Islands are places where different destinies can meet in the fullness of isolation, and in their own time. Island time doesn't match the time of other places. The ideal island is a whole world, and even a tiny island may contain multitudes.
July 2009 Archives
It's strange to think that after everything, when it's all over, you just quit. Your light simply goes out and you are no more. What I find saddest about that whole notion is all the questions left unanswered when we die. Nothing will be solved. No one will tell us what it was really all about. How we did. Worst of all, we'll never find the answers to all those nagging puzzles that haunt us.
We think of life as having a beginning, middle, and end. But it doesn't. It either ends abruptly or trails off. Either way, there are so many loose threads left dangling.
Our lives are the briefest of moments; they pass by like a dream. There's no second chance for those who fail to grasp it. Such people simply reach old age and live out the rest of their days in the hollow depths of remorse, with nothing to hold in their hands to show that they had lived except the dried remains of all that should have been--the discarded husks of their dreams.
Vagabond Dreams Outtakes are "deleted scenes" from my book. Think of them as a "Special Features" disc for a DVD yet to be invented. This incident took place in the Peten region of Guatemala...
Overgrown jungle pathways linked the main ruins of Tikal, transforming predictable sightseeing into something approaching exploration. I walked quietly and breathed deeply of the damp jungle air. Birds called from the canopy and troops of spider monkeys chattered in the distance. Smells of humid earth and decaying vegetation filled my nose. The intense heat of the flatlands wrapped me in a clammy blanket that I wanted to kick off.
The outer ruins lay as they were found. Walking there alone, it really did feel like I had just discovered the site after centuries of tomb-silence. The ruins hinted at stories long forgotten and enormous tracts of time. Jagged heaps of dislocated stones crumbled under probing and strangling roots. An enormous tarantula picked its careful eight-legged way across a shattered inscription. Whole buildings slept undisturbed beneath a living blanket of tangled growth that was slowly reclaiming the city.
History was digested there. The very land consumed it. Jungles exist entirely in the present, and purely in the physical. Their geography doesn't allow for abstractions. The jungle misuses nothing because it values nothing. And the jungle never tells what sleeps beneath the trees.
Compared to the half exposed ruins on Tikal's outer limits, The Great Plaza felt like a prop. Tourists wandered around armed with video cameras; Hawaiian shirts flapped; guides radiated fake cheer into the stifling heat. I had to stretch my imagination to the breaking point to block them all out.
Luck was with me. Some strange conjunction caused all the tour groups to leave at the same time, and none came to replace them. I scurried up the tallest temple, my shoes chuffing on dry rasping stones, to the edge of the platform and the small chamber with its black missing tooth of a door. I looked down on the plaza and imagined myself a Mayan high priest, standing before throngs of people, arms outstretched in benediction or in warning. A bloody heart beat spastically in my hand; I could feel it, just as I could feel the reverberations in my ribcage of the hoarse roar of the crowds below. My arm dripped blood and gore. The temple was a stage set and I was deeply absorbed in my role. The ghosts of the plaza turned to watch with approval, and I felt with my fingers their very touch upon the stones.
It was what I'd been seeking in Panama City when I followed the trail of Henry Morgan. Back there my preconceived agenda had blinded me to subtle emanations, because I hadn't yet learned how to listen. But in Tikal I glimpsed, however briefly, a new way of sightseeing, one that involved "thick" or "deep" time, a peek into the distant past fuelled by wide reading and that rare conjunction of having the entire stage to oneself. I felt somehow that the Road Gods had blessed me, had rewarded me for my ceaseless struggles, for my honest efforts and my faith. It almost never happens in today's world of budget travel and accessibility, where everything has been made so easy, interpreted simplistically on big wooden signs to cater to the lazy and the unimaginative.
The great monument builders of the world must have been motivated by the suffocating weight of time. They watched as the creatures of the jungle died, decayed and vanished back into the earth with nothing to show that they had ever lived. The monument builders knew that, though their flesh would pass, the carved stones they left behind would last through the ages.
So many people accept their presence in this world as a given. They plod along in the same well worn track as all those before them, driven here and there by impulse and instinct in a sterile Pavlovian existence. They live nine-to-five lives, affecting no one and changing nothing. The world is no better or worse for their having existed. They leave no trace; like a song they just fade away.
The very idea horrified me. I wanted to change something, to leave my own small footprint in time. A Mayan reminder.
The Mayan world occupied the upper third of Central America, from the baking jungle flatlands of the Yucatan Peninsula (present day Mexico, Belize and the Guatemalan Petén) to volcanic highlands stretching as far south as Copán in Honduras.
Mayan civilization was not an empire, but a loose collection of entities that shared a common cultural background. Large centers of power like Tikal, Copán or Chichen Itza were comparable to the city states of ancient Greece, and these great agricultural centers were the focal points of Mayan culture.
At its zenith, the Mayan civilization represented one of the most densely populated and dynamic societies in the world. The Mayans were responsible for the only fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, and they continue to fascinate us with their art and monumental architecture, as well as their sophisticated systems of mathematics and astronomy.
But nothing fascinates us more than their demise. What accounted for the stunning collapse of their civilization? Was it an ecological disaster, a catastrophic event, the collapse of trade routes, or a peasant revolt? Many theories exist; none has been conclusively proven.
Though their society collapsed, the Maya did not entirely vanish into the mists of time. Mayan peoples and their descendants remain to form sizeable populations in contemporary Mesoamerican societies, and Mayan languages continue to be spoken. In mountain villages and flatland jungle towns throughout northern Central America a slender, fragile thread of life still stretches back through time, providing a blood red connection to the monument builders of old.
Exploring those Mayan worlds was a bit of a pilgrimage for me. As a child I haunted library books with cutaway illustrations of castles and pyramids. I became obsessed with Easter Island. I didn't care for dinosaurs; I needed something with a dream attached, the echo of someone's all-consuming desire. I gloated over the unexplainable. I sought not theories, but mystery. Dark corridors. Ancient stones hewn carefully by hand. The musty smell of centuries. But my country had none of that. Those places where stories were contained in crumbling stones were entire continents away. Perhaps that's why I yearned for them. I've always dreamed of the inaccessible. In time. In place. In love.
Things have been busy in Murdland, and blogs have been scarce... This will be an update rather than the usual traveler's tale. Not a lame excuse for neglecting you, not a mea culpa, just a simple update with some links that you may enjoy checking out.
So where the fork have I been these past two weeks?
Australian rock legends The Church just wrapped up the tail end of their coast-to-coast North American tour. I spent a week catching several shows in the area, and hanging out backstage with my friend Steve Kilbey, singer/lyricist of the band and one of my most important writing influences. The shows were incredible--they absolutely blew the roof off The Tralf Music Hall in Buffalo, NY. Tim, Marty and Peter are all great guys, and I had a blast talking books, music, and art with Steve. Here are a few photos from Buffalo and Ottawa for those who are interested. You can also watch a short backstage interview with Steve from the Ottawa Bluesfest (if you look closely you'll see my arm and sleeve pop into the right side of the screen--my recent brush with frame...).
On other fronts...
Don't forget to pick up the current issue of Outpost magazine, in which I have the main feature on Ireland. It won't be on newsstands for very much longer! But there's no need to worry if you're feeling like you can't get enough of these pithy, deeply meaningful journeys through time, space and memory. I'll have the main feature again in the following issue of Outpost, this time on Egypt. That one should be out in late August.
I'm headed to Japan for a couple weeks in September for a personal trip, then off to Syria on a writing assignment with photographer Jason George. New magazine features will be the outcome of both trips. The blog is likely to be slow while I'm away--I don't travel with a laptop because I'm an old school notebook and pen kinda guy (voice from another room: he can't afford one!), but I'm thinking of changing that. Look for shorter, less polished updates from the road, and maybe even a video blog or two. If you have any requests, please be sure to post them in the comments.
If you're bored waiting for me to come up with new stuff, check out my podcast interview with the folks over at Real World Strength Training. There's some stuff about how I stay in expedition shape on the road and how martial art has formed my approach to both travel and fitness, and there are also lots of traveler's tales--about betel nut chewing in Burma, fighting giant cockroaches in Rangoon, and riding camels in the Arabian Desert. I hope you enjoy it.
On the coaching side of my work, I'm just wrapping up the writing for a new bodyweight exercise ebook with coauthor Adam Steer. Filming and photo shoots are scheduled for this week. Adam and I also recently released a free ebook on CST bodyweight exercise. If you're looking for an equipment-free, portable, time-compressed workout, click the link to grab your copy. Be sure to let us know what you think. On the Traveling Road Show front, I'll be joining the RMAX Faculty in Bellingham, Washington in a couple weeks to coach the big biannual CST Instructor certification seminar, followed by a TACFIT instructor certification. After that I'm off to London, England and Hamburg, Germany to run two more seminars. Hope to see you there if you're in the neighbourhood! You can read about all that stuff on my coaching site. This is the place for travel writing.
Hmm, what other inane details can I amuse ya with? I'm currently reading Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West. Watching films by Ingmar Bergman. And listening to Steve Kilbey's Art, Man & Technology. How about you? Reading, watching or listening to anything cool that my readers should know about? Let us know in the comments.
Next installment: back to our regularly scheduled--but never regular, conventional, or mundane--traveler's tales.
Surrealism supplanted reality the moment I landed in Pyongyang, North Korea. In front of the airport terminal, beneath an enormous painting of Kim Il-Sung, a long line of women in traditional dress chanted "Welcome Pyongyang!" as they pumped their fists in the air.
At the airport I was paired with an "escort" who wouldn't leave my side the entire time I was in the country (I swear he even slept outside my hotel room). He took possession of my passport and began a nonstop barrage of propaganda the moment we got in the car: "Scientific socialism is alive and well in North Korea. The Great Leader said the socialist countries of Eastern Europe failed because they forgot to factor in the crucial ingredient of love." Etc, etc, ad nauseum (add nausea).
Pyongyang is a city of ten-lane streets, marble monuments and grand public buildings. Murals of Kim Il-Sung adorn every corner. It's a Potemkin village on an enormous scale, built to dazzle the few foreign guests and delegations permitted to visit. It feels like a stage set, or like walking through an engineer's conceptual model. There's a sense of barely maintained illusion, of a collective effort at make believe. The grandeur is faked, and history is rewritten to suit the message of the day.
Pyongyang has the highest living standards in the country, though among everyone except the tiny elite these standards aren't very high. In the countryside is starvation. Soldiers are everywhere. Both men and women are in uniform. For many, enlistment is the only way to ensure regular meals. In North Korea the military is fed first and is first to benefit from foreign aid.
Only those most loyal to the regime are permitted to live in the capital. Old people, cripples, and the extremely ugly are banished to the countryside. Even the female traffic control police are said to be chosen for beauty rather than ability. It wouldn't matter anyway; there isn't any traffic.
From a distance the facade is impressive. The public buildings are incredible examples of the Communist Realist style. The many apartment complexes appear well organized and comfortable in their neat little rows. But closer inspection reveals drab grey concrete structures that seem about to collapse from sheer depression and lethargy. Many lack window glass. Thanks to chronic electricity shortages most of them lack heat during the harsh winter, as well as elevators and running water. At night they're lit by a single bare bulb, and through each window the regulation framed pictures of the Great Leader Kim Il-Sung and the Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il are visible on every wall.
A trip to North Korea will give you an unbeatable trump card in the game of traveler's tales. The Hermit Kingdom is the most difficult country in the world to visit, and nothing comes close to the dislocation of stepping into its alternate reality.
But a journey there goes beyond travel coups and dumb escapes. Places like North Korea need to be visited, and as travelers who have been there, we're responsible for talking about what we've seen. The stories of their people must get out and the world must take notice on a human level if there's to be any sort of lasting change.
Half an hour by motorcycle outside of Phnom Penh. A peaceful spot by the riverside. A place where fat lazy bees buzzed, and where crickets sawed songs in the grass.
A dirt pathway wound through this scene. I followed it until I met with the overgrown pit of an exhumed grave, its sides eroded like elderly gums or the caved-in face of a hobo. There were dozens of them, choked with stagnant water and mud. Once they were each choked with a hundred or more mangled bodies.
On the ground at my feet, pieces of coarse blue cloth were embedded in the dirt. A human ulna bone and several perfect molars had been revealed by heavy rain. When I crouched down to touch them, I saw that the ground around me was scattered with teeth.
The still air echoed with the sounds of a thousand primitive deaths: half-starved men bludgeoned with rifle butts and shovels; babies thrown into the air and caught on bayonets, the smothering pain of the drowning tank. In a peasant's war, bullets cost the same as mercy--both were in short supply. The people who did this now live back in town, just down the street from the families of the disappeared.
Afterwards, my driver wanted to take me to a shooting range run by the Cambodian military. He bounced from foot to foot with excitement, his face split by a smile. I could fire handguns, AK-47's, an M-60, or a Russian rocket launcher. For about a hundred bucks more, they would buy a cow from a local farmer and shove it onto the shooting range for my enjoyment. We had just visited the killing fields, but no one saw the contradiction in this.
Phnom Penh is a long way away, mister. Its symmetry is disturbed. Its collective psyche has been shattered. It's a place whose soul has been horribly blighted. It's not the kind of place you want to go back to. It's the kind of place you escape.
moonlight echoes through nighttime streets
reverberating off walls of limburger cheese
and the yellow plaster of peeling bandages
over Poseidon blue.
razor wounds
or Time's shaving nicks?
black cats scuttle
through dead-end alleys
like fading dreams they dissolve into cognac fumes
rain dogs howl and the light peels away
as the evening train mourns its passing with a brassy wail
and a clack of ivory teeth on day-old bread.
the ghost of Durrell wafts through on a telltale scent of wine
possessing those he touches
pulling them into his
hedonist
booze-soaked
aphrodisiac
world
with the magic of the grape and the lure of lost inhibitions.
for a while you inhabit the novel
until the reel world intrudes
and pulls you to earth with Icarian finality
plummeting into the day-to-day
with fluttering stomach and limbs of lead
to crashland in mundanity
not with a thud
but with a whimper of remorse.
