very nicey varanasi

leaving varanasi is exhilarating and sad. it should be a city i can live in forever – its hovels ... the whole city’s a prehistoric strip mall – traffic, beggars, friendliness-hostility mix, omnipresent food, wily sadhus, consumptive ritual, nanometre negotiations of space, spewed and tumbled architectures, as if the city’s made of oneiric mud, ghat scene, as if california were an addict of the drug old religion, bipeds, cows, goats, bicycles, motorcycles, tuktuks, cars, buses all righteously, nonchalantly claiming the same real estate, tourist as alien and target, scum and saviour, hash, opium, excrement (i'm even offered dmt one night) ... the ganga anchoring the scene like a spiritual stock exchange.

but it’s not.

its assumed holiness, monoculture, filth and noise, as if these are virtues, expats either caustic or earnest ... my tuktuk driver somehow manages not to kill us or anyone else on the way to lal bahadur shastri airport, which is the puzzle piece fitting the emptiness between varanasi and the world.

 

except it’s still india – different flights of different airlines to mumbai and delhi leaving at the same time share the same gate according to the departure screen. the sign above the gate just says mumbai.

no?it’s?both?yes?it’s?both?yes?it’s?india

a thanatopsychocultural blend of

melancholy, god-cows,

pansensuous gutter dreams

coming soon to varanasi –

• a starbucks by dashashwamedh ghat
• grunge punk nightly in vishwanath temple following aarti
• skateboarding park on the ghat steps
• sadhu rap thursdays
• calvin klein bovine sex club sundays
• burn your favourite enemy tuesdays
• varanicey verynasti 5,000 year anniversary celebration lasting 5,000 years – all kashites become honorary sadhus
• bumper tuktuk – come on! you can finally touch!
• feminist wednesdays
• send one varanasi beggar to manhattan for every 1,000 tourists
• amputate a limb of every 1,000^th tourist UN justice program
• shri baba baba turns the ganga to piss, parts the piss, and the children of kasha walk through to the promised other shores
• spiked lassi fridays
• cow poop spas for the world’s uberultrarich
• a subway line running under the ghats, a station at each ghat
• malaria mondays
• burn your saree saturdays
• bike lanes!
• food court at varanasi junction
• anti-corruption mosquito bots

 

* danke for the varies, rev bon hofmann

bundi

the colours of death came to me one night. they had shapes like architecture, and spoke in the bright sullenness of the houses of bundi in those rare moments when nothing asserts itself, when the messy duvet of the hills lies soft after the frenzied religious lust that tosses on the bed of this land. doors were unlocked and i wandered through those corridors and rooms undisturbed. the mirrors were wells of unreflecting and my face was like the grammar of sleep. i encountered bodies, still and perfect, white moons around absent centres, and they seemed like eyes – unblinking, plucked, sightless, visionary. i say, i would be those eyes. i would be a body perfect, still. no one answers, and my words fall somewhere in the temple of abysses. the architectures of death are blue. blue, skygreen, and nectarine. they come to me in nights. i inhabit them like love.

 

the power of cow in kāśi

cows are like dogs here, curled by the fireplace of death

they look at me in that doggy way – friend-hopeful, disappointment-accustomed, ever-trusting, eating the scraps of the human, pets of the kingdom of kashi, suckling the world’s maw

isn’t it right that cows are sacred, more holy than homo sapiens whose name is dubious? for do they not provide happy meals for the Empire of Hamburger, milk for the only animal who drinks of the breast until death, suffer silently the abattoir and stun gun, lay themselves in thin delicate strips for the aristocracy of kobe niku, curdle for the sweet diversity of cheese, take the flies of the world and sole the feet of the upright, graze the pastures of the wasting earth? all this without complaint, signing no waiver, lacking any charter of freedom, driven from eden without myth, god or iphone. who would not worship? who would not prostrate itself before the power of cow?

cow, who rhymes with wow and now and dao, whose homonym walks in reverse, who holds nothing at its centre with balance, equanimity, this beasty god and gody beast

i see them posing on the steps of the ghats like unassuming divas, depositing sanctified poops like coneless DQ ice cream in the banks of vision, wandering among death beyond concern and rite

and the humans around, hawking, stuffed with self-importance and grief, tilling history like oxen for strange and inedible produce – what are we in our two-legged swill and swirl next to the bovine whom we deign to feign to master; drink, slaughter, eat?

here on the ganga, lotus flowers lit and floating like plucked stygian souls, i see kamadhenu rise. it is not woman who will redeem us. not the mute gods, war. hardly technology or money or even love. it is cow

yottalopoli

these yottalopoli, tokyo and delhi, doppelganger siblings in unsustainability, the former of scrubbed privilege, incarcerating order, the latter of anarchic filth, screeching hunger.

delhi’s noisier, dirtier, more aggressive, obnoxious, relentless, meaner than i remember it. this bothers and fascinates me less than before, having become more intimate with these attributes, their ubiquity in society. their externalization (muted, sugar-coated in the new world) seems an inevitability among the planet’s urban architectures, at least until we figure out how to modify the soul ... perhaps the central practice of the human, a practice which religion, philosophy and art haven’t had much success in; technology now attempting new forms of the practice through genetic modification.

new delhi train station at midnight looks like hades – heaped wraiths, gustave-doré-scapes of grey and destroyed time. the trains look like death cars. it smells like the marriage of a garbage truck that’s never emptied and a latrine that’s never washed.

if anything looks like the end of the world, delhi does. as if the apocalypse has happened (even the moon looks sick here [looks like sushi rice in tokyo]) ... yet humans – photocopied without governance (the machines hyped, 24/7) – still wandering the destroyed earth bound by chemicals and technological scraps ... sign, sign the signs of ends ... (how could i ever return to europe after this ... that museum mausoleum?)

the delhi metro, like the entire city, is impossible. around the ticket-purchasing counter are thousands of people – no lines, no organization. the few ticket-purchasing machines all have out-of-order signs. if you have a pass you can get right in but you have to go to the counter to get a pass. do i want to push claustrophobically for three hours for a traffic-free ride under the nation’s capital? i return to the honking bumper-rickshaw maelstrom above.

the train from delhi to varanasi is delayed first 2.5 hours, then another 2, and finally departs 6 hours late, at 0230h. there are no announcements, apologies; information’s absent; no one knows anything. i find out eventually from a local on the train that the delay’s due to fog – the drivers are scared of not being able to see water buffalos on the tracks, a potential derailment issue. at some point i begin asking people how far to varanasi. the answers: 2 hours, 3, 4 maybe 6 hours, 5, 7. turns out to be 8. because we’re off-schedule, i’m told (all this from seasoned local travelers) we have to give way to every on-schedule train, making the ordeal 24 hours instead of 12. there are 23 cars – most of them sleeper class:  a comic misnomer, as they’re piled with hundreds of humans compared to mine at the top of privilege with only 12. by the end the washrooms reek so badly even passing them makes me gag. and that’s in ac first class. i’m in a cabin with 3 indians who speak only a few words of english. we occasionally nod and smile and exchange a few snacks as signs of goodwill and survival. finally, rabid with freedom, nearing midnight, i break into the thick madness of one of the world’s oldest cities, death hot in the air, my driver negotiating cows, goats, shit, bipeds, suicide-drivers to deposit me near my ghat, its nighttime wailing sticky on the ganga, the old asian moon nonchalant at the burning bodies on those sacred dirty shores.

 

people ask me where i’m from. canada, i say. where else? good country is the most common response. i suppose so. but we’ll see how good it is in a few years when the world begins invading it for its water and climate and land.

toke ee-eye-ee-eye yo

english signs frequently amuse; a sampling –

• this is the very steak, the big cut of steak
• italian tomato cafe jr.
• we are going to construction on coming 12nd of february. it will be make noisy a few times.

tokyo is all hospital. surgical masks are the baseball caps of the world’s largest richest yottalopolis, adumbrating pandemic as the newest hippest sport. 20% of the populace routinely wears them.

the fashion on the metro is as bland as the tube’s – browns, blacks, greys, dark blues, contrasting with the bubble gum pink and manga lime that dominate those other nipponic dimensions.

the bulge and sprawl of this place like a five-star god gulped by and digesting in a constellated arcade. tokyo isn’t pomo, it’s pofu (postfuture).

in paris one’s compelled to piss everywhere – a rite and sophistication of sorts. here, if one were to pull out one’s dick in even the most deserted street a shinto priest would surely appear, saying no piss no piss ...    ... bowing, bowing ...    ...

japan is easier to enter than amerika. the Empire’s border umpires scrutinize me as if i might be carrying a copy of the koran and hiding in it a t-55 tank, a blueprint for the miscarriage of texas, and a load of banisteriopsis caapi. the immigration and customs people at narita look 15 and nervous, as if they’d like to apologize for the geopolitical necessity of this impolite ritual. i am of course no more on japan’s side than amerika’s – they each are genetically jurisdictionally modified vegetables i snack on to supplement my usually strict and robust psychic-aesthetic diet.

a metro – at least one of any size – grounds a city. lost aboveground, weary, blistered, this moving matrix of mercantile production, mapped infinities, i descend into any frequent staircase and am immediately at home. even in a large metro like tokyo’s, its graspable finitude – about 285 stations and 13 lines – is readily mastered and i can moor the airy limitlessness of urban supraterranean life in the colourful countability of a numbered subterranean system, which is so impeccably and thoroughly – even anally! – signed i don’t hesitate directionally once during my tenure. i’m never lost below the soil. above ground, i can’t find anything. chthonically yours.

shibuya (shinjuku ...) i expect to overwhelm times square but it doesn’t, other than in its scramble – a choreographed technical animation, dance of a hive, auto and human rigorously symbiotic. new york’s central absurdity does neon, achieves a gawdiness shibuya doesn’t seem interested in. the latter is a lit-and-technical brand-and-buy outdoor mall; times square is religious vertigo, the light of heaven dragged and chained to earth, the new jerusalem of spectral vision, god on broadway bodway.

my insignificance in solitude in nature is mathematically matched, jurisprudently balanced by my insignificance in tokyo. despite the mono-ethnicity (i see a few aliens for every few hundred japanese, a non-diversity that would be more offensive if it weren’t for the city’s obvious techno-cosmopolitanism [the world is here, just not in flesh – or rather not in flesh’s legacy bestial signs]) ... as a rare caucasian i am wholesalely ignored. in mexico city, marginally more diverse – particularly on its metro – i am often stared at. the blasé of being at the top?

i transit globally to feast spiritually on my nothingness – this gigapolitic a trans-creation on that sticky theme of consciousness flickering on the immeasurable screen of night.

it’s 2200h – late rush hour. tokyo’s metro closes soon after midnight to accommodate straggling commuters, hardly for the drug and party crowd. there’s no smoking on the streets except in designated areas. no one jaywalks, crosses against red lights. i see nobody eating or drinking (even water) on the metro or outside. 2 or 3 white-gloved transit attendants line every subway platform and if i inadvertently break a regulation one instantly appears, its arms in the form of an x. the place reeks of obedience.

intermittent digital reassurances appear on metro cars – in case of an earthquake, stay calm – a thorough plan is fully in place

• throughout the city elevations above sea level are posted – some are as low as 0.3 meters
• the pacific is right there. so is north korea.
• ... and where is the plan for all those three-star michelin restaurants? who could stay calm if tokyo loses its #1 spot in food?

does the beast yet survive in this cacophony of hyperorder?

well, there are women-only metro cars so that females can ride without being groped.

in the washroom cubicle at the meiji jingo shrine there are heated toilet seats but no soap for washing. having shat, once outside, i rub dirt on my hands making them look shit-splattered, deteriorating the situation on the 10-minute walk back to the metro by rubbing leaves on my hands, spitting on them, rubbing more. i look like a scatological wreck by the time i make it to soap. all this on acid and the anniversary of the founding of the nation. i don’t know if emperor jimmu would have been pleased ... but i’m as blapper happy as blotter paper.

the hostel i stay at has –

• in the toilets integrated machines that do a pantheon of functions from the convenience of a seat-side panel:  warm-water bidet with adjustable pressure, front and rear hole options, modifiable odour-reducing deodorizer, flush music sound with volume control to muffle any rude ass audio
• a communal bath (divided by the sexes), available mornings and evenings, in which it is mandated that you’re naked
• provided slippers, which someone replaces each day and neatly arranges at the foot of one’s bunk
• me as the only westerner among ~150 guests
• a lock-in from 2300 – 0600h
• families! scores of children, as if school trips from japanese hickland flit here for outings ... i saunter to the washroom to go pee one evening and battalions of screaming pyjamad 5-year-olds tumble polydirectionally in the hallways, whirled in that pre-bed ecstasy only the biologically young can pull off with such reckless grace
• ... families ... children ... and middle-aged traveling used sushi salesmen, who belch, fart, bellow and snore like antediluvian sumo wrestlers ...
• ... everyone’s in bed by 2200h and stirring by 0500 ...

where am i?

lost in ratiocination

a lead piece from an

in-flight entertainment magazine –

 

once a research shows that the less privileged students are not the only ones that are more likely to be bullied in class. anyone not ordinary enough could be left out, including geniuses. although it’s commonly perceived that outstanding elites do not have issues and they are able to address their own problems, is it so?

 

there are people who prefer to be alone. they rarely have eye contacts with others and the facial expressions of others are incomprehensible to them. in addition, they are particularly meticulous about what they are interested in. they don’t care about people around them or the social norm.

 

in the movie, the accountant, ben affleck plays the math genius, christian wolff, who’s diagnosed with asperger syndrome.

 

china airlines presents the accountant to all of you who are unique and extraordinary out there.

 

a'a'a and the volcano

a’a’a is from ha’apulī’imokenu’u. her brother is i’i’i and he has a twin called u’u’u. when a’a’a is three her parents – e’e’e and o’o’o – move to kipimule’ēlopohahanapolu. a’a’a is not happy in kipimule’ēlopohahanapolu. she is sad.

 

confused, lost, outside of happiness, she travels alone to mount li’āmihuno’okepupu to consult the oracle in the crater in the lava to see what she should do. but when she gets to mount li’āmihuno’okepupu and to the oracle in the crater in the lava the lava is cold and the crater filled and the oracle silent. if i was lost before i am truly lost now, a’a’a says to herself. and she maintains a vigil for 40 days and 40 nights, eating only ash, drinking only vog, waiting for the lava to flow and the crater to be a crater and the oracle to speak.

 

and – behold! – after 40 days and 40 nights, a’a’a, as close to death as someone in that situation can be, the earth opens to expose the fire in its heart and the voices speak from before the time of a’a’a and i’i’i and u’u’u and, yes, from before the time of e’e’e and o’o’o, and – yes upon yes! – from even before the time of ha’apulī’imokenu’u and kipimule’ēlopohahanapolu and – believe it readers – if possible (and it is possible) before the time of mount li’āmihuno’okepupu, and they say in their voices that are not voices and yet speak:  a’a’a, climb on the back of the fire of the heart and ride with us to pihapukomenalī’i or what is sometimes called nana’aholikenomupo or rarely but hardly never mahū’olapi’ekano or in the ancient tongues wanders without a name.

 

and why should i go with you to mahū’olapi’ekano or nana’aholikenomupo or pihapukomenalī’i when i have been living in kipimule’ēlopohahanapolu with i’i’i and u’u’u and e’e’e and o’o’o but longing for ha’apulī’imokenu’u? says a’a’a.

 

but the fire in the earth does not answer and a’a’a climbs on the back of the fire of the heart and goes with the voices to the ancient tongues without a name.

gently fall the subway cars on indifference

across large swaths of society the sane are routinely, unquestioningly separated from those insane or questionable, the normal from the abnormal, eccentric, strange, objectionable. as i dig around in these separations, what is mostly meant is that the sane, the normal are middle class professionals. doesn’t matter whether they’re black or white, male or female, hindu or secular, gay, straight, bi …

next phase diversity challenges? technocapitalist inquisitional homogenization?

i no longer need to think of my body for my body is nature and nature doesn’t think of itself. and the world is in my body as it is in a bear or a patch of grass or the moon

i took 25 years to find my voice and as i found it it began tiring me. so i give the found voice up, seek voices far outside, wearing them as passable fashions

the metro mobs i used to avoid i now join freely. traveling transit in rush hour becomes a fascination, novelty, a ride on the ride called otherness, meditation, lucid dream, comedy, living anthropology class, a question and awe … what is this species?! how can its modes be mine?

as we build more and bigger dams across the earth’s physical rivers, so we build more and bigger dams across the rivers of the human psyche – the flow of emotions, passions, drives, now channeled, diverted, managed. so if i feel depressed, despairing, anxious, schizoid, hyper, manic, lethargic, suicidal – all these are something to be labeled, diagnosed, analyzed, possibly pathologized, overcome, corrected – transforming me (through whatever means – work, pharmaceuticals, therapy, religion, yoga or exercise) into an avatar of happiness

the dams grow, with consequent environmental damage

and the techniques (if these are what they are?) for simply (is this the adverb?) allowing the river(s) to flow (rapidly, slowly, stagnantly, vortically, …) without judgment, damming, without pulling others into my river – yet an interest in accepting the environment within, becoming acquainted (even intimate) with the landscape, describing them possibly – or at least the sensations aroused during wandering – as you would a river near your home, a river you love?

but who has time for such exploration? for – yes – exploring takes time. but dams demand time be used for building more dams. exploring takes risk. but dams demand that risk be subject to risk management models and governance. exploring requires flawed or missing maps. but …

western philosophy – that moated walled fortified edifice:  an unbalanced input in history’s mixing console

only once the majority of humans were urbanized could the statement everything is political make sense; spend sufficient time alone in nature – increasingly a rarity and privilege – and such statements dematerialize

love, once such a

meteorological

wrestle,

slips into

its wardrobe,

changing clothes

meanwhile,

rain falls in a northern

january

and

a sadoo

walks gently

this month this time

january is sleep and death and dream

i travel to sad, snack on terror,

wash on ruins

everything talks but only the trees listen

they keep their secrets

each day i count the seconds of extra sun

it is cloudy most days

i dream and sleep and die

where are the schools?

not the analysts, pills, doulas, degrees

but the classes of dying dreaming sleeping?

there – the trees, they are dying

the sun it is dreaming

the earth it is sleeping

let me learn from them

can i reach them? can i see them? can i touch them?

they are here, in my body

in my deaths and dreams and sleeps