streaming consciousness…

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  hardie karges 2:17 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  GEO-POLITICAL 

  Taiwan clings to the Chinese coast like a slingshot cocked and loaded, waiting to be flung out into the open Pacific by any earthquake with balls and bats and a love of the game. India’s sliding into second base, Camp Himalaya, with cleats high and dust flying. Turkey is a fragile coccyx attaching Asia to Africa and allowing Europe to get erect and stay there. Iran is a rusty scimitar slicing into the underbelly of Asia. Africa is breaking up and going separate ways. We ride on the crust of a custard, on the crest of a wave, a ball of fire cooled down to magma. It’s almost like the bloody thing is still alive in there. In another billion years, things might be more settled, continents satisfied with their figures and waistlines and their place in society. There will probably still be life. I wonder if there will still be humans. I wonder what they’ll be like. I wonder if anyone will still remember me, us, or any of this that seems such a normal, commonplace, everyday reality. I wonder how many times we’ll have to start over before we get it right. The earth will survive our most vicious transgressions, but we may not. The hard thing to realize is that we may still be in a very early phase of our lives as part of the universe. The recent discovery that galaxies are receding at an ever-increasing rate seems to indicate that we might still be in the early stages of the Big Bang. Our earth is barely cool enough to inhabit. We don’t yet know our limits. We think maybe we’re smarter than we really are. We still maintain our youthful suicidal tendencies. This is one of the disadvantages of neoteny, cultural or biological. Some retained traits may not be desirable. We’re killing ourselves.

   

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  hardie karges 6:21 pm on October 16, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  The Human Dimension 

  The third world is addictive, the very lack of superficial development something attractive in itself, the sights and sounds and noises and smells and total lack of order. I get an erection just thinking about it. I get a stinging sensation in my mouth. I get the same sensation the next day in my anal orifice. I prefer other feelings. If I’m lucky, then my stomach gets the same empty feeling you get from free-fall, vacuum, the natural feeling of weightlessness. I live for that feeling and it certainly beats any other feeling that stomachs are capable of. But the best part of the so-called Third World is not its food, its landscapes, nor its women. The best part is its unpredictability, the very fact that you don’t know what to expect from one day to the next. In that respect, it’s a lot like love, and like love, it gets boring if that’s the only basis to it. You have to keep trying new places to get that original feeling. But there’s no reason to feel guilty, because that’s what we are, the trip monkeys. We like to get around, and we like to get off. That’s what it is to be human, and that’s what makes us so successful. Other animals wander around; we’re driven.
   
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  hardie karges 8:34 am on October 9, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  Tribes Without Passports, People without States 

  Borders and passports are a recent phenomenon, you know. It’s only been barely more than a hundred years since borders have been closed and sealed. Governments, of course, have existed much longer, but free movement was generally allowed across borders, probably because labor has generally been a scarce resource for most of human history. Governments used to want immigrants! One effect of the modern system is that it denies tribalism a place, because many tribes lie across borders. Some of the best examples are the Quechua-speakers in four countries, some twenty million Kurds in four or more, the Tibetans in China and the Mons of Southeast Asia, all great nations in the history of the world, but left without a modern state to represent them. These are tensions inherent in the modern system. Since endless divisions are not necessarily practical, increased unification may be the only answer, so former Yugoslav states get their independence only to give some of it up willingly to a European Union, in this scenario. Certainly everyone could have a state if the designation were largely meaningless and merely an administrative division. This is what the US was in theory, before the Civil War negated it. The world is not ready for a true United Nations, but it might be ready for ten or twelve cooperative blocs as opposed to two or three.

   
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  hardie karges 4:30 pm on September 18, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  SCIENCE FRICTION 

  This world is science fiction, the fractal edge of the universe in the process of expansion, chaos meeting the void, waves crashing on the beach, the fragile border area between existence and non-existence. This is Interzone, the international zone, the chaotic border where languages fall flat and desires become erect. Modern standard Pidgin English is the lingua franca according to the fashions of the day, Chinese language torture, the tongue of half-baked smiles and crocodile tears. This is science fiction; this is World War III; this is reality. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and have no idea where I am. I search an empty mind for the most recent memory, any memory, anything. What’s a computer without an operating system? Insert boot disk. Finally a reference point emerges and the rest can be extrapolated. Sometimes I wonder if a different memory had popped up, then maybe the entire extrapolated world would be different. Is history constantly shifting its point of reference? IS there such a thing as objective reality?

   
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  hardie karges 9:22 am on September 14, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  SPECIAL RELATIVITY OF TOURISM 

  Time travel is the best kind. You don’t have to move a muscle or start an engine. You just flip the pages of memory and sit back and enjoy as images pass by on the projection screen of your mind’s eye. There’s only one drawback; it involves getting old. So, as with most of life itself, it all works out in the long run; the less you’re able to travel in space, the more you’re able to travel in time. Don’t laugh at that old guy with spit dribbling down his chin; he’s trucking in his mind.

   
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  hardie karges 4:57 pm on September 8, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  You Can’t Fight Customs 

  The Customs guys in Houston had a little table set up on the ramp to the airplane for the international flight. I’ve never seen anything like that, so ignore it. They flag me over. I’m Mr. Profile, by the way. They have a picture of what the typical bad guy looks like; it’s a picture of me. Hey, can I help it if I’ve got an eccentric flair for fashion? I’ve got carry-on luggage, so immediately I’m suspect. Under US law, if you’re carrying more than $10,000 in ‘monetary instruments’, then you gotta’ report it. No big deal; I know all that. I travel all the time; it’s a way of life. I deal with Customs officials all the time; it’s a way of business. I even do my own Customs brokering, so know the rap. They think I’m trying to be a smart-ass. They want to see all my money and such so we do that, counting every penny. Back then, ATM’s weren’t so popular, so I had traveler’s checks, plenty of them, since I buy handicrafts. It all added up to about $9,300 or so, well under the limit, or so I thought. Let’s wrap this up and get on with our lives. But no, the guy with the badge is getting excited. He leaves and comes back a few minutes later, telling me to follow him on to the plane. Like a good citizen, I obey. We go into the cockpit, where he informs me he wants to ‘know what that bulge in my pants is’. I shit you not. I had to pull down my pants for some pervert with a badge while two pilots and a flight attendant looked on. I guess know I know why it’s called a ‘cockpit’.

   
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  hardie karges 8:02 am on September 4, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  50 UNREPENTANT 

  The World’s Oldest Backpacker hit 50 (countries, years old, states of mind) with no regrets and unrepentant. Someone asked, “How long you been travelling?” Thirty years and counting…. Turning fifty was just like old times, alone and lonely, abandoned by my friends, walking the streets of London without an umbrella or a prayer. The rain hovers around me like weak soup, reminding me of why my ancestors left so long ago. I find solace in a pasty pie and a pint, and I’m glad for it. All that’s behind me now, older but wiser.

   
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  hardie karges 2:11 pm on August 31, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  TRAVEL 401 

  To be alone in a sea of strange faces is not only natural, not only not dreadful… it’s heavenly, relying on the basic goodness of mankind, unlearning the violence inherent from our fathers’ mistakes. Still the best part of travel is coming home to the nest, complete with mother and son… and shitting in it. Sometimes I don’t need to travel; I just need to BE without direction or schedule, an extra in the movie with no lines to read. I need no extra lines on my face to show my age- like some giant redwood lying shattered on the forest floor cut full girth across the grain of resistance, with no quarter-sawed comfy little beds and all their fibers lying smoothly between their teeth. Fibers one and all had their lives cut short, perpendicular open-ended ready for anything, large or small, objets d’art or mansions in the sky. I need contrast, the constant zigzag between poles, both north and south.

   
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  hardie karges 5:13 pm on August 25, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  THE TOURISTS ARE GETTING RESTLESS 

  Tourism is the great modern gold rush, linking past and present, rich and poor, traditional and modern, in a great gradual melting pot of cult and culture. The modern rich get their entertainment by viewing the past as expressed by poor traditional peoples. The only problem is that it puts itself out of business. If successful it changes the very thing that drew tourists in the first place. This is the new colonialism, tourist colonies and sunny beaches, Interzone girls and forty inch screens. The brave new world is a chicken shit travesty, a burlesque of the real world, dancing girls and transvestites included. Entertainment is everything now, the real thing itself, not just what ‘holds us’ between the real things. In the original French ‘entretien’ is just plain ‘maintenance,’ pure if not simple.

   
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  hardie karges 1:09 pm on August 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  BLUE PLANET 

  This is the Blue Planet, bathed in oxygen, a fire smoldering under control, not explosive enough to self-destruct, just oxidize and slowly turn to rust in the solid parts, slowly turn to life in the warm wet zones along rivers between thighs. This is it. Don’t look for more of us ‘out there’. It’s a pipe dream. However many planets there are out there, there’s one in that many chances of finding civilized life like ours. We’re it. Blue-green algae, yeah sure, there’s probably more somewhere. There’s probably no reason to stock up on cyanobacteria for that cryogenic tour. ‘Intelligent life’, though, that’s a different trip. First of all, you’ve got to realize that if humans go extinct here on Earth, then they probably wouldn’t come back again. Ever. Okay, I don’t really know that, infinity being a bit unpredictable, but I suspect it’s true. Platonic Forms are wishful thinking, anthropomorphism in its idealistic form. Think dinosaurs might make a comeback some day? Don’t bet on it. Second, intelligent life in any other circumstance, whether time or space, would not necessarily look like us. Is an ape really any smarter than a bear? Isn’t the possibility equally great that they might produce some mutant offspring with grossly oversized head that might one day outsmart all the others and rule the world? They themselves are an evolutionary improvement over their dog-like ancestors and can already walk on their hind legs to boot. Their trained dancing numbers even show those psychotic qualities so intrinsic to the master race.