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| Photo by Todd Quackenbush image courtesy of unsplash.com |
I’d thought, when I was perpetually lost on the south-west Pacific, that I’d been suffering from a lack of contact with humanity. Before an hour had gone by after I’d made landfall in Asia I found myself thoroughly disabused of this notion.
In some ways, southern Asia was the worst part of my wanderings, and in other ways it was the best. It was the worst because, at least for the first few days, I was never, never alone, and I learned rapidly that being alone is something I have to be able to do to keep up that priceless sense of inner peace I’d been wandering around to find. It was the best because whenever I’m close enough to people, I get filled up with whatever they’re feeling and thinking, until I almost forget that I’m there. When you have to walk miles and miles in order to find a room, or a building, or even a stretch of road you can have for yourself, it gets easy to blot yourself out for a while. The trouble with that is the people are also always in motion, so one gets quickly confused.
For these and other reasons I don’t have many clear and helpful memories that I can relate from my time in Asia, it’s mostly an enormous pile of unchecked, uninspected impressions; some graffiti on the blank wall of a building that looks like two people turning into plants, the havoc of dense and insanely colorful city streets, the wreak of a thousand different kitchens pressing into each other. One thing I do clearly remember is when I first came onto land.
It was a stretch of beach somewhere that looked like a poster in a travel office, except for the people. It must have been in either Vietnam, Thailand or Malaysia, to be honest I’m still not sure, and although there were people on it, it wasn’t extraordinarily crowded. I remember thinking to myself, as shapes became clear on the horizon, that I had begun my journey in California without any ceremony, that I had just kept walking once I was out on the water without a pause. I was telling myself that, for some reason, it would be good to finish the journey in the same way. But when I got up close to where the unlimited ocean met the limit of the land, I had to pause, and it wasn’t clear until I’d already done so why. The people, standing in the gently rolling water and nearby on the sand, were looking out at me. At first I must have thought this was natural, in fact I think I remember thinking that I’d have to come up with some sort of explanation as to who I was and why I was walking in from the desert with, as the man says, a perfect disguise. But it recurred to me that I was usually not visible to those still obliged to breathe, I halted in mid-step, about twenty feet from the water’s edge. I stared at them, they stared back at me. There were five or six of them, all young, half of them little kids. All were dressed for bathing, sort of. Further off down the beach I’d seen some men in bright wide hats stringing long red nets, like giant versions of the kinds oranges sometimes come in, through the surf. There was a little kid, closest to me, I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl, and they weren’t afraid. Just looking, maybe waiting. Then a large wave rolled under me, broke on shore, and everyone looked away and resumed their business, as if they’d seen nothing. I remember looking behind me, out at the horizon, to see if maybe they’d been looking at something else, but if there were something there I missed it. I didn’t try and attract their attention again. I walked onto the land, and into the low hills and buildings that abutted the beach, into the huge sprawling heated press of people, people, people.
Time changed rapidly. That close to people, it smoothed out and sped up drastically; I seemed to be unable to keep up with it. I think I might have still been a little wild in the brain from all the time by myself on the water. I remember I sat down a lot, and thought of the storm and the big wave, and tried to calm down a bit, and I was always surprised when I got up and found that time had passed, the sun was not where I’d left it. I got turned around a lot in the press of buildings and road corners and foot traffic, but I did my best to get inland, on the assumption that sooner or later I’d get away from the ocean and into drier country, and civilization would eventually have to thin out.
What were the thoughts and feelings I picked up? It’s sort of a haze. I remember that on the beaches I went to you could count on three or four strong chords, played endlessly with small variations: the bright spots of little kids rushing around, either jubilant with activity or listless with waiting; older folks trying to relax in the sunshine or the shade and feeling little nudges of discomforts and distractions become exaggerated as their minds quieted down; younger men looking at young women, younger women looking at everything, sometimes young men. Into the cities themselves it became an incomprehensible stew most of the time, with a few short exceptions. Mostly it felt like traffic everywhere; the tension of people trying to get through from one thing to another thing, and finding their way eternally blocked. I might have been imagining this.
After the beach I was never sure anyone looked straight at me again, but I became increasingly aware that I was having an impact on the people around me wherever I went. Once when I was younger I was at a fancy buffet restaurant, or maybe a country club, with my family for a breakfast or brunch or something, probably to celebrate a graduation or some minor accomplishment, I can’t remember what. I was little, and I remember having my shirt tucked in, and a cloth napkin in my lap. And in the middle of everything, we were all sitting and people were eating and talking, and this guy came in, looking back now I realize he was a homeless guy, but at the time I remember he was just this older, wrinkled, dirt-darkened guy, and I remember that he was big not because he was fat, but because his clothes and all his bags took up a lot of room. He walked into the restaurant entryway, and a little way past the hostess podium, coming only just far enough into the room to stand by the buffet line, by the plates, and he just looked at the food. He didn’t touch anything, he didn’t say anything, he just looked at the food, and after a minute he turned to go, and of course by then someone had called someone and a man in a suit led him out the door again. I don’t think he took anything, and I never saw him up close, but what I remember most is the reaction everyone had to his being inside the room with them. They all glanced, and afterward they all looked away, or at their plates, or at each other, as if they were trying to decide whether to say anything, and it got quieter and quieter, until the man in the suit finished leading him out, and then everyone started talking at once. I remember the shifting in seats, the straightening of spines, the way people held their silverware. That’s how I effected the people I moved among while I was in Asia. I felt it everywhere I went.
There were other things, other people, that I should mention if I’m going to talk about everything that happened in Asia, but I’m not ready to talk about them. Not yet.
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