So, you want to ride a motorcycle around a tropical paradise island in the Indian Ocean?

Mentally prepare yourself for a head on collision with a tanker truck going 85kmph on a one lane, gravel road in the pouring monsoon rain. Stare down the high beams from a 4x4 passengered and driven by piss drunk 18-year-olds on a terrorizing joyride. Swerve too far in panicked desperation and nosedive into the meter-deep aqueduct, or worse, into a volcanic gulley. As the late Hunter S. Thompson would say,
"Whammo. Game over. Meet the sausage monster."

If at some point your nerves resign to take a break on some village road, dont hit the chickens or the children criss-crossing the path. If you mistakenly park in front of some Bali-hound's territory, stare him down, slowly get on the bike then rip on the gas because its a contest of acceleration. Once your off, its a day at the races and the mutt doesn't distinguish between your right calf muscle and a frightened hare.



The road is only traveled alone. My short-lived Mexican com padre didn't understand that there is no such thing as a "Wrong Turn". This is the most vital wisdom to possess when setting out on a motorcycle journey in a foreign land. If you are equipped with this info:
put on a helmet, you cocky maniacs
fill up with $1.20 worth of Petronas
and
Punch it.

Other pieces of advice:

Avoid the templed; just like in most places in the world they are hives for cheats, scam artists and villains.



Steer clear of monkeys. They are shameless thieves with razor incisors and rabies, and they move shadow quick.



Go fast, but never rush. Those in a rush are blindfolded, straight-jacketed comatose cannonballs on a mindless bullet's-route to the grave.

If you are a circum-navigator, days are long, but bear in mind that 12 hours on a saddle is a creampuff latte frappe cake-dance compared to endless clicks on a smoked-out Chinese bus in the hinterland.

Jalan




Jalan




I'mashyo!

Harvest

I've lived a life of discipline
I've lived a life that's free
of all the must's and have to's I thought were chaining me

The wind of chaos blowing
muffled twirls of sand
you cannot build much anything
on such a shifting land

We've heard the word
called "entropy":
that in the end, you lose.
but movement is necessity
up or down: you choose



~~~~~~So, in misty Bali days

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ as warm seas lazy roll

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I choose the life of discipline

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ its my world,

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ after all.

---




---


I wandered into a dull and lonely place
the empty warmth of passionless womb
where acid fires sobered down to warm coals

Sharpness rounded off into uninterested, heavy stones
dragging themselves around with no real zest to amble

It was not lack of answers
I've always found a way to overcome and enliven and progress
once I have a question

These sullen windless days of travel
it was a lack of questions that stilled the air
where your body moves
but you don't go anywhere

The guardians stepped in

as they did in the beginning

and sparked my life with wonder


Archetypes
Perception
Mayans
Nature of man
Physicas
Language learning
Music theory
Emotions
Subconscious

I've dug up grist for the mill.
Now I can travel with a purpose again.
And see these wild Sumatras with intention.

Thanks to a Mexican Castenada
the moon under mystic seas
the wrong season
and Mescalito


---

Terima Kashi!
Suksmon!

---

These psychic nations I visit are somewhere along the physical route I trace. Burning across China, sloshing through muddy and slow Sumatra and hopping to Bali - It all becomes something in the ventricle factories.

"How to live"
has been the unmistakable central point of my voyage
It's not so difficult to see anymore
I witness before me the new and vast battlefield of the mind
that requires a constant effort

I can share little of value with my future self other than to canonize the hard-wrought principles that have transformed my decisions:

1. Simplify
2. Purify
3. Let Go
4. See Objectively and Analyze

and principles that have increased my joy of life:

5. Make Music
6. Meditate
7. Connect

and Buddha's three marks to witness everywhere:

8. Impermanence
9. No Self
10. Suffering

And that's it. All this time these 10 things have consumed my psychic energies for good or for worse. The more energy I put into these 10, and the less I waste on the twirling dance of hedonism, chaotic questioning and future-past quagmires, the more effective my life is and the more full of a human I feel.

Brief Thoughts on a Long Time Gone

Its a puzzle how the future becomes the past, or more appropriately, doesn't. I sit here writing this, conjuring up how I felt sitting in my friend Joe's apartment in Osaka looking over maps of the Middle Kingdom before I took the slow boat to China; the mind was so tied up in a future that never came to pass. I'm laughing. I see it as extra potent in this very moment because here I am again, tying and untying the future with my mind, in a similar fashion as I have done so many times just substitute the name of the country.

Its nothing like I thought it would be
and it never is - that's the mystery
one step at a time
I get ahead, or stuck behind
like a candle unto my two feet
I see what you want me to see
the future
remains open to me
the mystery
it sets me free

To know it and to live it; it is a slow development I've witnessed throughout the course of my journey. I can only hope one day to truly have no worries (mate).

---

After all, everything worked out in China...

More or less.

Speaking of which,


Less is more,

especially when dealing with the barrage of noise, pollution, and violent foreignness of China. It is, for any accurate measures to be taken in relaying the feeling and the observation and analysis, a different planet.
But I won't be able to describe it. Who could really describe the subconscious impact that the Great Civilization of the East would have on such an isolated, unawares and sheltered Midwestern boy?

I don't understand what happened or how what I saw and felt will change me as it gestates in my deep subcortum. I know many times I wanted to get out, to fly away, but that I took China like medicine. It was too much for me, and I sought shelter often. At the end of two months, I still didn't feel like I had a handle on it, even in a slight regard. China is another life.

And Tibet is another China.

Wild, massive and dangerously hungry dogs make there presence known around every (wrong) turn. Big skies you can touch with your gritty fingers. Dark flocks of vultures ripping human flesh from a corpse on the frozen tundra, 4000 meters above the world. Salt and fat boiled in a tea, mud houses, yak, bus rides through eternal fields of low, hard ochre and mossy green plains. In the barely breathable air, pink yellow sunrises hang on loosely to the rarefied mists. Time begins in the morning and ends at in the twirling indigo galaxy of your spacious mind. Tushi dey leh.

Tibet made me realize, just now in my recollection on its wonder, that I cannot realize how magic life is while im in it; it still requires me to reflect to see just how unbelievable and fleeting the magic of the world is.

It is so hard to be where we are, to live right above our shoes every day, especially when discomfort, fear, malnutrition and fatigue cloud my eyes, but these demons that haunt the road less traveled are no more ferocious than routine and boredom. I must uncloud my eyes. The world is so real, sparkling, even in the evil mud of Sumatra. My insignificance and smallness is so apparent when I get out of the way and the universe cuts through the clouds on strange lucid days.

---

Inukai Farm

We`ve got peaches! And lots of weeds!

Welcome to Inukai farm, easily accessible from the forested hills and just a hop skip and a jump from the craggy river bed. We`ve got peaches, rice, apples, strawberries, zucchini, eggplant, onions, garlic, leeks, potatoes, watermelon, sunflowers, pears, peanuts, soy beans, grapes and tobacco all within a five minute bicycle ride. And weeds!


I met Shigeru Inukai two years ago while he was busking with his contra-bass in front of a downtown city bank in Matsumoto (Japan) on a starry Sunday. We played music together in a coffee shop and in his music studio. Often, his very talented pheoncae will play her ukulele too. When I was preparing to leave Japan for my trip through Asia he invited me to come back and live on his farm for a while if I found the time.

So here I am, up to my neck in mud and weeds, surrounded by a green dream. He doesn`t use chemicals or plastics so we have to fight extra hard against overgrowth. Tired, full of green tea, My mind is easy as the clouds floating though the shallow valley. Clean country air is slowly washing away the metro smell that was stinking up my life.

--

Shigeru and his family live on a piece of land formerly used to operate a sizable mushroom factory. Their family mushroom business was driven out by a conglomerate a few decades ago and the former storage and processing shed became a store room for generations worth of odds and ends. In the former factory are several large walk in coolers, each approximating the size of an average bedroom. Two have been transformed into music studios for rehersal and recording. Awesome and diverse musicians play there and I get to hear them all (whether I like it or not!). I`ll take a recording next time and put up a video.

Even with the development of the two rooms, there is still tons of space just collecting clutter. He allowed me to transform two of the rooms formerly used as offices into living space. I even got to use tatami (!) for the floors. He has everything in that factory...somewhere. The other day he pulled out a bucket of miso paste, a gallon of homeage plum wine, a table, a mountain bike, an electric guitar and some plastic bowls from some dark corner. Anyways, here is the living room, the bedroom is just a tatami floor with my futon and clothes.


And the pantry:



Shigeru is quite busy with a full-time job, keeping his veggies at market and playing with two performing bands so it is nice that I can help out with some of the more time consuming chores (i.e. weeding the jungle AKA `kuso kusa` which is my pidgin Japanese that translates to: `Shit...weeds.`) Its really a great place, and the farming pace is so healthy. Rising early, eating fresh vegetables, sleeping when it rains...

I will spend the rest of my time in Japan based here with a few possible trips to the Japanese Alps. It`s an oasis for my spirits, the boost I needed after the grey and dreary soul-sucking outlet mall of Metropolis.

I`m charging my engines for another flight across the equator coming up midway through August when I`ll be headed back to Oceania.

Nothing deeps to say :) I`m just happy to be here.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That`s kind of the feeling.

Visiting Memories

I draw from the well
whose diminishing returns
soon has me thirsting
before it`s dry

And so it seems I`ll live my life:
a finger-food diet
grows hollow bones
with which to fly

-


Visiting memories is like hunting ghosts. You can feel them there, but always just out of reach. I don`t feel this hollowness when visiting people because most are running along side of me at a relatively equal pace. It`s the places, these intricate settings for my personal drama, that bring a strange empty feeling - like I`ve gotten on the wrong bus and ended up too Far East.


Its the external memories of a place that are most haunting. I never took the energy to infuse my brain with full accounts of the moments of life, but the places - like some subtle archive - have scripted small and detailed memories into their very molecules. Stone walls are inscribed with feelings of release, bamboo is etched with gallant independence and university chalkboards are streaked with purpose and fullfilment ~ memories that reinvigorate my direction and purpose.

A revisit is like a diagnostic meter. How is the engine running? How many miles have you registered? How often have you hesitated, which grinds your faith away like break pads? I`m here for a tune up. I remember where I was, I more clearly see where I am and things lost in the doldrums have resurfaced as distant flags just within sight. I feel reinvigorated, juxtaposed with the past, to continue climbing and descending the dune landscape of the future.

I struggled at first with not being the same as I was during my first visit to Japan. I still burn but without the molten heat of early twenties optimism and recklessness.
After three months I`ve found my adaptation uplifting and a signal that I`m on a road; whether it`s the right road or not, I`m going somewhere. I think somewhere is better than nowhere, which is where I may have been heading if I never left home. I disagree with the statement, `whatever doesn`t kill you only makes you stronger` in favor for `whatever doesn`t kill you can either makes you stronger or weaker depending on how you deal with it.` (I know it doesn`t have the same ring, but poetry, too, must bow before prudence.)

Echoes of the past still hum between the tatami fibres and thin Japanese walls. I feel gifted with an external memory as vast as the world, with each alley I`ve taken, each mountain I`ve climbed and every sacred place retelling me my own story. The seasons cast their familiar frame upon the chaos with which I have grown so comfortable. And here we go.

--
Home is where I want to be
so I have to go where I want.

A Cry Through the Night to the Edge of the World

Its been a long time...how it slips away
like a little tuft of snow
gently dropping from a frozen ledge
and sitting silently in the cold
waiting for the sun

~Tabibito Shimizu


Tokyo.
Nothing really changes my pace like Tokyo.
Every minute is valuable and everone is valueless.
Herds of autocrats storm through human-sized hamster tunnels
like polite wildebeast in stampede
single mindedly slicing off seconds from their daily commute
and without passion or hesitation
jumping on and off magnetic elevated high speed transport pods.

Filling the nights with blazes of neon red
as blue waves of sound call undirected feet into alleyways
or behind closed doors
where the jazz that rotates around the insides of this plaster mask
finally cracks the glaze and washes out
~

Australia is gone...left alone with its imagery of kangaroos and eucalypt breezes, with baby blue skies on the edge of the world. After all, thats what I decided Australia is: a desolate shore on the edge of the world. Penguins go there. And people with nothing much else to do.

In ways its a haven; the pure dream of societies now far behind with population and economy problems. Few people, vast resources, strong currency.


And the white bristling sand
makes its arch on the bay
under sprinkles of stars that not many see
and the poly-petro chemically glued glass panel wall
protects red skinned Britons from the sweet salty seas
as they eat pork-mutton meat pies
in designer jeans

-

and now filtered by distance and a sprinkle of time
my sieve gently sifts through the good and the bad
and I`m forced to re\read all the writings I have
to find any meaning in my abrupt flight

and there is one I love there
whose hair like the down on a black swan
would sit gently on my arm
as we lay in peace through the silent days
at the edge of the world

A dove who I left
with her broken wing
and my inability to do anything
to help her to fly or get back on her feet
sometimes this free life
is so bittersweet

Divided into two
I am collecting my pieces
my heart is so cold in the rain
Japanese
the river, the bull-thrush, the chorus of green
as bamboo-ish whispering of six unknown trees
pull me back into Asia
180 degrees.

Quid pro Quo

Kangaroos and boomerangs...these are the mantle piece above the complex economic and social phenomenon of a sunburned land. The proportion of first generation immigrants making up the work force of this extremely wealthy and strategically rich mineral land echoes of the great era of American history; a time when the United States was a land of opportunity. Pakistanis drive the taxis, Indians run the convenience stores, Lebanese work in factories, Irish dig the trenches, and seas of Chinese keep the university education industry afloat. Currently the Australian currency is 1:1, if not slightly stronger, than the American dollar, but worker wages are roughly 50% higher than American jobs of equal demand (e.g. a job paying $12 hourly in the US pays $18 here). Construction & demolition workers take home $1000 per week, even after a 29% tax, and up to $1500 weekly with a specialization ticket such as scaffolding, rigging, or asbestos certification. The unions are very strong, providing high wages, scrutinizing work-safe standards and limitations on work hours to make sure we, "don't work too hard, mate". An ecomnomic pilgrim would be hard pressed to find a land more rich in clean and maintained infrastructure, healthy working conditions and abundant opportunities.

Australia's major buouy keeping it afloat amidst the sea of financial crisis flooding the bank built world is a vast quantity of strategically important ore. Australian iron is top quality and has an infrastructure allowing efficient extraction and sale. Vast stores of premium uranium, including the uranium used in the Japanese nuclear reactors recently melting down all over the news, is also mined in Australia. Workers in these mines earn a base of $100,000 annually. The Chinese and Indian nations, both surging forth and fast becoming nations of formidable power and promise as global leaders/superpowers, purchase Australian minerals to construct their ever expanding infrastructures and commercial blocks. It is whispered that Australia may be enveloped in a financial union, ala the European Union, in aliance with the great industrial potentials of Asia. Australasia is not a term to be taken lightly. Australia is Asia.

Australia is Asia when I walk downtown Melbourne and pass three Han Chinese for every 'Aussie'. Australia is Asia when I speak pidgeon English, akin tot he English I use in the English as a Second Language classroom, more often than I speak a relaxed dialect. Australia is Asia when I use Japanese to assist a customer at the grocery store in buying bulk dog food. Australia is Asia when I drink Taiwanese bubble tea with a Japanese translator in front of a Thai restauraunt in Chinatown (which is 5 a five minutes walk from the main train station in the center city.) Australia is Asia when Chinese New Year is a spectatular event full of dancing dragons, clouds of incense and fireworks smoke and road closures throughout the main financial district of the city or when the horse race course is overrun by Indians throwing paint and colored dye at one another for the Hindu festival of Holi.
However, the Aussie's seem to have some grip at the top of this pyramid. Even the 'lower class' Aussie, known as a 'bogan' or 'yeow-boew' is often disgustingly rich. Imagine Cletus the trash man pulling 80k a year...what would he spend it on? Thus emerges a new social class, the tacky-wealthy. Low rider trucks painted neon green with liscence plates that read "SHR3K" buzz too and fro from dart bars, gambling pubs and TGI Friday's where. Idiots in $300 dollar wetsuits walk barefoot through marble floored malls. Women sporting 50k worth of silicone and botox bounce around from matinee movies to super Targets in UGG boots and Puma sweatshirts. But despite all the excess, they are no where near as fat as Americans.

So why all the economic talk? In the history of this blog, topics and interests have ranged from history, escaping reality, cultural enlightenment, renunciation, psychology and spirituality. I suppose if it had chapters, this one would be 'money'.

The most different I have been in the two years away is the time between arrival in Australia and now. I used to fear that I was losing whatever magic was enchanting my life during my travels in Asia. That money and image was corrupting my wander's spirit. Now the fear has subsided; I have finally submitted to becoming a chameleon in my surroundings. An excerpt from my journal, which I keep on my person at all times waiting to catch the tiniest drop of insight or prose, reads "I've sold my soul." Not the most poetic, hardly original but undoubtedly the most devestatingly true thing I've written in six months.

I'm in the doldrums, comfortably wrapped in a blanket of plenty.
the same old delusions arise from the incessant voice of culture
to earn and spend
to progress
and I see them as the lies they are
as the chains of bondage they are designed to be
yet wander listlessly into their arms
talking naps in the bosom of greed and selfish wealth
weakly hoping I don't fall asleep for ever
pressing snooze with every paycheck
and closing my eyes for just five more minutes...