I (Heart) Disaster

Greetings from: Luxembourg (again)

2010-08-10T22:46:00.000-07:00

We end where we begin: in Luxembourg. Probably not a moment too soon: Matthew and I are now loaded down with at least fifty pounds worth of new purchases.

We have dinner in a Laotian restaurant -- an odd cuisine to find in Luxembourg. Even more odd: as we come in, a muscular man wearing an Armani t-shirt is singing Thai karaoke. He says that Thai is his sixth language, and that’s he’s working on a seventh: Japanese. He also says, essentially, that he’s learned these languages in order to impress the girls of those countries, which is honest enough, I suppose. His comrade-in-arms, if not in tongues, has the build of a fireman. The polyglot laughs and jokes with the owner of the restaurant. He’s brought his own bootleg karaoke CDs. He has sets of harmonicas that he plays, blues-style, to a few songs. We applaud when appropriate.

This song, he tells us, is about a guy who brings his girlfriend to a certain part of the city. The next time he sees his girlfriend, though, she’s with another guy. So it’s a very fast, very angry song. Too fast for him to sing along.

The owner speaks to us in French. He moved to Luxembourg from Paris, and finds the Grand Duchy somewhat dull.

Well, yes, I can see how that’s possible.

But Luxembourg is what it is. Our Armani-clad friend says that the country is too conservative. Luxembourg has the highest income per capita in Europe, he says, but many people don’t know anything beyond their own borders. He’s going back to Thailand and Laos in a few months.

What’s your line of work? we ask. He’s an electrical engineer.

The evening pulls forth -- we have a plane to catch tomorrow. And how is it, that we’re in a Laotian restaurant run by a former Parisian, speaking English to a man who can sing Thai karaoke. The screens now show hideously cheesy videos, replete with ruffle-clad dancers and a singer who stands with the dignity of a former Miss Universe winner. The two men speaking French next to us switch to English when they address the two blonde ladies at the far table. And for this meal, sipping our fresh coconut juice, it seems as if Luxembourg has become a microcosm of the larger world.

Greetings from: BRUGES

2010-07-28T07:56:00.000-07:00

The expectations game is an extraordinarily bad one to play while on vacation, but when armed with foreknowledge of a place, it becomes impossible not to play it. Today’s contestant: Bruges. It already has two strikes going against it: 1) we’ve heard it’s extremely touristy (it has little industry of its own outside of tourism; blame the French); 2) Matthew has read that most of the buildings are more recent constructions, rather than the more authentic medieval buildings of Ghent.

And so, even as we wander about Bruges, we’re not so taken with it. At the open air ‘antiques’ market, one vendor has a large map of the city all done in lace. The souvenir shops themselves offer your initials in lace, as if trying to personalize the experience. We do see one actual lace maker at her work, but she has a small dish for tips next to her as she manipulates the pins and the string, and it reminds me of Colonial Williamsburg more than anything. The canal cruises are 1€ more expensive than in Ghent, the boats are more crowded, and they don’t even give you a free beer!

We meander along the canal the rings the city, and I get the sense that this is an interrupted city. There’s an old seminary for sale. A monastery that’s been turned into a hostel (of sorts). An abandoned apartment building with everything ripped out of it except for the light fixtures and some vinyl cling-on decorations for a kid’s room. It would be a sad sight, if it weren’t the life cycle of any city you could name.

Eventually we come to a small street fair. More Flemish rock, but on a more intimate scale. The band -- who seem to be aging bikers in their spare time -- perform hard rock classics. The rest of the street has become a huge garage sale, with all the junk that you expect from garage sales. It’s like the antique market that we passed earlier, except with pretensions or the ridiculous prices. They don’t trying to pass off their crap by claiming its authenticity.

Greetings from: GHENT

2010-07-28T07:53:00.000-07:00

When I was young, I always wanted to live in a castle. I imagined a moat, a drawbridge, a livery -- the works. Having not been born into European nobility, however, my chances were extremely slim. Maybe this is why I was so captivated by Ghent: there’s Gravenstein Castle right in the town center. It’s a museum now, and I’m not sure how excited I’d be to live in a museum, but it does bring back all of the childhood dreams.

We arrive in Ghent in the middle of its summer festival, and what should be an easy stroll becomes a maze of concert tents and tourists. Music reverberates off the old stones. People sing along to famous Flemish rock songs, but no one dances. But it’s early in the afternoon still, and who knows what happens after people get a few beers into them.

In the Bloemenmarkt, I had a cone of lily-flavored ice cream (having once eaten sautéed tiger lily buds, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect), but the taste was pleasingly floral, sweet. Belgians sure do love their sweets. Waffles studded with pebbles of sugar and then doused in chocolate or whipped cream; crepes dressed in the same finery. They even have yogurt that proudly displays its sucre content. I haven’t yet taken a good look at Belgian teeth to determine the extent of their dental issues. Along with canal, street food stalls fill the air with the smell of spiced, sizzling meats.

It seems as if the fair threatens to overwhelm little Ghent. But it’s stood for centuries already; some bad free-jazz trios aren’t going to bring it down now. Matthew and I take a canal cruise that, theoretically, should inform us of the city’s history, but the boat’s speaker on our side has gone out, and we sit next to the motor, which drowns out whatever the cruise operator might be saying, however perfunctorily. No matter: we sluice through the water and cautiously sip the free Duvel beer that came with the 6€ boat trip fee. The castle seems temptingly within reach.

Greetings from: the Eurostar from LONDON to BRUSSELS

2010-07-26T14:03:00.000-07:00

A cabal of four Australian young men sits across from us, fully iPodded, all legs and earpieces, feeling the full vigor of their youth. The South Asian, nearest to the aisle and directly across from me, reads from a large paperback, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. Another, a gangly, brown-haired man who seems too young to be going bald so quickly, records the world passing outside the window with his camera, as if this were the only way to keep the world from passing through his fingers entirely.

My ears fill and pop—the compression and decompression as we pass in and out of tunnels. The English countryside rocks back and forth.

***

Belgium has always been the butt of jokes. When I went on my European tour with my parents oh-so-many years ago, a Frenchman (of course) told me this joke:

Why does Belgium have so few birds?

Because they can’t fly like this. (He flaps one arm and holds his nose with his other.)

On that tour, the tour bus drove through Belgium, but didn’t stop. So now, 25 years later, I finally get to experience Brussels. My judgment: why must everyone pick on poor Brussels? The old city center is cute—touristy, yes, but you could say the same about St. Mark’s Square in Venice. And in St. Mark’s, you don’t get a gaggle of male Australian tourists, one dressed in an USA-themed Morphsuit (though that’s something I’d like to see).

Plus, it’s difficult to bad-mouth a city that has a chocolate shop on every street corner. Maybe outside of the historic center you begin to see fewer murals and more graffiti, but from my brief exposure so far, I’d have to say that I feel about Brussels the way I felt about Brussels sprouts: people keep telling me how awful they are, but until you try it for yourself, you never know how you’ll feel about it.

***

Brussels, at night, takes on a different character, as all cities do. The Foire has just started: a mile-long carnival along the Rue du Midi, which smells of fried food. You can hear screams synchronize with the lights of the rides spinning them into disorientation. This is the first shift of the night: the bar-goers, the club-goers. The young sit outside, chat and smoke, and families make their way back home, pushing strollers, herding along children who, they hope, will fall asleep immediately.

The second shift of the night comes when the bars have closed, and the darkness masks the motives of those still moving about. The full moon peeks in and out from behind clouds. There are still groups of young men roaming, and sometimes they break into song, thinking the night will swallow their voices, when it amplifies them. As you walk, you don’t feel unsafe, but you don’t let down your guard, either. Daytime tourists visit the Mannekin Pis and Jeanneke Pis, but nighttime tourists can smell the actual piss -- or see it produced.

No matter: by morning, Brussels will wipe itself clean. The shadows cast by street lamps will peel off the Palais and the Grand Place, making them clean and white again, and the man-shaped mirrors in the shop of the Magritte Museum will reflect something other than the faces of the night-dwellers who pass by, wondering how they ended up here.

Greetings from: SISSINGHURST

2010-07-26T13:56:00.000-07:00

People say -- and I have no idea who these people are, other than vague shadows who appear only to spout generalizations -- that relationships are all about compromise. And to whatever extent that’s true, let’s look at it in travel terms: Matthew certainly has spent his fair amount of time waiting inside, outside, and in the general vicinity of music stores; and today, he has a chance to visit Sissinghurst. (On the way there, he tells people that he’s wanted to visit since he was a child. This surprises me. I haven’t wanted to go anywhere since I was a kid except to sleep.) The cab driver explained: the hurst part of Sissinghurst and Staplehurst (the nearest train stop) is an old word for a clearing of trees. Who, then, I wanted to ask, was this Mr. Sissing to name the town after himself?

I’m sure Matthew will wax eloquent about the gardens on his own, but suffice it to say: there were a lot of plants, second only to the number of tourists. Any attempts at scenic, panoramic photographs will result in shaped hedges blighted with elderly tourists, doddering along the pathways. In a few years, of course, that’ll be me, and I’ll have earned the right to say: Screw your shot, I’m going to see what I want to see.

Greetings from: LONDON

2010-07-26T13:22:00.000-07:00

Maybe I was too hard on children in my last post. They can also be wonderful, but this comes when they’re older, in my opinion. Case in point: my cousin’s children, 10 and 11, have fully-formed personalities, rather than these little explosions of energy. They’re in their final week in school, in their final week in London (my cousin, married to a Greek Cypriot, is moving to Cyprus), so we don’t see them much of the children, but what we do see of them, we like. S___, the older sister, is gregarious and open-hearted; on the day we arrive, she brings over a friend, Reya, to play. R___, it seems, is more interior, imaginative. His father compares him to me (R___ having just written a poem about the London Eye.) When the scallops Matthew and I prepare for the evening turns out very spicy, R___ describes it as an army in his mouth, shooting hot bullets into his tongue. R___ doesn’t say much at first, but when he gets going, the words come in a deluge.

Matthew and I have been to London before, so we can skip the usual tourist stops (Tower of London, British Museum, Tate Modern, London Eye, Millennium Bridge, Buckingham Palace) and go straight for the shopping. Alas, Matthew’s rather disappointed that he can’t find a nice sports coat at Austin Reed like he did on our last visit two years ago, and when the salesperson suggests Aquascutum across the street (more suited for slender guys like us), we come across a depleted stock. You should have come earlier in the sale, the Mick Jagger-like salesman says. I can barely plan a trip across the street, much less plan a trip to coincide with a certain sale.

What I can manage, however: high tea. This time, at the Wolseley, which is attended by an army of servers, all of whom move about with such crisp efficiency that it seems they have wheels on their feet. High tea is always deceptive: when it comes out on its cute three-tiered tray, you have to remind yourself that tea wasn’t meant to be a meal -- a few finger sandwiches, a sprinkling of pastries. It’s a placeholder meal until dinner comes. But in the stomach, tea interacts with cucumber sandwiches in a strange way: the bread expands to fill up available space, like spray foam, so by the end, you barely manage to cram the last piece of scone into your tea-hole.

Greetings from: DURHAM

2010-07-21T16:46:00.000-07:00

I know that people have traveled with young children, and I know that people have blogged about traveling with young children, but for the life of me, I still can’t figure out how people travel with young children.

In Durham, we were fortunate enough stay with friends of Matthew, a lovely couple, with three young boys, who are themselves lovely. But with the boys, however, the levels of rambunctiousness increase seismically: disaster begets disaster, attention demands more attention, and it’s a wonder that mothers don’t go Medea every day.

As we walked to the Durham Cathedral and tour the old town, my head continually whipped back and forth, trying to keep track of all three boys at once: one ran far ahead down the cobblestone path; behind us, another contemplated a walking stick; and a third clung to my leg like the cutest lamprey ever. The boy looking at the stick then chased after the one running ahead, and I wondered: was I this energetic when I was young? How many circles of Hell did I conjure into being?

I hesitate to say that children will cramp “my style,” because this assumes I have a style of travel outside of sitting at cafes and stopping into CD stores. But there’s that extra consideration of making the trip worthwhile not only for yourself, but for your child. And it’s more than a matter of keeping them ‘entertained’ while you do your adult things -- it’s the balance of keeping everyone’s needs met.

My parents, for example, took me on a European tour when I was nine, and while I don’t remember much of the trip, I wonder now how much they had to concern themselves about me. (As I recall, they needn’t have worried; on the tour bus, I found a Canadian boy about my age, and we got along smashingly.)

Matthew’s friend, who’s doing a year’s sabbatical at Durham University, fobbed off her children onto her husband for a few minutes and snuck us into the faculty lounge at Durham Castle. Inside, a wedding was setting up: the wait staff wheeled in kegs of beer and polished glasses; a young man in a kilt made out with a young woman in a flapper dress; flower girls in diaphanous dresses flitted about on the lawn. But the faculty lounge was blessedly quiet, full of old, dark wood and sealed away, it seemed, from the world. There was a sign-up sheet where you could mark where you took a bottle of soda or a pour of gin.

I know why the room (by extension, travel) exists: everyone needs an escape.

Greetings from: NEWCASTLE

2010-07-21T12:57:00.000-07:00

For us, Newcastle is a waypoint -- a few hours to kill before we head up to Durham. As we exited the bus from the port, a chipper information guide gave us a route through the town. “It’s a nice bit of time,” she said.

At what point do all ancient keeps, castles and crumbling fort walls begin to look alike? As we travel from one former medieval city to another, I begin to gloss over their individual histories: which cathedral was destroyed when? And by whom? Was this city sacked or merely fallen into disrepair? I enjoy the scenery on an aesthetic level (rib-like arches, stained glass windows) and a conceptual level (how many conquered peoples did it take to build that?), but much of the awe that seems to overtake other tourists regularly escapes me. I’ve been more parsimonious with my photo-taking (you’d think that a digital camera, with its instant gratification, would lead to more pictures, but that’s not the case with me).

It’s not merely the tourist view of history, either; young Newcastletons sit on the medieval walls, dipping their fingers into bags of crisps and drinking lagers. A young couple snog as if they’ve only just discovered their lips. They’ve been exposed to this history so long they no longer realize that it’s there, except when tourists come to gawk and clog the sidewalks, reading historical plaques and signs.

But Newcastle has something that the Netherlands doesn’t have: charity shops. In the Amnesty International bookstore, I pick up a Javier Marias novel, and in another shop, I get a CD that, upon closer inspection, was smeared with maple syrup and rather scratched. But it was cheap, and a quick rinse cleared off the syrup. I’m not sure it’ll play or not, but I’ll just chalk that up as a donation to mental illness abatement.
I’m a giver, I know.

Greetings from: the Amsterdam to Newcastle ferry

2010-07-19T12:48:00.000-07:00

I now completely understand what David Foster Wallace was writing about in his essay A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. The appeal and horrors of a cruise ship. The Amsterdam-Newcastle ferry was only overnight, but it had the trappings of a full cruise, including a casino (tended to by two bored-looking dealers), a sports bar-cum-discotheque, a buffet restaurant, and on-board entertainment. And while I can see the appeal of having every whim catered to, I understand the horror of being trapped on the ship for an extended amount of time. After three hours, I was bored out of my skull. The Tribute to ABBA put on by the ship’s ‘Showteam’ killed a short bit of time (one of the male dancers looked disturbingly encephalitic (many of the middle-aged women watching the Showteam with us mouthed the words to every song; fans of Mamma Mia! I assume (also: what is it about Europeans and ABBA?))), but the rest of the time was spent walking up and down corridors, in and out of bars, rolling and listing with the ship. The North Sea was much too cold to stay out on deck to watch, but from our porthole, we could see the distant lights of other ships and unexploded oil rigs. The ferry’s onboard voice soothed us in three different languages.

Greetings from: LEIDEN

2010-07-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

Our last day in the Netherlands. Given the yesterday’s bicycle fiasco, we decide to take it easy. Leiden: nearby, tiny, walkable. (This is not to say, of course, that we’ve discovered a part of Holland that is not walkable.) As we cross canals and wander the twisty streets, I wonder how much of travel should only be smaller towns, like Leiden. The word “charming” gets thrown about quite a bit when you read travel guides, and while large cities have their attributes, ‘charming’ is generally not among them.

On this, our pre-determined leisure day, we enjoy a morning of Dutch pancakes (mine with bacon), some tulip bulb shopping (stay tuned to Matthew’s gardening blog in the spring), and then an afternoon sitting next to the canals of Leiden, sipping tea and having snacks. The snack-based culinary drive of Holland suits me: I’m all about the little bites, nibbling on whatever’s at hand. Perhaps this is how the Dutch stay freakishly thin and tall: snacking. (Argentine restaurants also seem to be big; they’re the Dutch equivalent of sushi bars in New York City.)

Maybe small things are the way to go: small Indonesian dishes, small sandwiches, small bowls of tapenade and pesto to spread onto chunks of brown bread, small towns that let you catch your breath as small white-billed ducks pass beneath you and swim towards the crusts you throw into the canals.

Greetings from: UTRECHT

2010-07-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

Our itinerary for the day: some Utrecht, then a leisurely ride to a castle about 11 km away, then maybe a medieval witch-city if we’re up to it. If a bike ride was good the previous day, then another bike ride would be twice a good the next day, right?

In theory, this would be correct. In practice, however, we hadn’t counted on two things: first, that the day would be much sunnier than previously. And, all things considered, this wasn’t much of a problem: we simply had to stay hydrated.

The second problem proved much more vexing: on the road to Vleuten, I got a flat. It’s a terrible sound, that slow hiss that comes from a broken stem. At first, I thought it may have been the sound of the traffic beneath me (I was crossing a bridge). But as the sound continued, I knew it was my back tire slowly deflating and collapsing to the ground, accompanied by my will to live.

So then: the long walk back to the Utrecht train station from which we had rented our bikes in the bright, bright Dutch sunshine.

Greetings from: DELFT

2010-07-19T12:33:00.000-07:00

The Dutch football team comes home today to their second-place parade. They’re to float by along the Herengracht, which is the canal right outside our hotel. Even at 10 in the morning, people stake out their spots with orange towels and streamers. So to avoid the Orange fever, Matthew and I retreat to someplace a little more blue and white. Delft, for instance.

We pull into the Hague first, and in the basement of the train station, the bike rental guy becomes annoyed with our touristy ways (“You need the deposit in cash? You don’t take credit cards?”). Despite some confusion, we exit, saddled with two perfectly functional bikes. Our cheaper bikes only have pedal brakes, which makes me feel like I’m in sixth-grade. I never realized how onerous pedal brakes are, especially when one initially tries to get momentum going. I wobbled across the bike lane and into the paths of oncoming trams.

Once in Delft, it feels as if we step into a Vermeer painting, although Vermeer wisely left out The Body Shoppe in his cityscapes. It seems, thus far, that the non-Amsterdam cities have all the charm and history of Amsterdam, and none of the sleaze. Inside of sweet marijuana smoke blowing out of every doorway, you have delicately-glazed ceramics and antique tiles -- an addiction just as costly. In the Turkish shoarma shops we pass, the TVs show the chaos in Amsterdam itself. From the air, the mass of people look like a terrible choice of orange shag carpet, separated by brown-green stripes.

On the way back from Delft, we get lost in the tangle of bike paths heading to the Hague. Instead of the direct route we took earlier, we on side paths, past a grid of vacation houses bursting with garden colors. We dart through the suburbs of Rijkwid, past a shopping mall the size of a football stadium, and arrive back at the Hague, late enough so that the foreign dignitaries and government bureaucrats have loosened their ties, taken off their jackets to lounge at sidewalk cafes, ordering beer after beer after beer. The Hague seems like the grown-up version of Amsterdam -- a little stodgier, a little more world-weary. But not without its own wicked sense of humor: at the World Peace Flame (near the Peace Palace), we noticed that someone had broken off the US representative of the “rocks of the world” display, and that Serbia and Montenegro had been removed entirely.

And if we had missed the party in Amsterdam, the remnants still remain: long beer cans crowding the base of trees, wine and champagne bottles like budding streetlights, the road paved with flattened aluminum cans, cheers in Dutch that sound like We’re number two! We’re number two!

Greetings from: AMSTERDAM

2010-07-19T12:29:00.000-07:00

Comedown day. If the Dutch had won the World Cup, Amsterdam would be overflowing. The canals would be dyed orange, vuvuzuelas would blow clear and free, love and peace and harmony would flow through the cobbled streets, and bikes would actually let pedestrians have the right of way. Alas.

Matthew and I watched the final in the window of The Queen’s Head, a gay bar. The crowd swelled and ebbed -- with each approach to the Spanish strike zone, the energy rose, and after each deflected goal, everyone deflated. I’ve heard that the Dutch are the tallest people in Europe (“freakishly tall” was the description), and standing behind them in the street, I’d have to agree.

Today, both the BBC and CNN replay the Spanish goal on an endless loop -- the football equivalent to looking at your ex-‘s pictures after a bad break-up. Plastic signs declaring Bertje! and Oranje! lie in the streets. Outside of the numerous coffeeshops, the smell of people smoking their sadness away wafts out.

So, in the spirit of Amsterdam, I decide to try a space cake. Inside Homegrown fantasy, the salesman -- a dread-locked Indonesian young man – measures out grams of the good stuff (and mediocre stuff, I assume) with clipped efficiency. When I let him know that I’m a newbie, he’s good-humored about it. “You may feel a little woozy,” he says. At the next table, a British gent orders a big spliff. I might have enjoyed the experience more if the space cake came with some slagroom (whipped cream) because it was dry and crumbly. But, I suppose flavor and consistency aren’t the cakes’ selling points.

I’m pretty mellow by nature, so I can’t tell how much more mellow I was supposed to feel. No wooziness, no paranoia, no thrill of the forbidden. (Another contributing factor: my table partner kept taking forkfuls of my cake.) In any case, I simply feel asleep, dreaming of the same goal over and over again.

Greetings from: the train from Luxembourg to Amsterdam

2010-07-19T12:22:00.000-07:00

There are a good number of cyclists on the train. As they board, they struggle with their bikes, wrestling to get them into an upright position. They’re dark-tanned (or perhaps just Spanish) and stride down the aisles with lean, muscular legs. I’m also continually blinded by people wearing bright orange outfits. I’m cheering on the Netherlands in the World Cup Finals too, but there’s a reason why hunters use that color to keep from getting shot.

An elderly woman sits across from us. She does things that seem inscrutable: cutting advertisements with a pair of tiny scissors; making notations in a date book no larger than the size of her palm; scrutinizing a brochure for youth hostels, bringing the paper close to her face, even as her glasses lie on the table in front of her. She wears pearls and a gold necklace with a cross, and her dress is the color of Delft tiles. She continually busies herself as I nap.

Meanwhile, the green parts of Belgium stream by; you could also be fooled into thinking the country were nothing but foliage. Foliage and graffiti, actually.

***

A minor kerfuffle: Matthew and I sit in a glassed-off compartment. The first Brussels-Amsterdam train was canceled, and the one an hour later is packed. We first share the compartment with a couple with a toddler daughter -- perfectly fine. When the couple disembarked at Antwerp, however, we were then joined by a Frenchwoman, who did a suitcase-block of one of the seats.

An African-American woman (Tanya) and her husband tried to enter, but there was a misunderstanding as to how many people were coming in, who had arrived first, and what the etiquette was for ‘saving seats.’
“We’re two people,” Tanya says.

“We’re two too,” the other woman replies.

“I think you’re very ill-mannered,” Tanya says.

“I think you’re ill-mannered,” the other woman replies.

“Why are you still talking to me?”

“I’m going to ignore you now.”

Peace has been restored. Tanya writes a book proposal on her laptop: A Guide to Hating Your Government. It’s a “satire” of some sort, with a surfeit of “scare quotes.”

I preferred the toddler, drool and all.

Greetings from: CLERVAUX

2010-07-10T15:49:00.000-07:00

My troubles in Luxembourg begins with my inability to make simple metric calculations. For instance, at the farmer's market in the Place d'Armes, I asked for 375g of German speck, expecting a handful of slices and ending up with a solid block of pig. It smells delicious but the small butter knife which the hotel lent me is insufficient to but through the tough, cured deliciousness. (I later compounded this problem when, for dinner, I ordered a 300g hamburger and watched Germany beat Uruguay for third-place in the World Cup.)

Next, as Matthew and I bought our tickets for the northern town of Clervaux, I couldn't believe the ticket agent when he told me it would cost €3. "How much?" I asked. The clerk, clearly annoyed, held up three fingers. If I were traveling on New Jersey Transit, €3 wouldn't have gotten me further than one stop, and Clervaux is nearly at the Luxembourg-Belgium border. The town itself is rather sleepy -- when we arrived, the shops were closed for a two-hour siesta. But I don't blame them: the sun scorched everything in its path. We sat under an awning for lunch and angled ourselves to avoid any contact whatsoever with sunlight. When we couldn't bear it any longer, we each ordered a café glacé -- three scoops of ice cream, warm coffee, and whipped cream -- to stave off heatstroke. It worked.

Our main purpose in going to Clervaux, though, was to hear the monks at the Benedictine Abbey of St. Maurice recite vespers. Let your mind wander back to 1990: the Berlin Wall falls; Margaret Thatcher resigns; Nelson Mandela is released from prison; and Iraq invades Kuwait. Elsewhere in the world, a little-known German-Romanian band named Enigma releases their debut album MCMXC a.D, and their single, "Sadeness, Pt. 1," which mixes Gregorian chants with techno beats, becomes a worldwide smash and finds a special place in the heart of a certain high school sophomore Aurora, Colorado.

On our way to the abbey, however, we got lost. We walked along a road up a hill and found, instead of an abbey, a daycare center. A helpful young woman pointed out that the abbey was on the other hill, and that if we were going by foot, we had just missed the turn-off for the trail about a hundred yards back. Thus, we began our walk through the woods -- pine needles underfoot, the smell of cow patties in the air. Small markers indicated that this was a bike path of some sort; judging by the steep incline, it was the masochist's path. Oh, it can't be that much further, I thought. There's not that much hill left. At best, it was another 100 meters of vertical ascent.

Yeah, that conversion issue again.

Greetings from: the Old City

2010-07-09T15:26:00.000-07:00

On the plane to Luxembourg, we met a young Luxembourgois named Chris, who advised us: you can see all of the Old City in an hour and a half, if you don't stop in anywhere. He also suggested a bar, Scott's, to which I nodded as if excited, but since I don't drink, it was mostly for show. As it turns out, our tour of the Old City took significantly longer than and hour and a half, but that's not because we didn't stop anywhere. Old City sounds better than "commercial shopping district"; it sounds more quaint. More romantic. And if there's any doubt to the romanticism of the city, I bore witness to these five examples:

#1: As I sat, sipping a chocolate milkshake at the Chocolate Company, right across from the Palais Grand-Ducal, I watched a young woman of about 14, chat up the Royal Guard, who looked to be maybe 18. There's none of that British-style, Beefeater stone-face here; the guard stared straight ahead, but he was clearly speaking back to her. As he did his formal march, a stately fifteen paces to his left, she followed along on the other side. There's something about a man in uniform. After that procession, however, he continued to march in the hot afternoon sun, beret poised sharply on his forehead, and the young lady, sensing a lost cause, moved on.

#2: Matthew and I went down into the Bock casemates, the cavernous underground military fortifications. We traipsed up and down stone spiral staircases, with steps so narrow that my size 9½ sneaker threatened to slip right off. As the story goes (from the casemate brochure), the first count of Luxembourg married a woman named Mélusine, who requested that he never see her on a certain night of the week. He, of course, couldn't resist his curiosity, and when he peeked in on her one evening, he saw that she had a fish's tail. She sensed him spying on her, and she dived into the Alzette River, never to return.

#3: Around the corner from the Palais, we ran into a bachelorette party. The friends all wore pink t-shirts with the bride's face, and around her face, appliqué letters announced that she was the "star of the evening." Her face, of course, was in a star. The bride herself wore a chef's toque and wheeled a cart with a banner of (I assume) her fiancé's face. She approached me: I'm getting married, she said. Will you buy something from me? Her cart had bottles and baskets. This might be a local tradition, I guessed. How about a cookie? she suggested, and I asked, How much? She replied, As much as you want to give. Her fiancé's face, above the cart, grimaced, his tongue lolling out. I gave her €1.5 for a cookie, and she said, They're special. Indeed they were: they were in the shape of a penis. Would you like some sperm? one of her friends asked, and I said, Of course! She sprayed whipped cream on the tip, but too much, and it splattered on the ground in a white blotch. She controlled the amount better the second time, and one of her friends photographed me as I fellated the cookie. The cart moved on, down the street, and I noticed the bride-to-be had a plastic ball-and-chain clamped around her ankle.

#4: For dinner, we ate at Chiggeri, on the curve of Rue du Nord. The road had been blocked off, and as we ate, we watched car after car drive approach the barricade, then have to do a five-point turn to go back downhill. One brave soul drove down in reverse. The maitre d' looked like a football hooligan: muscular, with a shaved head except for a center strip of black hair -- a cranial lane divider. When a group of young ladies came to dine, all the male wait staff immediately stood up straight and lined up across the road, their hands behind their backs, ready to be of service at any moment.

#5: In the Place D'Armes, the 'Summer in the City' festival was in full swing. The restaurant sidewalk tables were all full, including the ones serving McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and Chi-Chi's. We'd seen a classical quartet play earlier, and now that the sun had set (9:30 again), the Harmonie Orchestra Hesperange had taken the stage. They were a mixed aged orchestra; the flautists seemed particularly young, while the horn players and percussionists were older men. We arrived just in time; they played a medley of ABBA hits, "Dancing Queen" leading into "Lay All Your Love on Me," and ending with "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)." Matthew and I sat on a bench, next to a woman eating a nectarine. She put a plastic bottle of San Pellegrino to demarcate her personal space. At the table next to us, a couple shared a platter of fruits de mer on a bed of ice. Children danced in the square; other children stood on stage and pretend to conduct. Matthew and I were sticky from exertion -- summer clinging to our skin -- but he still put his arm around my shoulder.

Greetings from: LUXEMBOURG CITY

2010-07-08T14:30:00.000-07:00

The first day of travel is always rough going: merry travelers suffer from cramped airline seats, creeping effects of jetlag, and, for those visiting northern climes, the sun not setting until almost 9 in the evening. From the plane, sunset seemed to last forever, as if the plane were chasing the afterglow. And, after it had lost the chase, sunrise broke over the horizon. I, however, was too busy trying to cram myself into a comfortable position. If I get some sleep, I told myself, I'll be awake and alert for Luxembourg. Iceland Express, however, had other plans. Its crew was scrupulously polite -- I hesitate to call them 'elfin' for fear of stereotyping -- but even the men were pale and waif-like. It was a flight of Lord of the Rings extras: Eymer, Gunner, Orli...

Tiny little Luxembourg and tiny little Luxembourg airport. Several major carriers had landed there, but those planes were all twin-prop puddlejumpers. I'd wager that the Grand Duke would bristle at hearing his fair airport being called 'regional,' but there you have it. The bus from the airport took us through the banking district of Luxembourg -- modern glass-and-steel contraptions, men and women in gray suits having lunch in the warm afternoon sun.

"We're the only ones wearing shorts," Matthew said.

"We're ugly Americans," I replied. "It's sort of our uniform."

After checking into our hotel (just around the corner from the train station), we took a walk into the gorge that bisects the city. As a matter of fact, we were not the only ones wearing shorts, but this perhaps speaks more to the monoculture of worldwide fashion: if shorts could sag, they sagged, and if they could go beyond the knee, it might as well eat up most of the calf.

After seven in the evening, even though the sun is still at 3/4 power, the city rolls down its shutters. The 'ladies' of the cabarets stand outside their places of employment, smoke cigarettes, gossip, and make half-hearted efforts to lure in customers. In the spirit of adventure, I ordered a random meal for dinner: matjes served with an odd Dutch word that begins with g and has approximately 12 letters, 10 of them consonants. As it turns out: raw herring on pickled beets.

We walked the residential streets of the city until the sun set around 9, looking for a place that served glace. There were plenty of bars open (cafes in the local parlance), and people sat at sidewalk tables or in walled-off terraces, which made the city seem almost awake. But no ice cream. Instead, there were snack bars, mostly of Mediterranean descent, and men who stood behind the register with gyro slicers in hand. Cars were parked willy-nilly on the street, and we picked out the brands that don't exist in the US: Opel, Daihatsu, Skoda, Peugeot. National flags dangled from people's windows, especially those teams which have long since disappeared from competition. It's an act of defiance against the Dutch, I believe, who go to the finals on Sunday. We are here, they seem to say, and the sun rises and sets on our say-so; never mind what the clock may read.

a death in the family

2010-04-08T21:24:00.000-07:00

My aunt died last night. This was Fourth Aunt on my mother's side, the aunt to whom I refer to as my "French aunt," because while most of my extended family made a bee-line for the US after fleeing Vietnam, Fourth Uncle and his family went instead to France. And while her death wasn't a complete surprise -- she had been treated for cancer in the last year -- it's suddenness still caught everyone by surprise.

Because of the distance, I'm not as familiar with my Fourth Aunt and Uncle, as I am with the rest of my mother's relations. In fact, I'd only met her three times, and each time, it was a navigation between three languages: English, French and Vietnamese. My French is poor, my Vietnamese even poorer, but during our last interaction, when she and my uncle came to visit the US, we managed to cobble together a conversation about French books and French authors. They gave Matthew and me a gift of a bottle of Sauternes (half drunk) and tins of foie gras (which we kept in our kitchen cabinet until they went bad and leaked oil).

I received the news by email last night, but I didn't learn about her death until this afternoon. Or, slightly rephrased, I received an email last night, but didn't understand it until today. When I first saw the email, I thought it was a piece of spam that had somehow found its way into my work account at school. The subject line read: Tata Loan, and my initial reaction was to ask, "What's this about a car loan?" Of course, I had thought "Tata" referred to the Indian car line, and since I had just spoken with my mother the night before about swapping cars, this is where my mind immediately went. I didn't know Tata had already introduced its line of cars into the US, I thought. But when I opened the email, it became apparent that the subject line referred to my aunt, Loan, and that I had missed the connection.

When people read, they oftentimes sub-vocalize. But for Vietnamese, I have to go all the way to full vocalization. As I attempt to read Vietnamese, I twist each word around on my tongue until to approaches something appropriate to the context. I practice the different modulations of vowels until the word matches something familiar. Thus, reading Vietnamese is a laborious process. From my conversation with my mother the other night (the same conversation in which we discussed cars), she told me that Tata (a familial Vietnamese word for "aunt") had developed complications, which made her coughing up blood. I thought this email was related to that conversation. I put it aside.

I've got a small collection of notes my mother has sent me. Handwritten notes, on scraps of translucent paper or long, oblong Post-Its featuring the mascot of the school my father used to teach out, Kunsmiller Middle School. She writes them in Vietnamese, and half the time, I try to parse them, and the other half, I don't even bother. I wonder if sometimes she mistakes me for my brother (as she sometimes does on the phone), who is more fluent than I am. But these notes are usually included with birthday or Christmas checks, or when I've forgotten to balance my checkbook and have overdrawn again.

But this afternoon, my cousin (from Sixth Aunt) called Matthew to tell him that Tata Loan had indeed died, and that was the content of the above email. An odd transmission route of information: I should have known earlier -- late last night, as a matter of fact -- but my inability to read meant that I had become the last person to know. Even Matthew knew before I did, if only by a few seconds. He had that stricken look, as if bad news intensifies geometrically as its passed from person to person.

A few minutes ago, I tried to read my mother's original email: Các con, Tata Loan mới mất cách đây chùng 2 tiếng đồng hồ tại Bordeaux.

Các con: All my children.
Tata Loan: now a proper name, rather than an offer.
mới mất cách đây: was just lost
chùng 2 tiếng đồng hồ tại Bordeaux: around 2 o'clock, in Bordeaux.

The letter contines, but I can't read it. Not because I can't, but because I can't.

Reading: Ngugi wa Thiong'o

2010-03-19T14:48:00.000-07:00

Two African-American ladies in the audience cheered and applauded when Thiong'o mentioned Marcus Garvey. Old radicals, I imagine. Righteous. We post-colonialists need to stick together.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o reads more like a poet than a prose writer. He selected a number of shorter excerpts from his memoir and linked them with reminisces and digressions. He reminded me of an old English professor, delivering a lecture, but the deeper he goes into the material, the more he recalls scenes from his own life that coalesce off the page. When a questioner asked about his reaction to the death of South African poet Dennis Brutus, Thiong'o recalled a story in which he and his wife were travelling with Brutus. Thiong'o's wife went through without a problem, but Thiong'o and Brutus were held back. Thiong'o was soon released, but as time passed, they began to worry about Brutus. Eventually, they saw Brutus walking towards them, waving a sheet of paper. "Look," Brutus said. "I wrote a poem."

Reading: Adam Haslett and Sam Lipsyte

2010-03-09T19:54:00.000-08:00

Two hot young writers reading from their hot new novels. I'm feeling not so hot at all, on the tail end of a cold. For my "welcome back taste buds" meal: pho.

The audience seemed particularly keen on process questions: how long did it take you to write your novel? (5 years) What's the difference between writing a novel and writing short stories? (Length) Is your work fiction or non-fiction. (Fiction). I wondered if the young woman who asked that last question had accidentally stumbled into the reading. Adam, incidentally, is repped by Ira Silverberg, with whom I have a secret love affair.

It occurred to me that many of the questioners -- most likely many of the attendees -- were aspiring writers themselves. There were a handful of the older Philly literati who were drawn to this reading perhaps from Adam's appearance on the Today Show Book Club, but also a large number of late 20s/early 30s hipsters. Also: the occasional homo. And my signing friend, Matt, who brought his son.

But when it came to question and answer time, one gentleman in the front kept needling Sam about studying with Gordon Lish. What's the one piece of take home advice you learned from Lish or that you teach to your students at Columbia? Both Sam and Adam gave the same approximate advice: listen to your sentences. Later, he had asked another Lish-related question: what's the one piece of advice from Lish that you've had to forget or ignore? And Sam, after relating the oft-told tale of Lish stopping students, mid-sentence, to tell them why they were fraudulent, said, "I've had to learn to let go of the fear." The questioner revealed that he, too, had gotten a Master's in creative writing.

I think all young writers want the one-line answer to make writing seem that much easier. The one piece of advice that makes everything snap into place. The truth of the matter is, however...

My post-reading, "welcome back taste buds" dessert: star fruit and tart lime gelato from Capogiro.

Reading: John Banville

2010-02-26T18:46:00.000-08:00

Nothing will keep me from readings: not 4" of snow on the ground, not a boyfriend sick in bed with the stomach flu, not a $14 entrance fee (mitigated by half using the "I'm a student" feint), not sheer laziness (most of the time). These things will, however, make me late. By about 15 minutes.

Banville has a very even, very steady voice. You can imagine him doing his own book on tape, though you might have to adjust the volume up. he reminds me of a professor whom you wish would use a microphone, but would lean forward to hear anyway. There was a microphone here, however, so I could sit back at my leisure. What is it about an Irish accent that makes a voice so compelling? Banville's work is already lyrical in itself, so that slight inflection makes the words sing even stronger. He kept running his right hand against the corner of the podium, as if scratching his palm against the wood.

During the Q&A, he established his position on the literary arts: there's verse, there's prose, and there's poetry; the last can be found in both of the former. And, with the skill of a Olympic badminton player, he batted away repeated questions about the work of Hermann Broch gently, even as the questioner continued trying to inject. "How many others have read Hermann Broch?" he asked. One man raised his hand. "Great," Banville said, with faux exasperation, "another one."

new distractions!

2010-02-23T22:41:00.000-08:00

So, while this blog has devolved into an unwieldly mish-mosh (horror movie reviews, infrequent travelogues, reading attendances, sporadic book and potential boyfriend reviews), I've decided to make a (somewhat) fresh start with a new project wherein I live my life, sequentially, through the Criterion Collection. So all the classy movies go there. All the trash goes here.

All hail trash.

Jentel, Final Day

2010-02-12T15:16:00.000-08:00

My last day was almost as warm as the first, though it only reached 47° and the sky is overcast. Plus: snow? A small flurry of it, with tiny flakes that seem impossible, given the temperature.

Yesterday, after our final run through Sheridan, our resident handyman, Scott, took us on a tour of the Wyoming environs -- into his friend's pheasant ranch and along the snow-covered polo fields. So, in the spirit of exploration, I finally ventured into the hilly 1000 acres behind Jentel. Despite being completely out-of-shape and huffing like a madman before I had crested my first hill, I will say this in my defense: pulling your leg out of a shin-deep pile of snow takes quite a bit of effort.

I heard there are these things? And they're called snowshoes? And they distribute your weight across the snow so you don't sink into it? In my eternal laziness, I found deer tracks and promptly trekked through them, letting the pre-compacted snow carry my weight.

But at least the snow wasn't treacherous. Most of the non-snow parts of the hill were slick with mud and patties of cow dung (plus little jellybean-sized pellets of unidentifiable excrement). So if my ascent was marked by snow of indeterminate depth, my descent was marked by skidding along the mud, using innocent scrub and brush to slow my slide.

Also: even though walking over what looks like a frozen-over creek may seem like a perfect shortcut to save you -- oh, let's say forty feet or so of walking -- that water's really, really cold. And when the ice crackles under your feet, it only gets colder.

Jentel, Day 25

2010-02-09T06:44:00.000-08:00

Holy frijoles! It's a whopping -5° today. One of the visual artists, a lady of hearty Swedish stock, keeps cross-country skis outside of her studio, and a group of residents went snowshoeing yesterday. I... slept through it. Of the 1000 acres here on the ranch, I have explored about .5 acres. But I will say that I've successfully completed one section (14K words) of the novel, even though I realize it's misshapen and ungainly. Nonetheless, it's one more done section than when I arrived.

So, I give you the Big Horn mountains at dawn:

Jentel, Day 23

2010-02-08T01:37:00.000-08:00

Coming uncomfortably close to the end of my stay here in Wyoming. Current WCPD ratio: I'm no longer counting. It hurts too much. Instead, I bring you: The Ballad of Grey Kitty.

---

Yes, I know you're only here for a month.
And I've seen you every day at the door.
I squawk when you're carrying a cup,
because it's milk for me, I'm sure.

Yes, I know I'm forbidden to come in.
But the snow outside will cover my prints.
And if I should fall asleep in your chair,
it'd be enough to melt a heart of flint.

Yes, I know you sometimes stare at me
instead of trying to write your stupid book.
But when I purr and stretch and curl up,
how can anyone resist my pathetic look?

I've been here longer than anyone can recall.
Waiting patiently outside the front door.
I know you'll be leaving in just a few days,
But I'll make you come back soon for more.

---

And to think Mark Strand once gave me a C! Big smothering snowflakes falling tonight.

If there's anything worse than doggerel, it's "cat"terel. Ugh. Forgive me: it's late, and I just watched a hideous Syfy horror movie with Antonio Sabato, Jr. I know it's not an excuse, but it should at least be a mitigating circumstance.

Jentel, Day 20

2010-02-05T00:42:00.000-08:00

Another Thursday, another disruption. Current WCPD ratio: 677.

On the plus side, I'm becoming a local celebrity. Very local, small "c" celebrity. At the coffee shop, an interviewer from KOTA-TV asked for some on-camera opinions about personal finances. Sure, ask the out-of-towner who just barely woke up and is downloading cheesy dance music videos on YouTube!

First, speak and spell into the microphone. Don't look at the camera or the red dot which indicates, right now, that your image and words are being preserved for all eternity.

Do I keep my receipts? Not if they're incriminating.
What's my worst financial habit? Crazed orgies of spending.
My greatest financial achievement? That I haven't yet declared bankruptcy.

None of this, of course, counts as breaking news.

Jentel, Day 19

2010-02-03T06:22:00.000-08:00

Since it's now seven in the morning, and the new day (for me) officially begins at six, this means we've moved onto Day 19. A tad over a week left in the residency. Current WCPD ratio: 683. I've seen plenty of sunsets from my window, but this is probably the first sunrise I've seen. I like how the blue of everything slowly gains contrast. The mountains far in the back turn pink.

Normally, I've gone to bed at this time, but last night, the Jentel residents gave our presentation to the community. Jentel Presents! With a name like that, I feel we should have worn top hats and sported canes. Alas, no: we each just wore a fake red rose. Some wrapped it around their wrists; others held their like a laser pointer. I used mine as a boutonniere. The presentation was sparsely attended -- this is, after all, still February in Wyoming -- but I preferred looking around the Sheridan Public Library before the reading. Upstairs, on the second floor, are the study rooms. I saw what looked like a tutoring session in one. But, more importantly, there was a display all about space travel and exploration ringing the second floor. And, most importantly of all, in the display cases were actions figures and sundry memorabilia devoted to Star Trek, Star Wars, and, strangely enough, Independence Day. I never knew they made model figurines of the alien baddies of ID4. Now I know. The providers of the ~~toys~~ action figures had their names prominently featured in the cases. Mark of pride or mark of shame? You make the call. Also: a Lego model of the Space Shuttle.

After the reading, we re-convened at the Pony Bar & Grill, where they proudly serve microbrews and frou-frou drinks such as the Woo-Woo. I, sadly, partook in none of them, but I did have a steak. My first Wyoming steak! Driving from Sheridan to Jentel and vice versa, the fields are dotted with tasty, tasty cattle with some horses thrown in for local color. But this was my first chance to partake of a slice of cattle. Good? Yes. Mindblowing? Not quite. The 12+ ounces of cow did, however, make me feel very sleepy after dinner, and I took a nap until 3 in the morning. Hence, I have steak to thank for the pink streaks of clouds, the mountains that have now darkened to salmon, the purpling foothills, the mysterious half-covered footprints in the snow.

And a final note: what's up with those bizarre comments on my previous post? It's like they came from random word generators.

Jentel, Day 16

2010-02-01T01:27:00.000-08:00

After two and a half nights of dithering, I've finally gotten back on track -- I think. Current WCPD ratio: 660.

Thursdays are always disruptive. First off, the residents gather at nine in the morning for a meeting and to head into town for provisions. Given that most mornings, I'm just crawling into bed around five (sometimes as early as three or as late as seven), waking at nine proves difficult. And even when I plan ahead and go to sleep early (as I did on Wednesday), I was woken by strange, fragmented dreams which I can no longer remember and couldn't go back to sleep. Instead, I lay in bed, listening to music and watching the light from behind my curtains grow brighter and brighter.

And while I was able to tap out a few words in Java Moon (a "wellness meeting" took place at the next table: a group of 5 women and 1 man talking about pounds they've lost, goals for the future, attempts to promote wellness at work), after our shopping excursion (during which I bought primarily tea and cookies), I took a nap. Not so that I could work furiously later that night, but so that I could be plenty alert for a hootenanny later the evening.

The Occidental Hotel, in the town of Buffalo about twenty miles away, hosts a "jam session" every Thursday night, where local musicians sit down together and strum and sing and pluck. This night was somewhat different, however, because they were featuring a charity auction for a musical scholarship. So while we managed to hear a few strains of some country classics -- all of which are foreign to me -- we were instead treated to hearing Wyoming's Auctioneer of the Year (a man of about seventy, I assume) calling out bids on all kinds of sundry goods. He had a pleasant tone, joking with the locals in-between the tongue-twisting number calls. "He rises at the crack of noon," he said of one hunter who offered his services and land for tracking down (on separate occasions) an antelope, a wild turkey, and a jackalope. "It's more fun than hunting rats."

Meanwhile, we Jentel folks sat near the door, ate burgers and drank beer. (For me, I had a bison burger with the patty actually in the shape of a bison and a cherry cream soda.) In the lobby of the Occidental are photographs of the famous folks who had stayed there, including a brawny-looking Ernest Hemingway. The second floor of the Occidental is purported to be haunted, but the real specter is the rugged Victoriana that I attribute to hotels of the Wild West.

After the auction, people re-gathered for a group rendition of "Faded Love." The entire audience mouthed different words at different times -- the verse they particularly loved, the chorus, the cry break. Meanwhile, I got a moment to appreciate how much they appreciated the arts, whether it was the paintings they had made and sold, the illustrated poetry broadsides auctioned off, or the music they sang and were now going to deliver to a student. A $150 pan of cinnamon buns seemed a small price to pay.

Jentel, Day 13

2010-01-27T15:59:00.000-08:00

Revelations made while at Jentel:

• Wyoming weather, much like Colorado, switches at will; snow one day, sun the next.

• with a dishwasher, kitchen clean-up is less a chore, more a game of Tetris.

• turkey vultures, from afar, look like big dogs.

• Steve Madden boots were probably not designed for use in actual snow and/or mud.

• SyFy shows the most god-awful made-for-cable horror movies ever, but I'll still watch them, enraptured.

• water softeners makes your post-shower skin feel like it has a sheen of oil on it.

• one can mark time by measuring the amount of snow that has filled the bootprint since the last time you went to the restroom.

• this shit won't write itself; and yet, shit remains exceedingly easy to write.

Current WCPD ration: 615.

Jentel, Day 11

2010-01-25T22:20:00.000-08:00

Current word count per day ratio (WCPD): 567.

Sheridan, the closest town to Jentel, is still a good 20 minute drive, mostly along a winding road up and down the Wyoming hills. The whole gang ventures out every Thursday to provision up for the week, but today, we smaller group of 4 headed into town to enjoy civilization, other people, and blazing high-speed Internet. The Internet came courtesy of Java Moon, the independent coffee shop on Main Street of downtown Sheridan, and when we arrived at noon, almost all the tables were occupied by the lunch crowd. There seem to be a large number of entrepreneurs in the area, because I always see someone sporting a business plan in a manila folder or a start-your-own business book. Laptops open with bar graphs and metrics mapped out one after another. Men huddled conspiratorially, smiling their way to a prosperous future. And while my companions used their quick Internet -- quick in comparison to the satellite-based Internet Jentel employs -- I watched Dionne Warwick sing "Walk On By" on YouTube again and again.

The downtown of Sheridan plays up its frontier trappings: boot stores, a Wild West mall, and, best of all, King's Saddlery, a shop that specializes in rope and riding equipment. The helpful ladies at the counter showed me the correct placement of a cowboy hat (down low on the forehead, just above the eyebrows) and how it should feel (tight, to prevent it from blowing off). My hat size: 6 1/4 to 6 1/2, depending on the manufacturer. Further back, the store sold a glitter-spray for horse manes and a mega-sized Furminator, made especially for livestock. Or, in my case, for one of my cats.

Across an alleyway, King's Saddlery continues into a warehouse-sized building that specializes in rope. Rope of all sizes, of all materials, wound up on huge spools and tended to by genuine-looking cowboys. And just past the rope depot, to the left, is what can only be described as a Saddle Museum. I learned the difference between the Sheridan-style floral leatherworking (tight florets, a single connecting vine weaving through the flowers, concentrated design) and California-style floral leatherworking (larger flowers and more space between them, open design pattern). Usually when I think of the smell of old leather, I imagine English Leather aftershave -- I attribute that to my father's moustache-trimming days -- but inside the museum, the scent had an oily tone to it. The tannins were weathered, but not musty or smoky. For a town that's known for its polo as much as its rodeo, there was something joyously authentic about seeing rows upon rows of saddles, with their attendant spurs driven, prong-deep, into the wood of the staircase.

Jentel, Day 9

2010-01-24T02:06:00.000-08:00

The first week of the residency was so warm that I thought to myself, "This will be a piece of cake." All those dire predictions about winter in Wyoming were off the mark, I told myself. I wasted precious luggage space packing heavy coats when I could have gone with more shoes.

Today: the snow. I can't tell if the snow is actually falling, since the sharp wind makes everything whip horizontal in the air and run in serpentines along the ground. I'm not cold in the studio -- far from it -- but the run from the house to the writers' studio (and from the writer's studio to the artists' studio, where the bathroom and microwave oven are) seem fraught with peril. Cold, white peril. Sort of like Massachusetts.

Here, the snow doesn't accumulate as much as it re-deposits. I can imagine myself getting trapped in the studio as the snow piles against the door and blocks my exit. But -- I have snacks, I have a source of hot water, and I have two teabags left. That'll last me... 3 hours? I could perhaps crush some Oreos and create a chocolatey sludge soup but can feel the enamel on my teeth peeling off already.

After a week at the residency, I've had to drastically scale back my expectation of what I would get done in a month. Though I've never been one to whom the words "overly ambitious" could be applied -- look at how often I update this poor, neglected blog -- finishing a novel was probably too far-reaching. I've gotten into the bad habit of looking at my work and averaging how much I've achieved over my stay thus far. Sort of the like obsessive word counters of NaNoWriMo, but with much, much less ambition. (My average: about 500 words a day.)

Incidentally, why does the new version of Microsoft Word even have an auto word count feature? It's going to drive me nuts. But it's okay for now. When those 500 words consist of nothing but variations on "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," then I'll start revising.

Jentel, Day 6

2010-01-20T16:02:00.000-08:00

So this is where the magic happens: my writing studio!

We chose both our sleeping quarters and our studios at random -- sort of like a key party, but without the swinging. It doesn't matter much for the writers, however: there are only two writing studios. Mine (named Sunset for what I assume to be a west-facing view; I'm really bad with cardinal directions, folks) faces the mountains, and at the moment, the sun is setting, with some low-lying clouds just above the peaks, glowing the sort of pinkish-orange that keeps pastel makers in business. From my window, as well, I see the occasional barn cat (named Grey Kitty) and overly energetic dog bounce by in the snow.

The visual artists get all the perks, of course; each of their studios is outfitted with a bed, and their studio complex has a bathroom and kitchenette. We writers have to trek out into the Wyoming tundra just to pee, and while the recliner is comfortable... come on, a bed! (Of course, if I had a bed, I'd get absolutely nothing done.) I keep my studio at a toasty 65 degrees, and there's an industrial-sized Thermos for me to replenish my tea.

Strangely, though, both of the writing studios have been invaded by flies. Big black flies, the size of pennies. When I walk into my studio first thing in the afternoon, little black corpses litter the floor, and I use the handy Dustbuster to suck them away. Perhaps they're attracted to the Oreo and Mint Milano crumbs that ring the area around my desk chair. Maybe it's the beef jerky. Maybe the growing pile of used tea bags. But it's a war of attrition. I dread the day when I have to empty the Dustbuster.

The other writer, a poet, and I cross paths in the studio rarely, mostly because I prefer the late nights. When I walk out of the house towards my studio, the stars seem preternaturally bright. Huge things in the sky, and so wonderfully crisp. I'd stand and stare at them, but nighttime bring the promise of hypothermia. The melted snow puddles during the day become ice hazards at night, and it's a mad dash from one door to the other.

I think my period of adjustment has now passed, and despite the promise of terrible, made-for-cable horror movies on the SyFy channel, I'm being semi-productive.

Ah, look. The sun has gone down behind the peaks and the clouds have gone from pastels to charcoals.

Residency-a-logue: Jentel, Day 4

2010-01-18T16:38:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, I'm already three days behind in talking about my residency experience. But, as a wise old friend (Cruce Stark) told me, it usually takes about a week to adjust to your new settings and to get the creative juices flowing. But, with January in full effect on the cold Wyoming plains, those juices have become viscous and are in danger of freezing.

I suppose the desolation is good for the concentration. Even better: spotty satellite Internet, which means no streaming movies, no YouTube, and no World of Warcraft. There aren't any nearby coffee shops into which I can just pop. No cell phone reception. There is, however, satellite television, but I've limited my media consumption to CNN coverage of the Haitian earthquake, the occasional horror movie, and episodes of Robot Chicken and the Venture Brothers.

But desolation does have a certain beauty. Jentel, nestled as it in near the Big Horn mountains, is located down a dirt road, past cattle and horses and wild turkeys. The mountain range stretches in the distance, in defiance of the brown, flat land all around it. If I really wanted, I could hike up the large hills that are part of the 1000 acres attached to Jentel, but I'm not sure my boots could handle it. The snow pack stands at maybe only 4 inches, and it's mostly frozen solid, crunching underfoot.

So far, I'm getting along swimmingly with the other five residents (four visual arts & one writer; or, four women & one man). We're taking turns cooking -- this isn't your mother's cushy, hand-delivered meal residency. We've leaned more towards the vegetarian fare lately, but tonight black bean and chorizo soup is on the menu. My turn to cook comes in 2 days.

As for productivity, it hasn't quite hit me yet. I've been dithering, rearranging the papers on my desk or editing previously written sections of my novel or engaging in research, all while listening to the entire output of Saint Etienne. But I'm ready to push past it the procrastination, I think.

Late at night (or early in the morning, depending on your point-of-view), when I'm returning to the house from my studio, the stars hang large in the sky, and I hear coyotes far in the distance. I use a flashlight to guide my way, trying to find the non-snow path for my delicate, fuzzy slippers. The darkness seems entirely complete.

Reading: Lydia Davis and Jonathan Lethem

2009-11-14T09:58:00.001-08:00

So, if I wasn't intimidated by seeing one MacArthur Fellow, then two should really be no problem, especially when represented in the affable forms of Lydia Davis and Jonathan Lethem. As always, readings at the Philadelphia Free Library attracts a number of the city's homeless, who see the readings as an hour in a warm place where they can rest. And I don't fault them for that, as sometimes I, myself, have fallen asleep during readings. But I don't think I've ever snored, however...

Lydia Davis was promoting her mammoth new book of collected stories. But the genre term "story" doesn't necessarily apply to all of her work. Sometimes her pieces are short, pithy jokes; at other times, they seem like aphorisms or meditations or even poetry. They're stronger, I think, than Amy Hempel's often celebrated one-sentence stories, because of their cerebral nature. You turn them around in your head, and they seem to refract different aspects of your own experience.

That's not to say that the stories don't have an emotional component as well: though "Letter to a Funeral Home" seems like an extended meditation on the word cremains, it's wrapped in a painful examination of love and loss and couched in the tone of a letter of complaint. It's almost the perfect fusion of tone, emotion, and intellect pondering.

She ended her reading with new work, surprisingly enough. We were Lydia Davis' test kitchen! First out of the oven was a list story, a contemplation of identity centered around mis-sent mail. Something about it struck me as oddly hysterical, this list of mangled names, enunciated in Davis' precise and calm voice. And she ended with a recitation of dreams or dream-like situations. And although I'm always wary of dreams in fiction, that's usually reserved for dreams that appear within a larger context. But standalone dreams... well, it worked for Naguib Mahfouz...

And let's face it: Lydia Davis is a tough act to follow. Even for a beloved hipster (I use the term not disparagingly, but as a mere descriptor) author like Lethem. He read from Chronic City, which some may recall was savaged by Michiko Kakutani, and based on the selection from which he read, I can't exactly disagree with her. Okay, maybe following on the heels of such precise and gem-like stories, his work seemed much looser and unfocused, but I can confidently state that I did not snore. Instead, I was transfixed by his glasses, a translucent red plastic frame.

I wonder if the MacArthur foundation can out grants based on awesomeness of glasses alone.

The Confession

2009-08-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

Lest I be accused of not having my blog be sufficiently literary -- and, really, I do love my horror movies -- I'm taking part in a game of Consequences, where a series of writers writes 250 words, set in an abandoned landscape, each using the last line of the previous writer.

So far:

1. Sam J. Miller

2. Jade Park

3. Jane Voodikon

4. Lisa Silverman

5. Anna Shapiro

6. Mark Krotov

7. Wah Ming Chang

8. Alex Chee

And now me. A little tardy.

Okay, a lot tardy.

But still...

***

He gripped her face in his hands, leaned in for the kiss. Quickly, before the other guards saw. Her eyes were blind with terror, but he had recognized her the moment she was brought here, in shackles. As children, they had once fished for catfish in Tonle Sap Lake, tying crickets to the end of long branches to lure the fish to the surface.

And now, she was a seditionist, a traitor. Who had implicated her, he didn’t know, but he had heard husbands implicate their wives, mothers denounce their sons. The people being questioned called out names of the half-remembered, of the already dead, of the loved and hated and feared. And then, maybe a month later, they were led to the room where the executioner waited with a heavy pickaxe in his hand, because bullets were scarce.

Strange to think that this had once been a school, that students had once strolled across the tan-and-white tiled halls. Now, instead of students sitting in long, orderly rows, there were the prisoners, sleeping head to foot, shackled to a long iron bar.

Now, it was her turn to confess. Her life lay on the sheet of paper before her, starting with her birth. It would take another day, at least, to reach her arrest. She did not speak as he held her face, and did not react as he placed a thumb-sized lump of rice in her mouth. It was a small mercy, a cold mercy, but a mercy nonetheless.

***

Next up:

10. Lucas Green: porousborders.wordpress.com

11. Jedediah Berry: (manualofdetection.com): http://crshd.tumblr.com/

Remake Rumble: Ju-On vs. The Grudge

2009-07-30T22:04:00.001-07:00

The contenders: Ju-on, directed by Takashi Shimizu, 2002; and The Grudge, directed by Takashi Shimizu, 2004

The story: When a person dies in a state of extreme rage, and that state of rage is made into a feature-length film, it leaves a terrible curse upon the place where the death occurred. Any person who enters that place is marked for death, doomed to return to the theater for the remake and/or subsequent sequels. The curse is relentless, inescapable... and now it's coming for you.

The battle: Remember when J-horror was a novelty? Hard to believe that a scant five years ago, Japanese horror had clawed its way to ascendancy, thanks to a set of (now) cliche attributes: pale-skinned and long-haired ghosts, a creeping sense of dread, and a return to the prototypical ghost story. Since then, of course, these tropes have become so common, they've even been mocked in the Scary Movie series. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. And even though Ju-on came at the crest of the J-horror craze, it was itself a sequel, coming on the heels of two direct-to-video precursors.

Shimizu divides Ju-on into several episodes, each heralded with a title card naming the cursed victim. He jumps backwards and forwards in time, letting the viewer piece together the connections and the chronology. And, in an fascinating moment, one victim, a father who has entered the house in order to burn it down, encounters a vision of his daughter in the future. It's an off-putting moment that relies more on displacement than any jump scares, and I would almost say that it's the most eerie and effective scene in the film.

Ju-on also touches upon an extremely sensitive topic for the Japanese: elder abuse. Our social-worker heroine, Rika, first comes onto the scene when she makes a home visit to an elderly Japanese woman, who, by the looks of it, has been neglected. Shimizu's panning shots of urine-soaked sheets and the inset shot of a dark smear of unrecognizable filth certainly elicits a protean sense of horrific disgust, but for the Japanese, who generally revere and take excellent care of aging parents, it touches on a culturally-specific horror.

Unfortunately, the titular curse seems to spread, all Romero-zombie-like. So instead of having just Kayako (the deceased wife) and Toshio (the dead son) paying people unexpected visits, the curse infects a trio of schoolgirls. If one pale girl ghost is scary, than three must be three times as scary, right? Especially when they're wearing knee-high socks! On the DVD, Shimizu, in describing his deleted scenes, explains how the final shots of an emptied-out Tokyo harkens to Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Kairo, implying, perhaps, that the curse has spread wide enough to wipe out the population. Indeed, it's pretty effective at trimming down the city's inhabitants. Who needs population control when you've got a cursed house to do it for you? (Interestingly enough, even though the film uses Kayako, the deceased wife, and Toshio, the son, as the main bugaboos, Rika's final moments points more squarely at the murderous father, Takeo, as the true malevolence.)

With Sam Raimi's Ghosthouse Picture at his back, Shimizu was able to direct his own remake. Honestly, it's difficult to say whether or not this is a good idea. It's good if you want to control and honor the artistry of the original, but I wonder if a different set of eyes would have created a new vision -- so to speak -- of the original concept.

The Grudge focuses on American expats living in Japan, particularly Karen (the Rika role, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her boyfriend Doug. And even though screenwriter Stephen Susco tries to milk "zomg i can't read any of the signs" for all it's worth, he doesn't quite capture the sense of displacement in a way that enhances the terror.

As well, the episodic nature of Ju-on has been scaled back to center more around Karen, and in order to make up the time lost by eliminating the non-Rika segments in the original, Susco falls back on two all-American standbys: the love story and the detective story. How do we know Karen and Doug are American? Because they're always on the verge of getting it on at every possible moment. (Imagine Canadians doing that. Or the Swiss.) Once Karen discovers her cursed nature, it's a race against time (too reminiscent of Ringu) to neutralize the source of the curse.

Kayako in The Grudge is a much more menacing presence -- but not in her ghost form, strangely enough. Instead, Kayako is shown to be somewhat of a stalker, following around an American professor and popping up in all sorts of casual photographs. She's like the drunk dude in the background that you can't crop out. Her Madama Butterfly-like obsession sets her squarely on the road to spooksville, and even though it's the husband who's responsible for her death, her craziness over a white man (Bill Pullman, of all people! couldn't she have chosen Hugh Jackman or someone?) sets her up as a villianness.

White American men: the cause of curses everywhere.

The Grudge also suffers from over-Hollywoodization, including abuse of CGI effects and abuse of soundtrack. There's a sudden loud, build-up of strings and then... a door opens! Granted, Ju-on had its own soundtrack abuses, particularly a high-pitched tinnitus headache, but at least the ambient sounds were allowed to suffuse the atmosphere, rather than having an orchestra introduce herald each jump scare.

The verdict: Ju-on wins. The mental discombobulation from the fractured timeline adds a chronological je ne sais quoi to the horror quotient. Plus, it's difficult to watch Sarah Michelle Gellar face off with a ghost and just sort of cower. Now, I abhor typecasting as much as the next person, but I kept thinking, "Buffy, come on! Just kick her ectoplasmic ass!"

Remake Rumble: [•Rec] vs. Quarantine

2009-07-24T01:38:00.000-07:00

The contenders: [•Rec], directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, 2007; and Quarantine, directed by John Eric Dowdle, 2008

The story: A film crew, while following on-duty firemen, gets trapped in an apartment building with its residents... one of whom has come down with a mysterious illness. Needless to say, the illness involves face-biting, excessive salivating, and poor posture. As the authorities seal the building to prevent any residents from leaving, the film crew continues intrepidly taping the events. Think The Blair Witch Project meets 28 Days Later.

The battle: Although both films -- given their "found transmission" nature -- purport to be in real time, that sense is more pronounced in [•Rec] than Quarantine. The edits in [•Rec] are accompanied with digital fuzz, hinting at an actual camera being turned off, whereas the edits in Quarantine are much more smooth. Indeed, the sense of reality in [•Rec] feels much stronger. Angela Vidal, our newscaster heroine makes errors in her introduction to the show and whispers to her cameraman, Pablo, to cut if an interview turns out to be dull. Her tour of the fire house suggests real life for late-shift firemen: lots of boredom. Certain people are too shy to appear on camera. In essence, you get the feeling that this is a real event taking place, even to the point when, as the fateful emergency call comes in, the firemen feel no real need to use the siren on their truck. Given this firmly-established sense of the mundane, when the more horrific elements are introduced, the viewer is more inclined to accept these as plausible.

Indeed, the total immersion in the viewing experience allows [•Rec] to get away with jump scares -- say, for instance, a body falling down a stairwell. It's particularly well-done considering that many of the shots are done in long takes to emulate someone turning on a camera and leaving it on. There's no foregrounding of the scare with a ominous strings on the soundtrack or any other emotion-heightening techniques. Everything seems normal... and then boom!, a body falling into the frame. It's an effective moment. The long takes also amp up the gore factor, as the camera witnesses acts of violence that go naturalistically from shaky chaos to juicy face-munching.

[•Rec], being a Spanish production, also introduces two cultural-specific elements, one of which makes an important point, and the other which muddles an otherwise clean storyline. During one moment of respite, Angela interviews different trapped folks, which deepens the audience's sympathy for those caught in an increasingly dire situation. During these scenes, [•Rec] comments upon issues of immigration -- particularly, the Chinese family living upstairs. As the nature of the infection is discovered, blame quickly falls upon them, manifesting the stereotype of immigrants as bearers of exotic disease. (Ask Lou Dobbs on this point.) One vain resident (clearly coded as homosexual) who preens before his interview delivers a xenophobic screed about the smells coming from the apartment and their consumption of raw fish. He even explicitly mistakes Chinese and Japanese, saying that they're interchangeable. His buffoonery suggests a strong sympathy for the immigrants, who are just as doomed as he is.

The second cultural point is more problematic. Towards the end, it's suggested that the source of the outbreak might be demonic possession. For heavily Roman Catholic Spain, this might hold extra sway as a horrific element, but it adds some confusion. Had an exorcism taken place? Why all the scientific equipment? Did the occupant of the room take the Papal Encyclical about religion and science too seriously?

Quarantine, on the other hand, has a much more plausible explanation for the outbreak: a virulent strain of rabies. Given that the film is set in Los Angeles, this offers the opportunity for plenty of dog-related mayhem, and the director Dowdle is happy to oblige. Unfortunately, however, Quarantine also feels much more scripted than [•Rec], and a random, free-form night among the firemen becomes an opportunity for sexually-charged banter and playful harassment (coming primarily from Fletcher, played by a mustachioed Jonathon Schech.) Perhaps it's saying something about American firemen and their cult of masculinity. Come on -- firemen are plenty hot as is. No need to be jerks about it as well.

Interestingly enough, [•Rec] was released on DVD long after Quarantine, bearing the tagline "the movie that inspiried Quarantine." But Quarantine seems to be an almost shot-for-shot replica, with a notable exception: the cameraman in Quarantine, Scott, becomes much more of a presence. Whereas Pablo never even appears on-screen, Scott shows up several times, even using the camera as a weapon at one point. Somehow, his transformation from a witness to an active participant makes the film feel much more contrived. Though I understand the necessity of showing a rat, would he really film himself stomping the rat and then staring at rodent splatter on his shoes?

Quarantine also makes the mistake of introducing too many ancillary characters (also known as victims). The limited cast of [•Rec] keeps the tension lean, maintaining our focus on just a few individuals. Why should we be concerned with the drunk yuppie or the young, nubile opera student? On a positive note, in contrast to [•Rec]'s concern about immigration, Quarantine shows integration as somewhat of a fait accompli. The building's residents run the gamut of ethnicities and ages, including an immigrant Somali family (who only briefly get the blame for the illness) to the South Asian opera teacher (again coded as homosexual). But somehow, all their interactions feel staged, never quite achieving the same degree of naturalism that [•Rec] establishes.

But Quarantine does critique a uniquely American cultural anxiety -- namely, the idea of government as a malignant entity. Whereas the threat from the government in [•Rec] remains distant, the American government actively engages in propaganda (insisting that the building has already been evacuated) and terror (sniping an unlucky individual who tries to escape through a window). And, instead of demonic possession, Quarantine offers another uniquely American institution as the ultimate source of the outbreak: a doomsday cult.

The verdict: [•Rec] wins. Its more improvisational feel and tighter focus make for a more shocking experience.

Behind-The-Curve Trendwatch: Cinematic Déjà Vu

2009-07-24T00:19:00.000-07:00

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a film in possession of good fortune, must be in want of a remake. Unfortunately, movie reviewers and fans alike, especially those who specialize in horror, bemoan the recent spate of American remakes of overseas hits, and, for the most part, they have ample reason to complain: something about the Hollywood system seems to drain the essence of what made those films exciting in their native tongue. After the messy cannibalization of J-horror, America now has its sights set on its own corpus, remaking American horror classics from the 70s and now 80s.

It'd be simplistic, however, to chalk this up to the commonly-heard excuse that Hollywood has no good ideas. That'd be like saying that there's no point to reading anything because there are only four different sources of conflict: man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. fate, or man vs. himself. (Or, as John Gardner put it, there are only two stories: a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.)

Instead of putting all the blame on Hollywood, part of the fault lies squarely with indiscriminate consumers of horror films. After all, if there weren't such an appetite for remakes (and/or sequels), then film studios would need new ideas or concepts to lure cash-oozing gorehounds back to the theater. But instead of clamoring for something startlingly fresh, we're content to wait for the latest iteration of Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street.

But I wonder if people flock to remakes simply because they are familiar. Terror is, at heart, all about being plunged into unfamiliarity, and to allow yourself to be immersed in that situation -- well, what sane human being would want that? Instead, if the horrific element is wrapped in a familiar frame, this minimizes the terror aspect, leaving the audience free to be entertained, rather than terrorized.

While that certainly holds true for sequels, what about remakes? I'd argue that the original wave J-horror films were popular mainly because they were dislocating: there was no pre-set pattern on which audiences could rely. (Later, of course, this would change.) And perhaps bringing in some of these destabilizing elements is a good thing for the proto-typical Hollywood horror film, which has relied too long to serial killers, vampires, and now zombies.

But people charge that remakes (particularly American ones) flatten out the more intriguing aspects of foreign films, instead of injecting new blood into a moribund industry. And while this is a valid criticism, I think this gloss can sometimes be used as a cover to ignore what Hollywood can offer to their remakes. Namely: nudity, loud soundtracks, and big-name stars.

So, as a matter of research, I've added a new feature -- Remake Rumble -- in which I compare an original film to either its foreign counterpart or its fabled forebearer.

Let the games begin!

Reading: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

2009-06-22T03:02:00.001-07:00

Wherein I prove that I'm not frightened of MacArthur fellows.

It's an established fact that Adichie once lived in the same house as Chinua Achebe -- though not at the same time. It was a mere coincidence, said Adichie; in the small Nigerian academic community, these sorts of things were bound to happen. Achebe had moved out, and Adichie's family moved in. At the time, she didn't realize who Achebe was: she was not yet ten and was more excited to have a balcony and a staircase than to soak in whatever writerly vibes inhabit a place after an author has left it. Maybe it's like a light left on in the attic. Or mold that grows on the inside of walls. In any case, Adichie didn't realize the significance, she said, until the publication of her first book, when her editor apparently was flabbergasted by the news. I imagine the exchange as going:

"I used to live in Chinua Achebe's house."
"OMFG!"
"He had terrible choice in wallpaper."

I wonder how much children grasp the concept of a book as a physical entity, as a fetish object. Thinking back to my own childhood, books were merely the place where stories resided. Nowadays, I see books as having heft and weight and white space and clever cover designs. The words inside--who cares about those anymore?

At the Adichie reading, I encountered into my "signing buddy," Matt, whom I see regularly at the Philadelphia Free Library Events (also the photographer of Adichie and me above). He's like the book dealers I used to see at readings elsewhere, coming to readings with backpacks laden down with ARCs and dust jackets tenderly wrapped in acid-free plastic covers. But instead of simply getting a signature to bump up the resale value, Matt has the authors inscribe the books to his children, Caleb, Brigid, and now Colleen. That evening, Caleb had come with Matt, hanging on his father's arm and being shy. He was halfway through the sixth Harry Potter book, in preparation for the movie later this summer. He had listened intently for the last hour and a half and looked forward to getting some ice cream afterwards. His opinion on Adichie: "She was all right." When he grows up, he and his sisters are going to have an impressive library, courtesy of his father: all these carefully protected books; stories that jump out at them; their names in black marker on the inside, as if to say This was especially written for you.

I can't think of a better inheritance.

Reading: Joseph O'Neill

2009-06-17T00:59:00.000-07:00

According to Joseph O'Neill, the first organized team sport to be played in the United States was not football, or baseball, or soccer, and polo. It was, in fact, cricket, that strange sport familiar to most Americans only as what those good-looking British chaps played in all those Merchant-Ivory films. In fact, as O'Neill pointed out, Philadelphia itself was known as somewhat of a hub for cricketeers, and he, himself, has played (for the Staten Island team) on Philly cricket pitches, the least of which is located on the unfortunately named Dick Avenue.

So even though O'Neill's novel Netherland became somewhat of a cause célèbre when President Obama revealed on the BBC that he was reading it, O'Neill seemed quite self-effacing, declining to speak further on what might be the hippest endorsement since Oprah Winfrey's Bookclub called it a day. Instead, he was content to talk about cricket for the uninitiated, all but inviting the audience to come cheer him on. (You see, there's this ball, and this bat, and two teams, and something called a wicket...)

But he did point out an fascinating point on the issue of celebrity and the president: for ordinary folk, meeting the president can seem like a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Something you commemorate by taking copious pictures, writing effusive diary entries, and vowing never to wash your hand again. But for the President, it's possibly the most forgettable moment in his day. So perhaps, O'Neill hopes, reading novels is a way for the President to reconnect with the people in a more sustained way than a handshake and a quick shuffling of Secret Service agents. The novel becomes a means of re-entry, rather than escape.

And if that fails, there's always a game of cricket.

Movie: Deep in the Woods (Promenons-Nous Dans les Bois)

2009-05-26T18:21:00.000-07:00

Stop me if you've heard this one before: five good-looking youngsters venture out to a secluded house in the middle of a dark, spooky forest. What sets apart Deep in the Woods, then, is a defintie sense of style. instead of drawing inspiration from 80s slashers or 70s grindhouse, direction Lionel Delplanque takes inspiration from Italian giallos, particularly Dario Argento. Indeed, the opening sequence plays like an homage to Deep Red, with its tale of childhood trauma and its rich, saturated colors.

Deep in the Woods also plays upon the internal creepiness of fairy tales; in this case, the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Whereas Neil Jordan turned into a story of female sexual empowerment (helped, in no small part, by Angela Carter), Delplanque seems content to make a solid shocker. Although he confuses his animal metaphors (what's with all the crows?), his stylistic flourishes bring a surreal touch to a pedestrian storyline. Take, for instance, what seems to be the largest, steamiest bathroom in the world. Some of the camera tricks, of course, exist merely for their own sake (including: glove compartment cam, nylon bag cam, and fisheye lens crow cam), but if nothing else, they're kind of fun... which sums up the movie in general.

But what would a giallo be without flamboyant camera moves and psycho-sexual weirdness? The main creepy guy in question, Alex De Fersen, seems quasi-gay. He takes an unusual interest in blonde pretty boy Wilfried, complimenting Wilfried's physique, among other sleazy old man moves. And yet... he has a son and a co-dependent relationship with his pervy gameskeeper, Stephane (the French go-to guy for freakiness, Denis Levant). And although, in the end, the psychological make-up of the killer seems head-scratching, keep in mind that giallos were never really meant for their acuity into the human psyche. Instead, enjoy the lesbian sex, full-frontal nudity, and wolf-head imagery. It doesn't always have to make perfect sense when you've got those.

Movie: Eden Log

2009-05-23T22:41:00.000-07:00

Remember that episode of Pokémon that caused kids to have seizures? The first three minutes of Eden Log should probably carry a similar warning. I'm opposed to strobe effects, particularly when they're used well (for instance, the last few minutes of Looking for Mr. Goodbar), but director Franck Vestiel seems insistent to make his audience feel as much physical discomfort as possible. So if this entails inducing epileptic fits, then so be it.

Still, Vestiel tries the best he can with a limited budget and a surfeit of imagination. Eden Log, on some levels, reminds me of Cube, another cerebral sci-fi/horror film that makes the most of its limited set(s). (Primer, however, is the one to beat.) There is, however, only so much creepiness that you can eke out of a mud-covered man looking at plant roots. So Vestiel cleverly incldues some deformed and violent humanoid beings to up the ante.

But, oh, if that were only enough. Instead, Eden Log tries to cram in as many ideas and concepts into its limited space as possible. So rather than offer another siege-and-escape movie, Vestiel attempts to add timeliness. Is the film a Marxist parable? An environmental warning? An uneasy mixture of Soylent Green and The Matrix? At one point, a character threatens to let the world know "what you're doing to all the minorities" -- a post-racial future, my ass -- but is quickly (unsurprisingly) quieted. Somehow, the political points don't mesh with the film's metaphors. They feel sort of tacked on -- the right idea, but the wrong execution.

Mostly, whatever political point Vestiel tries to make also gets lost in the murk. The movie, shot in black-and-white with the occasional splash of color, is so dark that everything seems to get lost. As the movie begins, the main character wakes up at the bottom of a pit covered in muck, and decides that he must trek his way up from Level -4 to the surface, where (theoretically) answers await. But, since our main character conveniently has amnesia, he's as in the dark about his situation as the audience is. Quite literally. Along the way, there's a man covered in tree roots, a botanist who glides in mid-air (thanks to a series of wires and harnasses), and a mysterious woman who is weirdly passive. There's an infection, there's a revolution, and, most of all, there's Eden Log itself: giant tree, scientific facility and overburdened Macguffin all in one.

We get clues to Eden Log's purpose via memory cards -- in a unique touch, the hero must find screen onto which these images, whether it's pieces of scrap metal or a dead person's face. But all the cinematic flourishes don't resolve the issue that it's still terribly unclear what's going on. When we do finally discover the hero's identity, it feels like a big so what. As it turns out, the guy's just another poor sap.

Reading: Yu Hua

2009-03-27T23:39:00.000-07:00

In the film The Interpreter, we get an inside view of the world of simultaneous translation at the United Nations. Nicole Kidman, who for her part learned an invented African language for an invented African country, has to listen, process and translate as the original speaker talks. For Yu Hua’s appearance at the Philadelphia Free Library, Chinese woman, certainly less tortured than Kidman’s character, and several shades more perky, took on the job adroitly, punctuating her translation with the time-honored time-buying words well and umm. Let's face it, though: I worked as a freelance translator (my specialty: Vietnamese) and totally sucked at it.

So as Yu discussed his newest novel, Brothers, I accepted without complaint long pauses as the translator parsed questions and answers back and forth. Interpreting is a different skill set than translating; interpreting means working on-the-fly, trying to capture mood, tone and nuance in an immediate situation. And I’m not sure all those came through, despite the interpreter’s best efforts. Oftentimes, when Yu spoke, the Chinese-speaking audience laughed, and we English speakers waited breathlessly to hear the joke. (Yu, after all, is known as a great satirist.) And yet, what we heard in English didn’t seem as funny. Perhaps there was some slippage. Or perhaps humor doesn’t translate well—which is often the case.

Still, she cheerfully translated when one audience member asked a long, rambling question—well, less a question and more an observation of how the world works and how the world should work, and why isn’t the world working the way it should?, and wouldn’t it be great if…—stopping the speaker at certain points to digest what he had to say, and possibly saving the rest of us from more grief. Yu himself indulged the question, addressing what he saw as the number one issue facing China today: poverty.

Indeed, Yu spoke eloquently (via cute translator) about the difference between bootlegging his book in China and in the U.S. In the U.S., he said, the issue is rightly one of copyright, and seeing that his hefty tome costs $30 retail (but worth it), recouping those losses is worth it. In China, however, illiteracy is a pronounced problem, so if bootlegging promotes access to reading material, then so be it. It reminded of Connaught Square in India, where I bought a bootlegged copy of Midnight’s Children. Does Rushdie need those few extra cents of royalties? And how would I feel if that was my book being photocopied and poorly bound?

Yu’s talk took place at the Independence Branch in Philadelphia, at 7th and Market, the designated Chinese-American/gay and lesbian branch, as it has sections specifically devoted to those communities. Power to the people, I say. Maybe well-stocked and fully-funded libraries should be the real solution to China’s illiteracy issues.

Movie: Sheitan

2009-03-25T01:43:00.000-07:00

Sheitan has plenty going for it. For instance: attitude. As the first full-length from the Kourtrajmé collective (though Kim Chapiron is the named director)—best known for their hip-hop inspired short films—Sheitan demonstrates a no-holds-barred attitude when a title card announces, “Lord, don’t forgive them, for they know what they do.” It’s like Jean-Luc Godard in baggy jeans. Kourtrajmé’s anarchic energy attracted the attention of Vincent Cassel, who plays the maniacal, giggling groundskeeper Joseph. His wide-eyed portrayal of a man who may or may not have made a deal with the devil is another thing Sheitan has going for it.

The movie centers on a post-racial crew (an Asian, a black African, a light-skinned Muslim woman, and the main character, Bart, who’s as whiny has any other white suburban kid) who just want to have a good time—which includes picking fights, shoplifting, and driving away from the pump without paying. When they meet Eve, a pouty-lipped sexpot, she suggests, “Let’s go to my place in the country,” and—well, you know what you’re in for.

But not really. Sheitan bucks traditional backwoods stalk-n-slash for something more amorphous and loose. Kourtrajmé has previously disdained narratives, but when you’re not Chris Marker, achieving it with some sort of cohesion is a lot harder than it sounds. The director/writers move the film in any number of directions at once, milking creepy dolls and doll parts for all their worth. But bizarre plot deviations and perverse goings-on don’t necessarily build suspense; instead of building to a climax, Sheitan sort of accretes.

As if to compensate for this lack of narrative tension, Sheitan piles on the hip-hop attitude. And although linking hip-hop to the French riots might be short-sighted, the anti-social behavior in which our less-than-sympathetic characters partake have a hip-hop soundtrack, more a vent for their own strangely misdirected anger, rather than a means of authentic self-expression.

But fidelity to the strictures of hip-hop, however, isn't an excuse for misogyny. I know, it’s almost redundant to criticize a horror film for this, but given the filmmakers’ staunch anti-establishment stance, you’d also hope that they’d rebel against patriarchal structures, rather than falling prey to them. Their simplistic views of female sexuality seem too willfully narcissistic, and the sight gags involving female genitalia and childbirth seem particularly childish. The women in the film are little more than cyphers, and while Roxane Mesquida plays the siren effortlessly, compare this to her work as a fully-fledged seductress in À ma soeur! If you want a provocateur, try Catherine Breillat on for size. Jerking off a dog just isn't the same thing.

There’s also a strange queer subtext to Sheitan—which seems to codify this masculine ideal. When Joseph shows an unusual interest in Bart (inviting him to go skinny dipping, thrusting his nubile red-headed niece at him, having Bart climb on his shoulders), Bart insists that he’s “not a fag,” even as his compatriots tease him about Joseph’s advances. Plus: Vincent Cassel in wet underwear.

Wet underwear aside, Sheitan offers a thrilling, if confusing ride, willing to throw in camera-tricks and narrative jumps to shock the viewer. But, as we all know, the devil is in the details.

Reading: Wells Tower

2009-03-22T21:29:00.001-07:00

Every year, there's room for one or two "next big things" in the literary world. Wells Tower has already reserved his spot for 2009. A recent issue of Poets & Writers had a feature on him, and all the folks from Farrar, Straus and Giroux at his book launch seemed smitten with his short-story collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. And meeting Wells in person, you can't help but be overcome by his sweet demeanor and good humor. Plus, he's got an awesome name. I dare you to say it without adding a little James Bond inflection to it.

Also, I finally discovered the difference between a reading and a book launch. At a reading, someone reads, and nobody gets drunk. At a book launch, nobody reads, and everybody gets drunk. While the former is more intellectually satisfying, the latter is more physically satisfying. A little bird told me that FSG has permanently banned the presence of Crisco from its book launches.

So at Moe's in Brooklyn (replete with a portrait of Moe from The Simpsons, natch), we revellers enjoyed free Mediterreanean food -- a full-on dolma feeding frenzy -- bathed in atmospheric red light. While I sat in a row of dislocated fold-down theater seats and jealously guarded the tapanade, Mr. Towers circled the room and charmed the heck out of people. Cheers!

Movie: Artifacts

2009-03-20T00:08:00.000-07:00

Given how the Belgians have always been the butt of French jokes, much in the way the Polish are worldwide, you can't blame them for trying to capitalize on the "French horror" craze. The director, Giles Daoust, admits as much. He wanted to make a quick, low-budget sci-fi/horror film. And while he gets the "quick" and "low-budget" parts of the equation right, the sci-fi and horror aspects don't quite make it through. Artifacts tries to engage the viewer in a mystery—why are these good-looking young friends meeting tragic ends? But as the mystery deepens (they don't know each other at all! they have metallic "artifacts" embedded in their chests! their exact doubles are trying to kill them!), the film stumbles and falls flat on its face.

To be fair, some of the film's shortcomings are readily apparent early on. The writing, in particular, is strained. Exposition is delivered in the awkward ways possible: an overhead conversation in a police station elevator, for example, or a helpful radio news report. And before twenty-five minutes have elapsed, three characters have met their doom, as if there's a quota to be met. (Helpful hint: if you're alone in your apartment, and you see something writhing in your bed, it's best not to pull back the covers.) We're concerned for these people... why? Things don't get better towards the end, when guns magically appear by bedsides, and we finally get an explanatory figure, Carl Francken (found via Google, of all things). But what he has to say is rather ridiculous and frustratingly fails to explain anything whatsoever. Indeed, the explanation makes things more muddled. Maybe the writer tries to say something about the nature of identity (as doppelgängers are an effective metaphor for this). But, really, it feels more like the writers—Daoust and co-director Emmanuel Jespers—simply said, "Oh well, we'd better wrap things up with an anti-climactic chase scene."

To Daoust's credit, however, he milks the doppelgänger aspect of the film for all the creepiness it's worth. The closed-circuit television shot of a woman entering a building twice is appropriately eerie, and the boyfriend who doesn't know where he keeps the coffee establishes a bit of tension—despite being telegraphed from a mile away. There's also a genuinely cringe-worthy moment that involves the physical extraction of the artifact—the director's concession to gore fiends. As well, the low electronic screeching that permeates the soundtrack works overtime to establish atmosphere, which, perhaps, matches the film's low-fi quality of digital video.

The film certainly tries to be ambitious despite its miniscule budget, but in the end, a surfeit of ideas and the failure to consider those ideas fully sinks Artifacts. The film itself becomes one of those nasty little artifacts: a screechy, metallic annoyance that you would prefer to have out of your body.

Reading: John Wray

2009-03-14T04:08:00.001-07:00

Readings are generally genteel affairs. With John Wray, however, all of those niceties disappeared: people walked in and out willy-nilly (sometimes nudging their way forward), people fought for seats, people wobbled and toppled into one another, and Wray spoke through a megaphone, a device you usually associate with political agitators or street preachers. Though you could chalk this up to the fact that the reading took place on the last car of the L train during rush hour, I'd argue that it's the decline of civility in Western society.

Still, a brilliant marketing move by the folks at FSG for Wray's new novel, Lowboy. One representative had a roll of Lowboy stickers on her arm like a giant spool of toilet paper. The crowd gathered at the far end of the 8th Ave. and 14th St. stop, a gang rumble of hipsters. But we were headed to Williamsburg, after all. And who doesn't love a well-appointed hipster boy? On the train, Wray read the opening of his novel, moving from one side of the car to the other, graciously allowing room for oncomers and get-offers. Just as the train started to pull away from 8th Ave., a guy yelled obscenties from between cars at someone still on the platform. In the six stops to Bedford Ave., Wray didn't make it too far in his reading, but there was a playful tone to the experience: Lowboy, which deals with a 16 year-old paranoid schizophrenic boy, makes the New York City subway a major set piece.

At Bedford Ave., the crowd shfited to Spike Hill, where Wray read another section of Lowboy, this time accompanied by a friend plucking suspended notes on his electric guitar. He read a letter written by the title character to his mother, emphasizing the ways in which paranoid schizophrenics wrap their heads around certain ideas and facts and then concoct a grander narrative around them. He managed to plug Dogfish Head, on tap at Spike Hill and flowing free for the crowd, by replacing Schlitz with it in a dirty joke. I think, however, that the passage works better on the page than read aloud. As Wray explained, letters of this sort have all sorts of strange typographical emphases: words randomly capitalized, words underlined multiple times, words in all caps. Part of the fascination is trying to uncover the thinking behind the emphasis. But, as strange and defamiliarizing as the language was, as read by the tall, calm and (presumptively) sane John Wray, the narrative voice sounded suspiciously like a guy who had just come off the subway.

Movie: They Came Back (Les Revenants)

2009-03-02T21:22:00.000-08:00

George Romero has so thoroughly changed the popular conception of zombies that it's difficult to even think of the word without bringing to mind Romero's particular creation. Whereas cinematic zombies were once a colonialist construction—think voodoo—flesh- (or brain-) eating undead have become the norm. Anthropophagous zombies have even made their literary mark—and I'm not even talking about the Jane Austen zombie novel. So with zombies becoming the status quo, what's a French auteur to do?

Robin Campillo, who has written some of the more interesting French films of the last decade (Time Out, Heading South, and most recently, The Class), takes the director's helm for Les Revenants, his debut feature. Campillo jettisons Romero's conception of zombies, but the cultural baggage that remains creates a lingering unease. They're dead; of course they're up to no good. As Campillo starts the film with long shots of the dead, streaming out the cemetery and walking down the street, the dead remain almost as impassive and inscrutible as the living.

Campillo also sets out an interesting metaphor: the zombie as immigrant. Early in the film, as the Red Cross shepherds the newly un-deceased quarters where they can be catalogued and identified, one city council member remarks that their living conditions are like that of refugees. And, the fears that one assigns to newcomers to the country increasingly become assigned to the zombies. How can we give them all jobs? Why do they congregate together? What do they want? Campillo addresses these fears with a light touch: surveillance cameras mounted upon weather balloons keep track of the undead residents. And let's hear it for undead civil rights: in one mordantly humorous scene, the members of city council are assured that the balloons only register the lower body temperature of the zombies, and not their faces. Still, one panoramic shot, the camera does a 360, showing not only the balloons hanging low in the sky, but also the stone-faced (and primarily elderly) zombies. No speedy clamboring for human flesh here!

Towards the end of the movie, however, it becomes clear that zombies do, in fact, have an ulterior motive, and in a scene that seems prescient, Campillo depicts them blowing up cars (hints of the Paris riots again). The zombie as foreign infiltrator/terrorist? Not surprisingly, the Army appears with a plan to quell the zombie uprising once and for all. They got your civil rights right here.

But the zombie-as-immigrant is only a metaphor. Les Revenants seems more concerned the process of grieving. The ways in which people come to terms with their grief—whether parents reunited with their young son or an elderly widower with his wife—becomes the central issue. How does a woman return to life, so to speak, with a husband that she previously thought lost to her forever? Can people return to normal even if there is nothing normal about them? Jonathan Zaccaï plays the dead husband in question with an impassive face and steely blue eyes, but as he begins to regain his memory, that mask begins to quiver.

The ultimate goal of the zombies, however, remains opaque, and the ending feels tossed-off, as if Campillo is unsure of how to conclude his what if. But having established such a heartbreaking set-up—the scene in which two parents slowly wait as their returned son slowly comes into focus for the first time conveys such overwhelming grief—one can cut Campillo some slack for copping-out at the very end. After all, this is a movie that's all about letting go.

Movie: Frontiere(s)

2008-08-22T19:09:00.001-07:00

Frontière(s) embodies the elements of “new French horror” so well that one might be tempted to think that I extrapolated my theories from this film alone. Originally slated to appear in After Dark’s Horrorfest 2007, Frontière(s) was given an NC-17 by the MPAA and was given a limited release later. And while the gore isn’t more extreme than anything seen in Hostel (compare the two tendon-cutting scenes), its brutality and sheer intensity—particularly towards the final survivor, who has been so beaten and debased that she can hardly stand—brings more than a few cringe-inducing moments.

The set-up is achingly familiar—almost cliché: a group of youngsters on the run convene in a secluded inn only to discover horrific goings-on. And while it perhaps introduces too many elements (neo-Nazis, cannibals, mutants, torture, claustrophobia) to have the single-minded effectiveness of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Frontière(s) offers an explicit backdrop of the Parisian riots. The opening credits appear as televised images of rioters clashing with the police, with newscasters announcing the election of an extreme right-wing government (paging President Sarkozy). The image of the young rioters throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails highlights the underlying theme: the new generation versus an established quasi-fascist power. Even as the murderous von Geisler family decry integration (while mocking Farid, a Muslim), the youngsters show integration as a fait accompli. Yasmin (presumably Arabic and Muslim) is pregnant with Alex’s (a Caucasian) child. Farid calls Tom (another Caucasian) “brother.”

Director Xavier Gens capitalizes on the neo-Nazi imagery: in one particularly gruesome moment, a character is steamed alive in a chamber reminiscent of the gas chambers. Gilberte, the seductress of the family, has a creepy, sexualized air that calls to mind Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. The patriarch of the family wears black jackboots and gives fatherly lectures even as his victims lie writhing with shackles around their necks. He presides over his brood with an iron fist, and the yellow and orange color palette indicating chaos in the early scenes of Parisian riots return during a candle-lit “dinner” scene with the family.

Frontière(s) is most hopeful point in its insistence that evil—as expressed through intolerance—is a learned behavior. Just as the child-like Eva has not yet been corrupted by the von Geislers, so Yasmin attempts to spare her unborn child (which appears before the credits in ultrasound form) the fate of being inculcated into the family—or, by extension, the new right-wing government. Still, this hope is tempered by the final image: Yasmin, approaching the freedom and the border, only to be stopped by policemen who slowly reach for the guns as she approaches.

Welcome to the new world.

Movie: P2

2008-08-12T22:25:00.001-07:00

One problem with having a solid, verifiable trend is that people—naturally—will try to cash in on it. In the wake of the J-Horror craze, how many Ringu rip-offs did we endure? After The Sixth Sense, how many movies had to have a mind-blowing twist ending (well, other than the ones the M. Night Shyamalan himself put out)? So when the producers of P2 receive top billing, you can almost hear the cash registers ringing in the background.

So even though Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur have their fingerprints all over the screenplay, it’s Franck Khalfoun (perhaps best known as “guy-with-axe-in-his-back” in High Tension) who has actually puts on the director's hat. And while the set-up of the film is brilliant—one woman, one psychopath, and an abandoned parking garage—the execution somehow didn’t hold up.

The film—essentially a folie à deux—therefore hinges on the two main characters. Both Angela, the victim, and Thomas, the psychopath, suffer from being woefully underwritten. Eager to get to the red stuff as quick as possible, Angela furrows her brow, calls her family (it’s Christmas eve), and frets—none of which really makes her endearing. Thomas has screaming fits and glares angrily at the camera, but none of this makes him threatening. He’s too busy chloroforming Angela and handcuffing her to tables to be a fully-formed character. Supposedly, his loneliness is the source of his madness, but this is something that’s announced (somewhat unconvincingly), rather than evinced. Imagine a movie in which you both fear and pity the protagonist… now how scary would that be? (Hint: think of Asami in Audition.)

It’s a pity, since the set-up of P2 had so much potential. Usually “trapped in a bad place” films take place in the countryside, where the entire locale has been steeped in cannibalistic hillbillies. But to have a common urban landscape become utterly defamiliarized… this is the stuff of nightmares. P2 also hints at some underlying class tension (Thomas might as well be singing “Uptown Girl”), but it dispenses any deeper examination with a character that might as well be wearing a sign that says “dead meat.” It's much too easy to kill yuppies; everyone secretly cheers. (And it's a nasty death, too; the scene drags the entire enterprise into sleazy territory. And of course you can’t have torture porn without a wince-worthy fingernail extraction or ocular damage scene.)

Aja and Levasseur still have a little ways to go before they can establish themselves as a reliable brand name in horror, à la Romero. They can craft some effective thrills, no doubt, but for P2, it feels like they punched a button, got a ticket, waited for the gate to go up, and then just finally drove away.

Movie: Them (Ils)

2008-08-11T20:12:00.001-07:00

A second film which makes my grand, overreaching statements on French horror sound like blather? So be it. If anything, Them (Ils) has some elements of torture porn—namely, the torture part—the violence isn’t the centerpiece of the film. Instead, tension—pure, unadulterated—permeates every frame. Have Surround Sound? Good. There’s a recurring sound effect that's both familiar and mysterious; once its source is revealed, the sound moves from terrifying to deeply disturbing.

Ostensibly based on a true story, the film plays primarily on fears of displacement. First, the universal fear of being in a foreign place. Lucas and Clementine, the French couple, are already estranged from their Romanian surroundings. Although Clementine is a school teacher, she has difficulty with the language and is somewhat resentful of her students—in other words: normal. And if living in a large, cavernous home deep in the countryside weren’t enough, the film hints at a impossible, bureaucratic police department: either you’re put on hold until you’re dead, or you just don’t have the correct paperwork—and no less dead.

The second displacement is a more bourgeois, though no less effective: the fear of home invasion. And here is where the film works with brutal force. At first, the mysterious assailants simply frighten the couple: cutting off the power, turning the television on and off. But as the attacks grow more violent and begin to come from all directions, the safety of home becomes the inverse: the mechanisms used to keep the external world out (locks, shutters) are used against the couple, as their options for escape become increasingly limited.

The tension in the film never relents. Once night falls, the film hits its go-go-go stride, and the action doesn’t relent until daybreak (and not even then, really). The camera rarely stops to linger; instead, directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud keep things constantly in motion. Careful, judicious use of sound—primarily silence—provide much of the creepy, restless feeling: it's one thing to jump because of a loud noise on the soundtrack; it's another altogether to be feel the same nerve-wracking fear that the protagonists feel as they strain to hear something—anything.

The directors owe a debt of gratitude to Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, the original home invasion nightmare (unless you count Lady in a Cage or Wait Until Dark—and why wouldn’t you?). Obviously, Them has none of the postmodern conceits of Funny Games, and the sadism is ratcheted down a notch. As well, the pacing differs: Funny Games excels in delivering long, excruciating suspense; Them, on the other hand, rarely gives you time to catch your breath. But films share, however, a bleak worldview. The motives of the attackers in both films is eerily similar, and while the identity of the omnipresent, hooded figures in Them isn’t revealed until later, the dual revelation of both the “who” and “why” provides a well-placed gut kick. Remember how I said that French horror films have placed their hope in the new generation? I may have to revise that…

Movie: Silent Hill

2008-08-09T23:45:00.000-07:00

So after all the hoopla talking about “the new wave of French horror,” here I am, reviewing a film that’s: 1) an American production; 2) based on a video game; and 3) pretty poor. Let’s just go with the assumption I’m working from worst to best.

Now, Christophe Gans is by no means a bad filmmaker; after all, he helmed entertaining, if flawed, Brotherhood of the Wolf. In other words: he’s not Uwe Boll. But this seems to be the fate of French genre directors who make a big splash in their own terroir: they come to the US with stars in their eyes and are blessed with a big-budget video-game adaptations or remakes which still rake in ungodly amounts of money.

Having not played Silent Hill, I’m in no position to judge how faithful the film is to the game, but video games, at least, have an interactive element which allows the player to invest in the character on-screen. Films don’t have that immediacy, so it falls upon the screenwriter to provide that connection. So here’s problem #1: Radha Mitchell—no stranger to genre films herself—has little to do during the first hour of the film except run around and scream “Sharon!” Sean Bean is similarly squandered as he races around in a subplot that screams “Padding!”

Gans does manage to conjure up some striking images, but, unlike the visions of Guillermo del Toro, Gans’ feel shopworn, second-hand. Pyramid-Head might have been more frightening if he didn’t feel like a Cenobite on steroids. The town cut off by sudden, endless cliffs? You can thank Michele Soavi’s Dellamorte Dellamore for that. The uniform worn by Officer Bennett (Laurie Holden, whom you might remember from the X-Files as Marita Covarrubias) seems as if it were designed by Tom of Finland. The tightly choreographed Rockettes-of-the-damned scene (nurses in latex!), however, is something that I’ll give Gans credit for, but for every interesting moment, there are at least two that will leave you shaking your head: the trip-hop showdown march, the grainy explanatory flashback, the cryptic crazy lady. I kept shaking my hand at the TV screen, hoping a cursor would appear so that I could click Radha Mitchell into a different part of the movie.

Apparently Gans is slated to direct the movie version of the game Onimusha next. Wake me when he gets to World of Warcraft.

Behind-The-Curve Trendwatch: France is the new Asia

2008-08-07T22:00:00.000-07:00

Gosh, it seems like only yesterday that you couldn't go into your local multiplex without running into a long-haired vengeance ghost with Japanese origins. The turn of the millennium belonged to the Japanese and their creepy, atmospheric (and sometimes gruesome) J-Horror. J-Horror, of course, bled into the nearby countries—most notably Korea—and finally came to the Americas, via a steady stream of remakes. But, as it happens when something becomes a culture meme, the market quickly got oversaturated, and Sadako became as much as a stereotype as any other boogeyman. Or, woman, as the case may be.

Meanwhile, French filmmakers have becoming increasingly visible in the genre. While French forays into horror have been spotty (though with a few classic examples), they roared into the consciousness with Alexandre Aja's High Tension (Haute Tension); now, French horror auteurs have become the enfants terribles of the genre.

It seems to me that this new thrust of extreme French horror has three major influences:

1) Torture porn. The obvious forerunner for the French taste for torture porn would be Takashi Miike's indelible (and still unsurpassed) Audition, and, to a lesser extent, Eli Roth's Hostel. Graphic violence, of course, has always been a secret pleasure of horror movies, but recent French directors have turned up the gore level to 11. And while this might not necessarily distinguish them from American directors who have done the same—torture porn itself is an American phenomenon (which has, thankfully, seemingly passed)—recent notable French horror films have been able to imbue their torture with cultural significance, stemming from

2) the French riots of 2005. If one believes that horror films are the culture's way of exorcising its demons, then this is the catalyst for the most recent explosion. After the accidental death of two teenagers in a Paris suburb, the Arab and African immigrant communities burst out in protest. (It certainly didn't help that then-Interior Minister and current-President Nicholas Sarkozy said that those neighborhoods should have been "cleansed with a power hose.") The anger and violence spread throughout France and continued for almost two weeks, until new police powers—including the banning of public gatherings—eased the pressure somewhat. But the racial underpinnings of the riots remain a definite subtext—if not an outright one—in the best of these films. Besides, racial tension is one of the key factors in

3) the changing demographics of France, particularly the Paris suburbs. Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine in 1995 was the first high-profile French film to address the "new generation" of Francophones. Since then, the view has only gotten increasingly bleak. On the upside, though, many of these new films—especially those depicting French youth—have consciously (perhaps self-consciously) introduced a racially and culturally mixed cast as a representation of France as it is today. Granted, most of that cast is offed in various gruesome ways... not to mention the whole violence and pessimism thing... but there does seem to be a distinct, if faint, note of hope towards the upcoming generation, even as the current one heads off towards its doom.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be taking a look at some of these French horror films, taking a look at some common themes and exploring why France is the new Asia. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Movie: The Deaths of Ian Stone

2008-08-05T19:36:00.000-07:00

The main drawback of horror movies is that there are very few truly horrifying tropes out there, including (but not limited to): the division between the living and the dead; the necessity of bodily integrity; the line between sanity and cloudcuckooland. So when a new idea comes into play, it seems genuinely exciting.

I was genuinely excited to see The Deaths of Ian Stone. It promised Groundhog's Day... but with gruesome death scenes! But here, we come against the flipside of having a great concept; without an equally great follow-through, it becomes a wasted opportunity.

What The Deaths of Ian Stone offers is essentially a mystery story: why does good ol' Ian Stone, all-American boy, keep on getting murdered every day? Why does he retain only a few fragments of his previous “lives”? And what the heck is he doing in England? Does he have a valid work visa? Indeed, the mystery should propel the story forward, and, in theory, it should be maintaining our interest as we piece together the answers, breathlessly anticipating the form of Ian's next demise.

Only in theory, of course. The actuality, the film spills the beans far too quickly (thanks to the traditional fount of exposition, the Creepy Old Man). This seems to indicate that although the writer (Brendan Hood, who also penned the rightly-maligned They) had a killer concept but didn’t know where to take it. So instead of a spooky meditation on the possibilities of predestination, change or alternate dimensions, we get some hooey about supernatural beings called Harvesters, which, for all their smoky, eerie beauty, seem rather limited in their choice of deaths for Ian Stone. Impalement, throat-slitting, and speeding trains. Twice!

Mike Vogel does his best to inhabit each of Ian's new lives as best as he can; he's particularly convincing as both a junkie and a resentful office worker (although having him as a hockey jock reeks of typecasting). On the other hand, Jaime Murray is squandered in a role that involves way too much hissing. She has a sinewy sexuality, but given her actual role, it doesn't make a lick of sense.

The final third of the film devolves into quick cuts and voice-overs from previous scenes, plus a little latex and sunglasses fetishism cribbed from The Matrix. Now that the "why of the story has been answered, there's little left to do except throw in some more visual effects, add some lackluster fight and chase scenes, and ensure that, yes, love does conquer all. Ian’s last line in the movie, “What’s the matter? Scared?” seems to sum up the problems with the film as a whole. To answer his first question, the matter is a riddle is only as good as its solution; to answer his second, no.

Greetings from: VATICAN CITY

2008-08-03T03:54:00.000-07:00

Some people come to Italy for the architecture; others, the history. I’ve told anyone within earshot that my trip through Italy would be the gelato tour. And so it was: south of the Vatican, in the tree-lined Trastevere section of Rome, I began my tour. Odd, then, that I would make three stops at the same shop—La Fonte Della Salute—for three different flavors: chocolate orange, pear, and then peach. Not all at once, of course. Each time I returned for more, the girl at the counter gave me a cock-eyed look, a bemused You again? When I finally stumbled out of the shop, satiated, I fell into another shop, ready for some cinnamon gelato.

I know the Vatican is a huge pilgrimage site for Catholics, and as I walked through the Basilica, I saw nuns from around the globe in their habits of different colors and a smattering of priests. (Several shops along the street sold a calendar that offered a new hunky Italian priest each month; alas, none of them were in the Vatican at the time.) But the tourist-to-devout ratio was skewed more towards the former end. And why not? While I’m ambivalent about using one’s cultural heritage as a cash-in (on the one hand, it pays for upkeep and maintenance; on the other, it’s tacky), the Basilica is one of the few free historical tourist spots in Rome. I don’t think the Holy See is hurting for cash: lots of marble statues of saints, wax figures of dead Popes behind glass, everything gilded and/or filigreed. Alas, no religion offers total one-stop shopping; while the Vatican provides plenty of spiritual fulfillment, it does not provide gelato.

Greetings from: ROME

2008-08-01T06:16:00.000-07:00

On the train ride to Rome, I silently played “gay or Eurotrash” with the guy across the aisle from me.

Eurotrash points:

plastic frame aviator sunglasses
black leather loafers with rubber cleated soles with navy blue socks
ostentatious ring on right hand with undecipherable symbol
polo with a full-color brand symbol the size of his palm

Gay points:

sings along and seat-dances to Madonna on his iPod mini
carries a Prada manpurse
fashionable female friend with chunky necklace
wears a Louis Vuitton belt
has “concerto Madonna” written in big block letters in his day planner, which he then proceeds to color in

Sorry, gals. The gays have it.

I’ve noticed that the Roman men wear great suits and great shoes but only OK glasses. They also, it seems, a penchant for bikini briefs (don't ask me how I know, but it has to do with watching too much MTV Italia, all right?). But don’t take this as a complaint; it’s hard to criticize too much when surrounded by good-looking, dark-complexioned men who aren’t afraid to have body hair creeping out of their shirt collars. I’ve always wondered if the Italian-American machismo attitude was directly imported from Italy, or if it’s another all-American creation, like the fluffernutter. I think it’s probably an altered form of that machismo: the swarthy I’m a man pose blended with a Protestant-cum-Catholic work ethic. It goes beyond simply being a cultural phenomenon and transforms into a pose that Italian-Americans have to actively cultivate. Of course, I didn’t suffer the horror stories I’ve heard some female travelers tell about Italy: stares, catcalls, eyeroll-worthy pick-up attempts, and the ever-popular ass-pinch.

In fact, I kind of felt left out.

Greetings from: VENICE

2008-07-31T14:23:00.000-07:00

After a late night on a cramped train from Ljubljana, stepping into the morning light of Venice was not quite a breath of fresh air—if for no other reason than the canals create their own atmosphere. But Sunday is its own world in Venice; silence reigns on the Rialto Bridge, still clear of tourist trinket stalls. A handful of vendors were setting up their wares, but except for the unfurling of awnings, the quiet seemed almost medieval, otherworldly. You could hear the leaf-green water lick the edges of the canals. People were getting in their boats; shops were shuttered. The food vendors only now put out their good, narrow cups filled with watermelon and kiwi. In the cobblestone squares, empty plastic cups cricked against each other as the wind blew them about, and beer bottles, proof of late night’s revelry, stood in corners, on ledges. It must have been a wild Saturday evening.

As the day grew later and hotter, more tourists appeared, so that by the time we reached San Marco Square, the place was filled with tour groups, some following their leaders holding up little umbrellas, others following along with earpieces to their guide speaking quietly to them through the ether. From every vantage, the winged lion of Venice looked down, holding his Book. When we crossed back over the Rialto, we could hardly move from the crowds. Every shop glittered with “Murano” glass, cut and shaped into every conceivable form. If I stopped into those shops, it was only to soak up the air conditioning; with a bulky bag dangling from my shoulder, I was rightly concerned about stumbling and creating lots of beautiful glass shards on the floors of Venice.

With only a few hours to spend in Venice—a tragically tight schedule—you can’t help but hit all the big tourist spots: The Bridge of Sighs, the Grand Canal, the Doge’s Palace. But sometimes this is the way it has to be. At lunch, we sat in the shade, while an accordion player serenaded us with a medley of the great Italian musical stereotypes. It was the quintessential Italian experience: eating flat-crust pizza al fresco, while “O Sole Mio” plays in the background.

Greetings from: BLED

2008-07-31T03:19:00.000-07:00

Just a short trip to the north, Lake Bled is nestled at the base of the Julian Alps. It’s every photographer’s dream: you just can’t take a bad picture of this place. Resorts surround the lake, which is emerald-green and clear as far as you eye can focus. Swimmers, sunbathers, strollers: all around the lake, young and old; a retreat for tourists both internal and international. Tito himself had his summer villa here (which is now a hotel), but for such a prime piece of picturesque property, several of the lakefront homes are abandoned, collapsed, or otherwise in disrepair. Matthew keeps talking about renovations, and it frightens me.

We took a boat out to the center island (of course, we hired one for 12€ each; did you really think we’d row ourselves?), where, in the church atop the island, we watched the tail end of a Slovenian marriage. According to legend, if the groom can carry the bride up the stairs (and there are a good number of them), then the marriage will be a successful one. I don't think the groom did this, however; he was too calm and non-sweaty to have lugged another person. In dress shoes, no less. The bride wore a cream-colored gown, and the groom’s tuxedo was the color of honeyed milk with white pinstripes. We caught a glimpse of them as they left the chapel, amidst handfuls of rice. It must be odd, celebrating this day with a steady stream of tourists surrounding your party, blocking your photographer’s shots, and otherwise just getting in the way. But perhaps when you’re enjoying yourself, when you’ve convinced yourself that this day carries a greater weight than any other day before, you can ignore the presence of strangers commenting on your clothing and the clothes of your guests.

The national pride and joy—the dessert that made Lake Bled great—is a kremna rezina, a layer of whipped cream atop a layer of vanilla custard, sandwiched between to flaky pastry rectangles. It appears on your plate like a brick, but goes down like a marshmallow. Accompanied with a vroča čocolada s smetana, it’s decadence for those who know decadence. For others, it’s just a toothache.

Greetings from: a bicycle trip around the city

2008-07-30T14:57:00.000-07:00

After being forced aside by a mad bicyclist one too many times, it’s now my turn for revenge. I rented a bike from the hostel, and I was off like the wind. While I respected the existence of the bike lane, at times, it seemed to merge into the sidewalk (or else took a path which I couldn’t locate). And only once did I come close to a collision: two women, walking side by side. I rode up behind them, ninja-like, and eased by them on the left. Had I stretched out my right hand, I would have smacked one of them squarely on the ass.

Unsurprisingly, I got myself thoroughly lost several times. When the roads take a slight change in direction or angle off, they also change names, and with the tiny font on the map I had to guide myself, it was next to impossible to relocate myself. Many of the buildings in Ljubljana were unmarked as well (the National Gallery has to be one of these pink rectangles, but which one?), so I had to orient myself by unmistakable landmarks: the bus station, the beer factory, the river, the castle. Luckily, there isn’t much of Ljubljana to get lost in, so all problems mostly solved themselves.

In Tivoli Park, I stopped by the Hot Horse stall, apparently a local favorite. I ordered the house specialty, the horse burger, and at first, I suspected that the name had more to do with the size of the burger than the contents of the patty. As it turns it, it was both. You can pile on as many toppings onto the volleyball-diameter patty as you want, and the server wraps it neatly in a foil package. And while I can’t say that the taste was objectionable (either on my tongue or my conscience), if someone offers me horse meat again, I think that the neighs have it.

While eating, a small black-and-white kitten emerged from underneath the Hot Horse stall, squeezing its little body out from a hole in the ground. In a few weeks, it wouldn’t be able to do that anymore. Of course, being the sucker that I am, I immediately felt sorry for it. It hadn’t yet learned to fear humans—just a matter of time, I suspect; even though I carefully pulled off un-mustarded parts of my horseburger for it, other benches shooed it away thoughtlessly—and I was able to pick it up and hold it. So light, so fragile. He swatted good-naturedly at my fingers; no claws yet, but I imagined that they’d soon be sharp and ready to fend off the world. I named him Žižek and wished him godspeed.

Greetings from: LJUBLJANA

2008-07-24T15:56:00.000-07:00

I spoke about “roughing it” too lightly, and then I’m actually doing it. We’ve moved one step down from a hotel to a hostel, where the extra “s” stands for “savings.” It could also stand for “shared bathroom.” But irrational need for maid service and 400-thread count sheets will eventually be my undoing. Luckily, the Aladin Hostel isn’t strictly for youths, so there are a fair number of older folks here. And as long as it isn’t run by an international cartel of sadists who pay for the pleasure of dismembering you, I’m fine with it. (Damn you, Eli Roth!)

I’ve actually stayed in a hostel once, when I was in my early twenties and couldn’t afford a hotel room in Boston for a writers’ conference. I recall a pleasant enough experience, if not particularly a memorable one, since I only spent one night in the hostel before shacking up with various conference-goers after that. Please keep in mind: this is when I lived in D.C. and my #1 requirement for a boyfriend was that he have air conditioning.

The halls smell of disinfectant—off-putting, although it does imply that the toilets are cleaned on a regular basis. Still, I like to limit my Pine-Sol exposure as much as possible. The lobby looks like the interior of a strip club: padded benches with M&M-colored cushions, ceiling fan, colored lights in the windows. The reception desk could be the DJ booth. It’s actually peaceful here (signs posted around the hostel ask guests to keep their partying to a minimum, by request of the police), and residents drift in and out, speaking French, English, other unidentifiable Indo-European languages. On the whole, I've seen fewer mullets here than in the Czech Republic, but the fauxhawk is still in full-force. Particularly annoying are the fauxhawks with the pointy parts bleached or dyed a different color.

Late night in the hostel lobby: one of the two overhead TVs has a test pattern. The station has gone off the air and says nothing but “TV Koper. Capodistria.” The other plays a grainy Slovenian film. It looks to be from the 60s or 70s, judging from the clothes and the general demeanor of the actors. The odd thing—the Slovenian subtitles are on as the characters speak those self-same words. It’s a crash course in pronunciation—if only I knew what the police inspector was saying to the guy who refuses to button up his shirt.

Greetings from: BRATISLAVA

2008-07-23T13:12:00.000-07:00

Many travelers I’ve encountered really enjoy this idea of “roughing it”: lugging a 50-lb. backpack across a continent, staying in grimy hotels, buying as little as possible. Traveling, for me, is a mini-indulgence; it’s not a smorgasbord of extravagance, but neither is it an exercise in austerity. And considering the impressive skills of the chocolatiers along the Danube, why hold back on this simple pleasure?

Bratislava is almost like Prague in miniature—which shouldn’t be taken as a slight. It has the historicism of Prague, but on a smaller scale: Prague’s Staré Mĕsto could eat Bratislava’s for breakfast. By the same token, however, Bratislava attracts fewer tourists and has an appealing gritty side, which isn’t readily apparent in Prague. For instance, we arrived at the south train station in Bratislava and walked to the Old Town, a walk of about 2 km. Old, lived-in apartment blocks—crumbling concrete, laundry hanging off of balconies—edged up against new, vacant construction; an urban renewal project that hadn’t begun the “renewal” part of the plan. The Incheba Convention Center, a sprawling, white monolith in the center of a vast, empty parking lot, festooned with banners proclaiming upcoming gatherings (and Disney on Ice), seemed to embody both the initial optimism and eventual failure of Communism. The bridge spanning the Danube River, crowned with a Starship Entreprise-like restaurant, rattled with automobile traffic as we crossed. On it, a young man sprayed and wiped off graffiti—a continual losing battle; as soon as a space had been cleared, a new tag appeared.

The main drag in Bratislava’s Old City has been commercialized as much as Prague’s (global capitalism, thy name is The Body Shop), but plenty of raw Bratislava remains with boarded-up buildings and disintegrating facades. There’s also a similar sense of play with the public art: a man emerges out of a sewer grate. Napoleon slouches against a park bench. A photographer peeks around a corner.

But let’s talk chocolate for a minute. I’m generally not a truffle and bonbon connoisseur (I prefer the dense purity of bars; for example, in one Vienna shop, I saw a panoply of fascinating flavors: rose and thyme, sour cherry and Kirsch, cranberry and rosemary, but these were all fillings and crèmes, rather than integral to the chocolate itself), but even I indulged in some truffles at Cokolada pod Michalska. And while the flavor combinations aren’t as exotic as those described above, they still fire off all the tongue-based endorphins at once.

Better still was the hot chocolate at Schokocafe Maximilian Delikateso. Max Brenner in New York City serves up sugary sludge compared to the thick, rich, impossibly flavorful cups of bitter chocolate that we sipped—almond for Matthew, orange for me. Nearby, an orchestra tuned up, played snippets of soundtrack music to smatterings of applause. Tourists milled around the souvenir carts ringing the square, and Matthew and I surreptitiously snapped pictures of cute boys and well-dressed promenaders. (Maybe not as surreptitious as we’d like to think.) Sunshine lit up the fountain in the square, and the cannonball embedded in the face of the church seemed to make perfect sense: the flaw that makes beauty possible.

* * *

I know I kind of ragged on the Austrians earlier for their Asian food fetish, but we dined at Chang Asian Noodle (next to Chang Asian Duck Bar). And while this brought back some unpleasant memories from when I was nine—namely, a European tour with my parents, aunt, and uncle in which we wandered the street of Torani one evening, searching for a Chinese restaurant—I will say that in my defense, it was close to the hotel, well-populated by locals (one of whom brought in his Dalmatian), and reasonably tasty.

Greetings from: Opernring

2008-07-23T13:06:00.000-07:00

Monday! The sun was shining, the shops were open, the world had righted itself back onto its axis. The previous day’s rain became nothing more than a cold breeze that blew throughout Vienna. We made the tourist circle around the city center, gazing at Baroque buildings and dodging the bicycles that come zooming down the sidewalk. Vienna is extremely bicycle-friendly (designated bike lanes!) although the riders can occasionally be pedestrian-hostile.

I’d also discovered the joy of ordering my hot chocolates mit Schlag—with whipped cream. The Schlag isn’t sweetened, as one might expect, but adds the richness and butterfat that milk froth just can’t contribute. No more trying to dissolve those last lumps of Swiss Miss in tepid tap water—Viennese hot chocolate is the real thing.

The Viennese have a fondness for Asian cuisine (maybe rightly so, since there’s only so much schnitzel you can eat before you turn into a leaden lump). The Orientophages of the Czech Republic had to confine themselves to Činksa restaurants, but Vienna aims for a more cosmopolitan feel and offers the gamut: Japanese, Indonesian, and even Vietnamese (owned and operated by Chinese, but close enough). Asian groceries, as well, dot the streets around the Naschtmarket, tempting me with their shiny cleavers.

The main street of the City Center, Graben (a former ditch), has become a pedestrian walkway given over to high-priced conglomerate boutiques: Hermes, Hugo Boss, Zegna—beautiful suits around the 1,499 Euro mark. The businessmen striding through the square, assiduously ignoring tourists as if they were lampposts—were they the market for those suits? Or do they need the suits to match the red marble urinals and mahogany-doored stalls of the Adolf Loos-designed public toilets?

Matthew and I ascended the south tower of St. Stephan’s Cathedral, 300+ stairs caked with decades’ worth of spit-out gum and the names of previous visitors scratched into the stone. The top afforded a panoramic view over the city, but was slightly marred by the fact that it was now a gift shop, manned by a soporific cashier. I don’t blame him, though; it was warm, and I can’t imagine lugging an A/C unit up those stairs.

We capped off the evening with dessert and tea in Süssi. We were served by a single young man, Christopher, with dark hair and hearing aids in each ear. He reminded me of Jonathan from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, expect happier. “What is your wish?” he asked, indulging our indecision with a genuine smile, rather than the grudging acknowledgement to which we’ve become accustomed here in Europe. I sort of wanted to put him in my pocket and take care of him. Mit Schlag, bitte.

Greetings from: VIENNA

2008-07-21T15:34:00.000-07:00

My greatest regret upon leaving Prague—besides not being able to spend more time there—is learning all these words in Czech that I’m never going to use again. Knihy, for example. Book. Vlak, train. Dĕvka, bitch.

On the train to Vienna, we passed Blansko, where there was a lake of green water alongside a black cliff, almost like a quarry. The vines and tree branches stretched towards the water, a verdant waterfall. Sunbathers on its “shore.” What was I doing cooped up on the train again?

Worse, the rain that had annoyed us in Prague followed us to Vienna, where it had gathered strength and now came down in a fury. What I imagined to be a beautiful, classic city was washed out in gray clouds, falling sheets of water. Not to mention that it was a Sunday, and almost the entire city had closed down. This is what Catholicism hath wrought. Where’s the Reformation when you need it?

Our hotel, AllYouNeed, has a spartan decor, like a Ikea clearance showroom. I've also noticed that European hotel bathrooms—well, at least the lower- to mid-price hotels that we prefer—have a corner shower stall, little more than a quarter-circle. A tight squeeze: I constantly bumped up against the water handle, alternately scalding and freezing me out.

We did manage to sneak into one of the famous Viennese coffee houses, however: the Café Leopold Hawelka. Despite the strengthening rain, we sat outside, mostly protected by the umbrellas, although we’d occasionally catch some spray drifting past. The interior was all dark wood and heavy curtains, the day’s newspapers on long, wooden readers. But I suspected something might be bad when I stood at the doorway and the middle-aged waiter brushed past me (it seems that you simply seat yourself at most places in Europe) and muttered, “Please stop raining.” A young, blonde waiter came to take our order, and we sent him away because we hadn’t decided yet. Big mistake, because we never saw him again. No, really. He left the café entirely. One moment he was serving customers; the next, I didn’t see him whatsoever in a cursory sweep of the inside. We speculated that he’d been fired by the grumpy middle-aged waiter, because the older one kept getting more and more frazzled as the night went on. He was the only server, and he cleared tables with a violent sweep of his hands, oftentimes spitting out mysterious German expletives. He finally wandered back outside when prompted by a table impatient to pay the bill. And while our hot chocolates certainly delicious, I had to track him down in order to settle—€4 for each drink. The experience seemed questionable. Entertaining, but questionable.

Still, I’m a sucker for bad service stories, especially when you can see the curmudgeon materialize right before your very eyes: normal human, normal human, bam!, raving madman with slightly mussed hair. And I did leave a tip, but only because I didn't want him to cuss me out after I left.

Greetings from TEREZIN, back to PRAGUE, Vinohrady

2008-07-20T22:26:00.000-07:00

The first sunny day in Prague.

I fear that I’ve been using the word “ghetto” frivolously, letting it meaning “cheap” or “gaudy” or “trashy and full of bling.” But a day trip into Terezin reminds me that the word had a meaning long before it became associated with the contemporary African-American idiom. It will always mean a heavily populated area of a single ethnic or racial group, but in Terezin, I’m reminded of the darker implications of the word.

But—and I hate to say it—the city itself has a sort of tackiness that rubs me the wrong way. The victims of the Holocaust should be rightly remembered; the Holocaust itself should haunt humanity until the end of days, but I felt like the remembrance had become the major industry in Terezin. When you name a hotel the “Terezin Memorial Hotel,” it’s pushing the boundaries of taste. As well, it’s disconcerting to see normal Czech families living their lives in the houses that you know once housed thousands of doomed Jews. Of course, it’s unrealistic to imply that the buildings should have been preserved in amber as a static monument. But the everyday nature of the town itself makes the reconstructed dormitory in the Magdeburg Barracks seem artificial. It doesn’t help that outside of the Small Fortress, just past the field of gravestones and roses, many bereft of names, religions of the dead demarcated by the humongous cross and the Star of David emerging from a mound of black rocks—just past that were a strip of tourist shops, selling Bohemian glass or, at the shop closest to the road, Native American dreamcatchers and beaded necklaces.

And yet, I was still moved. The exhibition on the artists in Terezin struck me; maybe this is the only way to understand tragedy: huge numbers of deaths—humans shipped around like livestock—take on greater significance when extrapolated from a singular experience. To privilege a writer over, say, a mother of four seems terribly elitist of me, but there you have it.

From Terezin, we hiked a pleasant 2 km. to the small town (to say “quaint” runs the risk of being patronizing) of Bohušovice, which I imagine gets some spill-over from the tourist trade, but not much. On one side of the street, more Soviet-style block apartments; on the other, individual houses (or as Matthew phrased it: “proletariat/bourgeoisie”). The menu at the Restaurace Radnice was handwritten and in a plastic cover, with no translation, so I simply picked something and ate it. Discovery is the best part of travel. The barkeep, with his thick broom-like moustache, looked at us askance, but was good-natured enough to indulge us intrepid travelers.

* * *

I’m not one to stand on formality, so after returning to Prague, we went to Club Termix, a gay club that seemed to have a high patron-to-prostitute ratio. Is it ridiculous to want an “authentic” gay experience in a foreign country? Because—from what I can tell—gay clubs everywhere are pretty much a monoculture. Who needs Esperanto when you have Madonna? Even though I suspect very few people there spoke English, everyone knew the lyrics for “Ray of Light.”

Still, I was curious. The early 90s saw a huge boom in twinky gay Czech porn stars (the blame falls squarely on the hairless shoulders of Bel Ami); surely there was more than that. It really was like any other gay club in the United States. A smattering of older men, some bearish types—no one danced with their shirts off, thankfully—but still dominated by young men in their 20s. The only difference was that I only saw two other minorities—two black men (not together)—and I was the only Asian.

Well, maybe it’s not that different from the US, come to think about it.

To think: I would have happily danced alone on the floor there (tiny as it was, maybe 20 ft. square). I would have sacrificed my lung capacity to secondhand smoke and my hearing to the bass. I would have danced atop the speaker box with wild abandon. But I have a more fully-formed sense of shame now. And besides, I’m no longer in my 20s, so I gladly cede my position, especially considering the high preponderance of diva house being played. When the DJ started repeating tracks he’d spun earlier, I knew it was time to leave.

Greetings from: Hradčany, Malá Strana

2008-07-20T22:15:00.000-07:00

Every time I reach this section if town—the location of the Prague Castle—I have the irresistible urge to call it “hard candy.” Perhaps it’s simply too much Madonna on my mind. After all, there’s not a single area of the city that’s not painted or carved or scalloped or crenellated or otherwise adorned with statuary (or, alternately, studded with anti-pigeon spikes), and much of the imagery has religious symbolism: here, a pietà; there, a saint.

But Prague is also a dream for public, secular art: odd sculptures and murals appear with regularity. So whether it serves as a memorial (disintegrating victims of Communism in Malá Strana) or serves a mysterious function (a pendulum of the oversized metronome) or serves up a slice of a surreal (mutant babies crawling up the television towers), art is everywhere, and you eyes can never rest in one place. A city of beautiful distractions. In front of the Kafka Museum (a multimedia extravaganza with some installations that remind me of bad student films), two fountains in which the water flowed out of the penises of the statues.

The painted buildings look like pieces of Wedgwood china, but when you have a city that bears its history on its walls, even the new buildings have been made to look old. Every church—at least in the tourist-frequented areas—sponsors a 5 p.m. concert with some form of Vivaldi or Mozart on the program. As you walk down the streets in the morning, you can also hear a conservatory student practicing her piano from an open second-story window: ascending and descending arpeggios, scales, runs.

And yet, the man-mullet is still in fashion here. Go figure.

The Prague Castle complex itself requires an exorbitant admission fee (about 350 kč for the deluxe package), but the heart of the area—St. Vitus Cathedral—has no fee whatsoever. So, even though we all know that the Cathedral is God’s home, He’s made Himself a wonderful conversation piece with the six stained glass windows that explode out of the dark recesses. Other parts of the Cathedral may seem excessive (a tomb made of solid silver?), but the windows illuminate the soul as much as the world.

But equally as entertaining is the changing of the guard in the Castle Courtyard. They’re accompanied by a 5-piece brass band: trombones, tuba, snare drum. But it’s much pomp without the attendant circumstance. The guards’ powder-blue uniforms, replete with epaulets and colorful ceremonial cords and guns with shiny bayonets, make them look like a particularly masculine majorette squad. For those who can still be impressed by formation marching, shouted Czech commands, and sabers being slid in and out of sheaths, it’s quite the spectacle. For those who can’t, it’s just fun to watch boys parading around in uniform.

Greetings from: Staré Mĕsto, Josefov

2008-07-18T13:36:00.000-07:00

I consider myself relatively tolerant of other religions, particularly when they’re tolerant of me in turn. Thus, Prague, with its strong traditions of Catholicism and Judaism, comes as a sigh of relief, even if they haven't sat comfortably next to each other in history. Indeed, right in the center of the Old Town is a statue dedicated to Jan Hus, the guy who was way into Reformation before Luther made it all mainstream and cool.

And while I appreciate the artistry that goes into religious symbols—those Catholics love their icons!—it doesn’t bowl me over as much as it would a believer. Instead, I look at the vaulted and painted ceilings of St. Nicholas or the ornate Moorish patterns in the Spanish Synagogue and pause to admire its aesthetics.

Matthew, however, is a much more sensitive soul than I. His heritage is Jewish, after all, but I was surprised to find him tearing up within the gilded patterns of the Spanish Synagogue. Much of it had to do with the exhibit detailing the fate of the Jews in Terezin ghetto; Matthew found himself wondering how many of those who died there had come to worship in that very same synagogue. And later, in the Pinkas Synagogue, with its walls covered with the names and dates of death of the Jews of Prague, even I could feel the tremendous weight of history bearing down upon the place, even if my borrowed polyester kippah steadfastly refused to stay on my head.

But at least I wore mine. Despite the posted signs asking men to cover their heads to respect the sanctity of the place, I saw plenty who went yarmulke-less. And it annoyed me a little. More egregious was the young man who kept taking photographs when the pictogram clearly depicted a camera with the round red international symbol for no slashing through it. I mean, I could have easily taken pictures inside the Spanish Syngogue—and believe me, I was tempted—but I decided against it. Not that I fear any Divine retribution. But I'm probably pushing my luck as it is.

Behind us on the stairs in the Pinkas Synagogue, a teenage American girl missed a step and stumbled. As her friends helped her up, she admitted that she had probably had too much to drink last night. Her friends agreed; they were all pretty wasted. I guess wasted would be the appropriate word, but I don’t hold their youthful exuberance against them.

The day was cool, and the sun wouldn’t appear until nearly six in the evening, but walking through the Old Jewish cemetery, the gravestones clattering together haphazardly, angled whichever way their anchors had buckled, I passed by the grave of the Rabbi Löw, the legendary scholar and mystic, who had created the Golem of Prague. Matthew placed a pebble on his grave, a sign of respect. I bought a small pottery golem, my own sign of respect.

Greetings from: PRAGUE, Charles Bridge, Kampa

2008-07-17T09:38:00.000-07:00

Anyone who hasn’t played “gay or Eurotrash” should really give it a try. It only more challenging once you’re in Europe itself; the men are generally well-dressed and wear interesting—if not always great—shoes. I guess the feeling of foreignness is endemic to travel, especially when faced with a language that has strange diacritical marks over non-vowels. On the bus ride from the airport, Matthew pointed out the old Soviet-style block housing, Communist tenements, before Prague finally gives way to its own storied history and red-tiled roofs.

Our hotel, the Hotel Kampa Garden, is a stone’s throw away from the garden itself, a verdant path, where couples lie in the grass, the girl’s head on the guy’s stomach. Our room overlooks a small canal used for grist mills. In the direction away from the garden, the Charles Bridge stands across the Vltava River, and it’s a major tourist draw, lined both with statues of religious icons bearing gold crosses and street vendors selling glass jewelry and caricatures. At the moment, however, it’s under construction, with part of the Western edge fenced off, and workers in lime-green t-shirts mingling amongst the crowd. At one end, you can pay 70kc to ascend the tower, which allows you some astounding views of the city—you can trace the path of the river as it makes its way around. You can, as well, watch to other tourists as they gather below for group pictures or simply pick their way over the cobblestones.

In Kampa Square, at the foot of the Charles Bridge, there’s a busker festival going on. Thus far, we’ve been treated to jugglers, puppet shows, marionettes, and even mimes. Sadly, they didn’t wear whiteface a la Marcel Marceau, but they did have skin-tight white gloves that went well past their elbows. It seems to me that the secret of good miming is not getting trapped in an invisible box, but being able to carry a narrative on facial expression alone. Though the box does seem important as well.

I was exhausted in the evening—a full day’s worth of transit. The sun hadn’t gone down yet by eight, but evening was cool, and I could still hear applause for the performers in Kampa Square.

Greetings from: LAKHPAT

2008-05-27T15:40:00.001-07:00

I try not to cause any international incidents, but despite my best intentions, things get out of hand. For instance, take Lakhpat, a ghost town on the northern border of India. You need government permission to visit. I always thought that the government simply didn’t want you to see some of the extreme poverty-stricken parts of the country -- like China. But that’s not the reason at all.

Lakhpat was once a thriving port city situated at the mouth of the Indus River. An earthquake in 1819 diverted the flow of the river, however, and without water access, the life drained out of Lakhpat. Nowadays, it has 200 residents and two small, spooky temples, one Sikh, one Muslim. As far as I can tell, their #1 industry is survival. The city is ringed by tall fort walls; despite some crumbling here and there, it’s possible to walk Lakhpat’s perimeter on the wall.

Just beyond the walls lies the Rann, and this time, it’s pure desert. I crept out through a hole in the wall. It’s a flat expanse with a handful of hills. The earth had cracked from where mud during the rainy season had dried; animals had left tracks. Cows, dogs, and a single gazelle sprang off into the distance, startled by my approach. Some ruined boats in the distance demanded a closer look. As I photographed them, I saw three figures in the distance -- shepherds, I figured. I was two-thirds correct.

The third figure was a soldier. When he saw me, he waved me over. Even though I had my permission slip to be in Lakhpat, I was no longer in Lakhpat; I had wandered into the borderland with Pakistan. That explains the big honking rifle he carried, then. A small piece of camouflage cloth was wrapped around the muzzle, and the magazine cartridge was transparent. Inside, the bullets were sharp-tipped and severe. BSF was stitched onto his dun-colored uniform’s shoulder -- Border Security Force, I imagine.

I had to wait with him while he summoned his superior officer. The soldier who had stopped me was friendly enough; I showed him the pictures I had taken (it was more of a command, really), and he asked how much a camera like that cost. He asked if I had a girl. His superior was much more gruff. He barked at me in Hindi, and I tried to look contrite, but I didn’t understand a word he was saying, he and soldier who had stopped me did his best to translate. Eventually, we managed with sign language: my arm was the city’s walls, and I was not to go beyond the walls.

I wasn’t worried. I know that if anything serious had happened -- taken into custody, for example -- that I could demand contact with the embassy. I wouldn’t have been ideal, stuck on a tiny military outpost for who-knows-how-long, but I never felt in any danger.

Still, it’s good to remember: going beyond the fort walls is a no-no.

Greetings from: DHAMADKA

2008-05-27T15:39:00.001-07:00

If yesterday was the earthquake tour, then today was the textiles tour. As part of the rehabilitation effort, NGOs invested their resources into providing the Kutchi people a livelihood and not simply a hand-out. To this end, they made an effort to revive Kutchi handicrafts -- primarily in the textile industry. There’s a dizzying array of traditions at work in Gujarat; each tribe has its own specialty, its own designs. And I’ll be damned if I didn’t try my best to support them -- primarily by shopping.

The earthquake reconstruction period split communities in an odd way; some villages chose to rebuild where they were, while others simply picked up and moved a few meters down the way. In some cases, half the village would leave for a brand-new development, brand-new town, while the old village had its own, separate revitalization. And in both places, the villagers were able to restart their craft-making.

Ajrakhpur, for instance, split off from Dhamadka, but both towns continue their specialty: block-printing. The initial design is stamped onto a length of cloth and then stretched out in the sun, weighted with rocks, to dry. From there, the Muslim craftsmen (with firm and steady hands) continue to dye the cloth, expanding or filling in the colors of the first print. The natural dyes used in the process (derived from turmeric, pomegranate, iron) don’t appear too striking when first applied, but after a washing and boiling process, the vibrancy emerges.

Meanwhile, in Dhaneti, the women practice Ahir embroidery, an intricate and, frankly, stunning art. Traditionally, their finest work is reserved for their dowry, but the handiwork is unmistakable nonetheless -- tight stitching, bright silk thread, embedded mirrors. One craftswoman explained that the embroidery for a pillow cover would take about 10 days to complete. From their needles, animals emerge: horses, elephants, peacocks.

From what I’ve been told, in Bhujodi, every household has a loom for weaving -- and there are approximately 200 households there. From the shop, I could hear the clacking of the looms; each house can make one shawl a day, ranging in materials from a soft, imported Australian wool to a more rough, textured Kutchi wool. Shawls were stacked waist-high on the floor of the shop. As I stood deciding, he examined a recently-made one, a quick quality-control check.

It’s somewhat of a given that the highest-quality items are usually sold through high-end retail shops, like Shrujan or Qatab (both have, I might add, a strong development focus and conscience). The shops in the small villages themselves tend to have lower-quality items, but with the cheaper price tag.

You get what you pay for, and that counts for both fabrics and NGOs.

Greetings from: LODAI

2008-05-23T00:28:00.000-07:00

According to Mr. Jethi, who organized my tour today, Lodai is the Gujarati word for earthquake -- a sudden jolt. My auto-rickshaw driver would take me around to some of the village east of Bhuj which were damaged by the earthquake, with Lodai being the nearest large village (relatively speaking) to the epicenter.

I had some sightseeing stops along the way. In Kotay, I hiked a small ways up the hill to a tiny temple to Shiva that squeaked with bat calls. It had suffered some damage as well, but it was still in excellent condition for a temple that used no mortar in its construction (if you ignore the wooden poles holding up the temple from the inside). 1700 years old, I was told. The exterior had sandstone apsaras -- some had eroded away into skeletal shapes, remanats of divinity. But those in corners had preserved well.

The epicenter itself is in the Rann of Kutch, a desert expanse of salt plain and brush. Very little grows there, and what does has sharp, snagging thorns. You can still see pockets of upheaval -- craters with sides of fine dust -- and an earthen rift that my guide said once stretched all the way to Ahmedabad. Seven years have passed for the rains to smooth over the rip, for the winds to even out the edges.

Several villages have been completely rebuilt with the help of different aid organizations and religious charities. The new houses, most of them built of bright pink concrete, stand against the landscape of dry hills. The reconstruction is heralded with proud arches, plaques, and roadside signs.

Looking at it now, you’d be hard-pressed to say that Lodai had sustained any damage at all. But a few steps from the tiny town center, and you come across a Hindu cemetery, the dead commemorated with white, rectangular pyramids marked with orange dots. As I approached, a woman waved at me. I assumed I was headed for sacred ground and was trespassing. She indicated I should sit next to this man whom I assumed to be a holy man -- he wore the long flowing clothes of one and had a wooden necklace that looked like a string of dried dates. Again, the language barrier: we could only gesture futilely to each other. Soon enough, his son, Hari, who had a passable grasp of English, arrived on a motorcycle with his own son. Hari’s seven year-old son had dark Hindi kohl smeared around his eyes and apparently was hooked on the WWF. Four generations of the same family sitting in the shade.

I explained I was from America. I was here to study the bukum. I made a shaking gesture with my hands when I said it. Hari said that played drums for wedding ceremonies. And would I like to stay for lunch?

We sat on the tile floor of the Hari’s porch, just past the cemetery. Hari’s wife, mother and sister-in-law also present. His older son shot a toy laser gun; his infant son stumbled around, cooed after by his grandmother, mother, aunts. This was a different thali from the Prince Hotel: still all-you-can-eat, still with food remorselessly slapped onto your stainless-steel plate, but a humbling experience. The chapattis were dense and tasted earthy; the vegetable was green beans in a thin, spicy tomato sauce. The mother poured me a glass of unpasteurized milk -- slightly sour, slightly rich. She broke open an onion with the edge of her hand and put it on my tray. A simple meal, served simply. I promised Hari that for my wedding, I’d fly him to America so that he could play for the guests. And I thought, This is something the earthquake could never destroy.

Greetings from: various restaurants around town

2008-05-23T00:25:00.000-07:00

I’m not one to rhapsodize about food; it’s not my forte, and it’s a secondary consideration: I’ll go see some sights, then eat something. But since most of my day was spent either napping or eating, I’ll talk about food.

As promised, I had a Gujarati thali at the Prince Hotel. The restaurant was packed, and rightly so -- it’s an all-you-can-eat for only 100 Rs. Whereas most Indian buffets in America consist of last night’s tandoori chicken served in a different sauce, this came piping hot. It reminded me somewhat of dim sum, with each server carrying a different item (12 in all). But instead of picking and choosing what you want and paying separately for each, the servers here took the initiative and scooped the items into the stainless steel bowls ringing my tray. Maybe I just looked that hungry.

So along with the vegetable items (okra, potato, cabbage, bean), I received two soups (one dal-based, one yogurt-based), a vegetable pastry (much like a Jamaican patty), breads and a flat, sesamed noodle roll. Slightly overwhelming, and it wasn’t soon before I had to keep waving the servers away. The boy with the jalabi seemed disappointed, so I took more than I should have; their sweetness made my teeth ache. The saffron-flavored custard was more up my alley; I could have eaten it for days.

But, truth is, I only have 6 days. I told myself that I wouldn’t eat at the same restaurant twice, no matter how much I liked it. This hasn’t been the case, however. I stopped into Delhi’s Banana Leaf a second time for its pizza-sized uttapam and its fresh watermelon juice (when ordered, they pull a whole watermelon from the refrigerator and hack off pieces to feed into the juicer). In Darjeeling, I ate at Kunga -- a Tibetan restaurant -- thrice, a different configuration of momos each time.

Based on the suggestion of a commenter, I tried the bhel puri at Anandos, and if I hadn’t filled up on a bottle of Thums [sic] Up cola, I would have finished it. Puffed rice, onions, tomatoes and pomegranate seeds in a spicy tamarind sauce -- the combination of mouth textures (crisp, squishing, crackling, bursting) makes each bite unique.

If I were to become a vegetarian, I would do it in India, no doubt. The Indians’ knack for concocting meatless meals beats the American reliance on iceberg lettuce salads. Of course, that said, when I get back to America, I’m going to have a steak the size of a small child and deplete the ocean’s breeding stocks through sushi.

Greetings from: Aina Mahal

2008-05-20T03:15:00.000-07:00

Bhuj is a small city, perhaps one square mile altogether, not counting the outlying colonies and relocations centers. So how I keep getting lost continually is beyond me. I suspect three culprits:

1) the city’s lack of street signs or notation (in English)
2) my lack of a comprehensive map
3) my general crappy sense of direction.

The Aina Mahal is another beautiful building damaged by the earthquake. But unlike the Sarad Bagh Palace, there’s reconstruction at the Aina Mahal. The workmen toil in the sun outside, the dust and bricks piled outside the entrance. The curator says that the government has given some money for the rebuilding effort -- it’s a slow process, and the money is nowhere near enough. But still.

Inside, there’s a blue tiled floor and an ornately carved ceiling. If you’re going to have a palace, might as well make it over the top, right? Though the interior of the palace is kept dark (better to enhance the feeling of escape, otherworldliness), along the back wall, stained glass lets in blue and green light. The main bedroom is lined with old mirrors; most of the silver backing of the mirrors has oxidized, so that they reflect nothing but black. The wall has an inlay of semi-precious stones in a sinuous floral design. The legs of the royal bed are made of solid gold. The opulence may now seem threadbare, but you get a sense of how the royalty spent their time. Namely, collecting porcelain dog figurines.

I’ve had tremendous luck in finding good food here in Bhuj. The number of proper restaurants seems limited, but so far, eating has been a pleasure. Even if one waiter misheard my request for a “kashcamber salad” (I imagined it to mean “cucumber salad”) for a kashmiri pulao, I much preferred the pulao, a sweet rice dish with dried fruit and cabbage (at least, as the Ash Restaurant served it). Tonight, I had a mixed sizzler at the Nilam Hotel -- imagine vegetables in a sweet and sour sauce served hot on a fajita plate. The manager dissuaded me from ordering more; the sizzler would be more than enough for me. He was correct. Next up on my culinary adventure will be a Gujarati thali, for which I’ve only heard rapturous praise. That is, if I don’t get lost on the way there.

Greetings from: Sarad Bagh Palace, Jubilee Hospital

2008-05-19T05:07:00.000-07:00

Today, two new words: bukum, the Hindi word for earthquake. And wabi, the Japanese word for a beautiful image of destruction.

The gardens surrounding the Sarad Bagh Palace are shady and peaceful, with plenty of nooks where lovers can sneak in quick moments of intimacy. It’s a break from the sun and the strong wind blowing today, carrying sharp bits of dirt to bite into your skin. A one-floor summer house holds the Palace’s treasures: chandeliers, silver mail holders and pheasants, pictures of dignitaries, and a distressing number of dead animals. Two stuffed tigers, a stuffed leopard, long, graceful elephant tusks, and heads mounted in a taxidermy roar. This was the time of the Great White Hunter -- or in this case, the Great Brown Hunter.

I can only imagine what all that must have looked like in the Palace itself. The yellow building must have been beautiful once, embellished with ornate carvings and graceful arches; now, these had fallen in upon themselves, held together with good intentions and hope. Sealed up doors, shuttered windows; the crumbling top floor of the Palace houses nothing but pigeons.

I came across the Jubilee Hospital quite by accident in my wanderings; I’m not sure I could retrace my steps. And even if I could, as eerily beautiful as the hospital is, it is equally heartbreaking to think about what had happened here. Along the railing of the second floor, people tied mementos -- ribbons, prayers, memories. Like the outpouring of candles and teddy bears at any American disaster area. But how they got there, I don’t know; no staircase remains to the second floor, though the hint of where one had once attached to the wall remains. Contorted I-beams, a mound of concrete blocks, some wobbly bamboo poles: this is the only access to the second floor now.

The debris of everyday hospital workings -- a temperature chart, a water bottle, a rubber slipper -- still lie haphazard amongst the debris, as if the earthquake had simultaneously both destroyed the moment and frozen it in time. The painted “please no smoking” sign seems almost cheerful in its anachronism. I imagine a nurse in her crisp whites frowning at a visitor and tapping the sign with her pen. What’s the point now? The rooms are empty, the windows broken. The dead, the dying who were once trapped here are long gone, and now the building has been left to decay. One sky-blue metal door stands half-open, as if waiting to receive patients again. Just outside of the hospital was a temple. To honor the dead? I wonder. It was closed.

Greetings from: BHUJ

2008-05-18T07:59:00.000-07:00

Traveling in the well-known cities offers you a safety net. You can draw upon the experiences of former travelers; better yet, you can meet fellow travelers and caravan. Bhuj, however, offers no such luxuries. As I walked through the city, the heat staved off bravely by occasional breezes, I felt like the only foreigner for miles around. And I probably was, too.

But it’s made bearable because the people here are exceedingly friendly. I’m ashamed to admit it, but India has made me paranoid and suspicious. When someone approaches me, I try to figure out what they want from me, what his angle is. But here in Bhuj, people seem genuinely curious. They stare at me (not a problem, since I tend to stare right back), simply because I’m a novelty; I don’t think many tourists come this way. But people are generous with their smiles, with their good-natured humor.

The women’s clothing here is a riot of prints; from what I understand, the different patterns denote different tribes, ethnic clans. It’s beautiful -- the full-throated colors, the draped layers, the jewelry.

They sell a brand of bottled water here called Blister -- no kidding.

Greetings from: various points of transit towards AHMEDABAD

2008-05-18T07:55:00.000-07:00

The Taj Mahal is off the agenda. It’s something that’s better done as a couple -- going there alone is like having a restaurant’s Valentine’s Day special solo. All the happy couples cluck their tongues and look at you pityingly.

I had my craziest auto-rickshaw driver yet. He spoke no English, and I spoke no Hindi, but we got on together swimmingly. Well, other than he didn’t know where he was supposed to be going, mistaking Asaf Ali Road for Ansari Road. But at the India Gate, we saw a woman smacking around a teenage boy with her slipper, and with hit, he cheered her on. H jerked the auro-rickshaw one way, made sudden stops -- the most close calls I’ve had thus far. When he scraped the end of a parked auto-rickshaw, he glanced at the damage, then moved on.

The combination of cars “temporarily” parked in driving lanes and narrow streets leads to explosive situations. While two lanes and directions of traffic tried to squeeze past in one lane, one driver got out of his vehicle and pushed around a much older rickshaw driver. All the while, my driver was honking, trying to get things moving, directing traffic around his auto-rickshaw with only inches to spare. He remained good-humored throughout and kept speaking to me in Hindi -- we were somehow on the same wavelength.

On the way to the airport, my taxi driver, shut the side window on the hand of a female beggar who had come up to the car. He didn’t do it hard, because she continued begging even as he yelled at her. I felt somewhat bad (but not bad enough to give up a coin). Besides, it beats getting your foot run over by a car (which happened earlier this morning). My sneaker took the squooshing like a trooper, and my toes avoided harm.

At the airport, a stylish young man carried a square, leather man-purse studded with rhinestones along its edges. Thankfully, the limited American definition of “gay” has not yet come across the ocean. McDonald’s has, however, serving McVeggie and McChicken burgers (would you like chapatti with that?). There’s the Indian version of Starbucks, Café Coffee Day. There’s the Indian version of Panda Express, Yo! China. And there’s the Indian version of Coke, which is also called Coke and has the same color and carbonation, but tastes nothing like Coke.

In Ahmedabad, my luck ran out. Getting to the bus stand from the airport at 9:30 p.m. was no problem, but once there, the ticket taker, a hearty, middle-aged man, informed me -- through awkward, broken language -- that the bus to Bhuj was full. Others attempted to get on the bus, and he steadfastly refused them. He didn’t know when the next bus would be, and even so, the ticket office was closed. I wouldn’t be able to reserve myself a seat. By this time, I was carrying a unwieldly number of bags: my carry-on, a laptop bag, my day bag, two hanging suits, and an umbrella. I could either try to catch the 11:59 p.m. train, or I could find a hotel and arrange transport to Bhuj tomorrow. He pointed another bus that was going to Bhuj, and as it started moving, people swarmed onto it, one hand on the bar, the other on their luggage -- and I understood how people get trampled to death at Indian train stations.

Perhaps the driver took pity on this lost foreigner, looking pitiful and bewildered. But before the bus pulled out, he waved me on. The cost of the bus to Bhuj was less than the taxi ride from the airport to the bus stand. There wasn’t an official seat available, but I could sit behind the driver on a ledge, near the gear box. The ticket taker handed me a cushion. I think this was where he normally sat, but there was room for two -- barely. An elderly gentleman in the front row offered up his seat so that the ticket taker could relax. We sat together, this gentleman and I, as the cool Gujarati night came through the window. As the other passengers reclined their seats and let the breeze come to them, we two kept a vigil with the truck drivers flicking their high beams so that it looked like flash lightning; with the factories lit from within like a Christmas light stuck inside of an eggshell; with the passing cars and motorcycles, playing symphonies with their horns; and with the three-quarters full moon, reflecting the puddles of the salt marsh so that the ground glowed phosphorescent.

Greetings from: BAGDOGRA airport

2008-05-16T00:36:00.000-07:00

While traveling, it’s easy to think that you’re both a part of and apart from the world. But some realities can’t be ignored. The bombings in Jaipur two days ago serves as a grim reminder that not all of India of politically stable, that not all of the tensions have yet been eased. Even though I had no plans to go to Jaipur, Gujarat, my next major destination, has its own history of riots and violence. This, of course, comes on the heels of tragedies worldwide: the earthquake in China, the cyclone in Burma. The world has never been a safe place. It threatens friend and foe alike.

The televisions in the terminal of Bagdogra Airport were tuned to a Hindi news channel, covering the latest revelations and discoveries about the bombing. An email sent just before the blasts that included footage of the bicycles believed to have been involved. The global 24-hour news cycle demands that no piece of information is too fresh to go unreported. For instance: two famous Bollywood stars plan to marry, and the news shows their pictures in clip art hearts, bouncing around to the theme from Chariots of Fire. Strangely enough, the TV in the waiting area was tuned to the cable information channel -- here’s how to get the most out of your Tata Sky.

When we pulled into Indira Gandhi airport -- this time on the domestic side -- I noticed that the airport buildings (flight control towers, hangars, refueling stations) were painted in a red and white checkerboard pattern.

It goes without saying that my plane was late.

Greetings from: the toy train, Channu Summer Falls

2008-05-16T00:09:00.000-07:00

I missed my chance for a toy train ride in Shimla, and I wasn’t about to let the chance slip through my fingers here in Darjeeling. Besides, the Darjeeling train was supposed to be better. It’s pulled by an honest-to-goodness steam engine, with someone to shovel the black chunks of coal into a fire and everything. The whistle can blow out your eardrums. I had my window open, and each time the engine belched out a thick burst of steam, tiny pebbles of soot would fall into my hair.

The joyride is a condolence prize for those who can’t undertake the full 7½ trip to New Jalpaiguri. It heads to Ghoom, with a 10 minute stop at Batista Loop, a war memorial. But the memorial obelisk takes a back seat to the gardens and the vendors with bags full of ethnic Himalayan clothing -- for a small fee, you can dress your family in the bright outfits and pretend to pick tea. Still, this abbreviated journey offered stunning views of Darjeeling and the valley below -- towns built into the side of the hill, like outcroppings of rock.

There are two things you can be assured of every afternoon in Darjeeling: first, that there will be rain. When the train reached Ghoom, the grey clouds had descended from above and now manifested themselves as rain, a scattering of drops, enough to annoy. I walked back to the market stall where the Tibetan family two days before had helped Richard and me. They recognized me, and I thanked them again. Small kindnesses too often go unacknowledged.

The second thing you can be assured of: traffic. Ridiculous amounts of it. Cars line up for what seems like kilometers. Drivers turn off their engines; you can honk your horns until it fails, but no one budges. The road can only sustain so many cars, and motorcycles trundle by on the crumbling, rocky shoulders. The traffic police waving cars to and fro supposedly know what they’re doing, but it’s frustrating nonetheless.

Thus, when I finally reached the Channu Summer Falls (also known as the Rock Garden) that afternoon, it was a noiseless slice of calm. The falls themselves might not be all that impressive, but the sound of falling water soothes the nerves like nothing else (which explains, perhaps, the craze of electric-powered fountains in the US). I was the only Western tourist ascending the stairs, but that lent the moment an additional bit of serenity. The right-hand path follows the waterfalls; the left-hand path winds through flower gardens with some silly statues to break up the monotony of flowers. There’s also a small, slightly creepy cave dedicated to snakes; carvings slither inside towards cobra head fanning out above an altar. I did not leave an offering.

Greetings from: Happy Valley Tea Plantation

2008-05-14T01:49:00.000-07:00

Let us sing the praises of tea! How it brings succor to the soul, warmth to the being, and peace to the mind. Its fragrance brings forth flowering gardens; a still lake by a pagoda; the smoke from a gypsy campfire. A small leaf, unfurling in hot water, bringing life to the liquid and to its imbiber. How can all these miraculous elixir emanate from a single bush, from a glossy green leaf with soft, serrated edges?

As it turns out, the guide at the Happy Valley Tea Plantation was happy to show David and me. He lead us into the room where the tea sits in long, flat bins, blown first by cool air, then hot air to remove moisture. Then, off to the machines! Monstrosities with gears and rotors and rollers; they seem as if they’re more likely to propel a steamship than to produce a delicate, almost effete, beverage. There’s a machine to roll the leaves, another to dry it, and yet another to sort the leaves according to size and grade. The leaves get a short respite before drying on a long, tiled fermentation table, but it’s the metal that coaxes them to give up their secrets.

Okay, perhaps the process isn’t so mysterious after all. But it is time-intensive, and reminds me of the long, laborious path of rice, from stalk to plate. Inside the final processing room, women sitting on the ground sifted the finished tea to clear it of dust. They tossed it in the air from wide, shallow baskets and caught it in a smooth, simple motion, over and over again. The entire room smelled of tea; you could steep the air and sip it.

And would I like to buy some tea? Maybe.

Back in town, the salesman at Nathmull’s, the renowned tea shop, demonstrated the different varieties of the local Darjeeling; he took a handful of tea, gently crushed it in his fist, blew into his hand, and invited me to smell the aroma, from the generic black tea scent of the lower grades to the floral and earthier scents of the higher grades. Each tea represented a certain estate, a certain season, a certain flavor.

So let us sing the praises of the tea picker! Women wrapped in swathes of color who roam the rows of tea bushes. They carry bamboo baskets on their backs, and their fingers skim over the tops of the plants, knowing exactly which leaves to pick and which to leave behind. They separate bud from stalk, and the baskets slowly fill with green. To protect themselves from the sun, they open umbrellas -- dots of color among the green hills. They smile at strangers and boldly ask for tips for photographs. And when a stranger gives them a shiny 2 rupee coin, they laugh, standing straight up for a moment, a quick, breathy break before returning to a hunch, the leaves awaiting their nimble fingers.

Greetings from: GHOOM

2008-05-13T05:00:00.000-07:00

Today was to be my day of exercise. A Welsh lad -- Richard – and I met up at 8:30 a.m. to take a taxi to the top of Tiger Hill, then wind our way back down to Darjeeling, a hike of about 10 km. At the top of Tiger Hill, we had the sun at our backs, although the view of the mountains was still obscured by fog. (Those pictures of the mountain range, glowing with light? A fluke, a myth, a Photoshop creation.) A pleasant day, nonetheless. Instead of taking the paved road back, we opted to venture onto a dirt path, which led a slightly different direction, but as long as we were going downhill, we figured it would be fine. Besides, a Frenchwomen had taken the lead ahead of us, and they seemed to know where they were going. We took a well-trod trail through the Tiger Hill, across terraced fields and stone gullies alike. Richard swore he heard thunder, but I assured him that it was the toy train rumbling along its track. On either side of us, dense groves of bamboo (and, sadly, the occasional empty bag of potato chips). The path wasn’t treacherous, but in a few places, you had to be nimble on your feet, hopping from one small foothold to the next, until you reached solid ground again. There was no way to avoid the mud splatters on the cuffs of your trousers.

Then it was my turn to hear thunder.

The rain started lightly, as it always does, just a few drops on the hair, a momentary wet spot on your neck. But we could hear the vehicle traffic from Ghoom nearby, people chattering. We passed a school, where the children seemed delighted to see us. We asked them directions, but they seemed to be pointed us further into the school -- the child’s delight of tricking the clueless foreigners. One boy kept grabbing his crotch and yelling out a word, but by that time, we had found our way down into Ghoom proper. We had started following the track of the toy train, breathing in black diesel exhaust when a water truck passed by, when the rain really began to pick up. The drops crashed into the muddy pothole pools, and it looked like little black needle-nosed fish rising up out of the water. With only one umbrella between us, we ducked into a stall that sold egg noodles (both flat "spaghetti-style") in cellophane bags to wait out the rain.

It must have been lunchtime, because the family who owned the stall was frying up something that smelled garlicky and delicious. An older man, who had carried a bottle of unidentifiable liquor in his pocket, pelted Richard with questions, and the whole family seemed to be having a laugh. Not necessarily at us, but more at him. He wandered off eventually (after telling me, “No laugh. He is my big brother,” and pointed at the man behind me), and the woman who ran the stall said, “Drunkard.” The rain didn’t let up, but the family was able to hail us a share jeep, and we finally returned to Darjeeling. Appropriately enough, then the sun came out.

That evening, Richard and I and a fellow traveler from Washington, D.C., David, had drinks in the pub at the bottom of Glenary’s. The cover band played any number of rock songs, from Megadeth to The Doors. What do guys talk about when they get together? Beer (which I couldn’t relate to), heavy metal (ditto), strip clubs (which I could relate to, but in a different way), and prostitutes (ditto). Heterosexual masculine energy has its own feel, its own demands, which, perhaps to outsiders, look chauvinist -- after all, Richard drank an 8%, West Bengal-only beer called He-Man 9000. But it also confers an intimacy and camaraderie -- the oft-maligned “male bonding.” I took a small sip of the He-Man 9000, and I felt butch, even if it was only for one swallow.

Greetings from: Tiger Hill

2008-05-13T04:51:00.000-07:00

I woke up at an ungodly hour -- 4 a.m. -- in order to catch the sunrise at Tiger Hill, a must-do experience, apparently. All the taxi drivers thought so; that was the first things out of their mouths when they saw Pete and me: Tiger Hill? Tiger Hill? Generally, I resist “must do” things when traveling -- but I usually succumb anyway. (Hear that, Taj Mahal? I’m coming for you.) The problem with “must do” activities is, well, everyone does them. This held true for Tiger Hill.

Even before we had reached the summit of Tiger Hill, the mass of people present became evident; the tourist jeeps and taxis crammed the edge of the road, parked perpendicular to the slope. The jeeps have different names stickered to the top of their windshields: “Ma”haraja, Darjeeling Boy, Shree Ganesh -- mantras and means of identification both. We had arrived slightly late; the world had begun to get light. But the thick bank of clouds that hangs eternally over Darjeeling had resisted the sun’s emergence.

Women with metal Thermoses walked around the crowd of mainly Indians, selling Dixie cups of coffee. No tea? Disappointing. The crowd clumped up against the rail, seven people deep. For a few extra rupees, I could have gone up to the pavilion, but I doubt that they jostling for position would have been less fierce. I elbowed myself into a good spot, ignoring the glares of the people around me, and used my bony little arms to angle my camera for a better shot.

And then -- it happened: the sun peeked out. It had already risen from beneath a bedcover of clouds, but now it stretched its arms and looked out upon us. So even if we couldn’t see the mountain range, we at least got a glimpse of inspiration. Everyone’s hands went up over their heads, holding cameras and videorecorders -- a puja courtesy of Kodak.

The early morning must have made me delirious; at the Hanuman temple just down the hill, I made a small offering, and a priest applying a light dab of red -- a bindi -- to my forehead. At the Ghoom Buddhist monastery, I made a slightly larger offering, but no bindi. I’ve steadfastly avoided eating street food and giving to beggars, but I killed two birds with one stone: I bought three spicy potato samosas wrapped in newspaper from a young boy, ate two and gave the third to a woman begging on the steps of the monastery. Surely this is good for something in my near future.

Later in the afternoon, there was a protest march through the streets of Darjeeling. A steady fall of rain did nothing to stop them; they were almost all women, holding banners and flags, and sheltered beneath umbrellas. The organizers, spaced about every 10 meters, read chants from limp pieces of paper, and the others would repeat the last two words. I recognized one word only: “Gorkhaland.” The march stretched far down the street, and it seemed like a river of brightly colored umbrellas -- a dazzling array of stripes, plaids, polka dots, lamé -- flowing uphill.

Greetings from: DARJEELING

2008-05-12T04:49:00.000-07:00

Our train pulled into New Jalpaiguri at 9:15, which meant that Pete missed the 9:00 toy train to Darjeeling. No problem. We hired a taxi to drive us to Darjeeling, a 3½ hour ride as opposed to a 7-hour train journey. The roads to Darjeeling were surprisingly in better shape than the roads to Shimla -- they had concrete barriers to serve as a bump before you tumble to your doom -- even if they were a little narrower. At point, our taxi had to pull aside (or in one case, back up to a wider part of the road) in order to let lorries pass by.

But it was worth it, no doubt. As much as I loved Shimla, Darjeeling is in a class of its own. First, Shimla’s proximity to Delhi and Chandighar means that it was more developed; so instead of hills of solid green, you had the hills speckled with houses and resorts. Sure, there are some of those in Darjeeling too, but not as densely packed as Shimla. The numerous tea plantations also add to the amount of green space. The ascent up the hills itself, however, meant passing through a cloud barrier. With the windows rolled down, I felt cold -- at noon! In India! The clouds became a mist, a veil obscuring the tops of trees and darkening the sky. Rain spattered down, and instead of touts on the side of the road handing out flyers to their hotel, Bengali and Tibetan families, looking at our taxi with curious bemusement. I can see why the Buddhists chose to build there monasteries here; the altitude and atmosphere creates an inimitable tranquility. There’s plenty of political graffiti painted on the walls: “We condemn 6th schedule. We want Gorkhaland.” It scrolled along as we rode, a text feed from CNN West Bengal.

I had high tea at the Windamere Hotel, where Pete was staying. In the drawing room, atop the piano, they had stacked leather-bound photo albums, the pages separated with crinkled tissue paper. The pictures were from parties past at the Windamere: Xmas 1980, New Year’s 1993. The Tibetan staff setting up the Christmas tree, and old white folks raising their glasses in celebration. It makes sense: the Windamere dates back to the British Raj, as do other “heritage” hotels in the area -- so why not continue the tradition. Why let the real world interfere with the Victorian charm? We were joined by others for tea: a British couple, the wife originally from Gujarat; a family from Calcutta. This was the real reason to enjoy tea (300 Rs. if you’re not actually staying at the Windamere; be forewarned): to sit near the glowing coals with tomato sandwiches and lemon cake and cups of tea, sharing stories and travel tips.

After searching the market for an umbrella and a sweater, I settled in for dinner at Glenary’s, a Darjeeling institution. Separated into three levels, Glenary’s caters to all groups: upstairs, the fine dining area; ground floor, the bakery and Internet café; basement, the pub with a live band and haze of cigarette smoke. Perhaps I’d arrived on an off-day for them: I found a mosquito in my hot and sour soup (the hot or sour being enough to kill the malaria, I hope), my chicken kabob was dry as a mouthful of ash, and they were out of fish. But, they have WiFi available, so I’m sure I’ll be visiting them again.

Greetings from: the North East Express

2008-05-12T04:48:00.000-07:00

I took an auto-rickshaw to Mughal Sarai train station, a far outpost of travel in Varanasi. To reach it, we had to cross a bridge. Not the nice modern Raj Bridge -- going that far north would have taken us too far out of the way, I think -- but a wooden bridge, lifted above the water on pontoons. Sadly, this is a major transit route. They laid overlapping metal plates across the bridge in order to keep wear and tear off the wood, but come on! Not to mention, before and after the bridge were more brick roads and roads of compressed dust. The trip most likely misaligned my spine.

At Mughal Sarai, I encountered my first honest-to-goodness crazy person. A woman, maybe late-30s, wearing a green #23 David Beckham jersey. My train was late (not an uncommon occurrence, as I’m discovering), and I sat on my suitcase on the platform. She came up to me and started babbling in Hindi. I, flabbergasted, nodded mutely, smiled, and shook my hands in the international gesture of don’t know, please go away now. Yet she persisted, her voice rising to catch my attention. She spoke rapid-fire; even if I had understood Hindi, I probably wouldn’t have had an idea of what she was saying. I didn’t feel singled out, however; she went from person to person, perhaps saying the same thing, perhaps jumping from one subject to the next. A young B.H.U. student, who looked like Kal Penn with a rounder face (for Americans, I’m afraid there aren’t many more points of reference for South Asians similarities), explained: mental disorder. She seemed happy enough.

This 2AC car was completely different from the Shiv Ganga. Namely, it was smaller: there were berths on both sides of the train, and no doors to seal out the outside world. Just a dual curtain that could be fastened together with some failing Velcro. Instead of upholstery, plain vinyl and foam mattresses, compressed now to a comfort thickness of toast. I shared my berth with Pete, a sweet but naïve architect from Hong Kong, who, in his first day in Delhi, fell for two of the scams they warn against in the Lonely Planet. I shouldn’t talk, however, as I’ve most likely fallen for a few myself. Anwar, a native now working in a hotel in Dubai, had the lower berth across from us. He took it upon himself to watch over us foreigners, calling in porters as needed, ordering food, and generally being of good cheer. Pete mentioned how all the Indians he had met were so friendly. That’s true to an extent, I think; it’s a matter of sorting out who is genuinely being friendly and who wants to squeeze every last rupee out of you. That’s why I hesitate when someone asks, “Is this your first time in India?” Does he really want to know or does he just want to gauge how much to gouge me? I don’t want to be suspicious and distrustful of people in India. But there’s nothing wrong with being on your guard.

On the lower bunk, you feel much more of the vibrations of the train, the way it shakes and rumbles over the tracks. Some of that is dampened on the upper bunk so that you get the sway, but not the roar. The window to the outside is utterly dark -- you are traveling nowhere towards an even more unfamiliar nowhere.

Greetings from: Varanasi Junction Train Station

2008-05-09T03:47:00.000-07:00

I spent more time here than I actually meant to -- a result of forgetfulness and vacillation. My original plan was to pop in, grab my ticket to Delhi, and wait out the rest of the hot, hot afternoon. However: India: Live with it. The evening’s train was all booked and I didn’t want to tote my luggage all the way back, just to be denied a spot from the waiting list. I would have gotten my ticket yesterday, but I forgot to bring my passport. While there at the station, I ran into a British couple I had befriended earlier, Hannah and Jack. They were to have left at 10 in the morning, but it was now 1 in the afternoon, and their train had been delayed further. Not an auspicious sign. I secured my ticket for tomorrow (May 9) and made my way back to the hotel to book another night.

But as I sat in my auto-rickshaw (a half-hour of my joints getting loosened from their sockets), I thought, Geez, I’d love to go to someplace with cool weather. I’d already hit Shimla, and I needed a respite before I tackled Gujarat, a.k.a the salt furnace. And in spite of Wes Anderson’s film, I decided: Darjeeling. If I love the tea, why wouldn’t I love the actual location?

So there you have it. I schlepped myself back to the train station, where Jack and Hannah were still waiting (new estimated time of embarking, 4:30), returned my ticket to Delhi (with a whopping 200 Rs. cancellation fee), and bought a ticket for New Jalpaiguri (the way station to Darjeeling). This is the first leg of the trip which was completely unplanned, and thus I have no hotel accommodation when I arrive. Let’s hear it for spontaneity.

Greetings from: morning and evening walks along the ghats

2008-05-09T03:45:00.000-07:00

We use identity strategically. Travelers from the US and UK claim to be Australian, because Australians are seen as having less money. If I want to ignore the boat touts and flower wallahs that swarm along the ghats, I can pretend not to understand them, even as they call out, “Hello Japan! Konichiwa!” If they press further -- “You from Korea? China?” -- I can say that I’m from Vietnam and that flusters many of them. How many tourists from Vietnam do you see on a daily basis? Sometimes, I can play the inscrutable Asian too well, however; when I passed a Western tourist, I nodded to my fellow traveler, and he said, “Konichiwa.”

But the touts can be persistent. One followed me for what seemed like twenty minutes, trying to convince me to go to a silk shop, to follow him. This, even after I had claimed to be from Vietnam and feigned ignorance of English. He pursued me to the Harishchandra Ghat, the lesser burning ghat, where he said that I should give him a donation to help pay for the wood. “It costs 4000 Rs. to burn a body. Understand.” He kept repeating this: understand. It wasn’t a question -- do you understand me? -- but a command given in desperation -- you must understand me.

Old women swept the steps with straw brooms, fighting against the tide of dirt and goat droppings. People laid out their laundry on the steps; the ghats became blocks of color from bed sheets, saris, school uniforms. The Indians are particularly hard on their laundry: they twisted their washing, raising it over their heads, and slammed it down onto stones set up on the edge of the river. It seemed as if they were clubbing their clothes into cleanliness. The air echoed the smacks of their exertion.

I sat in the shade of the towers of the Man Mandir Ghat, in full view of a cow which let forth a torrent of piss. One man carried his elderly mother in his arms up the stairs; I imagine she had just finished her morning bath. The very picture of filial devotion.

And it was here that a man offered me a shave, and, failing to convince me of that, proceeded to give me a massage. “Good for the circulation,” he said. It wasn’t bad, by any means, but I suppose pestering me for money at the end was inevitable. “Indians pay me 100 Rs.,” he said, but I doubt that he goes up to random Indians and turns a handshake into a hand massage. In the end, he had to be happy with 65 Rs., which I suspect was already overly generous.

Then, in the evening, clouds. It seemed improbable, with the relentlessness of the sun at any other time. This time, I got a front-row seat to the ganga aarti ceremony, close enough so that I got chastised for having my shoes on and splashed from behind with Ganga water from a woman performing a puja. There seemed to be a political VIP this evening; he sat on a raised platform, ringed with flowers. A group of men raised their hands and cheered when he spoke, their voices competing with the boat touts. I was made to step aside as he came down the steps and onto a special two-tiered boat to watch the ceremony. I saw the preparations, which had escaped me from the boat ride before: devotees lit the line of small candles in terra cotta bowls lining the ghat. The orange-robed priests performed the ceremony dutifully, turning to face each of the cardinal directions, while behind them, some bored-looking girls in bright saris waved brushes, mirroring the priests‘ gestures. And the noise: on my side, a man with a drum; on the other, a man with a hand gong. Fire, sound, and movement -- and yet it didn’t make more sense to me this time than it had before. People came off the boats, carrying water bottles and jugs that they had filled with Ganga water. Sediment had settled in the nooks and crannies of the bottles. For a moment, I envied their connection to the divine. Was this what all the Western hippies -- and there were quite a few of them on the ghats -- had come in search of? Or is this a particular cultural experience, knowing when to raise your hands, knowing when to clap, knowing the words to the ritual? Or is it personal? -- one woman seemed on the verge of tears as she lay out prostrate on the ground. Perhaps it was all of these, and more. It was also commercial: a collection plate was passed around, and a man selling DVDs of the ceremony made his way through the crowd.

Greetings from: SARNATH

2008-05-09T03:44:00.000-07:00

Whose idea was it to pave with brick in Varanasi? As if the roads weren’t narrow and treacherous enough, there’s a small stretch from Varanasi to Sarnath that has a bone-rattling cobblestone section. What seems quaint in Boston or Philadelphia looks downright foolish in India. Infrastructure, people, infrastructure.

I should have had a closer spiritual connection to Sarnath than I did. After all, Sarnath is where Buddha gave his first teachings in a deer park. From there, a Buddhist temple arose and was subsequently decimated by Hindus and Muslims alike. If anything brings disparate religions together, it’s decimating other religions. Nothing remains but some excavated ruins now, and a huge brick stupa with historic carvings. You can access the park for a fee and walk along the ruins, but a Buddhist monk led me around the perimeter for free. Well, not exactly for free -- I made a donation to the Buddhist temple through him -- so if he pockets the money, it’s on his own head.

Inside the temple itself, a mural by a Japanese artist depicts the life of Buddha. I particularly liked the one with him battling numerous demons. Symbolic, perhaps. It reminded me of a commercial I saw on Hindi TV for a children’s cartoon; the Hindu gods were superheroes -- the Justice League of India. It brings in the younger generation, sure, but it also sort of cheapens the religious experience. This, of course, comes from a devout atheist, so Krishna laser power away! A replanted sapling from the original bodhi tree (now grown into its own) frames a quiet meditation spot. Black granite slabs inscribed with Buddha’s first sermon in several different languages surround life-size statues of him with his five disciples. All the time, I kept thinking that my parents would have loved to see this. They had a Vietnamese translation of the sermon. I would have read the English one, but it was in the sun, and it was nearing noon.

The nearby archaeological museum had much more interest for me, however. And that’s not just because it cost 2 Rs. to get in. Rather, seeing the retrieved statuary gave me, finally, a sense of history of the area. There was a huge stone umbrella with a diameter of at least 10 feet; images of Buddha in his various teaching poses (which I tried to emulate, of course); and an Ashokan column top with four lion heads roaring into each direction. And did I mention that the museum had A/C?

Greetings from: Benares Hindu University

2008-05-09T03:38:00.001-07:00

It’s difficult enough keeping students awake during nice weather in Delaware, but in 100+ degree temperatures in India? I’m surprised any learning goes on at all. The large campus of B.H.U. doesn’t have the classical architecture of American universities, meant to impress parents and potential donors alike. Instead, its buildings are more functional, the color of the earth itself. It’s a minor oasis, a part of the city and yet someone separate from it. The roads are lined with trees and walkways, and if it weren’t for the scavengers picking through the garbage, you could almost be lulled into thinking that you had reached a sanctuary from the constant push-push-push of Varanasi.

At the western edge of the university is the New Vishwanath Temple, which (like many of the other calm, peaceful sights in Delhi) was somewhat of a park for the locals. After wandering about the temple and its grounds (barefoot and hopping on the hot concrete), I settled into a quiet gazebo, which had a ceiling fan. In it, three young male students sprawled out on the ground and read. Nearby, a family relaxed, although the children seemed particularly energetic. They kept stealing glances at me. Eventually, though, all three of the male students succumbed to sleep; one tried his best to focus on the newspaper he had taken from a file folder, but his eyelids drooped, and his grip on the paper loosened. I can’t say I would have done different in his place.

The small museum also on the B.H.U. campus provides some solace in Varanasi, but the staff has an ingenious way of saving energy: they turn on lights and fans only when visitors step in to a certain exhibit -- maybe a good thing, considering how the frequent blackouts slows fan blades to a stop and allows the insidious heat to return. A few of the exhibit halls were closed, but the collection of illuminated manuscripts -- from the whole of the country and covering time periods beyond the Mughal -- made the trip worth it. Interestingly enough, three entire exhibits were dedicated to benefactors to the museum: the founder of B.H.U., artist and sculptor Alice Boner, and a German man who collected antique manuscripts and maps. The library in his honor seemed to have a surprising number of 1980s-era books about India -- books your eyes skip over when you’re browsing at Goodwill. The museum feels haphazard; it has little bits and pieces that people think should be on display -- from antique coins to statuary to modern Indian art -- but no one has an overarching vision of how to put all those pieces into context. It’s a rich cultural heritage stuck together with bubblegum.

Greetings from: a morning boat down the Ganges

2008-05-08T04:30:00.000-07:00

We all have our morning rituals; mine is to sleep through it. But even before the first bits of light start to brighten up the Ganges, it has already come to life. If the evening ceremony was about fire and noise, then the morning ceremony is about water and silence. Men stood chest-deep in water, filling and emptying silver and bronze chalices. Bathers once again came, but instead of raucous laughter, a more reverential tone. The fires at the burning ghats were still alive: ash and cinder and flame because I could not stop for death. A man in white -- a new widower -- walked around the pyre clockwise (the direction in which the universe turns?) before lighting it with a long stick, the end fanned out into a broom of tinder. The stick caught fast, and he had to drop it and jump back, lest he be burned himself. But the pyre didn’t quite catch, and some attendants stoked the fire. Apparently, the better your karma, the quicker your body burns. 2-3 hours minimum, though.

The other, desolate bank of the Ganges also sparked into a life of its own. There’s a small enclave -- less than a village, more than a hut -- and they were waking to their own needs. The sun rose mellow, as if it were still gathering strength, and brief flashes of heat skimmed off the water into the boat itself. The peacefulness seemed almost alien, an escape from Varanasi, rather than an escape to Varanasi. A row of schoolchildren, dressed in white, gave their offerings to the morning, and I laid back on the stern of the boat and waited for day to break.

Greetings from: VARANASI, an evening boat down the Ganges

2008-05-08T04:28:00.001-07:00

The Lonely Planet warns of Varanasi as a city of hassles and organized crime centered around the tourist trade. I managed to escape the craziness of the train station by having my hotel send someone to pick me up, a seemingly mild-mannered auto-rickshaw driver named Monish. He’d lived all his life in Varanasi, but he struck me as the Indian equivalent of a older frat boy, with an interest in cricket, rather than football. This isn’t to say that Monish had no designs on me, but at least he didn’t pester me. Too much.

Instead, we agreed to meet later in the evening so that I could arrange a boat trip. I tried to hone my haggling skills with a boatman, but to no avail: I still overpaid by a ridiculous amount. This guilt was compounded when I met my rower, a young boy, Rahul, who couldn’t have been more than fifteen. Child labor laws be damned; this is a concern for the developed world. He rowed me first to the other side of the Ganges to watch the sunset. It’s strange: for all the life and activity on the eastern bank, the western bank is flat and empty, all sand and scrub. I walked briefly along it and came across a human skull. Should I have recommitted this washed-up part of someone’s corpse back into the river? Or will the monsoon season reclaim it? Boys sailed kites in the sky, small scraps of nylon and paper. I got the feeling that Rahul would have rather been doing the same. As we made our way north, he dutifully announced the names of the ghats as we passed them -- not that I couldn‘t have read the signs clearly painted in block letters on the walls. Groups of male bathers splashed around and swam about halfway into the river before returning to their friends. The water itself is murky, the color of army fatigues. It was warm as well, from the tentative finger that I dipped in the water. A finger, I hope, that had no open cuts or sores.

My main goal for the trip was to see the evening time ganga aarti ceremony at Dasaswamedh Ghat. And indeed, spectators had gathered for the ceremony, sitting on the steps of the ghat as if they were bleachers. Five priests stood at their respective altars and performed their movements in unison. They rang bells and made circles in the air with various implements set ablaze: a censor, a tree of fire, a pan with metal cobra heads rising to form a protective fan. As the chants started, Rahul sang along , but he grew restless. His chants gave way to Hindi songs, and he called out to his friends, who were themselves rowing boats. We tourists held up our cameras and our video recorders, bobbing on the water, hoping for a clear shot, while all the boatmen along the river waited patiently for the night to end.

Greetings from: the Shiv Ganga Express

2008-05-08T04:26:00.000-07:00

Indian trains offer you two ways of seeing the world. You can see it as gray; one window offers a clear view to the outside, and by the time the train boards (6:30 in the evening), dusk has settled over the city. The platform itself is gray, and battered metal boxes wait on the concrete.

I think I misunderstood what the 2-sleeper car meant; instead of me and another person, it’s me and a family of three. The father, before going to sleep, spread a cream over his face. He kept playing Bollywood hit songs on his cell phone, taking advantage, perhaps, of the fact that I had headphones for my laptop. Those multi-use phones are a menace. He spoke into his phone as if what he had to say was so important that he wanted to hear its echo.

I wonder why the Indians chose red as the dominant color scheme for the interior. The seats had a geometric Najavo pattern, something you’d see on a 70s polyester shirt, while the thin privacy curtain had crescents and swirls. I thought of cranes, for some reason. Birds in flight. Even the emergency stop cord was an appealing red velvet -- Pull me. You know you want to.

Despite the black sliding door, the interruptions were endless: a man selling water from a metal bucket, a man bringing blankets, a man to put the sheets on the bed. They brought chai on a brown plastic tray with a brown and yellow Padmini-brand Thermos. It was so sweet that it made my back teeth ache. As the train started to pull out, men ran along the platform, thinking they make a running jump onto the train, as if it were a Delhi bus. And then -- the backside of Delhi. A burned out building, black with soot, and people walking along the rails, amongst a landscape colored by heaps of rubbish. Buildings seemed only half-constructed, missing two of four walls. Jagged concrete and rusted rebars jutted out from abandoned projects. I remembered John in Shimla, describing how India wanted to jump from Third World to First World without making the crucial intermediary step of investing in the infrastructure. This was the unfinished city.

Greetings from: DELHI, in seven fragments

2008-05-08T04:25:00.000-07:00

A cloudy afternoon. The sun behind the haze makes the city glow orange.

At a stop light on the way to South Extension, my auto-rickshaw driver asked directions of the driver to his left who, in turn, asked the driver to his left.

In front of the public notary on Asaf Ali Road, every afternoon, a cadre of manual typewriters appear, manned by proud and patient typists.

Indians also have a thing for Chinese food. Chili and honey makes an amazingly good combination.

At dinner, an older, well-heeled German lady sat across from a young Indian man. Her guide? Friend? They leaned towards each other as they spoke. Does the global sex trade extend to both genders? Or is it merely a need for companionship? Traveling alone requires a certain fortitude.

I’ve got two mysterious insect bites, one on the webbing between my left thumb and index finger, the other on my right shoulder. I don’t have any anti-malarials.

The heat has gone from unbearable to atrocious. I’ve read that several people in Gujarat have already died from it. Soon, it'll be my turn.

Greetings from: the road to recovery

2008-05-08T04:23:00.000-07:00

I guess I’d been pretty lucky up to this point -- no major food- or water-related illnesses. That all changed with an unlucky thali lunch in Shimla. I believe it was most likely food poisoning, rather than a microscopic bug. Whichever, it left me nauseous for most of the previous evening -- but it wasn’t anything three vigorous session of vomiting couldn’t cure. It’s a horrific sensation: your mouth filling up so quickly that liquid starts leaking out of your nose. I’m not sure what part of the thali did it, but I’m going to guess the raita. Sadly, the urge to vomit punctuated my last evening with Andrew, Heather, and Kim. The continuous vertical motion of the taxi ride back to the hotel didn’t help either.

I slept in for most of the morning and finally rose at 10 to have a bland breakfast of toast and tea. I’d pretty much recovered by then. I met a Brooklynite named John, also a writer. What is it with India and foreign tourist writers? I gave him my copy of Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays, as he writes freelance about film.

I slept for a short while on the road down, fighting off mild queasiness. Smoke from a forest fire rose in a ribbon from the hills. For some reason, some farmers favor slash-and-burn field management -- not a very efficient method, if I recall correctly. Whole plots of ground were alight, charred. At a stop light, right outside of Delhi, a man sold little IV bags of water. Squeeze into your mouth, discard, and hope it burns as easily as everything else. This is a country of smoke and plastic.

Greetings from: SHIMLA

2008-05-01T06:46:00.000-07:00

Nestled in the hills of Himachal Pradesh, Shimla was once a resort town for the British. Indeed, the Viceregal Lodge (the now Indian Institute of Advanced Study) looks like an estate straight out of a Merchant-Ivory Production: gray bricks, arches, turrets and spiral staircases. After the British left, there was no reason to let such a nice retreat go to waste; there’s a considerable military and government presence in Shimla, judging from the roads blocked off by serious looking soldiers and the number of government vehicles that traverse the hill. The temperature seems eternally moderate; at night, I even got cold and had to wrap myself in a comforter. In this way, it reminds me of my hometown of Dalat, also a summertime getaway. Shimla has capitalized on this. Every few steps, you find a hotel, guesthouse, or eat-and-sleep establishment. Here’s a town that thrives on tourism, both foreign and domestic.

I met a young Canadian duo, Heather and Andrew, staying next door to me at my hotel (the charming Spars Lodge). We agreed to join forces for the day. Heather, a pre-med student, has been living in Delhi with her aunt for the past five months, working at a hospital. Andrew is studying to be poet in Winnipeg. We set out towards the Mall, a pedestrian only strip of commerce, a good 2 km. walk from our hotel. Shimla is terraced; paths diverge and head uphill or downhill with no promise of ever meeting up again. To explore Shimla is to zigzag continually, orienting via prominent landmarks: the canary-yellow Christchurch, the statue of Indira Gandhi, the roller skating rink. I heard a mother chastise her unhappy child in English, “The Mall is what Shimla is known for. You should enjoy it.” What was most enjoyable: the cleanliness. Shimla has actual public rubbish bins. Automobiles aren’t allowed on the Mall. Spitting and littering is punishable by a 500 Rs. fine. The white houses and hotels nestled against the green hills make this area feel like the escape that it is.

Plus, monkeys. They’re everywhere: you hear them rustling in the branches above you or scrambling across a corrugated tin roofs; you see them sitting on the sides of the road, alone or with their family, picking leaves and eating them. Not surprisingly, the Jakhu Temple, dedicated to the monkey god, Hanuman, is located high atop a hill here. A sign at the base of the path to the temple asks you to test your fitness: if you can make it up in 30 min., you’re very fit. 45 min., just fit. If you’re over 70 and make it up at all, you’re fit. This was not a good sign. The vertical ascent seemed endless. Although the path is paved -- on one side is a set of uneven stairs with a railing -- the trek proved quite a workout. The cooler weather was no respite from the sun. Andrew, lanky and full of energy, bounded upwards without betraying any signs of fatigue; Heather lagged behind. I kept somewhere in the middle, occasionally resting in the shade, sitting on the railing, thinking, These monkeys had better be worth it. Well, they were and they weren’t. At the top, right before the final ascent to the temple, it was great fun to see them gamboling about. What was less fun, however, was having one jump on my back. It happened before I could react; I felt a sudden weight on my back, something brush by my ear, and the next thing I knew, my glasses sat slightly askew on my face, the left arm bent and the earpiece broken off. As I stood, examining the damage, another monkey -- or perhaps the same one, who could tell? -- snatched the glasses out of my hand and make off with them. A young boy chased it down for me and retrieved them. Only then did I notice the sign advising Please keep glasses, packets and cameras firmly in hand.

I was attacked by monkeys. I had become that guy.

Andrew and Heather wisely rented some monkey sticks and we made our way to the temple itself, joined by an Australian, Kimberly. The locals warned her about my recent simian encounter, and she put her glasses in her bag. At the temple, we removed our shoes and put them into a guarded -- albeit stinky -- shoe hut. The marble was cool on my feet, and the four of us were instructed to walk counter-clockwise around the temple, rather than clockwise. Near the temple is a metal swing, where Indian families (and some enterprising Westerners) took a moment to revel in childhood. I wish I could say more about the temple itself, but without my glasses, it’s a fuzzy memory.

Greetings from: the roads through Uttar Pradesh & Himachal Pradesh

2008-05-01T06:43:00.000-07:00

Even when I plan ahead, things go awry. I had my wake-up call for 4:30 in the morning in order to catch the 5:55 train to Kolka and Shimla from there. I had packed and was fresh, ready to seize the day. The silence that infuses the early morning Delhi air seems to be from another place entirely, and you wish it could be like this always. Men in sweatsuits go jogging. The street people start to stir. Traffic has all but disappeared, just a few cars here and there. I made my way to Nizammudin station, as advised by Lonely Planet. But one shouldn’t put too much faith in a book. As it turns out, that was the wrong station for me -- from Nizammudin, the Himalayan Queen leaves at 5:25 in the morning, and it then comes to the New Delhi station at 5:55. That being the case, I figured I’d go back to bed and do more touristy things around Delhi.

No. The hotel manager berated me. I see you going out every day without asking for help, he said. I thought, That’s kind of the way I like it, but in this case, perhaps he had a point. I could take a taxi to Shimla, an 8-hour ride. Taxi? Yes, he said, I can get you a good price. Only 6200 Rs. And you come back the 30th. Okay, I said, let’s do it. The tour operator (who was keen on selling me a 5-day drive to Varanasi; no thanks, a private car to Shimla is indulgent enough) set me up with a personal driver, and we started off, Delhi traffic back to its normal congestion. I had saved a whole 1000 Rs. by not going for the A/C car, but I hoped that the day wouldn’t turn hot so quickly. No such luck. The sun burned a hole right into the city.

As we got further away from Delhi, the landscape grew more desolate. Delhi is a city of dust, and if it should ever run out, just beyond the city limits, more dust is ready to enter. But even in these, there was a strange schizophrenia: plots of seeming unarable land abut new industrial parks, the developments touted by metal banners overhead. Futuristic planned communities appeared with surprising regularity. We’d pass for-rent gardens with carefully groomed trees and green lawns, part of India’s ridiculously huge marriage industry. And, in a more comforting touch, dhabas, roadside restaurants for travelers and passers-by, so that no matter how bad traffic gets, you can always get a bite to eat.

Driving in India: a game of chicken that never ends. The road to Shimla quickly became a two-lane highway, shared by trucks, bicycles, auto-rickshaws, pedestrians, and goat herds alike. The trucks have BLOW HORN painted on their back -- as if anyone needed reminding. But once the road wound up into the hill country, it became more of a white knuckle experience. The road never stopped twisting for its entire length; the curves were blind, and the drop-off promised an unpleasant death. God help those without power steering. My driver -- even if he was unsure of which direction to go -- seemed fearless, passing cars even when the signs clearly read NO OVERTAKING. But as soon as we began our ascent into hill country, you could feel the difference in the atmosphere. Pine trees filled the landscape, and the hills, one after another, were spotted with houses, little outposts of life. The dhabas continued upwards; even where there were none, there seemed to be construction underway. Along the road, I saw the railroad tracks for the toy train, my original intention that morning. It had tiny tunnels into which it could hide, each one numbered with a small circle. There’d be no white-knuckle moments on the train, I figured. No diesel fumes blowing in your face, no slow-crawl tour buses, windows colored by saris. And no rhesus monkeys running across the road, their young clinging, upside-down, to their bellies. Did these make the trip by car better or worse? Perhaps the question is useless -- no matter what the approach, the beauty of the hills comes in waves of green and tan, the farther layers increasingly blurred and indistinct, shapes in the mist. But on the road, you get to hold your breath for what might be coming around the next bend.

Greetings from: South Extension, Humayun’s Tomb

2008-05-01T06:41:00.000-07:00

Ordinarily I’m woken by:

morning call to prayer
clattering dishes
goats braying
construction
strange dreams
people talking loudly in the hallway.

Today, none of those stirred me. I slept until almost noon. My plan for today: Humayun’s Tomb, then the South Extension for more shopping. So, to avoid any confusion, I wrote down my destinations on a piece of paper. I was warned by my pal Matt Gross, however, that even though many Indians will nod and act as if they know where they’re going, oftentimes, they don’t. So even after showing my semi-neatly written instructions, my auto-rickshaw driver nonetheless had to pull over to ask someone else for help. To make matters worse, this third person still had no idea where I was going. It dawned on me: writing those names on atop the other, my driver believed Humayun’s Tomb to be a proper name, somewhere in the South Extension. Okay, then. South Extension first.

I don’t see shopping as a competitive sport. I see something I like; I buy it. No hassles, no fuss. I know deep down that I should comparison shop, but it seems like an awful lot of trouble. First, I was lured into a Louis Phillipe shop by a blue linen suit with green pinstripes. The staff fell over itself helping me out. Try the jacket. If you have the jacket, you must try the trousers. Here’s a shirt to complement everything. But I’m a difficult fit in the United States, and it holds true in India. Luckily, there are tailors can make custom suits for you -- in dark beige linen, for example, with widely-spaced blue pinstripes. Or they can make sportscoats -- dark brown tweed, say. This is all theoretical, of course.

I made it to Humayun’s Tomb later in the afternoon, near sunset. The Tomb seems to have a higher percentage of Western tourists than the Red Fort, but this may have been a result of being the weekend. Indians have a tradition of memorializing death. That doesn’t mean just Humayun’s Tomb and the Taj Mahal -- people buy ad space in newspapers to commemorate death anniversaries. The newspapers have the ad rates right there. It seems like a touching gesture, but it also strikes me as slightly tacky; the American equivalent of putting an IN MEMORY OF decal on the tinted back window of an SUV. It’s one thing to remember someone’s passing, but to make a show of it? Is one more proof of love than the other?

On Sundays, Asif Ali Road becomes a street-wide book fair. Books of all types are laid out on the sidewalk: trashy paperbacks, children’s books, and regrettable hardcovers, smoldering in the sun. This is where old textbooks went to die. Although I would have loved to browse, the mass disorganization proved too much for me. I like books sorted into their proper categories, their discrete sections.

Finally, in Delhi -- the city of sleeping dogs -- I finally saw my first kitten. I heard it first, mewing with all its strength, behind the potted plants in front of the hotel. It was bony and skittish, hiding as it made its way to a sewer grate. My first reaction was to try to find it some milk. There was a milk stall maybe two long blocks away. I wondered what I could feed it. But then it hit me: I was a bad Westerner. I was willing to help a kitten, but unwilling to give a beggar one measly rupee. You’re screwed in this life, but hopefully you’ll be born cute and furry in the next one.

Greetings from: Delhi Train Station

2008-04-28T22:31:00.000-07:00

I consider myself to be relatively adaptable; given a situation, I can generally figure out how things work and adjust accordingly. When given over to the Delhi Train Station by my auto-rickshaw driver, however, for the first time, I felt completely out of my element. I’ve read that deadly stampedes occur with some regularity at Indian train stations, and now I see why. First, the crush of vehicles is almost incomprehensible; the auto-rickshaws and cars and cycle rickshaws compete for every inch of available road space, and pedestrians pick between them, deaf to horns, exhaust blowing at their ankles. Second, at the ticket counter itself, a huge mass of people, organized only roughly by lines. Women with their luggage lean against columns, unmovable. People don’t cut in line as much as they simply jut in before you, right at the ticket counter. Whoever gets his money into the ticket slot first wins. When I finally made my move, I kept my elbow firmly against the ribs of the man formerly behind me, now adjacent to me. Tickets to my destination -- Shimla -- were sold out, however. But I think that’s probably for the best, as I wasn’t able to communicate that I wanted an advance ticket for Monday. Somewhat defeated, I made my way back to the hotel. On my way, I passed a car polka-dotted with flattened cow patties, drying to be used as fuel later.

Lonely Planet says that there’s an International Tourist Bureau at the train station, but I was unable to locate it. It said that main building, but I didn’t see anything that looked anything resembling main, and I was too flustered to ask. Therein lies my traveling weakness: I believe that I can figure it out, when I probably can’t. I’ll try again later.

Round 2: I discovered the problem: there are two entrances to the train station, the east and the west. I approached from the east, which means that I was on the other side. The travel guides warn about ticket touts who’ll sidetrack you and send you to your doom, but I was surprised that I hadn’t been accosted by any earlier. Now I know why: they’re also on the west side.

As soon as I came upon the right area, helpful faces came up to me: You looking for tourist bureau? I was handed papers and pens, told to get into an auto-rickshaw and pay no more than 10 Rs. for the ride, go now or office will close! Being Asian gave me a buffer, since I could pretend that I didn’t understand English. After being diverted the first time, I re-entered the building, whereupon a man grabbed my arm and insisted that I couldn’t enter without a ticket. He instructed me to go to Connaught Place, since the tourist office had shut down because of the Metro construction. Pay no more than 10 Rs. for the rickshaw, he told me. It’s because I’m not Indian that people will try to rip me off. You don’t say.

I found the International Tourist Bureau. I can see how people get sidetracked -- the staircase to the 2nd floor is difficult to see, especially with entire families spread across the floor. The bright saris and their colorful, playful stitching are a diversion, an opening to get swindled. As it turns out, although regular seats for Shimla are likely sold out, for monied tourists, there is always availability.