Yesterday's Mongolain Goodbye, Today's Wired Van Horn

I left Tucson this morning the first day of the new year, anxious to drive the completely straight 1000 miles stretch from Tucson to Houston. Haven't done it in a couple years and missed the big cold sky and raging winds at the truck stops.

600 miles to go.
{I need to mention, out of a impulsive need to be utterly indulgent, using celebrating the day I left Tucson as an excuse, I come to you blogging from the bathtub in room 133 of the Motor Lodge of Van Horn, Texas. Van Horn is replete with motel 20-30 dollar bargains. Once, and still mostly little 60s era independently owned lodges, now alot of them have free internet wi-fi and hot breakfasts to keep competative.}

Now I will remember some rememberings from my last night in Tucson that have been rendered forever dreamy with the digital camera.

A RIDE TO BEIJING.

I got a ticket!
Leaving January 25th!
Arriving the morning of the very first day!
of Spring Festival!
the biggest!
festival of the year!
in the capital!
of the most populated!
country in the entire world!

Nevermind! I knew nothing! I'm going to Beijing!!!!!!!!

I just got a call from Finley Beaton, a scotsman in West Beijing, to be precise. They want to hire me. Aihua Language School is in ShiJingShan, a far west poorer district of Beijing, which supposedly is more "Chinese" than any wear else in Beijing. Plus I can ride the subway 30 minutes to Beijing. Plus they've got a sweet little deal, more money potentially than Guan Ya. I'd have to share a appartment, but eh. Plus the school is run by cute Irish and Scots. Plus its just better...hopefully. This is such a hard decision. AGH!!!!!!!!!!I NEED TO DECIDE SOON. like tomorrow! I can't sleep.
Here is the site, its rather peculiar, and I like it.
http://www.aihua-english.com/English/

Zunyi City or Shenyang? Help me!

Zunyi City in Guizhou Province, south central China ("little" city, lots of hills to run around in, green limestone pinnacles, rice paddies, exotic chinese minorities that wear funky outfits, nice administrators, public high school)


Shenyang, Liaoning Province, north-east China (3 hours from North Korean border!, big city lots of stuff to do, city parks to run around in (if not frozen) Guan Ya school has good reputation, sub-arctic, nice administrators, private english cram school)

I'm SO totally blogging my office party.

BYE ECoBA, thanks for your employment, not to mention your pizazzaz and panache.


Vinn Diagram of Good, Bad, and Ugly Attributes of "Water" + Water CASA name poem (co-author Scott Stark)

"Evaulation of Cost Benefit Analysis of Actual Water Savings" PARTY 2005
Portrait at Tohono Chul in Nicaraguan Apron.

I made the saag baag and the spring rolls. Saag baag is left most green slop.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!BALLOON HAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Go here now and behold:
http://www.balloonhat.com

And the story on NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1419315

Having a Belgium Feeling

It’s cold and dry and bright, unlike in Belgium. I feel like being in Belgium. Not sure what that entails. Maybe I can come up with something later tonight. In Belgium they are 8 hours behind.

I once saw this bizarre, but lovely Belgium movie, Rosette, about a chubby, but pretty girl who lived with her mom in a trailer park on the periphery of an interstate and warehouse/factory district. It was constantly drizzling in the movie. In some scenes there was drizzle on the camera lens. She wore rain boots all the time. She lost her job at a factory for being late or generally incompetent, can’t remember. She got a job making waffles in a trailer outside one of the factories, which I believe was under the arch of the interstate overpass. As such, she was constantly eating waffles, holding them with only her woolen gloves. In my favorite scene Rosette was making a single hard boiled egg. The scene lasted as long as it takes for the water to start boiling and the egg to float to the surface, which, if you didn’t know, is indication that the egg is done. Rosette attended the egg for the entire duration of the boiling, constantly stirring it and changing the heat settings. She then dipped a ladle into the boiling water and greedily tried to remove the shell, which was (obviously) too hot and delicate. So she set it in a cup of water in the sink and stirred the egg around. Once it was cool she removed the shell in a single peel. She then rushed to her bed, got under the covers, and ate it.

In Avignon, France on the first official day of my bike trip last March. I met a Belgium tour bus driver in the foyer of this old hostel. I was putting together my bike. It was cold and late and the hall light was on an energy-saving timer. I constantly had to set down my bike and tools and press the button that is until he arrived and eagerly offered his assistance. He manned the light switch as he watched me assemble the bike. We began a long conversation via a pocket dictionary, which would stray into the night. He told me he is renovating a house in Belgium, like major renovation, but that the process has taken years since he is only home for a short while at a time in between Bus tours. He offered me some tepid Belgium beer, Juliper. We drank it in his hostel room, which was filled with cigarette smoke. He told me to be very careful in the south and in Italy. He told me I was brave, but he said what I was doing was wonderful. I was supposed to meet him for breakfast in the mess hall the next morning, but I overslept, I was afraid I hurt his feelings.

In another scene, Rosette is filling two buckets with water from an outside spigot. As she is carrying them back to the trailer a person she does not want to see arrives in front of her house. She drops the buckets and runs away to a nearby marsh and trips into a muddy pool of water. I imagine life in Belgium can get be pretty bleak if you’re chubby, a little slow witted, and unemployed.

North Korean Director plans prison camp stage musical

http://www.rfa.org/english/news/arts/2005/11/23/nkorea_musical/

"Thank you Jesus yadda yadda where's my cheap electronics" day 2005 + Dallas Downtown Adventure

My adventure day began as most adventures do, standing in line with a few hundred people outside of a Dallas Walmart at 4:30 am in the windy cold.



An orgiastic plundering of $68 DVD players in the aisle.

Credit Cards waved in the air at the Dallas- Richardson Walmart, 5 am.

"We were here all night. We watched you unload the truck. I'll leave when you give me one!" Nasty lady to Walmart employee about why she and 50 other people were crowding the cashier station in the electronics department to buy $400 laptops.

A few of us stood on the "sidelines" laughing at the ridiculousness. Before some security guards started screaming and we could feel it getting scary. I snapped some pictures and we left. Later tonight we saw on the news that several people had been trampled in a Beaumont Walmart and there was some Walmart ruckus in other parts of the country. The news showed security-cam footage of the doors opening at 5 am and crowds pushing in like the running of the bulls. A large black woman fell over, knocking off her wig. After a little bit of trampling and no one helping her she was able to crawl to her wig and place it back on her head before rolling herself up. Later, she was taken to the emergency room. Turns out...she was pregnant. For Christ's sake! This was the headline story. Honestly, I felt just a insy bit like I was a part of history, maybe even a unifying movement as it turns out every good american was at a Walmart this morning. I also felt, as I do most of the time, that this country is the laughing stock of the entire world. There are a few moments when I think I could become the proverbial street lunatic that yells its the end of the world. Its like the fleeting thought of jumping when your standing on the edge of a cliff or a building. I wanted to yell to everyone in the electronics department, "Hey, there's a war going on!!" But I guess what stopped me is that I was too busy laughing. That's sad, whats wrong with me. We came home I put on the shirt my mother gave me to sleep in and I slept for 6 more hours.

Then I woke up and rode the train downtown!

the Downtown.

This kid was eating a huge sprinkle cookie that was all over his face and staring at me a mere foot from my face. When I said to him "That looks like a delicious cookie." He looked honestly confused then replied, "What language you talking? Are you a mexican?"

The Hyatt Regency Reunion Ball Tower and Cocktail Lounge--I went up to the ball! It was the first space ball of its kind back in the day, setting the trend for countless south-east asian tiger urban dystopia cities of the 1980s.... The cocktail lounge was probably really nice in the late 60s. I pondred having a drink but there were lots of families drinking cokes and eating cold shrimp cocktails like they'z something fancy.

A view inside the ball.

This is an art shot I call this "The tops of things"

yeah! Dallas.

"Thanks, AMERICA/Jesus." Day 2005!!!

All Souls Procession 2005- "When everyone agrees that it makes the city the city it is"

Every year thousands of wacky people and people that like to watch wacky people agree to meet on time to hang out on 4th ave. It's called All Souls Procession and its a cultural potpourri of southwestern death rituals, most centrally Dia De los Muertos.



Pigs eat "NASCAR CARROTS"

Here I am trying to pull off my costume "Iraqi gas pipeline Bechtel representative."

Scott's "Dead Mexico City business man whose indiginous family decorated his corpse in traditional ornate death mask and flamboyant beads and flowers against his wishes" - at least that's my take

Bradford as "The embodiement of Bradford's enthusiasm for Egyptology."

Ed as a "Metrosexual"

Amanda holding a violin and Warrior Lord of Frenzy holding a rod.

Overheard Geography Lesson

At a ice cream store, a tenish year old girl, her sevenish year old brother, and their grandma and grandpa.

Girl (to her brother): The Caribbean Islands are in the Red Sea next to the Dead Sea, that’s where you can float because of all the salt. Those are near Mt. Everest. It would take you your whole lifespan to climb up the Himalaya Mountain.

Boy: It would take you. It would take you. It would take you a million days. No, almost , almost 999999 days to go up it.

Girl: Yeah, but you have to wear a mask.

They were eating ice cream cones. The grandparents said nothing.
Later…

Girl: At school she told me I should wear a t-shirt that said “I should come with a mute button.” I think that shirt is hurtful.

Boy: I would have 2 mute buttons!

Girl: Mawmaw do you think that shirt is hurtful. I think it is hurtful to people.

Grandma: (silence)

A Few Magics

I once worked with middle school students and as such was often asked by a few of the more imaginative ones to critique their artwork. I recall the artistic draftsmanship of one Brittany, a bug eyed dirty blond who made straight 100s and who usually helped me pick up the room after class.
One afternoon, she walked up to my desk during the homework hour and put a manila sheet of paper atop my keyboard and asked me if I thought what she had drawn on the paper “looked right.” What was on the paper was a large cube with arrows emanating from each cardinal direction outside the cube. Captioned next to the northward arrow was “expand-a-wall north,” and from the southern arrow, “expand-a-wall south,” etc continuing for east and west. The blueprint was for “Expand-a-room,” an architectural invention, Brittany elaborated, which promises to “give you more room in your room.” Upon one of the transparent walls of the cube there was a little rectangle, with an arrow pointing to it and a caption that read “power source.” There was also a larger rectangle, a “door.” And there it was, her invention. She had her elbows on my desk and was pivoting on them a bit waiting for my reply. “My dad is an engineer and said that it was a really good idea.” I sat marveled in the sheer lack of irony in her presentation, a simplicity I wanted to eat and have become apart of me. A conflict emerged: what do I say? I could have and wanted to take her comically spare blueprint and Xerox it and give it to all my friends to selfishly feed the pulsing want of irony and all things ironic and hilariously “mal produced” that sometimes seems to replace any kind of “natural” viewing of the world and supplant it with a view favoring incredulous surprise at even the most mundane. But I resisted knowing that a normal person would regard this art in the context of the sweet naïve girl who created it and would smile and simply say, as I did, “Yes, It looks right.”

So now, here, in the shadow of such a preface I present to the world the child-like renderings of Benjamin Jeremiah (see also "Favorite Ever Creation" Sept. 2005), a 25 year old man with a full beard and a penchant for stories about “the stupid things kids do,” whose scribbles and “magics” creations, in there baffling approximation to the “real thing”, allow me the satisfaction of near-Xerox reproduction with out the guilt of exploiting the naive artistic endeavors of an innocent child. Behold:

This one is called "A time for love."

"WeasalBabs To-do list"

"the magic I make" otherwise known as the "25th ofjuly"

A return to space

On the back of my leg there was a tingling. I rubbed at my skin through my cotton pajamas and tried to continue watching the movie. I was sitting slouching in my living room chair in front of my computer screen. The film was in Chinese and required all of my attention. I got up and pulled down my pants in the living room mirror. There was, on the back of my knee a red an intricate whelp, as if I had been lashed by a prickly branch. The door was open. The air came through every so often. It then came rushing through. I walked outside under the tree and looked up as a grey smokey puff was about to over take the moon. Someone approached in the alley, rolling, it sounded, on the gravel. They cast no shadow, no shadow I could see. Half a block visible from my porch a sanitation truck barreled down the boulevard. From the passenger side window hung a single forearm like a limpid wind sock. The smoke had since over taken the moon. I looked back at my house, through the wide open door and through the window whose blinds were turned parallel to the pane. The room was orange with dim lamp light. How the room seemed stewed, or had stew cooking somewhere within heart of the house, with somewhere there must be being a gentle stirring wooden spoon held impassively by a matron. How could this be my warm house, with such invitingness? How could I alone make such a home, a place that if passing in an alley would seem full of couched fed taken care of individuals, a place that fools even me that stew would be cooking there. I looked up and it was overtaken and had since dissipated and the full bright coin exposed. I thought of the language from the movie which still played. How it stirred the trepidation in me and the deep excited need for green hills and a distinct blue line between the hills and the sky. And wide pants and flat shoes. And being alone and unintelligible, until being alone is all I know, and being unintelligible is all I desire. The smokey clouds that broke apart when they passed between me and the moon prodded by a stirring spoon whose handle was so long that everyone held tightly as its splintered cylindrical length protruded into the sky and punctured through city glow and continued past space so cold that I am choked and clasp my throat and return to earth, and fall inevitably back into a chair.

BELOW: MAGDALENA UPDATE

Shoes on a wire 20 miles out of Magdalena.

Flicker link

Only a few measly pictures. I can only get a few on there and can't delete and add new ones. But more pictures no less.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoesonawire/

Magdalena

Magdalena

SOLA

Going 'sola' in Mexico was relatively hassle free, the people and pilgrims I passed on the road were pleasant and fun, but tired no less. The Mexico highway I-15 from Nogales to Magdalena was beautiful (in all places, except outside of dirty, trafficked Nogales) with tall stands of sunflowers right against the road, gentle shrub spotted mountains beyond, little shrines every 10 km or so, little roadside cafes/stands selling fruit treats, sopas, carne asada, what-have-you’s. I passed pilgrims every 3 minutes, of all ages, making the trek from various towns across Mexico to visit St. Francisco Javier's body in the Magdalena Chapel. (And By "body" I mean a (nearly comical) full-sized plaster mannequin dressed in robes laid atop a tomb.) Well, the ride was really incredible, and pretty easy considering it was downhill the whole way (Though of course it was uphill on the return trip).

Magdalena itself was beautiful, loud, crazy, colorful, dirty, funny, and completely over-stimulating. The small city center situated around the chapel and plaza was suffocated by a multitude of lucrative industries: individuals selling blankets, toys, pots, key chains (so many key chains) and fake Nike and Guess wallets, and yummy food stalls, cafes, pushcarts full of colorful almond and coconut candies, roaming Mariachi bands, and a busy street of carnival rides and fair game booths. I didn’t quite know what to do with myself at first. Too many people, no great places to lock my bike. So I did what I do best in such a situation, I ate. I sat down at a street café and ordered a big spicy plate of carne asada and sopas, which I paid for two-fold, once in pesos and the other in an unmentionable way. Then eventually after walking around the craziness for 20 minutes I found a relatively not-insane courtyard where families had laid out pallets. I sat my bike against a ledge and took a seat myself. Soon I had three little boys, Andres (5), Jaun (11), and Alberto (13) come and inquire about me and my bike and why on earth would a girl would ride her bike solo from Nogales to Magdalena. Of course they didn’t speak English, and I don’t speak Spanish, but we got along fine enough playing bull fighter in the courtyard, using my map as an ad hoc toreador cape. They eagerly helped me set up my tent. Alberto was very concerned about my bike and belongings. He was very sweet and asked his family to keep an eye out while we walked around the carnival. I was lucky to find such an escort.
Alberto came with his family from Siniloa, which is on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, he showed me on the map. Apparently, it is not bonita nor are the beaches bueno. His mom was selling café and sopas in the courtyard, they had been sleeping on blankets outside for the past few days. I wanted to treat him to some of the rides but he indicated that it was too expensive. We mostly communicated using a kind of charade sign language. Eventually, I bought him a Guadalajara soccer ball from a vendor. That’s his favorite team. We had a fun time trying to play soccer in the park with all the sleeping families on the grass. Several times Alberto kicked the ball into a few faces. So we walked and ‘talked’ and he took my photograph in the appropriate places in and outside the church. Eventually we had walked around the square and passed the same blanket guy and freak show at least 5 times, so I retreated to my tent after saying Buenos Noches only to be awoken on three different occasions by Andres, the curly haired five year old who talked at dizzying speeds. I could only humor his incessant inquisitiveness for so long. I told him Buenos Noches and he, with a pouty face, zipped up my tent flap sealing me inside for the remainder of the night.

I was camped in the echoing vortex of all the sounds from the carnival: 10, 000 people talking, hollering, laughing, whistling, Mariachi and Mexican rap music, and the loud crazy blanket salesmen screaming into his 4 foot high amp. The cacophony was so extreme that I guess my brain became acclimated to it after awhile and surprisingly I was able to sleep for nearly 9 hours. Though I kept waking up confused and confounded by all the noise and with the profiles of girls and their telltale poofy bangs and ponytails on the walls of my tent. Most surreal camping ever hands down.

So the ride back is mostly characterized by the several occasions that I was struck with the exxxtreme impulse to jump off my bike and hurl myself down steep embankments into prickly bushes and sharp rocks in order to use the bathroom, that and the blazing sun and the 50 mile uphill all the way to Nogales. But of course it was all so wonderful.