04.jpg\" alt=\"Heritage Park Schoolhouse\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/schoolhouse-05.jpg\" alt=\"Heritage Park Schoolhouse\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nThe bouncy house was also popular, if somewhat less photogenic.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/schoolhouse-06.jpg\" alt=\"Touch a truck ambulance\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\n<small>[Note, the aerial image above was taken by [custom aerial photography experts](http://www.barrelmanproductions.com/), Barrelman Productions.]</small>", "dek": "Something called touch-a-truck that rolls through town, or just south of town at a place call Heritage Park, every year. It turns out to be pretty much what it sounds like: a place where kids can touch trucks — semi-trucks, fire engines, ambulances and more.", "pub_date": "2015-03-15T13:38:34", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.4369468147174587 33.7630663985843498)", "location": 107, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/school.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/school-v.jpg", "meta_description": "", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 150, "fields": {"title": "Pig Roast", "slug": "pig-roast", "body_html": "<p>I was headed downtown about a week ago when I noticed a sign outside a local community garden that said, \"free pig roast\". Now there are two types of people in this world, those who go to free pig roasts and <strike>vegans</strike><sup id=\"fnref:1\"><a class=\"footnote-ref\" href=\"#fn:1\" rel=\"footnote\">1</a></sup> fools. Sign me up. </p>\n<p>As it turned out I was already signed up. Twice in fact. Corrinne, who is generally aware of things weeks before me, was already planning for us to attend, and my business partner had already volunteered our <a href=\"http://www.barrelmanproductions.com/\">photography services</a> to cover the event for Athens Community Connection. </p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/pig-roast-1-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/pig-roast-1.jpg 1180w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/pig-roast-1-2240.jpg 2280w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/pig-roast-1.jpg\" alt=\"\"></p>\n<p>Here's a good question, how do you get people to fill out a survey? This is the south, if you want to get people to come together, start cooking -- maybe roast 200lb locally raised pig? It's as good an idea as any. </p>\n<p>The conspiracy minded, of which there are more than a few around these parts, would not have liked the pig roast, since it was was not technically free. In order to get your pig roast you had to fill out a health survey of non-invasive, non-personally identifying questions about your general health and access to health care. </p>\n<p>The free pig roast was, you see, a con by the big bad local <strike>government</strike> community services group. And yes, there was the survey; something mandated by the Affordable Care Act, which did not, as I understand it specify that a pig be roasted. Athens Community Connection was simply erring on the safe side with the pig. </p>\n<p>Plus cookies. Don't forget the cookies.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/pig-roast-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/pig-roast-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p>I found some of the survey questions a little tricky. For example, \"do you have access to dental care?\" Well, I have access to the ATL airport, and a quick flight to Mexico City would put me around some top quality dentists I could afford and the whole thing, trip and all, would come out to less than a local dentist, plus, <em>tacos</em>... so... yes?</p>\n<p>The pig roast turned out to be so popular that it ran out of pig by 5pm. Fortunately we just barely made it and were able to get all the pig we wanted. And a damn fine pig it was, roasted up by Noah Brendel of (now defunct) <a href=\"http://www.southernliving.com/travel/south-east/athens-ga-the-four-coursemen\">Four Coursemen</a> fame. There were also some awesome collard greens, baked beans and macaroni and cheese from the Northeast Georgia Food Bank. The local Daily Groceries Co-op even donated some halfway decent vegan sides. We're an inclusive community like that. </p>\n<div class=\"footnote\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n<li id=\"fn:1\">\n<p>Vegan friends, I love you. And you have the moral high ground. Whereas I have the tasty, tasty animal flesh. Let us both go in peace. <a class=\"footnote-backref\" href=\"#fnref:1\" rev=\"footnote\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n</div>", "body_markdown": "I was headed downtown about a week ago when I noticed a sign outside a local community garden that said, \"free pig roast\". Now there are two types of people in this world, those who go to free pig roasts and <strike>vegans</strike>[^1] fools. Sign me up. \r\n\r\nAs it turned out I was already signed up. Twice in fact. Corrinne, who is generally aware of things weeks before me, was already planning for us to attend, and my business partner had already volunteered our [photography services][1] to cover the event for Athens Community Connection. \r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\r\n srcset=\"[[base_url]]2015/pig-roast-1-640.jpg 640w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/pig-roast-1.jpg 1180w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/pig-roast-1-2240.jpg 2280w\"\r\n src=\"[[base_url]]2015/pig-roast-1.jpg\" alt=\"\">\r\n\r\nHere's a good question, how do you get people to fill out a survey? This is the south, if you want to get people to come together, start cooking -- maybe roast 200lb locally raised pig? It's as good an idea as any. \r\n\r\nThe conspiracy minded, of which there are more than a few around these parts, would not have liked the pig roast, since it was was not technically free. In order to get your pig roast you had to fill out a health survey of non-invasive, non-personally identifying questions about your general health and access to health care. \r\n\r\nThe free pig roast was, you see, a con by the big bad local <strike>government</strike> community services group. And yes, there was the survey; something mandated by the Affordable Care Act, which did not, as I understand it specify that a pig be roasted. Athens Community Connection was simply erring on the safe side with the pig. \r\n\r\nPlus cookies. Don't forget the cookies.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/pig-roast-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/pig-roast-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\nI found some of the survey questions a little tricky. For example, \"do you have access to dental care?\" Well, I have access to the ATL airport, and a quick flight to Mexico City would put me around some top quality dentists I could afford and the whole thing, trip and all, would come out to less than a local dentist, plus, *tacos*... so... yes?\r\n\r\nThe pig roast turned out to be so popular that it ran out of pig by 5pm. Fortunately we just barely made it and were able to get all the pig we wanted. And a damn fine pig it was, roasted up by Noah Brendel of (now defunct) [Four Coursemen][2] fame. There were also some awesome collard greens, baked beans and macaroni and cheese from the Northeast Georgia Food Bank. The local Daily Groceries Co-op even donated some halfway decent vegan sides. We're an inclusive community like that. \r\n\r\n[^1]: Vegan friends, I love you. And you have the moral high ground. Whereas I have the tasty, tasty animal flesh. Let us both go in peace.\r\n\r\n\r\n[1]: http://www.barrelmanproductions.com/\r\n[2]: http://www.southernliving.com/travel/south-east/athens-ga-the-four-coursemen\r\n", "dek": "I was headed downtown about a week ago when I noticed a sign that said, \"free pig roast\". There are two types of people in this world, those who go to free pig roasts and <strike>vegans</strike> fools. Sign me up. ", "pub_date": "2015-03-22T09:58:14", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.3967297727529626 33.9524059923598074)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/pig-roast.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/pig-roast-v.jpg", "meta_description": "I was headed downtown about a week ago when I noticed a sign that said, 'free pig roast'. There are two types of people in this world, those who go to free pig roasts and fools. Sign me up. ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 151, "fields": {"title": "Down The River", "slug": "down-the-river", "body_html": "<blockquote>\n<p>\"We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown... We have an unknown distance yet to run; an unknown river yet to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not.\" –<cite>John Wesley Powell</cite>, August 13, 1869</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>It was late on a Wednesday afternoon when I got a text from Mike that said, \"going down the river tomorrow, you want to go?\" </p>\n<p>There will never be a time when I don't want to go down the river. </p>\n<p>These days getting on to one of nature's great highways requires a little more logistical effort on my part. It's not as simple as it used to be, climb in the truck, drive half way across the country and head <a href=\"https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2010/08/dinosaur-national-monument-part-two-down-river\">down the river</a> or out <a href=\"https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2010/03/so-far-i-have-not-found-science\">into the swamp</a>. </p>\n<p>It'll be that simple again one day, when everyone can go, but right now there are infants to care for and toddlers that would require another canoe. Sadly there wasn't a canoe to spare. But my wife is awesome, so she said go for it, even though, deep down, we both knew I'd be hours later than I said. That's how river trips are. And so it goes. At least my children found this time lapse video Mike made to be just about the funniest thing they'd ever seen:</p>\n<div class=\"vid\">\n<!-- \"Video For Everybody\" http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody -->\n<video controls=\"controls\" poster=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/videos/paddling.jpg\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\">\n <source src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/videos/paddling.mp4\" type=\"video/mp4\" />\n <source src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/videos/paddling.webm\" type=\"video/webm\" />\n <source src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/videos/paddling.ogv\" type=\"video/ogg\" />\n <object type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" data=\"http://releases.flowplayer.org/swf/flowplayer-3.2.1.swf\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\">\n <param name=\"movie\" value=\"http://releases.flowplayer.org/swf/flowplayer-3.2.1.swf\" />\n <param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" />\n <param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\" />\n <param name=\"flashVars\" value=\"config={'playlist':['https%3A%2F%2Fimages.luxagraf.net%2Fvideos%2Fpaddling.jpg',{'url':'https%3A%2F%2Fimages.luxagraf.net%2Fvideos%2Fpaddling.mp4','autoPlay':false}]}\" />\n <img alt=\"Paddling the Middle Oconee River, Athens GA\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/videos/paddling.jpg\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" title=\"No video playback capabilities, please download the video below\" />\n </object>\n</video>\n<p class=\"sans small\">\n <small>Download: <a href=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/videos/paddling.mp4\">MP4</a> | <a href=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/videos/paddling.webm\">WebM</a> | <a href=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/videos/paddling.ogv\">Ogg</a></small>\n</p>\n</div>\n\n<p>I've been wanting to float through Athens for years, but I never have. For some reason I manage to get myself halfway around the world with relative ease compared to how long it takes me to float down a river that's less than two miles from my front door. In the past ten years I've been to 19 countries and not once down the Middle Oconee river. Yet I know quite well that there's no need to go around the world to see something exotic, just hop in a canoe. </p>\n<p>Rivers make the familiar foreign in an instant. For the entirety of this trip I almost no idea where I was in Athens. I floated through an area that I have lived in and explored off and on for almost 20 years now and yet all it takes to make it utterly unknown is looking at it from a waterway rather than the land. </p>\n<p>Powell certainly faced more challenges and life threatening hazards floating the Grand Canyon for the first time in wooden boats in 1869, but his celebration of the unknown that lies downstream captures that secret thrill that always accompanies every launch onto the water. What is down there? \"We know not\". </p>\n<p>For Powell \"we know not\" was literal. It is less so for me since I'm going with people who have already floated this stretch many times. Still, rivers have a way of pulling you out of your usual reality tunnel, of changing how you've come to see a place. I don't usually think of Athens as a wilderness, as even having wild places really. When I think of Athens I think of what I see day in day out -- houses, streets, parking lots, downtown, sidewalks, highways, shopping centers. But there's wilderness all around that, perhaps even in that.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/river-01.jpg\" alt=\"Paddling the Middle Oconee River\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p>To be fair, this is not the wilderness that I grew up with out west. I'll never camp along the Middle Oconee and see the northern lights dancing dramatically above thousands of feet of red sandstone. Nor will I hit rapids that crush my precious barrel of whiskey, as Powell did.</p>\n<p>Yet as I get older I've found I have less need for that sort of dramatic nature and more appreciation for the small pockets that continue to exist in spite of what's around them. Growing up out west there were vast open tracts of wilderness in which you could go (and I have indeed gone) days and even weeks without running into another soul (at least in the 80s and 90s, who knows what's like now). It would just be me and the mountains or me and the desert. Nature out west operates on a different and very untamed scale. It's also a thing very separate from the cities and towns that have chipped away at it.</p>\n<p>This separateness, combined with the huge scale and awe-inducing grandeur of the west sometimes engenders a kind of snobbery about nature in me. Anything not that amazingly isolated and dramatic starts to feel somehow inferior and perhaps even not worth seeing. Similar things happen if you start to only eat in fancy restaurants and forget how great a can of tuna dumped in mac and cheese can be when you're hungry and cold and the sun is setting fast. </p>\n<p>I try to fight against this tendency in myself, especially with regard to \"wilderness\", but it's still there. I might write that I do not believe that humans are separate from nature, that even our worst Walmart parking lots are really no different than anything else in the world, but it can be hard to remember that when you're staring at a map planning a trip. Chances are your route is going to avoid the Walmart parking lots. I can't say my wouldn't, but it might be worth thinking about why that is at least.</p>\n<p>For this trip we put in at Ben Burton park, just a couple blocks from my house. We were, predictably, two hours late getting on the river, shuttle car mix ups and whatnot, but I had sliced open my toe with a box cutter earlier in the day and had decided not to get stitches because, well, river trip damn it. I used the extra time to fashion an entirely waterproof bandage system which, when combined with a rubber boot did in fact keep my foot dry the entire trip.</p>\n<p>Eventually though a dozen of us put in and started, as you may have noticed in the footage above, a rather lazy river trip. The rest of the people were mostly scouting for an upcoming <a href=\"http://garivers.org/\">Georgia River Network</a> trip, but there were a few other like me, just along for the ride. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/river-02.jpg\" alt=\"Canoe on the Middle Oconee river Athens GA\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>River rats are a different bunch, even back here on lazy rivers like the Oconee. Where else will you meet a motocross photographer turned invasive species hunter who spends his days looking for ways to eradicate Chinese Privet? Or an organic farmer touring the south who had just arrived in Athens 5 hours before launch?</p>\n<p>For most of the trip we were the lead boat. With nothing in front of us it was easy to forget that the rest of the world is out there. At one point we startled a green heron that took wing off the downed tree it had been standing on, fishing. It was close enough that I could hear its wings flexing against the air as it disappeared up the bank. Someone in the boat behind us said \"heron\" and then I heard someone behind that say where? And then someone else say, \"up there, up the bank, it flew up into the Hobby Lobby parking lot.\"</p>\n<p>Hrm, what? Oh right, that's a parking lot up there where the bank stops and all I can see is sky. This is not the west, this is Athens. The scale is smaller, but there's still nature here. The green heron doesn't care that there aren't dramatic cliffs or peaks. The Hobby Lobby parking lot is just another thing to fly over. Maybe it too prefers the unbroken forest canopy and river bottoms, it seems to since it was down here until we scared it off, but at the same time it doesn't fly straight off to some eco lodge in Belize just to see a forest. The world is what it is, the heron just flies over it. If you really want to see you have drop your preconceptions of what <em>should</em> be and see what is. And by \"you\" I mean \"me\".</p>\n<p>We paddled on, stopping from time to time to scout put-ins or take-outs or lunch spots or to gather some Morchella, better know as morels, one of the few mushrooms distinctive enough, with their unusual honeycomb-like structure, that even someone as ignorant of mushrooms as me can feel pretty safe gathering them wild.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/river-03.jpg\" alt=\"Morel mushrooms growing on the banks of the middle Oconee river\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>We pass nature and history telling their stories together, stone walls and the remnants of bridges, their spanning portions long since collapsed, now somewhere under the water, downstream and perhaps even out to sea. Only the edges remain, stone covered in moss, with gnarled trees working their roots into gaps in the masonry, inevitable chinks in the armor of history. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/river-04.jpg\" alt=\"Crumbing stone bridge on the banks of the middle Oconee river\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>There are people too. Children playing in yards that line the banks. Cars roaring past on overpasses. Coeds having sex in a red and black hammock swinging from a tree out over the water. They stop, we pass by. It's all nature.</p>\n<p>The river goes on, we go with it. The coeds join the herons and houses and the cars and the stone walls. The river goes on. </p>\n<p>Until eventually it blends with the sea. We get out long before that though and make our way slowly home, late as usual. But somewhere back there on the river those molecules of water that held us afloat for the afternoon are still going, headed out to sea where they'll mingle, end up who knows where, perhaps swept up in a storm brought up into the clouds and back over the land only to be dumped again into another river, over and over again. Every river is everywhere and it all goes on and on and on.</p>", "body_markdown": "> \"We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown... We have an unknown distance yet to run; an unknown river yet to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not.\" –<cite>John Wesley Powell</cite>, August 13, 1869\r\n\r\nIt was late on a Wednesday afternoon when I got a text from Mike that said, \"going down the river tomorrow, you want to go?\" \r\n\r\nThere will never be a time when I don't want to go down the river. \r\n\r\nThese days getting on to one of nature's great highways requires a little more logistical effort on my part. It's not as simple as it used to be, climb in the truck, drive half way across the country and head [down the river][1] or out [into the swamp][2]. \r\n\r\nIt'll be that simple again one day, when everyone can go, but right now there are infants to care for and toddlers that would require another canoe. Sadly there wasn't a canoe to spare. But my wife is awesome, so she said go for it, even though, deep down, we both knew I'd be hours later than I said. That's how river trips are. And so it goes. At least my children found this time lapse video Mike made to be just about the funniest thing they'd ever seen:\r\n\r\n<div class=\"vid\">\r\n<!-- \"Video For Everybody\" http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody -->\r\n<video controls=\"controls\" poster=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/videos/paddling.jpg\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\">\r\n\t<source src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/videos/paddling.mp4\" type=\"video/mp4\" />\r\n\t<source src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/videos/paddling.webm\" type=\"video/webm\" />\r\n\t<source src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/videos/paddling.ogv\" type=\"video/ogg\" />\r\n\t<object type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" data=\"http://releases.flowplayer.org/swf/flowplayer-3.2.1.swf\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\">\r\n\t\t<param name=\"movie\" value=\"http://releases.flowplayer.org/swf/flowplayer-3.2.1.swf\" />\r\n\t\t<param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" />\r\n\t\t<param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\" />\r\n\t\t<param name=\"flashVars\" value=\"config={'playlist':['https%3A%2F%2Fimages.luxagraf.net%2Fvideos%2Fpaddling.jpg',{'url':'https%3A%2F%2Fimages.luxagraf.net%2Fvideos%2Fpaddling.mp4','autoPlay':false}]}\" />\r\n\t\t<img alt=\"Paddling the Middle Oconee River, Athens GA\" src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/videos/paddling.jpg\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" title=\"No video playback capabilities, please download the video below\" />\r\n\t</object>\r\n</video>\r\n<p class=\"sans small\">\r\n\t<small>Download: <a href=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/videos/paddling.mp4\">MP4</a> | <a href=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/videos/paddling.webm\">WebM</a> | <a href=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/videos/paddling.ogv\">Ogg</a></small>\r\n</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\nI've been wanting to float through Athens for years, but I never have. For some reason I manage to get myself halfway around the world with relative ease compared to how long it takes me to float down a river that's less than two miles from my front door. In the past ten years I've been to 19 countries and not once down the Middle Oconee river. Yet I know quite well that there's no need to go around the world to see something exotic, just hop in a canoe. \r\n\r\nRivers make the familiar foreign in an instant. For the entirety of this trip I almost no idea where I was in Athens. I floated through an area that I have lived in and explored off and on for almost 20 years now and yet all it takes to make it utterly unknown is looking at it from a waterway rather than the land. \r\n\r\nPowell certainly faced more challenges and life threatening hazards floating the Grand Canyon for the first time in wooden boats in 1869, but his celebration of the unknown that lies downstream captures that secret thrill that always accompanies every launch onto the water. What is down there? \"We know not\". \r\n\r\nFor Powell \"we know not\" was literal. It is less so for me since I'm going with people who have already floated this stretch many times. Still, rivers have a way of pulling you out of your usual reality tunnel, of changing how you've come to see a place. I don't usually think of Athens as a wilderness, as even having wild places really. When I think of Athens I think of what I see day in day out -- houses, streets, parking lots, downtown, sidewalks, highways, shopping centers. But there's wilderness all around that, perhaps even in that.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/river-01.jpg\" alt=\"Paddling the Middle Oconee River\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\nTo be fair, this is not the wilderness that I grew up with out west. I'll never camp along the Middle Oconee and see the northern lights dancing dramatically above thousands of feet of red sandstone. Nor will I hit rapids that crush my precious barrel of whiskey, as Powell did.\r\n\r\nYet as I get older I've found I have less need for that sort of dramatic nature and more appreciation for the small pockets that continue to exist in spite of what's around them. Growing up out west there were vast open tracts of wilderness in which you could go (and I have indeed gone) days and even weeks without running into another soul (at least in the 80s and 90s, who knows what's like now). It would just be me and the mountains or me and the desert. Nature out west operates on a different and very untamed scale. It's also a thing very separate from the cities and towns that have chipped away at it.\r\n\r\nThis separateness, combined with the huge scale and awe-inducing grandeur of the west sometimes engenders a kind of snobbery about nature in me. Anything not that amazingly isolated and dramatic starts to feel somehow inferior and perhaps even not worth seeing. Similar things happen if you start to only eat in fancy restaurants and forget how great a can of tuna dumped in mac and cheese can be when you're hungry and cold and the sun is setting fast. \r\n\r\nI try to fight against this tendency in myself, especially with regard to \"wilderness\", but it's still there. I might write that I do not believe that humans are separate from nature, that even our worst Walmart parking lots are really no different than anything else in the world, but it can be hard to remember that when you're staring at a map planning a trip. Chances are your route is going to avoid the Walmart parking lots. I can't say my wouldn't, but it might be worth thinking about why that is at least.\r\n\r\nFor this trip we put in at Ben Burton park, just a couple blocks from my house. We were, predictably, two hours late getting on the river, shuttle car mix ups and whatnot, but I had sliced open my toe with a box cutter earlier in the day and had decided not to get stitches because, well, river trip damn it. I used the extra time to fashion an entirely waterproof bandage system which, when combined with a rubber boot did in fact keep my foot dry the entire trip.\r\n\r\nEventually though a dozen of us put in and started, as you may have noticed in the footage above, a rather lazy river trip. The rest of the people were mostly scouting for an upcoming [Georgia River Network][3] trip, but there were a few other like me, just along for the ride. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/river-02.jpg\" alt=\"Canoe on the Middle Oconee river Athens GA\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nRiver rats are a different bunch, even back here on lazy rivers like the Oconee. Where else will you meet a motocross photographer turned invasive species hunter who spends his days looking for ways to eradicate Chinese Privet? Or an organic farmer touring the south who had just arrived in Athens 5 hours before launch?\r\n\r\nFor most of the trip we were the lead boat. With nothing in front of us it was easy to forget that the rest of the world is out there. At one point we startled a green heron that took wing off the downed tree it had been standing on, fishing. It was close enough that I could hear its wings flexing against the air as it disappeared up the bank. Someone in the boat behind us said \"heron\" and then I heard someone behind that say where? And then someone else say, \"up there, up the bank, it flew up into the Hobby Lobby parking lot.\"\r\n\r\nHrm, what? Oh right, that's a parking lot up there where the bank stops and all I can see is sky. This is not the west, this is Athens. The scale is smaller, but there's still nature here. The green heron doesn't care that there aren't dramatic cliffs or peaks. The Hobby Lobby parking lot is just another thing to fly over. Maybe it too prefers the unbroken forest canopy and river bottoms, it seems to since it was down here until we scared it off, but at the same time it doesn't fly straight off to some eco lodge in Belize just to see a forest. The world is what it is, the heron just flies over it. If you really want to see you have drop your preconceptions of what *should* be and see what is. And by \"you\" I mean \"me\".\r\n\r\nWe paddled on, stopping from time to time to scout put-ins or take-outs or lunch spots or to gather some Morchella, better know as morels, one of the few mushrooms distinctive enough, with their unusual honeycomb-like structure, that even someone as ignorant of mushrooms as me can feel pretty safe gathering them wild.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/river-03.jpg\" alt=\"Morel mushrooms growing on the banks of the middle Oconee river\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nWe pass nature and history telling their stories together, stone walls and the remnants of bridges, their spanning portions long since collapsed, now somewhere under the water, downstream and perhaps even out to sea. Only the edges remain, stone covered in moss, with gnarled trees working their roots into gaps in the masonry, inevitable chinks in the armor of history. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/river-04.jpg\" alt=\"Crumbing stone bridge on the banks of the middle Oconee river\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nThere are people too. Children playing in yards that line the banks. Cars roaring past on overpasses. Coeds having sex in a red and black hammock swinging from a tree out over the water. They stop, we pass by. It's all nature.\r\n\r\nThe river goes on, we go with it. The coeds join the herons and houses and the cars and the stone walls. The river goes on. \r\n\r\nUntil eventually it blends with the sea. We get out long before that though and make our way slowly home, late as usual. But somewhere back there on the river those molecules of water that held us afloat for the afternoon are still going, headed out to sea where they'll mingle, end up who knows where, perhaps swept up in a storm brought up into the clouds and back over the land only to be dumped again into another river, over and over again. Every river is everywhere and it all goes on and on and on.\r\n\r\n\r\n[1]: https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2010/08/dinosaur-national-monument-part-two-down-river\r\n[2]: https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2010/03/so-far-i-have-not-found-science\r\n[3]: http://garivers.org/\r\n", "dek": "Rivers make the familiar foreign in an instant. For the entirety of this trip I almost no idea where I was in Athens. I floated through an area that I have lived in and explored off and on for almost 20 years now and yet all it takes to make it utterly unknown is looking at it from a waterway rather than the land. ", "pub_date": "2015-04-13T12:29:10", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.4382557327161010 33.9579992000525266)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/down-the-river2.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/down-the-river-v.jpg", "meta_description": "Rivers make the familiar foreign in an instant. I floated through an area that I have lived in and explored off and on for almost 20 years now and yet all it takes to make it utterly unknown is looking at it from a waterway rather than the land. ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 152, "fields": {"title": "The Poison You\u2019ve Been Dreaming Of", "slug": "the-poison-youve-been-dreaming-of", "body_html": "<blockquote>\n<p>You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. – <cite>Jane Goodall</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n<figure class=\"picwide\">\n<img sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/rothko-new-forms-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/rothko-new-forms.jpg 1180w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/rothko-new-forms-2280.jpg 2280w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/rothko-new-forms.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n<figcaption>Mark Rothko <em>New Forms</em> </figcaption>\n</figure>\n\n<p>The other day Corrinne's friend was over and I happened to come out of my office to the kitchen to get a bit more tea when I overheard her saying, \"you're a real downer with your off-gassing rugs and your crazy diet.\" </p>\n<p>For context, we've been trying to buy a rug. Yes, <a href=\"https://youtu.be/_vGK008c_rA\">something that really ties the room together</a>, but also that isn't made with, more or less, poison. This turns out to be hard; more on that in a minute. Also, my wife is on a very restrictive diet for personal health reasons. Yes it is working and no, with any luck, she won't be on it forever. But.</p>\n<p>Here's the thing. Corrinne's friend is right, suddenly starting to pay attention to where things comes from and what they're made of, how they're made, who makes them and so on down the production chain very quickly turns you into a mildly-paranoid downer of sorts. The thing is though, it's not just rugs and the antibiotics in your meat -- it's everything. And it's happening whether you're paying attention to it or not.</p>\n<p>I really don't care what you want to look at in your everyday life, could be your food, your house, your clothes, your shoes, your car... it doesn't really matter, below the surface I can almost guarantee something is deeply, deeply fucked up about it. There's toxic chemicals everywhere, I think on some level most of us know that by now, but of course it's worse than that when you start digging. Get a little below the surface and you'll find that <a href=\"http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/04/03/fishermen-rush-be-rescued-amid-indonesian-slavery-probe.html\">slave labor</a> keeps the price of fish reasonable and hey, how about chocolate? You like chocolate? I do too, but the <a href=\"http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/19/child-slavery-and-chocolate-all-too-easy-to-find/\">slave children who picked it for us</a> probably have different feelings.</p>\n<p>Everyday we go to the store and blithely buy things without ever thinking about how they got here or what the cost of these items beyond the obvious -- money we have to spend -- might be. And the problem isn't just Walmart or Target or whoever you want to boycott this week. It's not limited to the U.S. or the west either. Exploitation is a universal problem that looks exactly the same in every country I've set foot in. It's a pervasive within a capitalist system. In fact it might be the <em>basis</em> of the capitalist system.</p>\n<p>But that's a huge chunk to chew on. Keep it simple. Just look at one thing. Let's stick with rugs and personal health since that's something you might be able to control to a degree.</p>\n<p>You probably would not think your rug needs to be coated in flame retardant toxins and held together with 10 different toxic glues. Yet it is and you inhale them every time you walk in the room. I am presumably, inhaling them right now as I type this. Is that worst thing in the world? You didn't click on those links to the child slavery stories above did you? No, toxic rugs are most definitely not the worst thing in the world. </p>\n<p>Yet toxins in rugs and furniture seems like a really easy thing to fix. After all 100 years ago rugs were considerably less toxic, if they were toxic at all. So why are those toxins there now? Why does you rug need to be toxic at all? Does flame retardant really save that many lives? Is it worth saving a handful of lives at the possibility of shortening all the rest? </p>\n<p>What's most troubling to me is the brutal economics of toxicology. Here's the hard reality of it: if you want a non-toxic rug you will pay at least 3x times as much as you would for a rug with misc gene-altering petrochemicals deeply embedded in it.</p>\n<p>In other words, if you're either poor and the cheap rug is your only choice or you just don't want to spend too much of your life energy on a rug, you will either have to increase the number of petrochemicals in your blood on a daily basis or not have a rug. And while no one seems to know how bad these things are for you, everyone agrees they're not good. Particularly if you're very young like all of my children. </p>\n<p>According to even the conservative estimates from groups like the EPA, all of these chemicals have long term repercussions. It would, as I understand it, not be wholly inaccurate to say you will die sooner because of them. Might only be a month sooner, might only be a week sooner, but you lose a little life. Because you bought the cheaper rug.</p>\n<p>This gets more depressing when you apply it across a broad spectrum and realize that the same economics of toxicology apply to food, where you live, how you move through the world, the shoes you wear, the things you apply to your skin, your hair, your kid's hair.</p>\n<p>Sure there are worse problems in the world, there are far worse problems in the world. I just find this one interesting because it's an entirely consumer culture created problem. The need to produce cheaper goods drives manufacturing methods and materials down until you get the rug equivalent of Soylent Green. It's not people (as far as I know) but it will kill them, both as they make it and as it sits in your house. That's consumerism.</p>\n<p>But what is consumerism? Or better, why is consumerism? The socio-biology answer is perhaps the most illuminating in this context: modern consumerism provides domesticated primates like ourselves with a means of attaining and identifying one's social status within a group. The one with the coolest rug is the <em>homo sapiens sapiens</em> equivalent of the gorilla with the biggest chest thump.</p>\n<p>Ah Culture. In order to attain a higher position in the group (and of course really tie the room together) we are willing to inhale poison on a daily basis. We trade our lives for stuff to illustrate the state of our lives to other people and increase our status in their eyes. </p>\n<p>As Tim Jackson puts it in a <a href=\"https://youtu.be/NZsp_EdO2Xk\">talk</a> called \"an economic reality check\", \"<em>We spend money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last to people we don't care about</em>.\"</p>\n<p>We literally trade our time (all we have) for money to buy things that are killing us and the people we love. And we consider this totally sane. But it's not. If someone walked up off the street and offered to spray the same chemicals around out house for free we would call them insane. </p>\n<p>Why do we do it to ourselves? Because we've come to expect that our houses have rugs, that we can eat chocolate, that we can eat seafood. Because a lot of those things have nothing wrong with them. It's not <em>all</em> awful. Sometimes a fish is just a fish. Sometimes a rug is just a rug. But sometimes it isn't. Sometimes the bare floor ends up being more comfortable.</p>", "body_markdown": "> You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. – <cite>Jane Goodall</cite>\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"picwide\">\r\n<img sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\r\n srcset=\"[[base_url]]2015/rothko-new-forms-640.jpg 640w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/rothko-new-forms.jpg 1180w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/rothko-new-forms-2280.jpg 2280w\"\r\n src=\"[[base_url]]2015/rothko-new-forms.jpg\" alt=\"\">\r\n<figcaption>Mark Rothko <em>New Forms</em> </figcaption>\r\n</figure>\r\n\r\nThe other day Corrinne's friend was over and I happened to come out of my office to the kitchen to get a bit more tea when I overheard her saying, \"you're a real downer with your off-gassing rugs and your crazy diet.\" \r\n\r\nFor context, we've been trying to buy a rug. Yes, [something that really ties the room together](https://youtu.be/_vGK008c_rA), but also that isn't made with, more or less, poison. This turns out to be hard; more on that in a minute. Also, my wife is on a very restrictive diet for personal health reasons. Yes it is working and no, with any luck, she won't be on it forever. But.\r\n\r\nHere's the thing. Corrinne's friend is right, suddenly starting to pay attention to where things comes from and what they're made of, how they're made, who makes them and so on down the production chain very quickly turns you into a mildly-paranoid downer of sorts. The thing is though, it's not just rugs and the antibiotics in your meat -- it's everything. And it's happening whether you're paying attention to it or not.\r\n\r\nI really don't care what you want to look at in your everyday life, could be your food, your house, your clothes, your shoes, your car... it doesn't really matter, below the surface I can almost guarantee something is deeply, deeply fucked up about it. There's toxic chemicals everywhere, I think on some level most of us know that by now, but of course it's worse than that when you start digging. Get a little below the surface and you'll find that [slave labor](http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/04/03/fishermen-rush-be-rescued-amid-indonesian-slavery-probe.html) keeps the price of fish reasonable and hey, how about chocolate? You like chocolate? I do too, but the [slave children who picked it for us](http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/19/child-slavery-and-chocolate-all-too-easy-to-find/) probably have different feelings.\r\n\r\nEveryday we go to the store and blithely buy things without ever thinking about how they got here or what the cost of these items beyond the obvious -- money we have to spend -- might be. And the problem isn't just Walmart or Target or whoever you want to boycott this week. It's not limited to the U.S. or the west either. Exploitation is a universal problem that looks exactly the same in every country I've set foot in. It's a pervasive within a capitalist system. In fact it might be the *basis* of the capitalist system.\r\n\r\nBut that's a huge chunk to chew on. Keep it simple. Just look at one thing. Let's stick with rugs and personal health since that's something you might be able to control to a degree.\r\n\r\nYou probably would not think your rug needs to be coated in flame retardant toxins and held together with 10 different toxic glues. Yet it is and you inhale them every time you walk in the room. I am presumably, inhaling them right now as I type this. Is that worst thing in the world? You didn't click on those links to the child slavery stories above did you? No, toxic rugs are most definitely not the worst thing in the world. \r\n\r\nYet toxins in rugs and furniture seems like a really easy thing to fix. After all 100 years ago rugs were considerably less toxic, if they were toxic at all. So why are those toxins there now? Why does you rug need to be toxic at all? Does flame retardant really save that many lives? Is it worth saving a handful of lives at the possibility of shortening all the rest? \r\n\r\nWhat's most troubling to me is the brutal economics of toxicology. Here's the hard reality of it: if you want a non-toxic rug you will pay at least 3x times as much as you would for a rug with misc gene-altering petrochemicals deeply embedded in it.\r\n\r\nIn other words, if you're either poor and the cheap rug is your only choice or you just don't want to spend too much of your life energy on a rug, you will either have to increase the number of petrochemicals in your blood on a daily basis or not have a rug. And while no one seems to know how bad these things are for you, everyone agrees they're not good. Particularly if you're very young like all of my children. \r\n\r\nAccording to even the conservative estimates from groups like the EPA, all of these chemicals have long term repercussions. It would, as I understand it, not be wholly inaccurate to say you will die sooner because of them. Might only be a month sooner, might only be a week sooner, but you lose a little life. Because you bought the cheaper rug.\r\n\r\nThis gets more depressing when you apply it across a broad spectrum and realize that the same economics of toxicology apply to food, where you live, how you move through the world, the shoes you wear, the things you apply to your skin, your hair, your kid's hair.\r\n\r\nSure there are worse problems in the world, there are far worse problems in the world. I just find this one interesting because it's an entirely consumer culture created problem. The need to produce cheaper goods drives manufacturing methods and materials down until you get the rug equivalent of Soylent Green. It's not people (as far as I know) but it will kill them, both as they make it and as it sits in your house. That's consumerism.\r\n\r\nBut what is consumerism? Or better, why is consumerism? The socio-biology answer is perhaps the most illuminating in this context: modern consumerism provides domesticated primates like ourselves with a means of attaining and identifying one's social status within a group. The one with the coolest rug is the *homo sapiens sapiens* equivalent of the gorilla with the biggest chest thump.\r\n\r\nAh Culture. In order to attain a higher position in the group (and of course really tie the room together) we are willing to inhale poison on a daily basis. We trade our lives for stuff to illustrate the state of our lives to other people and increase our status in their eyes. \r\n\r\nAs Tim Jackson puts it in a [talk](https://youtu.be/NZsp_EdO2Xk) called \"an economic reality check\", \"*We spend money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last to people we don't care about*.\"\r\n\r\nWe literally trade our time (all we have) for money to buy things that are killing us and the people we love. And we consider this totally sane. But it's not. If someone walked up off the street and offered to spray the same chemicals around out house for free we would call them insane. \r\n\r\nWhy do we do it to ourselves? Because we've come to expect that our houses have rugs, that we can eat chocolate, that we can eat seafood. Because a lot of those things have nothing wrong with them. It's not *all* awful. Sometimes a fish is just a fish. Sometimes a rug is just a rug. But sometimes it isn't. Sometimes the bare floor ends up being more comfortable.", "dek": "Everyday we go to the store and blithely buy things without ever thinking about how they got here or what the cost of these items might be. We trade our time (all we have) for money to buy things that are killing us and the people we love. And we consider this totally sane. ", "pub_date": "2015-04-18T22:05:41", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.4031938964789390 33.9527308267274819)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/fucked.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/fucked-v.jpg", "meta_description": "Everyday we go to the store and blithely buy things without ever thinking about how they got here or what the cost of these items might be. We trade our time (all we have) for money to buy things that are killing us and the people we love. And we consider ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 153, "fields": {"title": "Coming Home", "slug": "coming-home", "body_html": "<p>I finally brought the 1969 Yellowstone trailer to the house. Many thanks to my in-laws for storing it at their place for the last six months.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/Yellowstone-01.jpg\" alt=\"1969 Yellowstone travel trailer\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>I am happy to report that, despite a sketchy tow hookup that doesn't lock to the ball, some last-minute wiring snafus, a considerable amount of dry rot on the tire and of course the fact that it still isn't registered, I did nevertheless succeed in getting it to the house.</p>\n<p>I need to get the tire off and replaced, but so far the lug nuts, they just won't budge. </p>\n<p>Instead I decided to pull out the oven and some cabinet hardware and few other things I plan to keep. I bought a respirator, some goggles (pretty sure there's a good amount of black mold in the insulation, I get a bad headache without the respirator) and was all set to tear it apart only to discover... the Clutch Head. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/clutch-head.gif\" alt=\"Clutch head screw diagram\" class=\"postpic\" />The Clutch Head is a peculiar screw head that was -- according to <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives#Clutch\">Wikipedia</a> -- popular with automobile manufacturers in the 1940s, and, wait for it, \"mobile homes and recreational vehicles.\" </p>\n<p>So... it's home, but I still haven't gotten to tear anything out yet. I ordered a <a href=\"http://www.vintagetrailersupply.com/Clutch_Head_Screw_Bits_p/vts-578.htm\">clutch head bit</a> set from Vintage Trailer Supply and it arrived a couple of days ago, which means soon I can get started. Soon, always soon.</p>", "body_markdown": "I finally brought the 1969 Yellowstone trailer to the house. Many thanks to my in-laws for storing it at their place for the last six months.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/Yellowstone-01.jpg\" alt=\"1969 Yellowstone travel trailer\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nI am happy to report that, despite a sketchy tow hookup that doesn't lock to the ball, some last-minute wiring snafus, a considerable amount of dry rot on the tire and of course the fact that it still isn't registered, I did nevertheless succeed in getting it to the house.\r\n\r\nI need to get the tire off and replaced, but so far the lug nuts, they just won't budge. \r\n\r\nInstead I decided to pull out the oven and some cabinet hardware and few other things I plan to keep. I bought a respirator, some goggles (pretty sure there's a good amount of black mold in the insulation, I get a bad headache without the respirator) and was all set to tear it apart only to discover... the Clutch Head. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/clutch-head.gif\" alt=\"Clutch head screw diagram\" class=\"postpic\" />The Clutch Head is a peculiar screw head that was -- according to [Wikipedia][1] -- popular with automobile manufacturers in the 1940s, and, wait for it, \"mobile homes and recreational vehicles.\" \r\n\r\nSo... it's home, but I still haven't gotten to tear anything out yet. I ordered a [clutch head bit][2] set from Vintage Trailer Supply and it arrived a couple of days ago, which means soon I can get started. Soon, always soon.\r\n\r\n\r\n[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives#Clutch\r\n[2]: http://www.vintagetrailersupply.com/Clutch_Head_Screw_Bits_p/vts-578.htm\r\n", "dek": "I am happy to report that, despite a sketchy tow hookup that doesn't lock to the ball, some last-minute wiring snafus, a considerable amount of dry rot on one tire and of course the fact that it still isn't registered, I did nevertheless succeed in getting our 1969 Yellowstone back to our house.", "pub_date": "2015-04-19T21:53:23", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.4014772827086261 33.9574296619052305)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/Yellowstone.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/Yellowstone-v.jpg", "meta_description": "I am happy to report that, despite a sketchy tow hookup that doesn't lock to the ball, some last-minute wiring snafus, a considerable amount of dry rot on one tire and of course the fact that it still isn't registered, I did nevertheless succeed in getting", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 154, "fields": {"title": "King of Birds", "slug": "king-birds", "body_html": "<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2013/skimmer-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2013/skimmer.jpg 1180w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2013/skimmer-2280.jpg 2280w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2013/skimmer.jpg\" alt=\"black skimmers flying along shoreline at sunrise, photo by Ed Yourdon, CC Flicker\"></p>\n<p>The sunset light is perfect, golden, the sort that photographers fantasize about, but the birds are still hard to see, moving far too fast to get a good look at any details on them. Some part of their heads is deep red color, near the eye and the rest of them is black and white. I have ideas, but I don't know for sure. </p>\n<p>My wife is searching Google images on her phone, but Google thinks that \"tern\" is a misspelling of \"turn\", which causes both of us to briefly contemplate how fast the world of <cite>Idiocracy</cite> is approaching. And still no positive identification of the three sleek black and white birds with splashes of vermilion across their faces, skimming the shoreline in tight formation, beaks open, <em>skimming the water from time to time</em>.</p>\n<p>I have a bird book. It's at home on the sideboard. It's been too long since I did this sort of thing, birdwatching. It didn't occur to me that I might want the book. The binoculars are automatic, they nearly alway make the trip even if they spend the majority of it tucked at the bottom or a bag or rattling around in an ammo can. </p>\n<p>I grew up birding. My father was a biologist. Birding was just one of many things we did on family hikes. There were plant pressings, lizards caught and sometimes kept. Snakes, snails, frogs, insects too. But I always liked watching the birds.</p>\n<p>There's something wonderfully ephemeral about watching birds. They're there, but then at any given moment they can flutter tiny wings and disappear into a thicket of trees, or swoop huge spans of wing that slowly and majestically lift their bodies up into the air until they become just a thin black line on the distant horizon.</p>\n<p>I may not have actually pursued identifications and list making much in my adult years, but I've never tired of watching birds just be birds. </p>\n<p>I started traveling on my feet. Hiking the Sierra Nevada, the Trinity Alps, the White Mountains, the deserts of Arizona, Utah and Colorado. I spent a lot of time out there on trails, resting on rocks, wondering, what is this thin wisp of plant clinging to life on the edge of a sandstone cliff? What is this hummingbird buzzing me like an angry hornet? Spend enough time outdoors and I think some level of naturalism finds you.</p>\n<p>That I remain, after all these years, drawn to birds could be old habits not dying, but it could also be the simple fact that birds are everywhere. Even in the densest examples of human population where the crush of people is often quite literal, like Ciudad de M\u00e9xico or the entrance to a subway in New York at rush hour, there are still birds there. Sparrows, pigeons, starlings. Survivors.</p>\n<p>Watching birds teaches you to see the world a bit differently. You're always alert to flittering movements in your peripheral vision. After a while you start to scan the tree line, the edges of the marsh, the place where the buildings meet the sky, the borderlands where movement begins. You quite literally see the world differently.</p>\n<p>I've never really written about it here because it was something that seemed too idiosyncratic to share. Even I think it perhaps a bit odd to spend time watching birds. Or maybe not.</p>\n<p>The birds might lead you to look at the world differently, to be part of the world in ways that you are not the rest of the time. It requires that you be both in your self, mindful and aware of your surroundings (lest you trip and fall or worse), but also to be out of yourself, to be aware of the other and its movements, its awareness. It's a reminder that you are not just in the world, but an active part of it.</p>\n<p>Watching birds becomes a gateway to much more. You can't spend much time watching birds without starting to think about insects and sticks, bushes, trees, water, habitats, ecology, geography, weather, architecture. Everything on earth is intrinsically linked. Most of it much more closely linked than we generally realize. </p>\n<p>Now that I have two young children I've decided to get back into the world of birding, identification, lists and all. In part because it's a good way to get out in nature, and there's nothing that teaches so readily or excites children so much as nature. Also in part because it was part of my own childhood, but also because I want to be able to teach the art of bird watching to my children. They're less than a year old right now, far too young to use binoculars or even pay attention to anything for more than a minute or two, but they already enjoy watching the robins and blue jays that prance on our deck at home. But I'm not trying to get them bird watching right now, I'm relearning the art myself. Relearning how to identify, how to observe birds and their world.</p>\n<p>You can't teach your children something if you aren't already well versed in it yourself. Moreover you can't hope to instill any sense of enthusiasm if you don't have it yourself. Even babies have powerfully accurate bullshit detectors. </p>\n<p>I don't necessarily care if my children get into birding or not. It's not the birds I'd like them to care about; it's the sense of curiosity about the world around them that I'd like to pass on. It's that sense of curiosity and wonder that makes bird watching worth doing and that curiosity carries will beyond the binocular lens. Bird watching is part of the lost art of paying attention to not just the world around you, but the details within that world, to stop, to watch, to make something else the center of your world for a few minutes and to consider its world, to see how it lives, what it does, what it wants, how it lives. To observe, to really watch. To record what you saw when it makes sense to do so and to just watch and enjoy when it doesn't. That's bird watching. At least that's what it means to me. </p>\n<p>I was brought up in nature -- birding, hiking, camping, backpacking, fishing, climbing, kayaking. These were the things my family did for fun. I want to create similar experiences for my kids, to take them out into nature to watch and identify wildlife, to cook on camp stoves, to smell wood fires warming coffee in the morning, to cozy up in a sleeping bag, to watch the stars from inside a tent, to hit the trails at dawn and head for the high country of the mountains because the high country is where human beings are meant to go, to push yourself, your knowledge of the world, your understanding and feeling of being alive beyond where it is today. To never stop exploring, as my former employer emblazons on all its advertising. Disingenuous though it may be on a North Face tag, the words are nevertheless perhaps the best advice there is.</p>\n<p>More than just teaching my kids about birds I want to teach them to have insatiable curiosity, to look at the world as ever-changing and always new, always with something enticing just around the next bend. I don't want them to say, \"look daddy, a bird\", but \"daddy, what kind of bird is that, what is it doing, where is it going why is it doing that where does it sleep what does it eat?\" and the thousands of other questions a curious child will think of -- questions I can't even imagine. </p>\n<p>I'm not 100 percent sure yet what I think the role of a good parent is, but I lean toward this: that you point them in the right direction and get the hell out of the way. To answer the easy questions so that they have enough of a start, the confidence to start asking the really hard questions, the ones even I can't answer.</p>\n<p>And I think one of the best ways to get them started on the curiosity road is to get them out exploring the natural world and exploring it in detail, watching birds, hiking trails, climbing mountains and watching the pines sway in the wind while you eat lunch, seen the starts through the screen of the tent and all the other things I did and wished I had done as a child.</p>\n<p>But you can't teach your children these things if you don't do them yourself. If you don't have a curiosity about the world you won't be able to pass it along. You can't fake it. So I'm getting back into the natural world, into bird watching down here on the shores of the Gulf coast because I want to relearn everything I once knew, still do know, buried somewhere deep down, and pull it back up to the surface both so I can pass it on, but also so I can enjoy it again. I can remember a time when my whole world could momentarily be forgotten and everything about the world suddenly wrapped up in the skittish flitter of a warbler or a Sanderling darting the shoreline or a Black Skimmer, ahem, <em>skimming the shoreline</em>, its partly-red bill strikingly red against the blue of sea and sky, its mouth open as if trying to swallow the ocean whole. </p>\n<p><small>[In addition to forgetting the bird book, I did not have my camera on me when we down at the shoreline. the image at the top of the post is by Ed Yourdon, who posted something that looked <a href=\"https://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/16733423838\">eerily similar</a> to our experience on Flickr with a CC license that allow me to use it here. Thanks Ed.]</small></p>", "body_markdown": "<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\r\n srcset=\"[[base_url]]2013/skimmer-640.jpg 640w,\r\n [[base_url]]2013/skimmer.jpg 1180w,\r\n [[base_url]]2013/skimmer-2280.jpg 2280w\"\r\n src=\"[[base_url]]2013/skimmer.jpg\" alt=\"black skimmers flying along shoreline at sunrise, photo by Ed Yourdon, CC Flicker\">\r\n\r\n\r\nThe sunset light is perfect, golden, the sort that photographers fantasize about, but the birds are still hard to see, moving far too fast to get a good look at any details on them. Some part of their heads is deep red color, near the eye and the rest of them is black and white. I have ideas, but I don't know for sure. \r\n\r\nMy wife is searching Google images on her phone, but Google thinks that \"tern\" is a misspelling of \"turn\", which causes both of us to briefly contemplate how fast the world of <cite>Idiocracy</cite> is approaching. And still no positive identification of the three sleek black and white birds with splashes of vermilion across their faces, skimming the shoreline in tight formation, beaks open, *skimming the water from time to time*.\r\n\r\nI have a bird book. It's at home on the sideboard. It's been too long since I did this sort of thing, birdwatching. It didn't occur to me that I might want the book. The binoculars are automatic, they nearly alway make the trip even if they spend the majority of it tucked at the bottom or a bag or rattling around in an ammo can. \r\n\r\nI grew up birding. My father was a biologist. Birding was just one of many things we did on family hikes. There were plant pressings, lizards caught and sometimes kept. Snakes, snails, frogs, insects too. But I always liked watching the birds.\r\n\r\nThere's something wonderfully ephemeral about watching birds. They're there, but then at any given moment they can flutter tiny wings and disappear into a thicket of trees, or swoop huge spans of wing that slowly and majestically lift their bodies up into the air until they become just a thin black line on the distant horizon.\r\n\r\nI may not have actually pursued identifications and list making much in my adult years, but I've never tired of watching birds just be birds. \r\n\r\nI started traveling on my feet. Hiking the Sierra Nevada, the Trinity Alps, the White Mountains, the deserts of Arizona, Utah and Colorado. I spent a lot of time out there on trails, resting on rocks, wondering, what is this thin wisp of plant clinging to life on the edge of a sandstone cliff? What is this hummingbird buzzing me like an angry hornet? Spend enough time outdoors and I think some level of naturalism finds you.\r\n\r\nThat I remain, after all these years, drawn to birds could be old habits not dying, but it could also be the simple fact that birds are everywhere. Even in the densest examples of human population where the crush of people is often quite literal, like Ciudad de M\u00e9xico or the entrance to a subway in New York at rush hour, there are still birds there. Sparrows, pigeons, starlings. Survivors.\r\n\r\nWatching birds teaches you to see the world a bit differently. You're always alert to flittering movements in your peripheral vision. After a while you start to scan the tree line, the edges of the marsh, the place where the buildings meet the sky, the borderlands where movement begins. You quite literally see the world differently.\r\n\r\nI've never really written about it here because it was something that seemed too idiosyncratic to share. Even I think it perhaps a bit odd to spend time watching birds. Or maybe not.\r\n\r\nThe birds might lead you to look at the world differently, to be part of the world in ways that you are not the rest of the time. It requires that you be both in your self, mindful and aware of your surroundings (lest you trip and fall or worse), but also to be out of yourself, to be aware of the other and its movements, its awareness. It's a reminder that you are not just in the world, but an active part of it.\r\n\r\nWatching birds becomes a gateway to much more. You can't spend much time watching birds without starting to think about insects and sticks, bushes, trees, water, habitats, ecology, geography, weather, architecture. Everything on earth is intrinsically linked. Most of it much more closely linked than we generally realize. \r\n\r\nNow that I have two young children I've decided to get back into the world of birding, identification, lists and all. In part because it's a good way to get out in nature, and there's nothing that teaches so readily or excites children so much as nature. Also in part because it was part of my own childhood, but also because I want to be able to teach the art of bird watching to my children. They're less than a year old right now, far too young to use binoculars or even pay attention to anything for more than a minute or two, but they already enjoy watching the robins and blue jays that prance on our deck at home. But I'm not trying to get them bird watching right now, I'm relearning the art myself. Relearning how to identify, how to observe birds and their world.\r\n\r\nYou can't teach your children something if you aren't already well versed in it yourself. Moreover you can't hope to instill any sense of enthusiasm if you don't have it yourself. Even babies have powerfully accurate bullshit detectors. \r\n\r\nI don't necessarily care if my children get into birding or not. It's not the birds I'd like them to care about; it's the sense of curiosity about the world around them that I'd like to pass on. It's that sense of curiosity and wonder that makes bird watching worth doing and that curiosity carries will beyond the binocular lens. Bird watching is part of the lost art of paying attention to not just the world around you, but the details within that world, to stop, to watch, to make something else the center of your world for a few minutes and to consider its world, to see how it lives, what it does, what it wants, how it lives. To observe, to really watch. To record what you saw when it makes sense to do so and to just watch and enjoy when it doesn't. That's bird watching. At least that's what it means to me. \r\n\r\nI was brought up in nature -- birding, hiking, camping, backpacking, fishing, climbing, kayaking. These were the things my family did for fun. I want to create similar experiences for my kids, to take them out into nature to watch and identify wildlife, to cook on camp stoves, to smell wood fires warming coffee in the morning, to cozy up in a sleeping bag, to watch the stars from inside a tent, to hit the trails at dawn and head for the high country of the mountains because the high country is where human beings are meant to go, to push yourself, your knowledge of the world, your understanding and feeling of being alive beyond where it is today. To never stop exploring, as my former employer emblazons on all its advertising. Disingenuous though it may be on a North Face tag, the words are nevertheless perhaps the best advice there is.\r\n\r\nMore than just teaching my kids about birds I want to teach them to have insatiable curiosity, to look at the world as ever-changing and always new, always with something enticing just around the next bend. I don't want them to say, \"look daddy, a bird\", but \"daddy, what kind of bird is that, what is it doing, where is it going why is it doing that where does it sleep what does it eat?\" and the thousands of other questions a curious child will think of -- questions I can't even imagine. \r\n\r\nI'm not 100 percent sure yet what I think the role of a good parent is, but I lean toward this: that you point them in the right direction and get the hell out of the way. To answer the easy questions so that they have enough of a start, the confidence to start asking the really hard questions, the ones even I can't answer.\r\n\r\nAnd I think one of the best ways to get them started on the curiosity road is to get them out exploring the natural world and exploring it in detail, watching birds, hiking trails, climbing mountains and watching the pines sway in the wind while you eat lunch, seen the starts through the screen of the tent and all the other things I did and wished I had done as a child.\r\n\r\nBut you can't teach your children these things if you don't do them yourself. If you don't have a curiosity about the world you won't be able to pass it along. You can't fake it. So I'm getting back into the natural world, into bird watching down here on the shores of the Gulf coast because I want to relearn everything I once knew, still do know, buried somewhere deep down, and pull it back up to the surface both so I can pass it on, but also so I can enjoy it again. I can remember a time when my whole world could momentarily be forgotten and everything about the world suddenly wrapped up in the skittish flitter of a warbler or a Sanderling darting the shoreline or a Black Skimmer, ahem, *skimming the shoreline*, its partly-red bill strikingly red against the blue of sea and sky, its mouth open as if trying to swallow the ocean whole. \r\n\r\n<small>[In addition to forgetting the bird book, I did not have my camera on me when we down at the shoreline. the image at the top of the post is by Ed Yourdon, who posted something that looked [eerily similar](https://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/16733423838) to our experience on Flickr with a CC license that allow me to use it here. Thanks Ed.]</small>", "dek": "Watching birds teaches you to see the world a bit differently. You're always alert to flittering movements in your peripheral vision. After a while you start to scan the tree line, the edges of the marsh, the place where the buildings meet the sky, the borderlands where movement begins. You quite literally see the world differently.", "pub_date": "2013-05-30T21:42:28", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-84.8733663015173647 29.6574013228877185)", "location": 105, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/skimmers.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/skimmers-v.jpg", "meta_description": "Watching birds teaches you to see the world a bit differently. You're always alert to flittering movements in your peripheral vision. ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 155, "fields": {"title": "We're Here", "slug": "were-here", "body_html": "<p>Lilah and Olivia are young enough that pretty much everywhere is called \"here\". This greatly simplifies the whole \"are we there yet\" dilemma of driving with children. That's not the question. On the drive down here to St. George Island they would ask little Buddhists, \"are we <em>here</em> yet?\" To which Corrinne and I would answer, \"yes, we are here.\" They're young enough that they let us get away with that.</p>\n<p>And we are <em>here</em>. </p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/here-00-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/here-00.jpg 1180w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/here-00-2280.jpg 2280w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/here-00.jpg\" alt=\"Sunrise through clouds over the beach, St George Island, FL\" /> </p>\n<p>What the girls won't let us get away with is car seats. A car seat would make even Paul Theroux want to get off the train. So we were looking for a place to stop and feed the baby, change a few diapers and let the girls get out of their car seats and stretch their legs, which is how we found ourselves in downtown Thomasville, GA. Are we here? Yes we are.</p>\n<p>If you're planning an American road trip here's my best suggestion: avoid the bypass. Go straight on through. Downtown. </p>\n<p>The bypass will just give you gas stations and the same 30 stores arrayed in stucco boxes that you saw 30 minutes ago in the last town. Go straight through. Go downtown. Unless it's Tallahassee, screw that place, take the bypass. The smaller towns though, straight on through is like time travel, straight back to the last moment in time before everything in urban planning went to shit. Or maybe just the last moment there was any urban planning. It feels a bit like going back to the last moment that people actually liked each other, though I know that's an illusion too.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/here-01.jpg\" alt=\"The Big Oak, Thomasville GA\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>The best thing about small towns is the strange little moments you discover. If time is, as the Greeks would have it, a river, it's possible to find the strangest things whirling around in the little eddies of small town centers. Once, somewhere in Indiana or so, in the middle of the night, I went straight through and stumbled on a giant statue of superman in the middle of a downtown square. In Thomasville we went straight on through and stumbled on The Big Oak. </p>\n<p>Look, we're here.</p>\n<p>The only reason I know the name of Thomasville is that it's home to Sweetgrass dairies, which makes a pretty good chevre. There wasn't much in the way of parks though. Damn you urban planners of 1930. But I did see a little tiny tiny plaque out of the corner of my eye that said 'Big Oak' and had an arrow to the right. I turned. There were no further signs. I just kept driving until at one point I actually said, <em>hey, that's a big oak tree</em>, and sure enough there was sign that also said that.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/here-02.jpg\" alt=\"The Big Oak, Thomasville GA\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>And both of us were right, it's a really big oak. The trunk is almost 27 feet in diameter and I have no idea how they purport to know, but the sign claims the tree has been around since 1680. These days it takes a mess of cables and wired and posts to prop it up, but it's still growing. It's still here.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/here-03.jpg\" alt=\"The Girls, Thomasville GA\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>It's even got its own camera or something like that. If you stand by the oak and look up at something your picture gets posted on the internet I believe. We skipped that and had races across the grass to the gazebo instead.</p>\n<p>Later we counted boats along the coast. There's a boat. There's a boat. There's a boat. <em>I want to see another boat</em>. There's a boat. There's a boat. Never boring, always here. And then you arrive. Here again.</p>\n<p>Later at night, the sound of the sea. The waves and wind dying down. The fishing boats lit up on the horizon. The salt in the air. The cloud of the Milky Way. We are right here.</p>", "body_markdown": "Lilah and Olivia are young enough that pretty much everywhere is called \"here\". This greatly simplifies the whole \"are we there yet\" dilemma of driving with children. That's not the question. On the drive down here to St. George Island they would ask little Buddhists, \"are we *here* yet?\" To which Corrinne and I would answer, \"yes, we are here.\" They're young enough that they let us get away with that.\r\n\r\nAnd we are *here*. \r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\r\n srcset=\"[[base_url]]2015/here-00-640.jpg 640w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/here-00.jpg 1180w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/here-00-2280.jpg 2280w\"\r\n src=\"[[base_url]]2015/here-00.jpg\" alt=\"Sunrise through clouds over the beach, St George Island, FL\" /> \r\n\r\nWhat the girls won't let us get away with is car seats. A car seat would make even Paul Theroux want to get off the train. So we were looking for a place to stop and feed the baby, change a few diapers and let the girls get out of their car seats and stretch their legs, which is how we found ourselves in downtown Thomasville, GA. Are we here? Yes we are.\r\n\r\nIf you're planning an American road trip here's my best suggestion: avoid the bypass. Go straight on through. Downtown. \r\n\r\nThe bypass will just give you gas stations and the same 30 stores arrayed in stucco boxes that you saw 30 minutes ago in the last town. Go straight through. Go downtown. Unless it's Tallahassee, screw that place, take the bypass. The smaller towns though, straight on through is like time travel, straight back to the last moment in time before everything in urban planning went to shit. Or maybe just the last moment there was any urban planning. It feels a bit like going back to the last moment that people actually liked each other, though I know that's an illusion too.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/here-01.jpg\" alt=\"The Big Oak, Thomasville GA\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nThe best thing about small towns is the strange little moments you discover. If time is, as the Greeks would have it, a river, it's possible to find the strangest things whirling around in the little eddies of small town centers. Once, somewhere in Indiana or so, in the middle of the night, I went straight through and stumbled on a giant statue of superman in the middle of a downtown square. In Thomasville we went straight on through and stumbled on The Big Oak. \r\n\r\nLook, we're here.\r\n\r\nThe only reason I know the name of Thomasville is that it's home to Sweetgrass dairies, which makes a pretty good chevre. There wasn't much in the way of parks though. Damn you urban planners of 1930. But I did see a little tiny tiny plaque out of the corner of my eye that said 'Big Oak' and had an arrow to the right. I turned. There were no further signs. I just kept driving until at one point I actually said, *hey, that's a big oak tree*, and sure enough there was sign that also said that.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/here-02.jpg\" alt=\"The Big Oak, Thomasville GA\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nAnd both of us were right, it's a really big oak. The trunk is almost 27 feet in diameter and I have no idea how they purport to know, but the sign claims the tree has been around since 1680. These days it takes a mess of cables and wired and posts to prop it up, but it's still growing. It's still here.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/here-03.jpg\" alt=\"The Girls, Thomasville GA\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nIt's even got its own camera or something like that. If you stand by the oak and look up at something your picture gets posted on the internet I believe. We skipped that and had races across the grass to the gazebo instead.\r\n\r\nLater we counted boats along the coast. There's a boat. There's a boat. There's a boat. *I want to see another boat*. There's a boat. There's a boat. Never boring, always here. And then you arrive. Here again.\r\n\r\nLater at night, the sound of the sea. The waves and wind dying down. The fishing boats lit up on the horizon. The salt in the air. The cloud of the Milky Way. We are right here.\r\n", "dek": "Right now the girls call everywhere \"here\". This greatly simplifies the whole \"are we there yet\" dilemma of driving with children. That's not the question. On the drive down here to St. George Island they would ask \"are we here yet?\" To which Corrinne and I would answer, \"yes, we are here.\" They're young enough that they let us get away with that.", "pub_date": "2015-05-07T20:55:59", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.9817034655677190 30.8410407826443169)", "location": 108, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/bigoak.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/bigoak-v.jpg", "meta_description": "On the drive down here to St. George Island they would ask \"are we here yet?\" To which Corrinne and I would answer, \"yes, we are here.\" They're young enough that they let us get away with that.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 156, "fields": {"title": "Tate's Hell", "slug": "tates-hell", "body_html": "<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/storm-st-george-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/storm-st-george.jpg 1140w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/storm-st-george-2280.jpg 2280w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/storm-st-george.jpg\" alt=\"Storm clouds over the beach, St George Island, FL\" /> </p>\n<p>After about of a week of perfect sunshine and a nice little routine that went something like beach-nap-beach, the wind kicked up one evening and blew in a dark line of storm clouds that would hang around all morning for the next few days. The afternoons were still plenty sunny, but we started exploring other things in the morning.</p>\n<p>One morning I convinced everyone we should go take a look at the Apalachicola River and see some of the marsh area. I'd read about a nice boardwalk where the kids could see the marsh and river without too much of a hike. It's also supposed to be a good spot to <a href=\"/jrnl/2013/05/king-birds\">see some birds</a>, especially with the storm blowing in who knows what from the tropics. </p>\n<p>We never actually made it to the Apalachicola River overlook though. We got sidetracked by a place called Tate's Hell. </p>\n<p>Tate's Hell has an arresting name. It pretty much demands that you learn more. We'd seen the signs for it over the years we've been coming down here, and it's hard to miss the vast expanse of green on the map that makes up the present day state park, but we'd never ventured in. I mean, it's called Tate's Hell. Doesn't really make you want to go in.</p>\n<p>Here's a synopsis of the <a href=\"http://www.freshfromflorida.com/Divisions-Offices/Florida-Forest-Service/Our-Forests/State-Forests/Tate-s-Hell-State-Forest\">legend behind the name</a>: </p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Local legend has it that a farmer by the name of Cebe Tate, armed with only a shotgun and accompanied by his hunting dogs, journeyed into the swamp in search of a panther that was killing his livestock. Although there are several versions of this story, the most common describes Tate as being lost in the swamp for seven days and nights, bitten by a snake, and drinking from the murky waters to curb his thirst. Finally he came to a clearing near Carrabelle, living only long enough to murmur the words, \"My name is Cebe Tate, and I just came from Hell!\"</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>If you're like me you're not going to take this legend very seriously. You're going to think, pshaw, <a href=\"/jrnl/2010/03/so-far-i-have-not-found-science\">swamps are fun</a>, how bad can this one be? And about this Tate, what kind of pansy can't handle a swamp? </p>\n<p>This is where I clear my throat and add that now that I've actually been in Tate's Hell for a grand total of about 30 minutes, uh, well, turn out, it can be bad. Really bad in fact.</p>\n<p>It would be an exaggeration to say we were lost, but I do, in hindsight, find it interesting that Tate's Hell managed to get us off course, sidetracked in search of dwarf cypress, before we'd even really entered it. There might be something to that legend.</p>\n<p>Whatever the case, after four miles of increasingly bad dirt/sand roads in a minivan under overcast skies -- with me absently wondering what would sort of impassible mud swamp the road would turn into should the deluge open up -- we made it to the lengthily-named Ralph G. Kendrick Dwarf Cypress Boardwalk Overlook which had inspired us to abandon our original plans of peaceful marshes and rivers. </p>\n<p>This is where it gets really interesting. This is where we \"<a href=\"https://luxagraf.net/photos/galleries/dinosaur-national-monument/#image-5\">get out of the damned contraptions and walk</a>.\" Sort of anyway. From parking lot to end of the boardwalk overlook was about a quarter of a mile. Maybe a half mile tops. Yet in that short distance we encountered one very small alligator, one very large (albeit harmless) black water snake, swarms of mosquitoes, a fire ant mound and hordes of a vicious little yellow flies that packed a nasty bite. </p>\n<p>And that was just half of mile of not really even entering the swamp. Lilah seems to find it all some sort of grand adventure. Olivia got bit by a yellow fly at about the same moment I discovered I was standing on a fire ant mound. She's screaming and tugging on my shirt for me to pick her up and I'm trying to strip off my Chacos and smash ants as fast as I can. I'm sure if there were video it would have been hilarious. In hindsight.</p>\n<figure class=\"picwide\">\n<img sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/tates-hell-01-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/tates-hell-01.jpg 1140w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/tates-hell-01-2280.jpg 2280w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/tates-hell-01.jpg\" alt=\"Alligator eyes in water, Tate's Hell, Florida\">\n<figcaption>While I was taking this photo I was standing on a red ant hill, which I realized, painfully, about one millisecond after pressing the shutter.</figcaption>\n</figure>\n\n<p>Eventually we made it to the actual boardwalk and headed out over the dwarf cypress, which were \nfascinating if only because no one has ever been able to explain them. Despite being, in many cases, over 150 years old, they're no higher than 15 feet. The same cypress at other places in the park grow to normal height, but here, for some reason, they stay short.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/tates-hell-02.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p>We got a slight break from the unrelenting insect onslaught when it started to rain while we were out on the platform. The rain queued up a chorus of frogs that went silent a few minutes later when the rain stopped. Olivia might have even smiled. </p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/tates-hell-03.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p>Sufficiently traumatized by swamp, we headed back to the car and, after spending a few minutes killing all the biting flies that had followed us in the door, we managed to get out of Tate's Hell. On the way home Olivia fell asleep in the car so I ended up back on the road to the marsh area, which soon had us down more dirt roads. We didn't get out to walk the boardwalk but we did run into a few locals on ATVs who assured us it was lovely and that we should return at some point to check it out.</p>\n<p>While they were talking I could help noticing that, aside from their faces, not one of them had a bit of exposed skin, pants were tucked in to boots, long sleeves into gloves. Tate's Hell is only hell if you wonder in doubting that it's hell. Come prepared and it's like anywhere else -- beautiful.</p>", "body_markdown": "<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\r\n srcset=\"[[base_url]]2015/storm-st-george-640.jpg 640w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/storm-st-george.jpg 1140w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/storm-st-george-2280.jpg 2280w\"\r\n src=\"[[base_url]]2015/storm-st-george.jpg\" alt=\"Storm clouds over the beach, St George Island, FL\" /> \r\n\r\nAfter about of a week of perfect sunshine and a nice little routine that went something like beach-nap-beach, the wind kicked up one evening and blew in a dark line of storm clouds that would hang around all morning for the next few days. The afternoons were still plenty sunny, but we started exploring other things in the morning.\r\n\r\nOne morning I convinced everyone we should go take a look at the Apalachicola River and see some of the marsh area. I'd read about a nice boardwalk where the kids could see the marsh and river without too much of a hike. It's also supposed to be a good spot to [see some birds][2], especially with the storm blowing in who knows what from the tropics. \r\n\r\nWe never actually made it to the Apalachicola River overlook though. We got sidetracked by a place called Tate's Hell. \r\n\r\nTate's Hell has an arresting name. It pretty much demands that you learn more. We'd seen the signs for it over the years we've been coming down here, and it's hard to miss the vast expanse of green on the map that makes up the present day state park, but we'd never ventured in. I mean, it's called Tate's Hell. Doesn't really make you want to go in.\r\n\r\nHere's a synopsis of the [legend behind the name][3]: \r\n\r\n> Local legend has it that a farmer by the name of Cebe Tate, armed with only a shotgun and accompanied by his hunting dogs, journeyed into the swamp in search of a panther that was killing his livestock. Although there are several versions of this story, the most common describes Tate as being lost in the swamp for seven days and nights, bitten by a snake, and drinking from the murky waters to curb his thirst. Finally he came to a clearing near Carrabelle, living only long enough to murmur the words, \"My name is Cebe Tate, and I just came from Hell!\"\r\n\r\nIf you're like me you're not going to take this legend very seriously. You're going to think, pshaw, [swamps are fun][4], how bad can this one be? And about this Tate, what kind of pansy can't handle a swamp? \r\n\r\nThis is where I clear my throat and add that now that I've actually been in Tate's Hell for a grand total of about 30 minutes, uh, well, turn out, it can be bad. Really bad in fact.\r\n\r\nIt would be an exaggeration to say we were lost, but I do, in hindsight, find it interesting that Tate's Hell managed to get us off course, sidetracked in search of dwarf cypress, before we'd even really entered it. There might be something to that legend.\r\n\r\nWhatever the case, after four miles of increasingly bad dirt/sand roads in a minivan under overcast skies -- with me absently wondering what would sort of impassible mud swamp the road would turn into should the deluge open up -- we made it to the lengthily-named Ralph G. Kendrick Dwarf Cypress Boardwalk Overlook which had inspired us to abandon our original plans of peaceful marshes and rivers. \r\n\r\nThis is where it gets really interesting. This is where we \"[get out of the damned contraptions and walk][5].\" Sort of anyway. From parking lot to end of the boardwalk overlook was about a quarter of a mile. Maybe a half mile tops. Yet in that short distance we encountered one very small alligator, one very large (albeit harmless) black water snake, swarms of mosquitoes, a fire ant mound and hordes of a vicious little yellow flies that packed a nasty bite. \r\n\r\nAnd that was just half of mile of not really even entering the swamp. Lilah seems to find it all some sort of grand adventure. Olivia got bit by a yellow fly at about the same moment I discovered I was standing on a fire ant mound. She's screaming and tugging on my shirt for me to pick her up and I'm trying to strip off my Chacos and smash ants as fast as I can. I'm sure if there were video it would have been hilarious. In hindsight.\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"picwide\">\r\n<img sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\r\n srcset=\"[[base_url]]2015/tates-hell-01-640.jpg 640w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/tates-hell-01.jpg 1140w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/tates-hell-01-2280.jpg 2280w\"\r\n src=\"[[base_url]]2015/tates-hell-01.jpg\" alt=\"Alligator eyes in water, Tate's Hell, Florida\">\r\n<figcaption>While I was taking this photo I was standing on a red ant hill, which I realized, painfully, about one millisecond after pressing the shutter.</figcaption>\r\n</figure>\r\n\r\nEventually we made it to the actual boardwalk and headed out over the dwarf cypress, which were \r\nfascinating if only because no one has ever been able to explain them. Despite being, in many cases, over 150 years old, they're no higher than 15 feet. The same cypress at other places in the park grow to normal height, but here, for some reason, they stay short.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/tates-hell-02.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\nWe got a slight break from the unrelenting insect onslaught when it started to rain while we were out on the platform. The rain queued up a chorus of frogs that went silent a few minutes later when the rain stopped. Olivia might have even smiled. \r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/tates-hell-03.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\nSufficiently traumatized by swamp, we headed back to the car and, after spending a few minutes killing all the biting flies that had followed us in the door, we managed to get out of Tate's Hell. On the way home Olivia fell asleep in the car so I ended up back on the road to the marsh area, which soon had us down more dirt roads. We didn't get out to walk the boardwalk but we did run into a few locals on ATVs who assured us it was lovely and that we should return at some point to check it out.\r\n\r\nWhile they were talking I could help noticing that, aside from their faces, not one of them had a bit of exposed skin, pants were tucked in to boots, long sleeves into gloves. Tate's Hell is only hell if you wonder in doubting that it's hell. Come prepared and it's like anywhere else -- beautiful.\r\n\r\n\r\n[1]: \r\n[2]: /jrnl/2013/05/king-birds\r\n[3]: http://www.freshfromflorida.com/Divisions-Offices/Florida-Forest-Service/Our-Forests/State-Forests/Tate-s-Hell-State-Forest\r\n[4]: /jrnl/2010/03/so-far-i-have-not-found-science\r\n[5]: https://luxagraf.net/photos/galleries/dinosaur-national-monument/#image-5\r\n", "dek": "Tate supposedly wandered out of his eponymous hell swamp and managed to say \"my name is Cebe Tate, and I just came from Hell!\" before promptly dropping dead. If you're like me you're not going to take this legend very seriously. You're going to think, pshaw, swamps are fun, how bad can this one be? As it happens, if you're not prepared, it can be pretty bad. Especially in Yellow Fly season.", "pub_date": "2015-05-15T09:55:27", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-84.8141645841502054 29.8542386145882332)", "location": 109, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/tates-hell.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/tates-hell-v.jpg", "meta_description": "If you're like me you're not going to take the legend of Tate's Hell very seriously. You're going to think, pshaw, swamps are fun, how bad can this one be? As it happens, if you're not prepared, it can be pretty bad. Especially in Yellow Fly season.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 157, "fields": {"title": "A Big Long Week", "slug": "big-long-week", "body_html": "<p>Whenever Lilah and Olivia want to convey long lengths of time they use the phrase \"in a big long week\". As in, \"we have not had any cookies in a big long week.\" A big long week could be anywhere from two days to over a year. In this case we had two big long weeks on the island.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1140px) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/big-week-01-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/big-week-01.jpg 1140w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/big-week-01-2280.jpg 2280w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/big-week-01.jpg\" alt=\"\"></p>\n<p>One of the many great things about having children is I get to see a lot <a href=\"https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2015/01/sunrise\">more sunrises</a>. </p>\n<p>It's strange how quickly you develop habits and patterns. We would usually wake up, watch the sunrise, have breakfast and then get down to the beach.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-02.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-03.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-04.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p>St. George is teeming with creatures for kids to play with, including some that defend themselves.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-05.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-06.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-06a.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-07.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-08.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-09.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<div class=\"picgroup duo\">\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-10.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picuno\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-11.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picdos\" />\n</div>\n\n<p>After trying various water toys, pool noodles, boogie boards, etc, none of which convinced the girls to come out in the ocean with me, I finally tried a good old pool float, which was a huge hit.</p>\n<div class=\"picgroup duo\">\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-12.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picuno\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-13.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picdos\" />\n</div>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-14.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>\n<p>The great tragedy of being a twin is that sometimes you have to take turns.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-15.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-16.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-17.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-18.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-19.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\n<p>A couple of times we made the trek to Apalachicola for cookies and other supplies.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-20.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-21.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/big-week-22.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" /></p>", "body_markdown": "Whenever Lilah and Olivia want to convey long lengths of time they use the phrase \"in a big long week\". As in, \"we have not had any cookies in a big long week.\" A big long week could be anywhere from two days to over a year. In this case we had two big long weeks on the island.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1140px) 100vw\"\r\n srcset=\"[[base_url]]2015/big-week-01-640.jpg 640w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/big-week-01.jpg 1140w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/big-week-01-2280.jpg 2280w\"\r\n src=\"[[base_url]]2015/big-week-01.jpg\" alt=\"\">\r\n\r\nOne of the many great things about having children is I get to see a lot [more sunrises](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2015/01/sunrise). \r\n\r\nIt's strange how quickly you develop habits and patterns. We would usually wake up, watch the sunrise, have breakfast and then get down to the beach.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-02.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-03.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-04.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\nSt. George is teeming with creatures for kids to play with, including some that defend themselves.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-05.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-06.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-06a.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-07.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-08.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-09.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n<div class=\"picgroup duo\">\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-10.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picuno\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-11.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picdos\" />\r\n</div>\r\n\r\nAfter trying various water toys, pool noodles, boogie boards, etc, none of which convinced the girls to come out in the ocean with me, I finally tried a good old pool float, which was a huge hit.\r\n\r\n<div class=\"picgroup duo\">\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-12.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picuno\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-13.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picdos\" />\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-14.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\nThe great tragedy of being a twin is that sometimes you have to take turns.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-15.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-16.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-17.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-18.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-19.jpg\" alt=\"\" />\r\n\r\nA couple of times we made the trek to Apalachicola for cookies and other supplies.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-20.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-21.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/big-week-22.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picwide960\" />\r\n\r\n", "dek": "Whenever Lilah and Olivia want to convey long lengths of time they use the phrase \"in a big long week\". As in, \"we have not had any cookies in a big long week.\" A big long week could be anywhere from two days to over a year. In this case we had two big long weeks on the island.", "pub_date": "2015-05-18T12:36:06", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-84.8670577459167532 29.6600957363159274)", "location": 105, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/bigweek.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/bigweek-v.jpg", "meta_description": "Whenever Lilah and Olivia want to convey long lengths of time they use the phrase \"in a big long week\". As in, \"we have not had any cookies in a big long week.\" A big long week could be anywhere from two days to over a year. ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 158, "fields": {"title": "Ode to the Outdoor Shower", "slug": "ode-outdoor-shower", "body_html": "<p>The outdoor shower may be one of life's greatest joys. Certainly it makes for memorable showers. In fact, really, other than the fact that I know I shower every other day or so, I have no distinct memory of any of my showers save those that were outdoors. </p>\n<p>I remember sunshowers hung from the <a href=\"/jrnl/2007/07/other-ocean\">mast of a sailboat</a>, the slick mossy wood of an outdoor <a href=\"/jrnl/2006/02/lovely-universe\">shower in Laos</a>, the cold marble of bucket showers in India, the sandy tile of the beach showers where I grew up.</p>\n<p>Down here I almost exclusively shower in the outdoor shower. This is partly practical, you're coming up from the beach, you need to wash the sand off before you go inside. Also, at the place we stay the indoor shower lacks a water pressure regulator and so is a bit like standing in front of a fire hose. After a long day in the sun the last thing your skin needs is a pressure washing.</p>\n<p>The practicalities of the outdoor shower are really just a cover though. The truth is I prefer to shower out of doors.</p>\n<p>There's a wonderful freedom to showering outside. It's the same sort of freedom, or feeling of freedom that I get when I know I there are no constraints on my time, that feeling of freedom at the outset of an extended trip, that feeling that anything is possible. With the outdoor shower I think some of that might be the nakedness. My body is rarely naked to the elements (however peaceful they may be) and there's certainly an exhilaration in that. When was the last time you were naked in the afternoon sun?</p>\n<p>There's also the novelty of it. I happen to think we should all do more things outdoors and to me the best way to do that is not to go somewhere exotic and commune with nature, but to just to do the things you do now indoors, out of doors. Simple. Can't beat the view either.</p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/outdoor-shower-view-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/outdoor-shower-view.jpg 1140w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/outdoor-shower-view-2280.jpg 2280w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/outdoor-shower-view.jpg\" alt=\"view of clouds from an outdoor shower, St. George Florida.\"></p>", "body_markdown": "The outdoor shower may be one of life's greatest joys. Certainly it makes for memorable showers. In fact, really, other than the fact that I know I shower every other day or so, I have no distinct memory of any of my showers save those that were outdoors. \r\n\r\nI remember sunshowers hung from the [mast of a sailboat][1], the slick mossy wood of an outdoor [shower in Laos][2], the cold marble of bucket showers in India, the sandy tile of the beach showers where I grew up.\r\n\r\nDown here I almost exclusively shower in the outdoor shower. This is partly practical, you're coming up from the beach, you need to wash the sand off before you go inside. Also, at the place we stay the indoor shower lacks a water pressure regulator and so is a bit like standing in front of a fire hose. After a long day in the sun the last thing your skin needs is a pressure washing.\r\n\r\nThe practicalities of the outdoor shower are really just a cover though. The truth is I prefer to shower out of doors.\r\n\r\nThere's a wonderful freedom to showering outside. It's the same sort of freedom, or feeling of freedom that I get when I know I there are no constraints on my time, that feeling of freedom at the outset of an extended trip, that feeling that anything is possible. With the outdoor shower I think some of that might be the nakedness. My body is rarely naked to the elements (however peaceful they may be) and there's certainly an exhilaration in that. When was the last time you were naked in the afternoon sun?\r\n\r\nThere's also the novelty of it. I happen to think we should all do more things outdoors and to me the best way to do that is not to go somewhere exotic and commune with nature, but to just to do the things you do now indoors, out of doors. Simple. Can't beat the view either.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\r\n srcset=\"[[base_url]]2015/outdoor-shower-view-640.jpg 640w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/outdoor-shower-view.jpg 1140w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/outdoor-shower-view-2280.jpg 2280w\"\r\n src=\"[[base_url]]2015/outdoor-shower-view.jpg\" alt=\"view of clouds from an outdoor shower, St. George Florida.\">\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n[1]: /jrnl/2007/07/other-ocean\r\n[2]: /jrnl/2006/02/lovely-universe\r\n", "dek": "The outdoor shower may be one of life's greatest joys. Certainly it makes for memorable showers. I have fond memories of sunshowers hung from the mast of a sailboat, the slick mossy wood of an outdoor shower in Laos, the cold marble of bucket showers in India, the sandy tile of the beach showers where I grew up.\r\n", "pub_date": "2015-05-20T22:13:19", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-84.8673581533248296 29.6608042898007334)", "location": 105, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/outdoor-shower.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/outdoor-shower-v.jpg", "meta_description": "The outdoor shower may be one of life's greatest joys. Certainly it makes for memorable showers. In fact, really, other than the fact that I know I shower every other day or so, I have no distinct memory of any of my showers save those that were outdoors.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 159, "fields": {"title": "The Big Blue Bus", "slug": "big-blue-bus", "body_html": "<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/bluebus-1-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/bluebus-1.jpg 1180w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/bluebus-1-2280.jpg 2280w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/bluebus-1.jpg\" alt=\"A blue 1969 Dodge Travco\"></p>\n<p>The first few corners are nerve-wracking, the kind of white knuckled terror-inducing driving I haven't done since the very first time I sat down behind the wheel. Or the time in Thailand that I <a href=\"/jrnl/2006/01/king-carrot-flowers\">claimed I could ride a motorcycle</a> when I actually had no clue. It always works out in the end. So far<sup id=\"fnref:1\"><a class=\"footnote-ref\" href=\"#fn:1\" rel=\"footnote\">1</a></sup>.</p>\n<p>I have driven somewhere in the neighborhood of 250,000 miles, but this is the first time I've strapped myself to a 27 foot long monstrosity in unknown condition and promptly set off, barreling down a mountain on narrow streets through a town I just arrived in 2 hours ago. The prudent man would have done some sort of test drive I suppose. Meh, screw it, let's go.</p>\n<p>There's one big hairpin turn at the bottom of the hill that I noted on the way up and it's the main thing that has my palms sweating. It turns out to be nothing. I pump the brakes a bit, take it nice and slow and slice around the corner like it's not even there. After that the road straightens out as it heads through downtown Mars Hill. </p>\n<p>At the first stop light I pull up close enough to the car in front of me that the entire facade of the Travco is visible in the back window. I start laughing because it is quite simply the coolest thing I've ever seen. </p>\n<p>Over the course of the next 180 or so miles home this will happen over and over again whenever I stop and catch a glimpse of this thing in some window or mirror. It's not me either, it seems to happen to just about everyone. I get 180 miles of smiles and waves. The first time I stop a man is up at the window asking if he can take a picture before I've even taken off my seatbelt.</p>\n<p>I get smiles and waves from hoodlum kids lounging on skateboards behind a gas station, a couple coming out of an antique store in Fletcher, NC. An old man walking through Anderson, SC tips a baseball cap to me and everyone I see looking my way it smiling. I pull into a gas station, but it proves too small (the tank is in rear and these pumps were not 27 feet from the door of the building) so I leave. My parents, who are in town and graciously agreed to following me back, stop and go inside and later report that the entire gas station is talking about the Travco, speculating on the year.</p>\n<p>Pulling into Athens I stop at a light downtown and everyone waves. A man making a left comes around the corner and I watch his eyes widen as he takes in the Dodge grill and then he breaks into a smile and starts laughing. I completely relate to him.</p>\n<p>Usually wanting is better than having. We call this buyers remorse, but it's basic evolutionary biology -- wanting, that is, imagining having, releases more dopamine than having. So you have all this dopamine associated with the thing you want, but then when you actually get the thing, well, no more dopamine.</p>\n<p>Unless it's a Travco apparently, because I get a huge hit of dopamine every time I see this thing. It's been in the driveway for nearly a week and I still smile every time I walk out the door. Yesterday my wife and I stood in the front yard just staring at it and giggling like children. </p>\n<p>To call it an RV is to say a Stradivarius is a violin. The Travco is not an RV; it's a 27 foot long fiberglass container full of magic and joy. I have no idea what it is about it, but it's clearly not just me that feels it. It'll make you giddy.</p>\n<p>I can't wait to get it in top traveling shape.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/bluebus-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/bluebus-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/bluebus-4.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>Work on the interior is underway. I'll post more pics later.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/bluebus-5.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<div class=\"footnote\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n<li id=\"fn:1\">\n<p>I hope it goes without saying that my kids were not with me for this trip. <a class=\"footnote-backref\" href=\"#fnref:1\" rev=\"footnote\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text\">↩</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n</div>", "body_markdown": "<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\r\n srcset=\"[[base_url]]2015/bluebus-1-640.jpg 640w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/bluebus-1.jpg 1180w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/bluebus-1-2280.jpg 2280w\"\r\n src=\"[[base_url]]2015/bluebus-1.jpg\" alt=\"A blue 1969 Dodge Travco\">\r\n\r\n\r\nThe first few corners are nerve-wracking, the kind of white knuckled terror-inducing driving I haven't done since the very first time I sat down behind the wheel. Or the time in Thailand that I [claimed I could ride a motorcycle](/jrnl/2006/01/king-carrot-flowers) when I actually had no clue. It always works out in the end. So far[^1].\r\n\r\nI have driven somewhere in the neighborhood of 250,000 miles, but this is the first time I've strapped myself to a 27 foot long monstrosity in unknown condition and promptly set off, barreling down a mountain on narrow streets through a town I just arrived in 2 hours ago. The prudent man would have done some sort of test drive I suppose. Meh, screw it, let's go.\r\n\r\nThere's one big hairpin turn at the bottom of the hill that I noted on the way up and it's the main thing that has my palms sweating. It turns out to be nothing. I pump the brakes a bit, take it nice and slow and slice around the corner like it's not even there. After that the road straightens out as it heads through downtown Mars Hill. \r\n\r\nAt the first stop light I pull up close enough to the car in front of me that the entire facade of the Travco is visible in the back window. I start laughing because it is quite simply the coolest thing I've ever seen. \r\n\r\nOver the course of the next 180 or so miles home this will happen over and over again whenever I stop and catch a glimpse of this thing in some window or mirror. It's not me either, it seems to happen to just about everyone. I get 180 miles of smiles and waves. The first time I stop a man is up at the window asking if he can take a picture before I've even taken off my seatbelt.\r\n\r\nI get smiles and waves from hoodlum kids lounging on skateboards behind a gas station, a couple coming out of an antique store in Fletcher, NC. An old man walking through Anderson, SC tips a baseball cap to me and everyone I see looking my way it smiling. I pull into a gas station, but it proves too small (the tank is in rear and these pumps were not 27 feet from the door of the building) so I leave. My parents, who are in town and graciously agreed to following me back, stop and go inside and later report that the entire gas station is talking about the Travco, speculating on the year.\r\n\r\nPulling into Athens I stop at a light downtown and everyone waves. A man making a left comes around the corner and I watch his eyes widen as he takes in the Dodge grill and then he breaks into a smile and starts laughing. I completely relate to him.\r\n\r\nUsually wanting is better than having. We call this buyers remorse, but it's basic evolutionary biology -- wanting, that is, imagining having, releases more dopamine than having. So you have all this dopamine associated with the thing you want, but then when you actually get the thing, well, no more dopamine.\r\n\r\nUnless it's a Travco apparently, because I get a huge hit of dopamine every time I see this thing. It's been in the driveway for nearly a week and I still smile every time I walk out the door. Yesterday my wife and I stood in the front yard just staring at it and giggling like children. \r\n\r\nTo call it an RV is to say a Stradivarius is a violin. The Travco is not an RV; it's a 27 foot long fiberglass container full of magic and joy. I have no idea what it is about it, but it's clearly not just me that feels it. It'll make you giddy.\r\n\r\nI can't wait to get it in top traveling shape.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/bluebus-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/bluebus-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/bluebus-4.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nWork on the interior is underway. I'll post more pics later.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/bluebus-5.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\n[^1]: I hope it goes without saying that my kids were not with me for this trip.\r\n", "dek": "Change of plans, sold the trailer, bought a 1969 Dodge Travco, the coolest vehicle ever made. The first few corners were nerve-wracking, the kind of white knuckled terror-inducing driving I haven't done since the very first time I sat down behind a wheel. Or the time I claimed I could ride a motorcycle when I actually had no clue. It all works out in the end.\r\n", "pub_date": "2015-06-10T12:52:36", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-82.5456594880304237 35.8205005096186397)", "location": 111, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/bluebus.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/bluebus-v.jpg", "meta_description": "Bought a 1969 Dodge Travco, the coolest vehicle ever made. The first few corners were nerve-wracking, the kind of white knuckled terror-inducing driving I haven't done since the very first time I sat down behind a wheel. Or the time I claimed I could ride ", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 160, "fields": {"title": "Elvis Has Left the Building", "slug": "elvis-has-left-building", "body_html": "<p>Elvis is currently in my office, peering over my shoulder as I type. And sorry, but the lovely velvet rendition of the king that came with our Travco has already been claimed by friend. It's not that I have anything against the king, it's that I don't have anything at all, no feelings one way or the other on Elvis. So he came out and will be going to someone who does have some feelings about the king. </p>\n<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/travco-01-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/travco-01.jpg 1180w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/travco-01-2280.jpg 2280w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/travco-01.jpg\" alt=\"Stripped interior of 1969 Dodge Travco\"></p>\n<p>Here's an early image of the bus the way we got it (more or less) for reference:</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/bluebus-4.jpg\" alt=\"Interior of Dodge Travco before with Velvet Elvis painting\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>The walls, ceiling and floor of the Travco are also coming out. Stripping them all has been a slow process in part because of the weather -- it's been murderously hot here for a couple of weeks. One day I came out of the bus dripping sweat and thought the outside temperature actually felt pretty pleasant. When I checked the thermometer it turned out to be 97 degrees F. Inside the bus is at least 15-20 degrees warmer.</p>\n<p>It's also been slow going because I'm trying to remove the walls relatively intact so I can use the pieces as templates for the new paneling. I still don't know what to do for the ceiling, but a fellow Travco owner got in touch and offered up a bench seat and bunk system, which solves the thing I was dreading the most -- building that from scratch without measurements to work from. One headache solved. Thanks Paul.</p>\n<p>I also started cleaning up the exterior. With help of course.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/bluebus-wash.jpg\" alt=\"Washing a blue 1969 Travco\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>Detailing a 27ft long 11ft tall vehicle is as time consuming as you'd think, but I think the results are worth it. The finish on this thing isn't perfect, but it's still pretty good, good enough that I doubt I'll do anything beyond patching a few soft spots I found on the roof.</p>\n<p>What's impressed me the most about all this tear down is just how well this thing has held up. </p>\n<p>With the exception of the furnace area beneath the sink there is almost no rotted wood. One piece by the door needs to be replaced, but that's it. That's pretty amazing for a 46-year-old vehicle. Of course there is a gaping hole in the floor under my sink due to a very poorly installed furnace that lacked any sealing and was obviously still leaking.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/bluebus-hole.jpg\" alt=\"water rot and floor damage 1969 Travco\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>So I get to do a little subflooring and an interesting curved cut to match the contour of the side right next to the door. </p>\n<p>Once that's done the next step is to rework the wiring and install a solar setup. Then I can re-insulate and start the fun part -- putting it all back together.</p>", "body_markdown": "Elvis is currently in my office, peering over my shoulder as I type. And sorry, but the lovely velvet rendition of the king that came with our Travco has already been claimed by friend. It's not that I have anything against the king, it's that I don't have anything at all, no feelings one way or the other on Elvis. So he came out and will be going to someone who does have some feelings about the king. \r\n\r\n<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\r\n srcset=\"[[base_url]]2015/travco-01-640.jpg 640w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/travco-01.jpg 1180w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/travco-01-2280.jpg 2280w\"\r\n src=\"[[base_url]]2015/travco-01.jpg\" alt=\"Stripped interior of 1969 Dodge Travco\">\r\n\r\nHere's an early image of the bus the way we got it (more or less) for reference:\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/bluebus-4.jpg\" alt=\"Interior of Dodge Travco before with Velvet Elvis painting\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nThe walls, ceiling and floor of the Travco are also coming out. Stripping them all has been a slow process in part because of the weather -- it's been murderously hot here for a couple of weeks. One day I came out of the bus dripping sweat and thought the outside temperature actually felt pretty pleasant. When I checked the thermometer it turned out to be 97 degrees F. Inside the bus is at least 15-20 degrees warmer.\r\n\r\nIt's also been slow going because I'm trying to remove the walls relatively intact so I can use the pieces as templates for the new paneling. I still don't know what to do for the ceiling, but a fellow Travco owner got in touch and offered up a bench seat and bunk system, which solves the thing I was dreading the most -- building that from scratch without measurements to work from. One headache solved. Thanks Paul.\r\n\r\nI also started cleaning up the exterior. With help of course.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/bluebus-wash.jpg\" alt=\"Washing a blue 1969 Travco\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nDetailing a 27ft long 11ft tall vehicle is as time consuming as you'd think, but I think the results are worth it. The finish on this thing isn't perfect, but it's still pretty good, good enough that I doubt I'll do anything beyond patching a few soft spots I found on the roof.\r\n\r\nWhat's impressed me the most about all this tear down is just how well this thing has held up. \r\n\r\nWith the exception of the furnace area beneath the sink there is almost no rotted wood. One piece by the door needs to be replaced, but that's it. That's pretty amazing for a 46-year-old vehicle. Of course there is a gaping hole in the floor under my sink due to a very poorly installed furnace that lacked any sealing and was obviously still leaking.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/bluebus-hole.jpg\" alt=\"water rot and floor damage 1969 Travco\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nSo I get to do a little subflooring and an interesting curved cut to match the contour of the side right next to the door. \r\n\r\nOnce that's done the next step is to rework the wiring and install a solar setup. Then I can re-insulate and start the fun part -- putting it all back together.\r\n", "dek": "It's not that I have anything against the king, it's that I don't have anything at all, no feelings one way or the other on Elvis, so he came out and won't be going back in. The walls, ceiling and floor of the Travco are also coming out.", "pub_date": "2015-07-02T10:06:48", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.4013270790041190 33.9637744574520752)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/elvis-gone.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/elvis-gone-v.jpg", "meta_description": "It's not that I have anything against the king, it's that I don't have anything at all, no feelings one way or the other on Elvis, so he came out and won't be going back in. The walls, ceiling and floor of the Travco are also coming out.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entry", "pk": 161, "fields": {"title": "Progress", "slug": "progress", "body_html": "<p><img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\n srcset=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/progress-00-640.jpg 640w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/progress-00.jpg 1180w,\n https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/progress-00-2424.jpg 2424w\"\n src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net/2015/progress-00.jpg\" alt=\"Girls playing beside a blue 1969 Dodge Travco motorhome\"></p>\n<p>Restoring artifacts from the past is a slow, painstaking and sometimes tedious process. </p>\n<p>I've never participated in an archaeological dig, but sometimes restoring the bus feels like one. I may not be digging million year old dinosaur bones out of the ground -- I imagine it takes a bit more skill to extract dinosaur bones and reconstruct the skeleton of an actual creature from them than it does to peel the paneling, insulation, wiring and plumbing out of a 1969 Travco -- but the aim is the same: bring the past back to life.</p>\n<p>The problems is you never quite know what the past was <em>really</em> like. Is that a bone a finger joint or a toe? Should this be attached to that or was it always flopping here? Do I need this random bit of 12V wire tucked behind the under the sink? And, most ominously, the moments you find yourself thinking, \"what in the world is that?\"</p>\n<p>I've also diagnosed a potentially serious disease in restoration projects that primarily manifests itself like this: \"Well, as long as I'm in here, I might as well check the ______\". </p>\n<p>Next thing you know, instead of just fixing some rotting wood behind the kitchen counter you've completely re-done the entire plumbing.</p>\n<p>It's all fun though. Especially getting all the crap out. Tearing out the ugly roof wart air conditioning unit and kicking it down to the ground where is shattered was especially satisfying (see <a href=\"/jrnl/2015/06/big-blue-bus\">a picture</a> of said wart). Falling through the rotting floor under the hot water heater and almost punching my foot through the black water tank, less so. Fortunately I've mostly been working barefoot. I'm pretty sure a shoe would have had just enough extra weight to have cracked the tank.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/progress-01.jpg\" alt=\"The rotted wood under the water heater and water tank\" class=\"picfull\" /></p>\n<p>The air conditioning is gone though and that's all that really matters. I hate air conditioning. I have it in my home because when air conditioning came along we promptly threw out all the things that made it possible to live without air conditioning. So now we build houses in the worst possible way and then pay a ton of money to keep them cool. Progress. Never mind that humanity somehow managed to do for 60,000 or so years, give or take, with, gasp, no air conditioning at all. To hear most people these days those first 60,000 years had to have been one long miserable existence. </p>\n<p>I disagree. I think life without air conditioning is grand, if a bit sweatier here in the south. But we don't intend to spend much time here in the south. And yes, I have spent several summers here in the south without air conditioning. I survived. I even enjoyed it.</p>\n<p>I did install a fan in its place. I'm not an animal. I even went in for the fancy reversible fan with temperature controlled shutoff, which should be more than sufficient to keep things from getting too bad. The thing is -- forget for a moment that I reject the notion that life should be constantly comfortable and climate controlled -- let's stick to the more universal idea that not being too hot is generally more pleasant than being too hot... it's an RV, if it's too hot where we are, we will fire up the magnificent Dodge engine and go somewhere cooler. I really need to tear out the rear A/C too, but for now it stays.</p>\n<p>It should go without saying that the heater has likewise long since departed via graceless and shattering fall to the concrete. Nothing replaces the heater. Instead we now have enough storage space under the stove for more useful items like a slow cooker, a cast iron dutch oven or two, a few jars of fermenting veggies and maybe even a sauerkraut crock. </p>\n<p>Next on a chopping block is the two way refrigerator which will replaced by an icebox and the Onan generator which will be replaced by nothing. The ice box move freaks everyone out, \"oh my god, how will you live without a refrigerator?!\" Technically, we'll still have one, it's just going to be in the form of a 12V freezer, which will allow us to freeze things we need to freeze (ice blocks, bulk purchase meat, huge batches of camp beans from aforementioned dutch ovens) and then turn it off when we don't need it. The other things we need kept refrigerated will do just fine in an icebox. </p>\n<p>Almost nothing in the average refrigerator actually needs to be there for any health reasons. If you'd like to learn more, read up on how long distance sailors store food.</p>\n<p>The generator will be replaced by couple solar panels on the roof which don't take up 10 cubic feet, are silent and don't belch smoke. Looking forward to the storage space that will buy us in the back, under the bed. </p>\n<div class=\"picgroup duo\">\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/progress-02.jpg\" alt=\"Travco t-shirts\" class=\"picuno\" />\n<img src=\"https://images.luxagraf.net//2015/progress-03.jpg\" alt=\"Travco t-shirts\" class=\"picdos\" />\n<div class=\"picgroup-cap\">Travco t-shirts (printed by a band called The Swell Season -- no idea what the music sounds like, but I bought some shirts for the girls).</div>\n</div>\n\n<p>Slowly but surely progress happens. Or what I call progress, which this case means reverting to technology of roughly 1955, around the time technology slips into solipsism. Well, except solar, that, along with incremental improvements in energy efficiency are about the only decent tech inventions since 1955. And those are few and far between. My 1969 Ford F250 gets as good or better gas mileage than the current line of Ford trucks. </p>\n<p>Which is not to say I hate technology, just that most of it serves itself or its makers, not its users. </p>\n<p>Solar is a notable exception -- possibly the best idea/tech we've ever invented. I mean, I'm not crazy anti-tech, I just think the good, sustainable ideas are few and far between. But I'm not a delusional lunatic who thinks I'm <a href=\"http://www.vox.com/2015/9/9/9275611/victorian-era-life\">living in the Victorian era by playing dress up</a> or anything. I just don't really like air conditioning. Or heaters. Or generators. And I prefer a good fire to electric light. Hmm.</p>", "body_markdown": "<img class=\"picwide\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw\"\r\n srcset=\"[[base_url]]2015/progress-00-640.jpg 640w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/progress-00.jpg 1180w,\r\n [[base_url]]2015/progress-00-2424.jpg 2424w\"\r\n src=\"[[base_url]]2015/progress-00.jpg\" alt=\"Girls playing beside a blue 1969 Dodge Travco motorhome\">\r\n\r\nRestoring artifacts from the past is a slow, painstaking and sometimes tedious process. \r\n\r\nI've never participated in an archaeological dig, but sometimes restoring the bus feels like one. I may not be digging million year old dinosaur bones out of the ground -- I imagine it takes a bit more skill to extract dinosaur bones and reconstruct the skeleton of an actual creature from them than it does to peel the paneling, insulation, wiring and plumbing out of a 1969 Travco -- but the aim is the same: bring the past back to life.\r\n\r\nThe problems is you never quite know what the past was *really* like. Is that a bone a finger joint or a toe? Should this be attached to that or was it always flopping here? Do I need this random bit of 12V wire tucked behind the under the sink? And, most ominously, the moments you find yourself thinking, \"what in the world is that?\"\r\n\r\nI've also diagnosed a potentially serious disease in restoration projects that primarily manifests itself like this: \"Well, as long as I'm in here, I might as well check the ______\". \r\n\r\nNext thing you know, instead of just fixing some rotting wood behind the kitchen counter you've completely re-done the entire plumbing.\r\n\r\nIt's all fun though. Especially getting all the crap out. Tearing out the ugly roof wart air conditioning unit and kicking it down to the ground where is shattered was especially satisfying (see [a picture](/jrnl/2015/06/big-blue-bus) of said wart). Falling through the rotting floor under the hot water heater and almost punching my foot through the black water tank, less so. Fortunately I've mostly been working barefoot. I'm pretty sure a shoe would have had just enough extra weight to have cracked the tank.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/progress-01.jpg\" alt=\"The rotted wood under the water heater and water tank\" class=\"picfull\" />\r\n\r\nThe air conditioning is gone though and that's all that really matters. I hate air conditioning. I have it in my home because when air conditioning came along we promptly threw out all the things that made it possible to live without air conditioning. So now we build houses in the worst possible way and then pay a ton of money to keep them cool. Progress. Never mind that humanity somehow managed to do for 60,000 or so years, give or take, with, gasp, no air conditioning at all. To hear most people these days those first 60,000 years had to have been one long miserable existence. \r\n\r\nI disagree. I think life without air conditioning is grand, if a bit sweatier here in the south. But we don't intend to spend much time here in the south. And yes, I have spent several summers here in the south without air conditioning. I survived. I even enjoyed it.\r\n\r\nI did install a fan in its place. I'm not an animal. I even went in for the fancy reversible fan with temperature controlled shutoff, which should be more than sufficient to keep things from getting too bad. The thing is -- forget for a moment that I reject the notion that life should be constantly comfortable and climate controlled -- let's stick to the more universal idea that not being too hot is generally more pleasant than being too hot... it's an RV, if it's too hot where we are, we will fire up the magnificent Dodge engine and go somewhere cooler. I really need to tear out the rear A/C too, but for now it stays.\r\n\r\nIt should go without saying that the heater has likewise long since departed via graceless and shattering fall to the concrete. Nothing replaces the heater. Instead we now have enough storage space under the stove for more useful items like a slow cooker, a cast iron dutch oven or two, a few jars of fermenting veggies and maybe even a sauerkraut crock. \r\n\r\nNext on a chopping block is the two way refrigerator which will replaced by an icebox and the Onan generator which will be replaced by nothing. The ice box move freaks everyone out, \"oh my god, how will you live without a refrigerator?!\" Technically, we'll still have one, it's just going to be in the form of a 12V freezer, which will allow us to freeze things we need to freeze (ice blocks, bulk purchase meat, huge batches of camp beans from aforementioned dutch ovens) and then turn it off when we don't need it. The other things we need kept refrigerated will do just fine in an icebox. \r\n\r\nAlmost nothing in the average refrigerator actually needs to be there for any health reasons. If you'd like to learn more, read up on how long distance sailors store food.\r\n\r\nThe generator will be replaced by couple solar panels on the roof which don't take up 10 cubic feet, are silent and don't belch smoke. Looking forward to the storage space that will buy us in the back, under the bed. \r\n\r\n<div class=\"picgroup duo\">\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/progress-02.jpg\" alt=\"Travco t-shirts\" class=\"picuno\" />\r\n<img src=\"[[base_url]]/2015/progress-03.jpg\" alt=\"Travco t-shirts\" class=\"picdos\" />\r\n<div class=\"picgroup-cap\">Travco t-shirts (printed by a band called The Swell Season -- no idea what the music sounds like, but I bought some shirts for the girls).</div>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n\r\nSlowly but surely progress happens. Or what I call progress, which this case means reverting to technology of roughly 1955, around the time technology slips into solipsism. Well, except solar, that, along with incremental improvements in energy efficiency are about the only decent tech inventions since 1955. And those are few and far between. My 1969 Ford F250 gets as good or better gas mileage than the current line of Ford trucks. \r\n\r\nWhich is not to say I hate technology, just that most of it serves itself or its makers, not its users. \r\n\r\nSolar is a notable exception -- possibly the best idea/tech we've ever invented. I mean, I'm not crazy anti-tech, I just think the good, sustainable ideas are few and far between. But I'm not a delusional lunatic who thinks I'm [living in the Victorian era by playing dress up](http://www.vox.com/2015/9/9/9275611/victorian-era-life) or anything. I just don't really like air conditioning. Or heaters. Or generators. And I prefer a good fire to electric light. Hmm.\r\n", "dek": "I'm not crazy anti-tech, I just think the good, sustainable technologies are rare. I'm not a delusional lunatic who thinks I'm living in the Victorian era or anything. I just don't really like air conditioning. Or heaters. Or generators. And I prefer a good fire to electric light.", "pub_date": "2015-09-22T16:12:48", "enable_comments": true, "point": "SRID=4326;POINT (-83.4083437377862964 33.9579043699893646)", "location": 4, "status": 1, "photo_gallery": null, "image": "images/post-images/2015/progress.jpg", "thumbnail": "images/post-thumbnail/2015/bluebus-v.jpg", "meta_description": "I'm not crazy anti-tech, I just think the good, sustainable technologies are rare. But I'm not a delusional lunatic who thinks I'm living in the Victorian era or anything. I just don't really like air conditioning. Or heaters. Or generators. Hmm.", "template_name": 0}}, {"model": "jrnl.entryaside", "pk": 1, "fields": {"title": "kote", "body": "post about sugru on ere forums, start by saying i was rereading the parts of the book that talks about repair/life span of objects. ask if anyone has used it, wht they think", "entry": 134}}, {"model": "jrnl.homepagecurrator", "pk": 1, "fields": {"alt_text": "Girls playing beside a blue 1969 Dodge Travco motorhome", "image_base_url": "progress-00", "tag_line": "The latest is almost never the greatest.", "banner": 161, "template_name": "archives/homepage.html", "entry_list": [155, 146, 134]}}]
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