On
Minnesota and Fishing
Fishing today. Quite a violent
sport. You gut a worm to put it on a hook, then you capture fish,
half-suffocate them, and if they are babies, you rip the hook
out of their mouths and throw them back. In the end, you rip
open their bodies to remove their entrails and then eat their
flesh. We found a few momma's and I ate their eggs deep friend.
Violent. You know, if we all had to do our own butchering, there
would be far more vegetarians. As it is, we live in isolated
pods and refer to animals as beef or pork. At least chickens
are still chickens. Anyway, what a violent mess we live in. Personally,
I blame God, but you all know that, don't you.
Landing
in Beijing
Well, I'm here, and it was a
bumpy ride coming in, the plane was okay, it was turbalence of
the existential kind. Running around, taking care of business,
getting things done,
I didn't have time to feel. So on the plane, when I did feel
something, there wasn't time
to grab a donut, and I was stuck with all the emotions. Leaving
California for the trip I think is like dying, our stuff is gone,
our friends are far away, and I am left with myself. And then
I think my leaving feels like I've been drafted and I'm going
off to war, war for the self? Against the self? In the words
of the immortal Freddie Mercury, leaving home ain't easy.
On the plane we watched a movie, THE
HURRICANE with Denzel Washington, and it
brought up a lot. And so then I thought about going to prison,
and this experience was
like going to prison, and how much courage and strength it would
take. In the end, I
was left with my fear and the schism that happened when I left
Colorado. I got off the
plane in California in 1989, and there were no bands, no girls,
no life-long friends, just tarmac and Santa Clara Valley. It
was so hard. I came expecting so much, and believing that I would
be able to just recreate my life from Colorado, and when I learned
that I didn't have any social skills, that I was scared and homesick
and ill-equiped for the move, it was devastating, and the rest
of the time in California was rebuilding. I could not live life
with the tools that I brought with me from Colorado. Now I am
worried about the same thing happening, that our little pilgrimage
will show me how ill-equipped I am now. I guess the difference
is that now I know that I have limits, that I don't have the
stamina for travel that Laura has, that I need breaks where I'll
need to read or do nothing, and that's okay. Ten years ago I
wouldn't have known that, I would have the ideal in my head,
and then damn the torpedos, I'm going ahead with it, no matter
what. And in the end, being shocked and overwelmed that I wasn't
the stud I had thought I was. At least now I know that, and I
know a little bit more about reality.
So now that the trip has begun, I see
that I should have spent more times with friends,
that I don't have a lot of friendship skills, like calling people
to just chat, or get together,
or remembering birthdays and things like that. I left California
with friends, but I wish I
would have spent more time with them. Maybe that is what the
great pilgrimage is
about, leaving puts into focus the truth about ourselves, or
at least shows us what was
the truth about where we lived before we left. I don't know.
I get on the road, finally,
and now I want to go home, and I think that 18 months is too
long to be away, and we
should cut the trip short. Ahhh, the duplicity of the human mind.
Laura's friend said
something wise, that even if we stayed in the bay area, we wouldn't
know what our life
would be like in 18 months, and if we thought about all we had
to do for the next 18
months we would be overwelmed as well. Overwelmed. Yeah, I understand
that. So
now that I am in Beijing, we have a cool hotel room, it's big
and we even have HBO
and CNN, I worry about Vietnam. I'm never where I'm at, I'm always
either regretting
the past or fearing the future. And that is a tragedy.
So, here it is, here is where I am at.
Thanks for reading, and if you skipped to the
bottom and feel guilty, go back and read all of it, now! Pray
for us. I know that God
will give us the things we need, but I am still so afraid. On
the plane, flying in, here we
are over Kamchatka, an alien ocean, an alien land, and I have
never been more
terrified. And on the cab ride over, the people, the bicycles,
the poverty, the Chinese
characters, the whole scope of China, it flooded over me and
I was mesmerized,
excited, but terrified.
Open Letter to Robert Kaplan, author of To The Ends of the Earth
Dear Mr. Kaplan,
My wife and I are on a trip that is similar to the one you took in your book, To the Ends of the Earth, though we are trying to avoid much of what you sought, the crime, the bribes, the starving children, the open sewers, the unbelievably disgusting bathrooms, the eco-cide, things like that. For backpackers, we are on a very luxurious budget and we have a lot of freedom the other, intrepid travelers you met didn't have. So we've avoided some of the telltale signs of the anarchy you described in your book, but then again, we have seen too much of what you wrote about: the population explosion, the holocaust of the environment, the huge villages that some mistake as cities, and like you, we don't have any answers. As a political scientist and adroit traveler and writer, we desperately turned the pages of your book for an answer, but there was none. But you did allude to the idea that in reality the world has always been a troubled place, especially in the places where you have visited. Funny, if you would have written your book a thousand years ago, China would have been far more impressive and you would have had your doubts about Europe. Istanbul might have been a little more upbeat, but Central Asia would have been about the same, except less people, less oil, and perhaps less chaos.
We are starting in Southeast Asia, going through India, and then down into Africa before touring Europe and we've planned a year and a half for this trek. My wife and I both left the computer boom in Silicon Valley to see the world before we settled down to have children in the dubious comfort and safety of suburban America. One Expat in Hanoi went back to the States and was hysterical, keeping her children always within her sight, lest they be stolen or shot by some anti-social maniac. In the First World, if I can even use that term any more, we are wealthy enough to live much of our lives alone, nestled in a protective bubble of Television and economics, believing that other people get sick and die, but we can count on our life being long and fruitful. The thing about being poor, I think, is that you don't have to be poor alone. There are many other poor people around to keep you company. And if you are a poor woman, you still have comraderie with your girlfriends, and women have that special bond that the oppressed people all over the world share. Rich men, often, are rich and manly alone. Not always, certainly, but enough so that maybe it is the solitude that creates the deviants in American society. We certainly have our fair share of prisons and high school shootings.
In Vietnam, the postcard salesman clambered over us as soon as we left our hotel, complete with Air Con. Intrepid as we are, we need Air Con, and we were going to write a travel book of our own, AC Around the World. Beggars have also come up to us, one little girl followed us for a block, pulling on our arms, pointing to restaurants for food and the like. Right now, it's 14000 Vietnamese Dong to the dollar. But do we give her money? Do we buy postcards we don't want? We say we don't want to create a nation of beggars, but doesn't the little girl need food? And then the horrifying idea that with less people, Viet Nam might have a far better chance in the world, and so the girl is just a casualty, an unfortunate martyr in the aftermath of the explosion boom. Reading about Africa in your book, a part of me thought that the Non-Government Organizations should pull out, and then those that survive can rebuild. Are we keeping too many people alive in a world that is running out of resources? Walking around in the Vietnamese jungle, everything has been eaten, no mammals, few insects. We snorkeled in Halong Bay and found a desert, everything had been eaten. So if two billion people need to die in order for the scales to balance out, then the little beggar girl is just one out of that number, and economics and chance dictated her unfortunate demise. Me, I'll be in my suburban home, mowing my lawn, using up seventy percent of the world's resources, worrying over God knows what, believing that my health insurance and bank account are a sufficient shield from all the violence and desperation in the world.
A friend of mine went to Peru a couple
of years ago, and his guide book, along with all of his American
friends, warned him of the scams, the pick pockets, the corrupt
police, all of that. So he and his friends went, always on guard,
always suspicious, and he realized how ridiculous they were being
when they boarded a bus but didn't have small enough bills to
pay. The bus driver and his partner just didn't have enough to
make change. So the rest of the bus took up a collection and
these peasants paid for the rich American contingent to ride
the bus. My friend remembers all of his worry with such a fury,
yet, my wife and I heard about a couple doing something to our
trip who went to a house with a stranger they met and wound up
stripped of everything in a hotel room hours later after being
drugged. One of the things that struck me in your book was all
of the people that helped you along the way, your friends as
well as kind strangers who aided you without thought of reward.
The African woman in the beginning who saw that you were not
in the right part of town to be walking, the Chinese kid who
got stiffed by his boss, and many others that acted as your guide
and translator. What strikes me about the world, more and more,
is not the violence and crime, but the lack of violence and crime
there really is. When my wife and I walk down the street in Hanoi,
we are millionaires to the people around us. Our pocket change
is a month's wage. What stops them from robbing us? We got into
so many taxis in Beijing, not having a clue where we were going,
not a clue. We couldn't read or write Chinese, that was obvious,
we couldn't identify the taxi driver if anything happened, and
we were easy targets. Why didn't he just drive us down an alley
where his buddies were waiting and then steal everything? I know
it happens, but I am surprised it does not happen more. Not just
surprised, shocked. I was certain that my wife and I would be
robbed, but now, I'm not so sure. We don't drink, we aren't really
disco people, and we are careful and not too trusting, but on
top of the that, the world is far safer than I think it is. I
know that the police in China and Viet Nam are oppressive, that
we are around people a lot, but still, how often were you in
terrible parts of the world, and nothing happened to you. That's
another thing I was shocked about, you were never robbed. Sure
you were nickeled and dimed by corrupt border officials, and
I'm sure you paid extravagant prices for things the locals got
far cheaper, but you were never physically, violently attacked.
I find that amazing. So the world is dangerous, atrocious things
happen (I think of the Cambodian commandant who created by a
serial killer by having an uneducated peasant kill pigs over
and over so that when he switched to people it wouldn't be that
bad) but most of the people on the planet are not the blood thirsty
scavengers that I sometimes think they are. After the Columbine
High School massacre, I was not so much shocked at the event,
I was more amazed that they hadn't killed more people, that Columbine
doesn't happen more. For the most part, people don't like violence,
and are loathe to kill.
When people do kill, who do they kill?
In America, they kill family and friends, people they have known
for a long time. In other parts of the world, I'm sure it's similar.
It's like the gangs in Los Angeles. Instead of storming into
the suburbs and robbing the rich, they massacre each other over
city blocks. During our time in Halong Bay, we rented the boats
from a couple of women for the day, and in the end, one of the
women took all the money and wouldn't share it with the other.
Instead of cheating us, she was going to cheat her neighbor.
Maybe we are just alien. I'm sure you've had a similar experience,
traveling, people looking at you, the rich Westerner, coming
to their country. Maybe we can be fleeced for extra money, pay
the foreignor price, but when it comes to thievery and violence,
we are just too alien for that, but I would think that would
only make it easier. And again, I understand that tourists and
travelers are killed, mugged, arrested, kidnapped, and ransomed
everyday, but not enough, not enough when there is such inequity.
You said in your book, that you were writing to warn the west,
that the borders of anarchy were expanding and that we are a
part of a shrinking world and could not ignore the growing population
of restless young men looking for a cause other than hanging
out and playing card with their friends on the streets of their
slums. I keep thinking about those Cambodian teenagers, armed
with AK-47's and filled with ideology, and it reminded me of
the Hitler youth. I taught middle school and high school, and
there is nothing more dangerous than a teenager who knows they
are right and will do anything for a cause. Killing and dying
are concrete enough for the today minded teen to wrap his mind
around.
I don't believe in an apocalypse, certainly, five thousand years of civilization and history is not going to be stopped from a messiah descending from the heavens, and a part of me believes that I can just go and hide in my gated community and forget about all of what I have seen. I can just throw my hands into the air, the world has always been bad, it will always be bad, and as long as I have mine, who cares? Let God deal with all these people, he created them all anyway. But there is another part of me that knows that I can't go back to the sixty hour work week at a software company, working only to pay for the Nike's on my kid's feet. I want to serve the world, but I have no idea of where to begin. Do we feed the starving, just so they'll grow into better soldiers for some demagogue? I'm not sure I'm made to be one of those NGO volunteers, living in the bush, ducking bullets and trying to deal with the long-term effects of Larium. And I've tried my hand teaching, and sixty hours working in a software company was infinitely better than sixty hours fretting over my students, so at this point, I really don't know what I can do for this ailing world. The Buddhists say that if I reduce my own suffering, the suffering of the world is decreased. But I think I listened to much to my Jesuit teachers, and I feel like I must give back to the world. I have been so blessed, at every turn I have been blessed.
Tonight we take the bus from Hanoi to Hoi An. We've hooked up
with an English couple, fellow world travelers. My wife and I
are weary, and we've been only been gone a month. We dream of
Thai beaches and lazy days, away from the economic and political
miasma of Viet Nam, but we also believe that we are here for
a reason, to see what you wrote about in your book, to be kinder
when we do go back to the states, and to ponder all of these
complexities. We've left your book with a Mary Knoll priest here,
working with juvenile delinquents in a prison outside of Hanoi.
We enjoyed it so much, but as I turned the last page, I was just
struck by how few solutions there are to any of this. I would
like to think that any solution would have to be spiritual in
nature, but then I feel like just another crackpot asking God
for help. I say and write this a lot, but I don't know. And I
fear people that are certain that they know for sure. Thank you
again for writing the book, and if you have any advice, words
of encouragement, or solutions, please pass them along.
Swimming
With Sharks: The Myth of Travel
Laura and I became certified PADI Open Water Divers because our
trip was going to take us to some of the best diving places in
the world. Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Seychelle Islands,
the Maldives, people went there to scuba dive. I had always wanted
to try scuba diving; I watched Thunderball way too many
times, and so we learned how to scuba dive. And during our time
in Thailand, we dove with leapard sharks, two meters, maybe more,
with a long, flowing tail, and they are called Leopard Sharks
because of their spots.
How cool does that sound, yeah, we went diving with Leapard Sharks, and one came up and eyed us. So now, I can go to parties, and we can talk about the things we've done, and I can chirp up and say, "There was this one time, we were diving with Leopard Sharks, they were two meters long, and one even swam right up to us and checked us out." So now I can say that.
A couple things about the world trip. In a way, I went on the trip for the same reason I wanted to scuba dive; traveling and seeing the world was always something I wanted to try. And I watched a lot of James Bond movies over and over again. And now at parties, I can list all the countries I've seen and all the cool things I've done. And so, herein lies the myth of travel. Travel does nothing for you or to you or anything like that in and of itself. People who say that have spent too much time at the Louvre. I should qualify myself, travel, in and of itself, does not force change, what happens when you travel can bring about changes, but travel in and of itself does not. People kept saying, "Wow, that's quite a trip. You'll never come back as the same person." Maybe. But is anyone the same after eighteen months? And I've always been struck by how much we all want our lives to change, and we want big, momentous changes. Man, after that trip, you're going to be a different person. This is always said suggesting that this is a good thing, that becoming a different person is a good thing.
Laura and I are staying in Air Conditioned rooms, many of the rooms that we've been in have HBO and MTV, and the Internet is everywhere. True, the poverty is still there when we go out, and we have seen some very beautiful and interesting things. But you know, there was poverty back in the United States, and California is brimming with beautiful places. Funny, so many people are looking to go off the beaten track, but wind up taking the same tours as everyone else. Mama Han's boat tour in Nha Trang, the Sapa tour, the Halong Bay tour, riding elephants, snorkeling shark point in Koh Phi Phi. If we went into our own backyards where we speak the language and where we have some contacts, there we can get off the beaten track. I said this to Laura and she pointed out that we wouldn't because we would be too busy buying groceries, having money meetings, running errands, or watching Family Matters, love that Erkel. And so we went on this grand adventure where we got to swim with sharks.
Did I mention that leapard sharks eat only plankton? Did I talk about how even though the shark had a lot more to fear from humans that we had to fear from it, Laura and I were still scared and had to keep reminding ourselves that we were safe? No, at the party, you don't mention the details, you market it and yourself, and you try and put yourself in the best light. In the end, all of this, and the list of countries you have been to, is complete and total bullshit. I don't want to play that game. The reality is that you leave home with yourself, you take yourself all over, and you go back home with yourself. Monumental change happens inside, and inside, is where ever you are right now. We see a lot of people going through the motions of travel but are generally too inebriated to remember much of what they have done. Has travel down this huge spiritual magic show on them? Maybe, but probably not.
Let me tell you the most interesting things so far about the world trip. And it's not the places or the people or anything like that. As far as I could see, I could have done the same trip in the United States and gotten to see similar things. Well, the Chinese acrobats were very cool. But back to my point, the most amazing part of the trip is what happened to time when we left the U.S. There is a great quote in STAR TREK:GENERATIONS. "Some say time is the fire in which we burn." That is exactly the case. Time has suddenly become an ocean, and we think, man, eighteen months of this. I don't think I can do it. We email our friends and in a couple of days, when they haven't emailed us back, we think that the world has come to an end. We are feeling a lot more minutes of the day on this trip than we were working, running errands, or watching Family Matters, love that Erkel. On our ewords of wisdom page, one of the sections says that we have entered the monastery of the world, and if anything, that is the most amazing thing.
But notice, we didn't have to leave our homes for that. We just had to slow down, and give it time. Maybe I should say, time is the only real currency we have to spend. And suddenly, we have a lot more to spend, but you know where we want to spend it? On our family and friends, who are fourteen hours and God knows how many miles away. I get to write more, Laura gets to chat more, we get to do interesting things to fill up our day, but again, we didn't have to leave to find this out. Or maybe we did, I don't know.
The other great lesson we have learned from debunking our own myths about travel is that life is, in the end, very democratic. The most important parts are open to everyone. You do not need money, you do not need to travel, you do not need anything at all, to really experience life. The most important parts of life are open to those that are looking for them, and they are so simple, most of us don't have know we have them until they are gone. They are relationships, with ourselves, with each other, with God, and with the world. Poor people, rich people, people who will live and die five miles from where they were born, and even fuckin' world travelers, we all can really experience life, the important parts of life.
So for those of you out there, hating your job, wishing you were swimming with sharks and dong other exciting things, quit everything and come and do it. Nothing will change. In the end, you will be right there, with yourself, burning in the fires of time.
Does this mean we come home now? No way, I want to see if those people were right. I want to see if eighteen months away will make me a completely different person. For many of my friends, they will welcome the change.
Open Letter to Stephen King: An Eleven Year Old Apology
Dear Mr. King,
Eleven years ago I wrote you a letter, after I read Misery, it seemed fitting to write a fan letter after reading that particular book. It remains the only letter I have ever sent to a famous person. I always talk about writing people, but it never comes to pass. For example, I wanted to write Michael Moore and send him five dollars because of the movie Roger and Me. I felt like he deserved that much, but alas, it never came to be. It was my mother who motivated me to write you the letter, eleven years ago, and she even filled out the envelope, which is probably another reason I have never sent a letter to a famous person, I don't know how to do the mailing. With this letter, however, it's going to be easy. I am going to post it on my website, and through that whole six degrees of separation thing, you will hear about the Aaron and Laura World Trip website, you'll read this letter, and email me back. As you can see, I too write fiction.
I just finished reading Bag of Bones. I found a copy in Krabi, Thailand, and thought that it was the perfect thing to read on the train on the way back to Bangkok. I had a hankering for fiction, and since you are really the only modern fiction writer I read, it worked out perfectly. I read other writers, Cormac McCarthy is one of them, Toni Morrison is another, but I don't seek out their books like I do yours. Anyway, I read the book waiting in the bus station, then I read another chapter in the berth, all cozy with the curtain pulled tight, and then when I woke up because I had never slept on a train before and didn't have the knack for it (not that I'm a champion sleeper in my best moments), I read for another couple of hours. Well, by that time, it was all over, I was hooked, and so I woke up and read the rest, both on our way into Bangkok and in our hotel room.
I guess the purpose of this letter is to apologize for the last letter. I would like to say, in my defense, that I was eighteen at the time, turning nineteen, leaving home for college, something I was nowhere near ready to do, not by any stretch of the imagination. I don't remember all the fine print, but I do remember saying that you should stop wasting all of your immense writing talent and work on something serious, so you'll be remembered, so you'll make it into Norton's Anthologies of Supreme Writers. Enough of this horror stuff, you need to write a serious novel, like Ernest Hemingway, full of short sentences that you repeat over and over. Something that Gregory Peck could have starred in once the inevitable movie was made, either Gregory Peck or Charleton Heston. Something serious.
When I was nineteen I had completely, and when I say completely, I mean irrevocably given up on being a writer. My short stories just didn't cut it with the literary magazine, and I was too much of a man to be a poet. That was before I knew that being a writer is just one step up from piss-boy and one step below God Emporer - the former for those trying to get published and get the attention that we crave, the latter for the few giants of the field who sway the universe with their pens. That was when I thought all one needed was to type up the next great idea, sell it to Random House, and then bask in royalties. Now, I understand, to get published, you have to have sex with someone powerful, sell body parts, kill, and grovel, and whine, and gnash teeth, and in the end getting published is about as likely as winning the lottery. And for me, I haven't even tried to get published, which makes me like the guy whose pissed off that he's missing out on the twenty million dollars but he's never stooped to buy a lottery ticket at all. I guess I've stood out in too many thunder storms, up in the Rocky Mountains, and was never hit by lightening; I'm just not lucky.
In the past eleven years I wrote a novel, and then I revised that unwieldy son of a bitch for five years, and in the past three years I wrote a trilogy still just about as rough as rough can be. The trilogy has potential, and I wanted to finish it in case my big world trip turned sour and I never got home. I send my revisions from the road to a friend, in hopes that someone will recognize my pure genius if the unthinkable happens and I will publish after my demise; hey, what's this in Aaron's pocket, it looks like a lottery ticket, fancy that? My first novel will always be my first love, a true Aaron Ritchey novel, it is the only first novel I could ever have written. When I get back from my odyssey, I hope to do one more revision, and then look to get it published. Most likely, when I scratch off the gray stuff, I won't win the twenty million dollars, but Lord, I just want to try. I am the Rocky Balboa of the writing world: I don't have to win, I just want to go the distance, to try and peddle my uniquely me stories to a savage, financial juggernaut, that would sell the warm blood from my veins if it could move product. Just in case I died on the trip, I worked with my wife and we found a printer and I made thirty copies of my first novel, The Dream of the Archer, for the people around who might like to take a peek at my writing. Many couldn't finish it, those that could, liked it in the way people will say they like Asian desserts if their son's Vietnamese friend brings over their god-awful gelatin monstrosities. My friend from college stayed up all night and read the whole thing and cried in all the right parts. I wrote the novel for an audience of two, me and my friend. I dedicated it to my wife because I matured enough writing it to marry her; it gave me the sense and the fortitude and the hope. It also gave me a sense of reality. I haven't found a way to pitch it yet, but it's about a man who is slowly waking up that you can't live in a fantasy world all your life.
Which brings us back to you and the letter I wrote eleven years ago. I was dead wrong to write what I wrote. You know, in college, the college I left to attend after writing that letter, having given up on a writing career before beginning, I found myself not the party animal that I always thought I would be. I found myself playing Dungeon and Dragons with a lot of guys who had never seen a girl naked, outside of the video screen and the magazine (how do you pronounce Oui?). I was so embarrassed that my life had come to that. And then when I wrote my first novel, it had a sorcerer named Eljer Wetnight, there were demons, a heroic archer, a reluctant princess, the trappings of the fantasy novel, and I felt embarrassed by it. I started the novel by accident, but then it became fun to think that I could write a novel, and then I finished it, and I started revising it, and before long people at parties would ask me about my novel. I would hem and haw, and finally say, "It's kind of like David Lynch meets The Lord of the Rings." They would shake their heads, and then we would talk about something else. I hate talking about my writing. This letter, though, this is kind of fun, and so I am being verbose, running off at the mouth. My wife started telling people I write on the trip, and I have to go through this whole thing about my trilogy. What's it about? And I still say, well, it's David Lynch meets The Lord of the Rings, but sometimes I say it's a mythic, pseudo-religious tract set in a fantasy-science fiction world, and my characters include a turn of the century Gikuyu woman, a poor rice farming girl from 12th century India, a Hispanic middle school kid from modern San Jose, a wretched, evil, ancient necromancer whose given to sodomy, pedophilia, and conversations on the nature of God, but then I have twelve main characters, and it gets a little muddled, and I don't know what to say. These cross-genre things never fly, it will never get published, and I will die nameless. That's okay. I love it. I love the story, I love the characters, I love the whole thing. Even the bad parts, maybe the bad parts most of all.
I think I blew my chance of the Atlantic Monthly picking up this letter and publishing it, it's long and rambling and most likely as unpublishable as my novel. Thank God. Bottom line, Mr. King, if I am going to write, I'm not going to write James Joyce short stories, I'm not going write Ernest Hemingway novels, I am going to write fantasy novels, I am going to have characters who have flaming swords, they'll be dragons and demons and there will be quests and heroic, but tragic endings, and I will love them. You've said this about your own writing, that you write what comes to you. Other writers see a bog in some deserted mountainside and think of a poor coal miner's daughter, struggling to get out of town and make it in the big city, and you think of evil things that could slurp out of the morass and eat a small, Maine town. I fall on your side of the coin. Eleven years ago I fell on the same side of the coin. Even after I stopped reading genre fiction, and started in on the classics, Russian novels, Cormac McCarthy, nonfiction books to make my trilogy more plausible, big, thick histories on atomic bombs, John Steinbeck, the good stuff. I read Goethe's Faust a couple of years ago and it was heaven. But I kept thinking that that was what I wanted to capture in my writing, that sense of power, that sense of seriousness. And I think that genre writing can capture it, Jesus, Faust wasn't a realistic, modern novel, but in some ways it does a better job than many realistic, modern novels about capturing the real and the modern. But I digress.
I enjoy your writing, and you are my favorite novelist (when I taught Freshman English we used your stories "Jerusalem's Lot" and "Granma" right alongside H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe to study all that English class bullshit). And I envy you your gift. Reading your books, I thirst for what you have: you can grab a reader and beat them senseless with your stories. I want that. I most likely don't have it, but I hunger for it, just like a garage band guitarist would love to do those Jimmy Page rifts, jut like the masters.
But then again, we are two different ball parks, just like the garage band guitarist and Jimmy Page. Some of it is talent, okay, quite a bit is talent, but more important than talent is drive and motivation. The garage band guy loves to play, but he also loves his wife, and he works to feed the kids, and he only gets to jam every Thursday and the occasional wedding. Jimmy Page just did it more than the garage band guy, and he got lucky. Me, I am the writer's equivalent of the garage band, without a doubt. I don't want to spend twelve hours a day writing. I'd go loopy. It's not the writing, I'd be fine while I was there, it would be the re-entry, it would be the coming down. I have a hard enough time with reality, but take me out of it, and I don't want to go back. No way. And really, I can't write for more than four hours at a clip. Really, I can't write for more than two. After two, I am so done with it. I am so done. And in my life, I can then go do something else after I write. Go to a job, hang out with my friends, do step aerobics. Yeah, too manly for poetry, but I can do step aerobics, work it, girls.
I talked with a friend, and I was having problems with my days, trying to figure out how to structure my time, and I talked about just giving up on writing. I mean, yeah, it's fun, but come one. And she said so matter-of-factly, "No, you have to write, that's all there is to it, so what else can we cut?" So I have to write. I have to write my wonderful me novels, and I can strive to play those choppy, been-a-long-time-since-I-rock-and-rolled licks, but I most likely will never get there. But at least, I can give my friends my writing, some will read it, others won't, just like at the big gig the garage band puts together, some will totally dig hearing the Beatle's covers, others will applaud lightly. They sure love what they do, they'll think. And you know, that's okay.
I think I realized in the past eleven years that becoming a world famous X, fill in the blank, is not going to make me happy. Money is not going to make me happy, fame more and more looks like it sucks, and now I am traveling the earth and guess what, no happiness here, my brother. It's an inside job, that's what those AA people say. Tomorrow, I turn thirty. The chances of me being a rock star are slim. The chances of me being a bestselling author are better. At least I am in the garage, doing scales, playing those Led Zepplin albums, one more time. Wow, I think, that Stephen King, he sure can hit it just right. Play what you want to play, sir, and let history sweep up after the party. We won't be around to care, and the important thing was not who was up on the stage, it was that we all were here, to dance, to drink punch, and to chat with our friends, and be in love with the people in our lives.
And if my trilogy bears a slight, ever so slight resemblance to your Gunslinger series, imitation is the highest form of flattery. In the end, we both are drinking from the same fountain.
My best to you, to your craft, and to your family,
Aaron Ritchey
P.S. Desperation kicked ass! It's
been the best thing you've done since It, in my humble opinion.
And I could write a whole other letter on the Gunslinger series.
I'll just say, don't push it, Mr. King, you're out on a limb
with those books, stay out on a limb. Don't go for the easy answers.
I know, in eleven years, I'll be writing to recant on that, but
really, walk carefully with the Gunslinger, walk carefully, but
take risks. By the way, for the record, I think those rumors
that your wife wrote your "woman" books of recent years
is rubbish, absolute rubbish. Score two, Insomnia and
Bag of Bones. And I organized my house and did all the
shopping around listening to Rose Madder. How fun!!!!
And of course, The Green Mile. I read them all together,
but it was still mighty good. Kind of like "The Ocean"
off of Houses of the Holy.
"Very curious, very curious,"
said Passpartout to himself on returning to the steamer. "I
see that it is by no means useless to travel if a man wants to
see something new."
-----------Jules Verne, Around the World in 80 Days, p. 52
If I ever get out of here, I'm going
to Khatmandu.
-----------Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
Being at the Khatmandu Guest House makes me feel like a colonial lord, especially since we are planing an expidition inot the moutnains complete with a sherpa, proters, a cook, and kitchen boys. Kahtmandu is quite diffferent than I expected; people say to leave it as soon as possible and they say ll its good for sickenss and the suqsequent stool samples. Laura andI really like it, the narrow streets, the buzz and thrills, Laura calls it an untrampled Hanoi and I agree. In the end, Viet Nam proved to be our true immersion into Asia, and now the beggarsand hawkers (tiger balm instead of postcards in Khatmandu) are now just like old friends. Old friends I now dismiss and not look at, or speak to, just like Amondine did in Viet Nam (we took her calm disregard as our model and it works). It's easier this way; if they catch my eye, and I stop, extricating myself from them is an endless task. I just walk, say as little as possible, and don't look. If you look, you pay, and all of the literature says not to give out money, and I am just following the rules.
And so I am a colonial lord, preparing for an expedition to Dhaulagiri, the 7th highest mountain in the world and even cooler than that, we are go to be taking ice-axes along with us. Aaron Ritchey, world explorer, complete with an ice-ax. And then I think of the myth of travel, back at the cocktail party, I can pooh-pooh Anapurna trekkers or Everest Base Camp trekkers, and talk of Dhaulagiri, my lonely ice maiden. But last night, and really, all of our time in Nepal, I have been thinking about travel, the myth of travel, and right now, I am excited, nervous, happy, blown away I am in Nepal and that I have hired a team for an expedition and in a few short days we leave to see Dhaulagiri. I know the truth, that Dhaulagiri is the 4th most popular trek, that while difficult it is not dangerous, and that anyone in Nepal with a thousand dollars would be able to do the same thing. We'll not be alone on my ice maiden, I doubt Dhaulagiri is all that lonely.
However, and this is a big however, I do feel, right now, that I am living life fully. When we were going to settle on Teahouses, doing the Anapurna with seven thousand of our closest friends, I was gutted. but now, the adventure is exhilarating, and I am so grateful, oh so grateful that Laura and I have been so blessed. But again, travel in and of itself wasn't the catalyst for this gratitude, or for this sense of living life large. Travel, our world trip, is merely an expression of our willingness to follow our hopes and dreams. We were open to the idea that beckoned us to take the trip in the first place.
One the last times I felt like I was truly living was during a softball game, when it was the last inning, and I was pitching. Unbelievablly, our shitty team had come from behind and was ahead by only a couple of runs. Bottom of the 7th, we just had to hold them, and I was pitching. I was scared. I wasn't in Nepal, I was in Santa Clara, California, a mile from my home, and I wasn't trekking around Dhaulagiri, I wasn't even playing baseball, I was pitching on my bad softball in a game that didn't matter to anyone but the twenty or so guys playing. But I was actively involved in my own life, and what I did mattered, and if I sucked and walked a bunch of guys, I would lose the game.
If traveling does anything, it reminds me that my whole time breathing is a journey, that anywhere I am is exotic if I have the right frame of mind. Best of all would be if I would capture that "I-am-living-life-fully" thrill just doing the dishes or driving to work, or talking with friends. I firmly believe that traveliing to Nepal is not a pre-requisite for a happy, full life. But, however, another big however, here, I am very grateful that I am here, that I do get to do this, that I could live this dream. I am so very lucky. And if I die up on Dhaulagiri, that lonely ice queen? We all die sometime, and I'm just glad I attempted to follow my bliss.
A friend we met in Bangkok talked about her relationship with God as being like a boy who is flying a kite in the clouds. He doens't see the kite, but he feels the pull. I think whether oneis a rice farmer in Viet Nam, a businessman in Hong Kong, or a mechanic in Cleveland, the point of life is to focus on the pull and fly the kite we can't see as best we can.
And by the way, we won that softball game and I pitched my heart out. I even caught the last out,yelling all the way.
"You
Want More?" For Richer or Poorer Part 1
You know what Jesus said, Seek
Ye First the Kingdom of God. Sure, he said that all right, and
a lot of other things, and then he was nailed to a cross and
was buried. After that, the whole mess got confused with resurrections
and angels and being "the son of God" which Jesus is
never directly says in any of the gospels. He says "the
son of man", and old phrase from the book of Daniel. Are
you the son/daughter of man, yeah, we all are. I think Christianity
would have done better if they just took the crucifix and said,
"Okay, let's not do this to anyone else ever. Let's not
torture each other, let's not murder each other, let's at least
not physically brutalize one another. At least, let's not do
that." Three centuries ago the Islamic Empire in Lahore,
in modern Pakistan, offered 80 ruppees for each Sikh head that
was brought to them, the Sikhs being a kind of synthesis of Hinduism
and Islam (funny, the first guru thought he could be peaceful
and tolerant and open and that other people might be able to
be the same, funny). During one particular bloody scene, after
a raid on a Sikh village, the Muslims chopped up babies and hung
their body parts around the necks of their mothers. Yeah, in
the Qur'an it talks a lot about being virtuous and being peaceful
as well. It even says at one point, to kill one man is like killing
all men. But then, turn the other cheek isn't a very Islamic
idea, Christianity owns that one, and for much of its time on
earth, the love your enemy idea was forsaken for, "Die,
infidel! Convert or die!" Jesus, I think, never offered
up torture as being a part of the Kingdom of God. I think. It's
so hard to tell these days.
So what is the Kingdom of God? Oh, well,
we're all in Heaven, where there are many mansions, and Jesus
sits at the right hand of the Father, and we all play harps,
all day long. Well, only the good people. For the bad people,
they are all burning forever in a lake of fire and pain. And
we all know the difference between good people and bad people,
good people aren't sexual and bad people are sexual. Good people
never use the word "fuck" and bad people curse a lot.
Good people go to church on Sundays and bad people don't. Good
people believe in what WE believe in, and bad people don't. I
now turn to the book of Pink Floyd for a definition of the kingdom
of the true Kingdom of God:
A place to stay
Enough to eat
Somewhere old heroes shuffle, safely down the street
And you can talk out loud about your doubts and fears
No one ever disappears
You never hear of the standard issue, kicking in your door
You can relax, on both sides of the tracks
And maniacs don't blow holes
in bandsman by remote control
and everyone has recourse to the law
and no one kills the children any more.
Let's at least work for that. It makes more sense than the idea
that God sacrificed his son, Jesus, so that all of our sins could
be forgiven and then raised his son back from the dead and all
of that. Let's just work for a more peaceful world, where people
have a chance. But then,that's a very American idea, that we
all just need a chance at life. Equal footing, I think that is
the American Ideal, we all start the race on equal footing. Sure,
some will run faster, some will be smarter, some are destined
to be richer, but if we can give every human being on the face
of the planet a chance at success, just a chance, well, that's
a good thing.
So here Laura and I are, in the middle of these madness, and India is madness. But then, we met a guy who called India the epitome of the world, and I would have to agree. India just has its madness out where everyone can see it, everyone. The US hides it's madness behind Baywatch and the Stock Market, a convincing cover, I grant you that, but there is madness nonetheless. India can't keep its chaos and poverty and insanity and Beaurocracy in the dark, its all right there. So in this madness of the world, Laura and I start reading Charles Dickens novels. We kind of hit our fill of trashy British romance novels. We got through two, actually, Laura did three, and then we decided to go for something a little more substantial, and DAVID COPPERFIELD and BLEAK HOUSE are big and fat and wordy and they don't just kill time, they mangle it. I was in the New Dehli Railway Station, waiting for our train to Madras, reading OLIVER TWIST. And there was a boy underneath the bench where we were sitting begging. India has the Taj Mahal, everyone knows about the Taj Mahal, and just as famous are its beggars. So here I am, reading about the heartbreaking story of everyone's favorite orphan, while a dirty, dusty, skinny, half-naked kid is asking me for more. Weeks and weeks later we were in Bombay, and on the street there was a little boy, maybe three, sitting naked on the sidewalk, with a cup in front of him, tears running down his cheeks. He just sat there. The kid under the bench was obnoxious, touching us, whining, begging. This little boy was just weeping. I didn't give either kid anything. I pushed another beggar boy out of my way in Goa. He had something wrong with his eye, and he was blocking the road, and there were cars and buses and motorcycles and he was latching on to my arm, pointing at his eye, and he wouldn't get out of my way. And so I pushed him him out of my angrily. Today, on the way to Agra, our driver hit a woman and her baby as they crossed the street, not hit hard, but hard enough for us all to notice it. In Hanoi, Vietnam, there was a young girl, four years old, who held on to our arms while we walked, begging. She pointing at a bread shop across the street. We kept walking. And do you know what I say when the beggars come up, I say,"I gave at the office." Or I say,"No, who loves you, babe?" Or I say, "No, I'm really sorry, but no." One of our travelling friends can do an exact imitation of a beggar woman pointing at their mouth, and then at their stomach, and then at their mouth, and then at their stomach, eyes wide and pitifully and pleading. We all laughed because she could do it so well.
On our Camel Safari, it all came together. Our guide was not the happiest man in the world, and I could feel his anger at us, at the world, because he had been born in the deserts of Rajasthan and I had been born in the Suburbs of Denver. He said something wise, he said "One man asks for chappathi (kind of like an Indian tortilla) and gets bread. Another man asks for bread and gets chappathi." I wanted to point out that both get fed, but in the end, we are all unsatisfied. And when he cooked for us, or did the dishes, I could feel how it pissed him off, to serve us, and I offered to cook lunch, but then, I didn't know how to cook lunch, and it felt awful to have all this luxury and wealth, just because I was born in the U.S. to good, middle class parents. Seek ye first the kingdom of God. Why didn't I give the beggars money? Why didn't I cook Johur and Lalu lunch? How can we be so flip about the misery of all these people? At one point something snapped inside of me, and I realized that I was a tourist in a foreign place and I was just visiting. By me being here, I help the economy, I try to tip generously, and I try to just play my part as a tourist. I gave money to beggars outside of the temple in Trichy and a mob descended on us, and after all, our drivers, the government of India, everyone tells us not to give money to the beggars. When Oliver asks for more you say, "No, sorry, I gave at the office." I started to say, "No, I really can't help you." That was closer to the truth.
And would my rupees help? That's the
thing. There are pregnant dogs and puppies everywhere, and the
puppies, those are hard to take. People, well, there's a lot
of people in the world, but puppies, oh those little, innocent,
big eyed puppies. Do you feed the puppies? If you feed the puppies
they grow into dogs, and those dogs mate, and then there is a
litter of six puppies, and what if you don't feed those puppies?
They starve to death on the street. They are kicked, they are
run over, they live unimaginable lives until they starve to death
or die of a disease brought on by malnutrition. Well so do the
people, right? Same-same. Yeah, but that's to hard to think about,
let's just take the puppies. Ideally, you spay/neuter the dogs
that are out there, as responsible pet owners and strays, you
gather up and the ones that are not collected you put to sleep,
you kill, quick and painlessly. That's ideally, but this is India,
and India is a world of reality. And in reality, puppies are
born, they live, they die. Some get a home, some get food, others
don't. At least Hinduism offers up some hope, be the best puppy
you can be, and maybe you'll come back as a cow. Be a good cow
and you'll come back as a beggar. Be a good beggar and maybe
you'll come back as a Middle Class kid who loves to go to the
movies. Pia, Pia, Oh Pia, Pia, Pia Pia, Oh Pia. India has a middle
class that has the same population as all the classes in the
U.S., roughly 250 million, and many of those middle class kids
love movies as much as I do.
Do we feed the puppies? The Sikhs feed everyone. God, I live
the Sikhs. Imagine the pope saying to visitors, "The Vatican
is your Vatican, Jew, Muslim, Baptist, Mormon, go where ever
you want in your church. This is your church." Imagine the
priests at Mass saying, "Our holy Eucharist is for everyone.
So what if you're not Catholic, you are invited to the bread
and wine because you are a human being." At the holy Golden
Temple in Amritsar, Laura and I were given free food, we were
told, "Go where ever you like, this is your temple as much
as it is ours." A part of me felt hope that maybe religions
can do some good in the world. A part of the Sikh religion is
about giving back to the community. Work, oh yes, those Sikhs
have a work ethic to rival the Puritans, work, work your ass
off, but give back to the world. Islam has the same thing. A
part of the 2nd Surah talks about it doesn't matter if you pray
to the west, pray to the east, be a virtuous man and part of
being a virtuous man is giving to the poor. Well, before Jesus
rose from the dead, which a lot of people think is far more important
than anything he said, Jesus also talked a little about giving
to the poor. I think. Or maybe he said, "Believe in me and
you'll go to Heaven forever. Believe that I rose from the dead
and am seated at the right hand of the father and I will come
again to judge the living and the dead. And the poor? Screw the
poor." I think that might be in the book of John, that crazy
John. He was so Greek.
The problem here is that I don't give to the poor. The Catholics
say give 10%, the Muslims suggest 10%, and I'm not sure what
the Sikhs say, but 10% is good. Now, let's say you take home
$2000 a month, that's $24000 a year. That's a lot of money. And
the pinch is, who do you give it to? There are a lot of poor
people in the world. Hell, the poor in the U.S. seem rich in
comparison to the poor in India, a whole lot richer, world's
richer. No wonder refugees and illegal aliens pack themselves
into the slums, our slums are paradise compared to the Shanty
towns of Dehli and Bombay. On the train into Bombay, I stood
at the door and saw a little of the slums, and man, oh man. But
Laura and I have money meetings, we pay our bills, we save our
pennies, we saved a whole lot of our pennies to this world trip,
and we gave, occasionally. I lived for two years at the Casa
de Clara, a homeless shelter for women, and we gave to the Casa
monthly for awhile because they needed a new roof. But did we
give 10%. No. And now we have seen the world, and at first we
thought we would divide up the countries and then give to each
country based on the issues we saw and how much time we spent
there. China and Vietnam we thought about giving money to the
World Wildlife Fund, or some environmental agency since the environments
in both countries are under siege and there is a Chinese idea
that eating certain animals will do certain things and so sharks
are endangered because if you eat their fins on a full moon you'll
never impotent again. In Thailand, we thought we would donate
money to an agency that works with the sex workers in Bangkok.
For Nepal, a UN organization that works on population control.
And India, well, hell, just pick an organization and they'll
be doing work in India. A good plan, but then, the puppies. Do
you feed the puppies, do you nurse the puppies, so they have
more puppies? And will the money really get to the people we
want to help? And is it our business to worry about the populations
of other countries? Ebenezer Scrooge laughs that there is a surplus
of humans, and we need to cut the surplus. One of the ghosts
reminds him of this a little later, much to his (and my) chagrin.
Who gets to decide who is surplus and who isn't? Not me. And
then there are tons of stories about money being used by corrupt
governments, money that fattens the rich's already fat purses,
money being wasted. I don't want my money wasted.
And then a voice says, "Help your
own people." My people? Middle Class white kids full of
existential angst? I might be out on a limb, here, but maybe
we should work on physical hunger and then spiritual hunger.
But how do we do this? I am left with no answers. Money, it seems
to me, can be used for good, but money is a sledgehammer in the
fight against poverty, and we too often need scalpels. And it
is a good dodge, I had you going, right? So I can keep my 10%
and spend it on computer upgrades? No, the money needs to be
given to the poor, but once more, which poor? How do I even begin?
"Do
you have a better idea?" For Richer or Poorer Part 2
The problem with the world is
that the world is a problem. Take away all the human beings and
you'll still have foxes eating baby rabbits, or if the foxes
can't eat baby rabbits, the fox puppies will starve. Add people
into that, and you have the same thing. That is the other side
of the anti-capitalism movement. If the corporations don't get
to eat, the workers, however indignant, will starve. It seems
the longer I am away, the more conservative I get, the more American
I get, and the more I love America. Frightening. But when someone
starts bashing the States, I get very patriotic. We have some
good ideas. And one of the good ideas we have is that whole equality
thing. Equal footing, and then we all begin pulling ourselves
up by our bootstraps.
Along with Dickens, we've been reading THE ECONOMIST, a conservative magazine out of Great Britain. Reading about the U.S. from a foreign press is probably the best way of getting the real scivvy on things. Anyway, in an issue of THE ECONOMIST, I was reading about Globalization. Remember the riots in Seattle, against the World Trade Organization. Well, there is an idea that liberalizing world trade will mean the richer will get richer, the poorer will get poorer, and the environment will suffer all so that people in Chad will get their MTV. The anti-capitalists fear that globalization of trade will lead to the destruction of cultures and a "one world" culture of sex, drugs, and rock and roll -- see Baywatch allusion. THE ECONOMIST , is honest about it's bias, it is a conservative magazine. And THE ECONOMIST says that the protestors in Seattle were right on two points, that globalization was a moral issue and that globalization can be stopped. But then the article went on to argue that free trade is the answer to poverty, not the cause, and that governments should be pushing for globalization and not apologizing for it. As I was reading this, in the Pahar Ganj area of New Dehli, having walked through human excrement to the doors of the Hotel Namaskar, I couldn't help but agreeing. Capitalism is not perfect, Democracy is not perfect, but faced with the alternatives...at least with Capitalism, human greed is a key factor and we can always count on people to be greedy. In a more current issue, THE ECONOMIST also pointed out that the World Trade Organization also sees globalization as a green issue, and that free trade does have an effect on the environment, which is nice, since earlier they had pooh-poohed that whole issue for a long time.
"Workers of the world, unite!" So the communist motto went. I'm not sure that capitalism has a motto, but it should. The first thing that comes to mind is what my old boss used to say to pump up our sales guys, "Have fun, make money." That's a good motto for capitalism, but a better would be, "Well, do you have a better idea?" Maybe that's the Aaron Ritchey capitalist motto. I don't have any better ideas. I don't. The American Capitalist/Democratic Model is far from perfect, but if we look at our current society from an historical perspective, well, I'm glad to be living in a house with electricity and running water and indoor toilets. Centuries ago, I would have been a farmer, living a short, brutish life. Now, I get seventy years. On my more suicidal days, that seems too long, but on the whole, how many of us are dirt poor and how many are gloriously rich, I'm talking palace rich? We've seen a lot of buildings on our little trip that were made for one guy. Just one guy. The beauty of the Middle Class is that there are a lot of us and we have jobs to go to and we don't have to choose between being a poor farmer and a very poor farmer. Sure, the CEO's stay in their five-star hotels, the new palaces, and we have people in the U.S. starving. Sure, the system is imperfect. Our elections this year prove that. But what is the alternative? Do you have a better idea?
My father has been sending me issues of the THE SUN magazine. While THE SUN is not the most political magazine out there, it's slant is definitely to the left, maybe the politics are so left they cease to be politics, I don't know. But I've been reading THE SUN, and it criticizes the U.S., often. Before the world trip, I would read the articles and think that I should throw off my chains and join a movement and put an end to poverty and injustice. Now I read about the U.S.'s crimes against humanities and I think that all I want is a job and a house in the suburbs. Now I read about the prisons and the poor of the U.S. and I think the ultimate conservative thought: "Don't whine at me about being black and poor, do something about it!" All that is liberal in me shrieks, "Don't you understand? It's the economics of racism, it's the sociological scars of a history of oppression, it's the old story of Jean Valjean, stealing bread because he was starving." And I come back with my new, trusty, capitalist motto, "Do you have a better idea?" Just being in the U.S. you have opportunity, nowadays. Don't ask me what the economic slowdown will bring. I'm afraid that I'll wind up Tom Joading up and down California highways looking for a piece of work to do. But now, right now, people are dying to get to the U.S., like they have always been dying to get the U.S., to get on equal footing with their peers and run their race. If you are born there, how much better is that? Sure there is racism and the chains of poverty have always been difficult to break, but what is your option? The best option for an angry young man, pissed off at the world, is to join a cause, pick up a gun, and kill or be killed for an ideology. Again, I think of the teenage warriors in Cambodia's Khmer Rouge period. A sixteen year old with an AK-47 and a cause is a dangerous animal. In the U.S., our freedom fighters kill other freedom fighters for a strip of asphalt, but what happens when they stop killing the brother man and start killing the other man? I don't know, but I've gotten off track.
World-wide capitalism is not the best idea in the world, it surely can't be. But I think it is a better solution than most. Winston Churchill saw that our democratic capitalism was imperfect, but does anyone have a better idea? The only better idea that I've seen on my travels might be Singapore. Treat the people like children, kill the drug industry, literally, and fine anyone for doing anything. Lockdown by a benevolent dictator, it works, for awhile. But Singapore, like Hong Kong, embraces their merchants and preaches the gospel of trade, and they are doing well. Many of their people have a place to stay, enough to eat, and for Laura and I, it was so nice to be in a safe country where we knew we could walk home at midnight and not have any trouble. Oh if it were like that in New York City, but it's not and Americans are too well armed to tolerate the Singapore model of oppression.
So we all work to put a MacDonald's on every corner. CEO's, living in Texas or wherever the corporate offices are, get very rich and the poor people eating their Big Mac stay poor, but the sub-manager in the Dehli branch? He can afford that new Fiza CD, and his children can go to the better, private schools. They get medical care and they might even get a puppy to look after, a puppy that will be spayed or neutered when the time comes. The CEO won't give his riches to the homies in the streets, and the homies in the streets will have a hard life. It is my people that I think about, those middle guys who sit at computers and run graphs and work late. And if the Delhi MacDonald's manager is a Sikh or a Muslim or a Christian, he'll give ten percent of his income to some cause somewhere, or maybe he'll help out his brother or cousin or sister-in-law. And we all muddle through. The Fox eats the Rabbit, and the Rabbits have a difficult life. But would it be better if we took away the Rabbits, put them in low-income housing, away from the jaws of the Foxes? What would happen to the Fox's? They would die. What would happen to the Rabbits? They would overpopulate the warren and die. Hence, the biological model proves that if we help the poor people of the earth, they will grow in numbers and die, and the middle managers will be out of work and they'll die, and the CEO's will have to eat the dead to stay alive.
What a corner I have painted myself into. Now I am the conservative capitalist, justifying poverty so that my social class can have money for CD's and movies. I'm an ignorant bigot caging rabbits with stereo-types. I am what I hated in college. The real problem here is not with any economic or political system, the problem is what I started out talking about. There is one thing that I didn't mention, I thought of my trilogy (its working title is THE GOSPEL OF THE SEVERED EARTH) as I stepped over the poor in India, as I saw the sex workers plying their trade, as it is, in Bangkok. As I watched the grotesque drama of this world being played out, I thought about Feral Sloan, the villain of my trilogy, named after the Sloan automatic toilets that you'll see in public restrooms. My Feral Sloan, who isn't evil, just excessive, who is at the very center of the story. My Feral Sloan, who just wants a better world. As I walked over and through the poor, I shouted in my mind, I told them that I would change it if I could. In my mind, I told them that I would remake the world and I would do a far better job than the paltry god we are forced to serve. I told them that what the universe had done to them would be repaid in full. And I remember the little boy weeping in Bombay, and I think that that is Feral Sloan, and he will make the world pay for his hunger, and a part of me, the deeply hurt part that has witnessed all of this tragedy wants him to exact his vengeance. He will beat his wife, he will beat his children, he will kill his neighbors, he will visit evil upon the world because when he was three, he sat in the gutter in Bombay with a cup in front of him, and no one gave him any money, and he stayed hungry.
In the movie TOMBSTONE with Kurt Russel, Michael Bein, and Val Kilmer, Wyatt Earp asks Doc Holliday why one of the outlaws is so mean and cruel. Val Kilmer, in his drawl says, "He wants revenge."
Kurt Russel, as Wyatt Earp, is surprised, "What does he want revenge for?"
"For being born."
MIGRATORY
ANIMALS
With two rooms in our apartment
in Paris, I can wander about in the night and look for a good
place to curl up and try and sleep. Finding a home where I can
sleep is an old habit I seemed to have come out of the womb with.
When I was little, I would gather up my afghan and sneak across
the hall, past my parent's room, and into my brother's room.
I would camp there, nesting in the dirty laundry, and sleep.
Now I do the same thing when I have room to roam at night, looking
for a more suitable place to hunt for sleep.
I've only read a little bit, but I think I might have a little
Hopi Indian in me. I'm reading a series of Hopi stories and a
lot of them have to do with migrations, wandering around the
Southwest, looking for a home in a world full of portents and
powerful signs. My wife and I are migrating now and the story
goes like this. Laura and I woke up in our middle-twenties wondering
what the sky looked like in Borneo. We were both educated, she
was well traveled, and I got bored enough back in high school
to dream about other parts of the globe. In Mr. Gold's geography
class I looked up and saw the space between Africa and India
and wanted to know what it would be like to fall out of the sky
and land in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Well, now I know.
If you have enough money you can go to the Maldives or the Seychelles
and live it up with Italians and eat pate with the French. On
July 19, 2000 we went through our own hole in the sky and entered
a world of hotels, restaurants, buses, planes, trains, boats
of every size, and a lot of really friendly, really poor people.
Maybe the world trip was an extension of my own midnight migrations
for sleep. Reading about the Hopi, at least I'm not alone in
wandering. Through a hole in the sky, called a Sipapuni, the
Hopi went into the world of Massaw and were given a new home
in the fourth world. The people wandered around, started clans,
had trouble with each other and started other clans. Some of
the clans were made from mud and given life by Grandmother Spiderwoman,
others came across the water, and the land filled up with people,
all looking for a home. That's what Laura and I have been doing,
wandering about, looking for a new home, trying to follow the
portents and symbols in our own equally mysterious world. What
have we found so far?
We've made the discovery that Paris has really good cheese. Let
the heaven's rejoice and the earth be glad. We've also learned
that there are really poor people in the world and many of these
really poor people are really nice. John Steinbeck wrote that
it is the poor who know how to give and to share, and that is
the truth, at least that's we've found. The poor, just like the
rich. Funny, what I just wrote was that all poor people are good,
nice, friendly people and the flip side, sing it with me, baby,
is that the rich people are evil, awful, sinful, greedy, lustful,
but then we can all laugh, "Better to be rich than poor,
right?" As if economics were an issue of happiness.
In our travels, we have learned one powerful lesson other than
the quality of French cheese, but it's not like a lesson that
can be remembered, like math or geography or the punchline to
a good joke. Our world trip lesson is a little more elusive.
It is this. You can be given your deepest dreams and that still
won't be enough. Let's repeat that for our listening audiences.
You can be given your deepest dreams and it still won't be enough.
So, Laura asks, "What do we do now?" You can't really
spread the message to the masses. You can't tell the man who
lost his wife, "Even if you had her back, it would not be
enough." You can't tell the poor man, "Even if you
had millions of dollars dropped on your head, it wouldn't be
enough." You can't tell the rich man, "Even if you
lost it all, it wouldn't change your life all that much."
I've heard it said that happiness is an inside job, but then
why did we go on this pilgrimage then? Were we just delusional?
As a pilgrim, I can go through the places where we have been,
the things we've seen, all of that. We've been on top of the
highest mountain range in the world and below the sea, in jungles,
in cities, in temples and in brothels, and I can tell you we
have become homesick. I long for Taco Bell, Laura longs for Long's.
I miss Star Trek and Laura misses Sunset Magazine. In reality,
we are not missing the comforts of home, not really. What we
are missing is what got us started traveling in the first place.
Laura says we are looking for that which will fill our souls.
I am longing for the ideal world that could never exist, has
never existed, and won't ever exit. I don't want people starving
in the world. I don't want wetlands drained and animals killed.
I want to have forests to explore and plains to look out upon
unmarked by freeways and housing projects. I want a world where
I can go to a job and earn enough to take care of my needs and
the needs of the people around me and not worry that the corporation
who owns my company is turning oceans into landfills and killing
off animals faster than the animals can adapt. I want that ideal
world of love and community, but I don't think I'm going to get
there, and I am sad about that. I am really sad that I got stuck
with this plain old, imperfect, second-hand, unwanted world.
However, the cheese in Paris is really, really good. It's made
in factories now, mostly, and the private little cheesemakers,
however blessed they might have once been, are now big companies.
I still like the taste of the cheese. Is that wrong? My parents
live in a nice little house on an acre of land in a great subdivision
right outside of Denver. I'd like to live there too, and watch
the wild bunnies nibble grass. Or course there are also the displaced
coyotes there, watching over the golf course, wondering how their
land has gotten to be so small. The houses there are still nice,
the land still so beautiful, nestled up near the Rocky Mountains,
the backbone of my homeland, but the golf courses, the development,
it is all stealing the natural world away. Taco Bell taco meat
is made from factory farmed cows who suffer, but I still like
those taco's more than anything. I bite into one and I remember
kissing Kelly Timmons at the Taco Bell on Florida and Kipling
in Lakewood. I eat at Taco Bell and I am eating my trips to the
gym with my dad when I was in high school. The burritos are full
of David Mohr and college. But even when I eat tacos and cheese
and even if I do get to live in my parent's neighborhood which
is located on the edge of a park reserve, it still won't be enough,
because as we've learned, even when I get exactly what I have
dreamed of, it still is not enough.
I have a crazy idea. The idea is this. I want to have God's dreams
for me come true. I don't know what His/Her/Their dreams are
for me, but I want those dreams to come true because I have a
suspicion that if those dreams came true, they would fill me
right up to the top.
We leave Paris for the Seychelles in nine days and we lose another
home. The Hopi clans would write on rocks to mark the places
where they lived while on their travels, and I am doing the same,
marking Paris with my little bytes, our Internet pictures, telling
the world our truth. We came to Paris, we ate the food, kissed
long and deeply like so many other couples in the city of love,
entertained in our apartment, wore nice clothes, and made some
sweet memories. But when we looked out across the chimneys of
the buildings, when we looked out over the rooftops at the blue
sky and the fluffy white clouds going gray with rain, we saw
that our trip was not over yet. Homeless still, we are packing
up our apartment, shipping our Paris boxes back to my parents
like prayers to Maasaw, and putting our backpacks back on to
see if we can get a clue on what God's dreams might be for us.
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