floorpie

I don’t think I’ve ever posted from Taiwan. So there you go. zaijian!

I am an introspective person by default, but traveling along makes me doubly so. Especially when in a country where even the first through third most popular languages are ones I don’t know.

China is a brutal country. Not in that it is rife with violence, but in just it’s demeanor. To be fair, I’ve only been all over Southern China, traveling through and staying in various factory cities in and around Shenzhen; and, in those areas, life is raw and brutal. The driving is suicidal, but then everyone has heard that. Everything everywhere is coated with a fine layer of dirt and dust, rendering a view of the cities in a near sepia tone, sucking the saturation out of even the Hello Kitty backpacks. The streets and neighborhoods look as if they were recently bombed…there are dirt roads leading off of the relatively smooth paved main artery, with dirt parking lots that are festooned with piles of just. rubble. I know what the reasoning behind it is, but everywhere I go, without exaggeration, has just piles of bricks or mounds of dirt or miscellaneous pieces of twisted metal piled high for some reason. No one ever seems to be doing anything with said piles, they don’t seem to be building supplies, they’re just there, pockmarking the landscape with detritus.

There are outdoor pool tables everywhere.

Storefronts are row upon row of little concrete boxes with a large roll-up door. There are no outer walls, or doors to enter, it’s as if someone dropped a facility of storage units and people just moved in. There’s no obvious zoning laws in effect, with machine shops grinding away at metal bars, showering sparks on to the dirt lot right next to small noodle bars.

It’s just raw and brutal and alive; which, to me, is the strangest part. China has literally thousands of years in history on the US. Yet America is nearly defined by it’s cushy lifestyle. Why not also China? In my mind, they’ve had the time to perfect it…unless, of course, it all comes down to money.

I need to get out and about more. I’m fairly well travelled, I’ve been all around North America, the usual places in Europe, and spent a fair amount of time in common and uncommon parts of Asia. I’m better travelled than the majority of my friends, but not of them all, and there’s a hell of a lot of world left to see.

I don’t necessarily want to travel by myself, but then at the same time I desperately do. Solitude makes me introspective, which in a lot of ways is my favorite way to be. It also makes me depressed, which isn’t so much my favorite…though it secretly sometimes is. It makes me creative, or at least affords me the time to think I am. I write more. I think.

At the same time though, I’d love to share my experiences with someone(s). I’d like to be the hero, to have someone to laugh at my jokes, to bounce ideas off of and to motivate me to NOT just stay in my room.

Not every trip has to be an ordeal. I want to see the mundane and free as much as the epic and expensive. I want to kneel on the steps at Angor Wat, but I also want to drive out to Mt. Rushmore and buy the worst sweatshirt I can find. I want to ride a camel in Africa and sit in someone’s cornfield in Iowa because why else would I ever go there?

And I need to start doing these things instead of not doing them. Not because I have to, but because I want to. Who’s in?

Generally speaking, I don’t have a home in the traditional sense.

Actually, generally speaking I do have a home in the traditional sense, in that I have an apartment that houses all of my things and I have the keys to.

What I don’t have is a home like most of you probably do. One that you grew up in; or at least spent a considerable amount of time in. You have special memories about a certain stair or a rock in the garden, and there are still people in the neighborhood that remember your name. It’s what you think of when you think of “home”.

I, however, grew up in a military family and though I would put down roots wherever I went, I really was too young to understand the concept, or have the ability to, stay in touch with those places. So when I left, though sadly, it was without looking back. Consequently, my parents now live in a house that I don’t know, in a neighborhood I have no memories in, in a town that I can’t get around with. Which, for me, makes it a little depressing to visit.

I used to think that I was just a loner and didn’t like visiting that much, because I would invariably get a little depressed at some point as well as very bored. The bored part I can understand, staying inside all day in a place you don’t know doing basically nothing is at least overly calming if I can spin it optimistically.

Thinking about it this time, though, that’s exactly what a lot of people do with their families and they love it to no end. Which means that either I’m a heartless bastard, or there are other variables at play…and I think I figured out the other variable: this place. I don’t think I really like it here.

I don’t mean the house, the house is nice and I feel comfortable in it. I’m just not an east coast kind of person, I think. It’s always too cold or too humid or too something. The people seem to stare a lot and there’s not a lot of cultural diversity and…the hard to quantify thing that’s really the issue for me: it just doesn’t feel right to me.

I don’t know why.

I’ve lived all over the country and things have felt good enough. I’ve been lonely and depressed in the middle of China, isolated and stressed out, but the places felt fine. I’ve traveled a fair bit around the world and always been ok wherever I went. But for whatever reason, I always feel uneasy here. It’s the color of the sun and the way the hills roll. It’s maybe the stress in the air being so close to the country’s governmental seat. I dunno, but I’m always on edge.

On the other hand, it may just be that it’s so hard for me to relax.

Vending machines from back in the day were clunky and huge. You pushed a button with a photo representation of the product you wanted, it fell through some labyrinth, took a few dings, and off you went. It was fast, efficient, and brutal.

Now I stand in front of a gleaming glass-faced obelisk. The actual drinks that you, with the price of admission, can hold in your hands are displayed and pleasingly lit as if from within. A robotic arm glides into view upon receipt of money, efficiently grabs your prize, guides it to a chute, and then into a clear cylinder, from which your Coke revolves into view.

But it’s all a deceit. The robotic arm and rotating cylinder deal was fascinating and fun the first time. Maybe even the first 5 times. Now, on the 100th time, I’m over it. I wait and wait for the little robot to do it’s thing, I count the beats as the cylinder rotates and door opens. I reach my hand in impatiently and wait some more knowing that my change won’t be offered up to me until the machine senses that I’ve taken my Coke.

I’m not a particularly good or methodical engineer, but I am and engineer, and every time I see that robot doing it’s mundane dance and count the beats until my change appears, I visualize in my mind’s eye Coke’s falling straight down into my waiting hands like they used to, the change clattering down as well almost simultaneously. Thanks to the view afforded by the glass front of these new machines I can actually see the path I wish my Coke were taking.

I’m really not sure what we’ve gained from this “improvement”.

It’s weird how there’s no time for anything anymore.

I haven’t had a good ol’ fashioned hangout with some of my old friends in months? In some cases years? I haven’t called back a half a dozen people I would actually love to talk to but haven’t had the chance. I’m behind on a myriad of personal projects that are of critical importance to me (building an entertainment center, painting a picture I have an idea for, designing my photography website, cleaning out my music studio, fixing that bike, etc). And somehow I seem to be at work past 8PM pretty much nightly.

Why is that? Was it like this for my parents when they were my age (I don’t think so). Do I have more interests than when I was, say, 24 (possibly, but I remember being into a ton of other stuff back then). Am I just older, slower, and dumber now?

And it’s also weird how living life so completely also feels like missing it.

I don’t generally like celebrating holidays, I’ve decided. I find that the commercial aspects have taken most of the magic out of them. Ironically, Christmas is my favorite holiday for just that very reason, I like to get things.

It seems like, not unlike a game of Telephone, our modern traditions get distilled down into their base parts. Much like the original telephone message boils down to a single correct word, “Banana!”, Thanksgiving is now about eating, possibly with other people, and maybe there is cranberry sauce.

Even the meal has gotten summarized. What used to be turkey, giblets, stuffing, green bean casserole, this horrible celery something, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, corn, bread, and yes, cranberry sauce; is now maybe turkey sometimes ham, stuffing, and one of the above based on whim.

And, in that succinctness, so comes a general dulling of the splendor. I personally believe that adherence to the splendor and tedium of ceremony is the single most important thing that’s keeping the Catholic church alive and well. “Hell, look at all the kneeling and crossing themselves…and that stained glass ain’t cheap! If they’re going to go to THIS kind of trouble, there must be something to it!”

But I digress.

Not usually a fan of holidays save Christmas and the 4th of July. Sometimes New Year’s, though they are often disasters. Despite that, I decided to break out mom’s 24-hour salad recipe this year and cook a beef roast. If I’m going to celebrate, I’m going to at LEAST do it wrong on purpose.

I’m going to a record-release party for Michelle Harding tonight. That should be of actual little interest to you unless you happen to be a fan; and if I were to post about every show I went to you’d have been slogging through years of old posts just to find one of any interest.

I’m trying to say I go to a lot of shows.

At any rate, Michelle is a friend of mine of a while now, with an amazing voice and an infectious spirit. She’s an all-around nice person even if she is Canadian. But that’s not the point. The point is that I’m going to this record release party, the art of which was taken almost entirely by me. Truth be told, I didn’t get the CD cover like I almost did, her “people” convinced her to choose a picture that was a bit more commercial. I did get the back cover, all of the inside pamphlet and the CD itself, though…so in many ways I count this as a victory.

It’s interesting, thinking of the very real possibility that dozens? hundreds? maybe more? people will be seeing and admiring my pictures. Granted, they will probably more be admiring that Michelle is pretty, but having captured that for a moment does somewhat make it mine, too, doesn’t it? Or not, maybe I’m just the monkey who pushed the shutter button, but the point is that I am that monkey. And that’s something.

Plus I’m just honored to be a part of something that is so important to a friend of mine.

Also, did I mention my pictures were on a CD?

It’s been nearly a month since I unceremoniously tripped over my mid-30’s. Honestly, I don’t feel at all different than the month before. In retrospect, I don’t feel differently from any other year.

Granted, I get out of breath a little faster than I used to and my right knee refuses to not hurt all the time and my hair is thinner than it used to be and my ankle is weaker after that bad sprain….but I don’t remember these slow transitions into decrepitude. To me it’s all been one and the same game.

I vaguely remember the lithe energetic body of a nubile pre-teen, but only in theory and not especially clearly.

What is the point? I dunno, some cliche about only being as old as you feel or something.