throat wind bone

the flight that lands december

waking up to a brick wall

touching the lense of this eye

waking up to a reminder

that by now i am cassidy without the sex

without teeth

i am invented meat

fictional

i have become an oscar meyer weiner

Padang dreams

• painting a snowman (on the side of a fridge?) .. white paint diluted and not showing up very well against the background

• large high ceiling room, probably in the u.s.  Sean Gude and others there (Alyssa?).  recent times.  end of something like a small version of comic-con.  long steep floor without mats or bleachers after the event was packed up, serving as a natural slide.  door at the "top" of the hill/room, led into high school hallway.  one long slide from the hallway all the way down the "hill" in the room.  going back up to the hallway for another run, hearing footsteps slow in the hall, probably high heeled.  scooting quietly down the hill then looking up through the open door: a woman walking very patiently, slowly, deliberately, with a self-occupied child, the woman lost in thought.  looking at the others who are watching the woman pass by the open doorway above, one of them is suddenly japanese, and/or reminds me of a japanese festival (that i'm meant to attend?).  something about a black rubber-like surface with high grip.

old notes

siem reap (5 nights? .. more?)

install "assassin’s creed 2” and finish

swollen feet, esp. left foot

see the town doctor, weird super blue contacts in lady from west virginia

bangkok 2 nights (1 serabaya hostel, watch “inception” / 1 welcome inn shit place, watch “inside man”)

bangkok moto->train station

train bangkok->butterworth

may 3-5

georgetown days

stardust guest house

train tix station closed sundays, stay one more night

stuck in mall during big storm, flooded streets

reggae bar (coke & chips) Nicky and Nick - 'arizona girls / fake tits / blow jobs'

watch “a single shot” + “the winning season"

mfc 500 tokens on red head, good laughs

last day = Belarus couple, 9 hours at good WiFi in mall…

...Emilia russian, couchsurfer + invitation to st. petersburg (lives in hollywood?)

ferry georgetown->butterworth

train butterworth->kuala lumpur

watch “the way, way back"

may 6

train kuala lumpur->johor bahru

email from serena ‘long hello'

reply on train

listen to new ray ‘supernova’

watch “everybody’s fine”

walk johor bahru, expensive, 3-4 times kuala lumpur prices

lunch in Mariner’s Cafe to make room booking (via agoda)

pencil-looking wall art of giant whales and small creatures

CIQ hotel (17e, cheapest option), no internet, no pool, closet room but clean, cut hand on toilet paper dispenser

night walk, cigarettes everywhere, guy in yellow shirt singing at cafe…

eat giant plate of ‘tagine’ egg-covered pancake thing

...introduces himself later: Dali, ‘beautiful women’ ‘you should do drugs’ ‘want to go to hollywood'

watch “gentleman broncos”

*nostalgia song from childhood in film screening scene*

may 7

schindler’s lift

ferry johor bahru->batam

1:00 ferry “broke down” = missed 3:00 connection to jakarta

5 different check points for tix/visa

booked room on web at mall cafe (black canyon)

“welcome to padang” hollywood sign on hill

4 hours total walking, no sidewalks, whole centre under construction

location on map wrong, address widely unknown

asked total of 15 different people re: address + 2 phone calls to guest house

finally found with no name, and asking for cash

walked back to mall / change cash / walked back to guest house

no internet “i don’t know” guessing ssid+numbers

walked back to mall for snacks

watch “a case of you” + “snow angels”

book flight for padang, sleep 5 hours

may 8

flight batam->padang

falling asleep during cheerful flight attendant announcements, waking up to ‘something something the penalty is death'

on plane start watch "12 monkeys"  (emily birthday, retrace long-lost steps, see what happens)

cigarettes absolutely everywhere at airport, inside, outside, everywhere

tries from taxi men, following me all the way past air traffic control tower and back again

‘you name Ivan?’ ‘i take you no bus’ ‘you take bus?’ ‘you name Rudy?’

idea for perpetual motion system with water wheel + archimedes screw

young man approach, ‘i take you my guest house, 100,000 rupi, padang 250,000 one room, i take you’

bought the bait, nice quiet clean room

finish movie

6 codeine downed w/ rainwater

long sleep

may 9

rooster bringing up the dawn, try to fall back asleep

no dreams (?)

trying to write notes / wake up / nicely fogged head at 6:55

apparently 7am is late!!

Rudi at the door at 7:03 with travel plans ‘do you go here, do you go there, you pay me, i driver, no ticket, i take you, do you bakitinga, do you lake, do you rent car no, i drive,' breakfast coming right behind him at 7:05, power saws & hammers at 7:30

Lightfoot

What a pleasant day.  Woke up in time to check out without penalty.  19-year-old Belarus knockout fucking her boyfriend in the adjacent room.  Put a flame under me and drove me distracted for an hour or so until I passed them in the street and suddenly snapped out of it.  Smiled.  Reset.  Whistling along.  Got my train ticket down to Kuala Lumpur without a hitch; bought at 12pm and the train sets off at 11pm, so a bit of time to kill.  Decided to hit up my spot on top of the big mall with the excellent WiFi speed and reception, dig in and get some Sam Rockwell films uploaded for Sean.  Spent ages on art work and details, not to mention bouncing and shifting details around to build a new YouTube profile and get it verified, and spent several hours uploading a few films there, only to find they were immediately recognised and pulled (even though everything was set to Unlisted and Private .. guess that just doesn’t fly for them).  Oh well, then used the account bandwidth allowance to just push the films into the online Drive and then share the link to the folder with Sean instead.  Easy.

Meanwhile, a lovely blonde Western lady in an aqua pattern summer dress got herself a drink from the kiosk and smiled at me.  We ended up talking a bit, sharing websites useful for travelling.  Emilia, Russian, has been everywhere.  Says she wants to go back to Europe next and do a trip from Finland on down south.  She’s been before, but never made it to Greece, so she wants to give it a go.  She was sweet and unassuming and wanted to tell me about the things she’d seen recently in Malaysia, the people she’d met and water she’d swum in and food she’d tried and where she’d stayed.  I was glad she just wanted to share, easy like, without feeling lonely or asking me anything.  In fact, before we even got into it, she said she was headed to Kuala Lumpur the next day, and then back to Russia, to St. Petersburg, to get some visa things sorted and a few bits of paperwork, and she invited me with her, on the spot, dead serious.

I’m still kicking myself, but only a little bit, that I didn’t say Yes right then and there.  I told myself, before leaving for this journey, that I wouldn’t go following women around and get distracted by them — no white rabbits of the Western Eyes variety for this Mr. Alice -- and I would like to stick to that plan.  But I liked the upfront nature of herself and her kindness, and the upfront invitation, very much.  It’s very tempting to look up prices to St. Petersburg and my own visa requirements and then see if I can find her once in Kuala Lumpur … just see what happens, yes?  Very tempting.  But I’ll leave it at just being made happy by the invitation.  That’s enough.  And I want to get my head and my body and my attention back in balance on top of a surf board, probably in Indonesia, preferably soon.  Chasing a lovely lady up to Russia and beyond, that would honestly just be backtracking, and isn’t the kind of adventure I’m looking for.

Well, I got nearly all the films uploaded and sent the link for the folder to Sean.  I also emailed a response to an ad I’d seen pasted on a phone box on the local street.  A yacht, 42 metres long, looking for some crew, no experience necessary, for travels around this side of the world.  Price negotiable, see the sights, learn to sail, etc.  Now THAT is the kind of thing I have no problem saying Yes to.  So I shot off a little essay about me and my dreams and why I’d like to join the crew on the boat.  It all felt a bit strange, coming out; probably too dry and serious.  But I’ll cross my fingers anyway.  We’ll see.  They say okay and the price looks right, I’d be there in a heartbeat.

Over nine hours in one hard mall cafe seat; the snickering and flirty little giggles from the guy and girl behind the nearest counter turned near the end to looks of concern and a sort of nervous pity.  But while I was uploading and waiting I was also collecting old inspirational songs from movie soundtracks, the likes of Last of the Mohicans and Chariots of Fire.  Remembering my youth, my craving for climbing, for exploring, my intense spiritual focus in the opening days of California mid-childhood.  Reading and reading and sitting and listening and emptying my head and focusing all my energy, before grasping or dealing with a vocabulary that included “energy” or “meditation” or similar.  It was simply the response to what I felt was a calling, close and blood-deep, from Life.  This is you, this is your life, this is what you do, go deeper, go out there, you’re built for it.  Without those words, that was the magnetic will I couldn’t help but respond to, say Yes to.  Somewhere along the lines I came across the word and idea “shaman” and this ripple of recognition shocked through me like an earthquake made of light, and suddenly the things I was learning and feeling and exploring that I didn’t have words for or a means of sharing with other people made a lot of sense.  This hardcore spiritual sensitivity, without the branding of a prescribed religion, and (so) at the cost of a certain kind of current-world-ly social community.  But it felt positive, felt fitting, and like a direction that made as much easy sense as breathing.

So, I spent some time with some of the music that coloured those emotions and journeys back then, and some recent tracks that have reminded me of that exquisite response to my nature and my calling, and even, with their own tone and colour, feel like they are calling me back, from way over the other side of my life’s horizon.

Walking out of the mall, feeling lighter on my feet than I have in a long time (oh perception and perspective, you are such worthy human body toys), I was singing and untouched by concern for what anyone might think.  I love that space.  Like a child.  Like when I used to sing Dave on the streets, and just let those screams roar out.  It lifted me; it made me lighter.  Singing and singing, all down the street to collect my backpack, then all the way back to the ferry terminal, not minding the light rain, actually finding it refreshing, where the night before it simply bothered me until it stopped.  Tapping and humming and spitting out some of the lyrics on the ferry crossing over.  Then down to my 11pm train, near the end of the album, at this point listening to old David Gray.  How I love his sounds when I’m on the move.  I thought of Sara.  Wondered where she’s gotten to and let a silent tear of gratitude slide down, so thankful to have met her.  Got washed over by, washed up in, and overwhelmed by Flesh.  “It’s simply now or never, putting flesh on the bones of my dreams.”  Had a good cry in the gangway outside the sleeper hold between the toilets, warm fists and pounding knee, feeling the train pull away, the movement underfoot, that blessed sensation of movement, of transit.  Picturing how brittle those bones have become, and feeling how tender and delicious is this dressing of those bones with the flesh of action, of response, of breathing life into my dreams.

“This diamond in our hearts / there’s no need to nail it to the ground / there’s no need to smother it with sense / Just listen to the rhythm of your heart that pounds / and trust it all to chance / Cos we’re standing face to face / with the angel of grace / and don’t it / just / taste / so / pure."

Bamboo

A planned stay of months, or at least one month, on Koh Russei (Bamboo Island), turned into a mere 18 days’ stay.  I’d taken a solo trip back to town to gear up, with a bit more cash and some reading materials.  The collected works of Pablo Neruda, some extra soap, a first aid kit, and around $250 USD — after three nights in the dorm, paying $3 per, your accommodation was free, indefinitely.  It didn’t make great business sense to me, but that was the way they had it laid out, so with each meal costing around $4 and a refill of water on 50 cents, I calculated that I could live quite comfortably on around $10 per day, until my 30 day visa ran out, at which point I could opt to extend, or move on.

But the western company became smothering, unbearable.  Kind people, at heart, all three, Melissa (Philippine but raised in Madrid), Andy, from England but well-travelled, and Andrea, from New Zealand, who was at least 50 years old and only now just starting to travel the world.  I enjoyed Melissa immensely, her positivity and general glee-faced openness and enthusiasm.  Andy was a wake-and-bake stoner who rolled his first spliff around 8 a.m., after breakfast, and didn’t stop rolling or puffing until around 23:30, when he eventually trailed off to sleep.  His capacity for run-on sentence storytelling and arresting all other voices and trains of thought and hijacking them with his own thread increased the more he smoked, until, every evening around dinner, whether I or anyone else in the vicinity liked it or not, we were forced to sit and wait for the deluge of words to end, some people waiting very patiently for enough of a significant gap in breaths to say their “good night” and scurry off to their dorm or bungalow; some risked judgement and simply walked away when they’d had enough.  There was no point trying to add and opinion or a thought to the monologue: everything that wasn’t his idea was automatically wrong.  I remember one of the first nights there when he’d gotten on to the topic of Formula 1 racing, and I told him I didn’t follow it, but that I had seen it in Kuala Lumpur, where it was being held for three days, during which I’d recently been staying in the city, and it had affected all the traffic and public transportation.  He said he didn’t think it was the right time or season for Formula 1 to be running, then, after mulling it over for about 10 or 15 seconds, decided out loud that I was wrong, that it wasn’t on this time of year, even though i’d physically been at the arena, out near the airport, and saw the words “Formula 1 Racing Kuala Lumpur” done with multi-coloured flowers arranged in the soil of the hill on the south side entrance to the track.  Andy had his own ideas, and insistently shaped reality and the facts at hand to suit those ideas.  It got very tiresome, very quickly.  And Andrea, bless her heart, liked very much to use open-minded and open-hearted sounding words, but she was as scared and closed up as any other bird who had never before left the nest.  All music playing in the cafe during dinner time (the only time the Khmer family would have the generator running with the stereo on), if it was’t by a selection of known, familiar artists, say a list of 20 or so from the 60s and 70s, then it was the wrong music, and she would put up no end of fuss.  The dogs, three males and a female in heat, were her enemies, given all that noise they made and the way the males fought each other and left puss-filled wounds and bulging scars on each others’ paws and faces.  That was wrong, and someone ought to do something about that, according to Andrea.  The way they worked, or didn’t work, and who was doing what work and when, that was all wrong, according to Andrea.  The way they raised their children, the way they handled tourists, when and how they did their shopping for supplies, and how it was delivered, that was all wrong, according to Andrea.  The way the tourists who visited the island behaved, and even the sounds from the fishermen out on their boats at night, and the bass beats that could be heard, carried over from the party clubs in the mainland across the way, that was all wrong, according to Andrea.  It was quite impossible, I found, to make a noise near her, let alone a whole word, without prompting a complaint about some thing or some one … though she was always overtly kind and warm-hearted with whomever she was, at the moment, speaking.

All this western bullshit, this politeness, this two-facedness, I just wanted to scream.  I spent as much time as I could in the water, snorkelling, swimming, or hiking around the island with the dogs, or just reading in the sunlight.  Sometimes I would play, around the restaurant area, with Kontia, the little four-year-old girl who was the daughter of the army captain who ran the place with his mother and sister and unpaid “hired” help.  Kontia was a delight.  Giant smile, giant voice.  Essentially spoiled, she had a firm grasp on the fact that her scream, the scream of a small girl being slowly murdered limb by limb, was not something that the customers / tourists wanted to hear or were willing to tolerate, and so any time she wanted something and it wasn’t forthcoming — be it a picture drawn for her in her notepad, with coloured pencils, or for another can of Red Bull to be opened for her since her fingers had neither the strength or the shape to lift the tab — she let out this almighty siren, and her wish was immediately granted by the parents who didn’t want to make a scene in front of their guests.  I had good play time with her, though, and I think she learned to respect me fairly quickly, when she learned that her screaming simply didn’t wash with me, and if I said No, I meant it, and that was that.  In less than a week she was giddy and goofy with happy-to-see-you moves whenever I made my way over to the restaurant, the same as it was with Melissa, who played with her much more often.  We built leaf and sand castles on the beach, played house on the restaurant dining floor area with her tea set, which included a plastic egg and an electric-pink rubber hedgehog toy.

There was usually a delivery on Mr. Pro’s fishing boat in from mainland once a day, sometimes during breakfast, sometimes during supper.  Blocks of ice in burlap-like plastic sacks that smelled of fish, large cellophane wrapped bundles of kitchen supplies, cases and cases of beer and soft drinks.  I’d get my shirt off and lend a hand when I was on hand during the delivery, which I normally was.  Andy would say things like, “Oh, don’t get the ice, I’ll get the ice, it’s awkward,” or “No, no, sit down, I’ll do it,” or “No, don’t bother, oh look now you’ve gotten your clothes all dirty with petrol,” or some such similar line.  Later he would complain about being duped by Mr. Pro to being obliged to help him with the delivery, or some similarly coloured self-complimenting complaint.  It drove me to small fits of rage.  All this western politeness again, saying one thing while meaning another.  All this telling people what to do and how to do it, though they require no instruction and are not his to instruct in the first place, and then later complaining about having to “do everything” and complaining about being left in charge.  I’d come there to participate, with the people who ran the place, not wage war between my patience and another visitor’s ego.  So, after the night that Andy purposely didn’t join the restaurant at the customary time for dinner, having asked Andrea to pick him up something chicken in a takeaway and bring it back to the bungalows for him, and I found him deeply stoned and drinking, and telling me to watch out for Mr. Pro, to not let him “push me around” and “get things for free” out of me, and asking me in so many roundabout words to help him “teach Mr. Pro a lesson,” and then declaring that his takeaway dinner will probably be spit in, I made my decision to leave.

I want to return, though.  I want to learn some more Khmer, and to teach the sister and Kontia some english, if they want to learn.  And to sit, in the quiet, in the rain if it’s rain season, to swim, to think, to pass the hours without much company at all.  Despite all the trash that collects all around the edge of the island, it is a beautiful and quiet place, and excellent for a retreat.  The bungalows on the other side from where we stayed are essentially defunct.  Both areas, our side and the other, have had their contracts bought out, one by Chinese, one by French, and will undergo development within the next to years, probably beginning sooner than one year.  I want to go back while the simplicity still exists.  Before the air conditioning and the digging and drilling and the swimming pools and the facades.

When I travel, I don’t want more of the same from where I’ve left.  I want something else, the way things are in some other place already, not a prescribed experience.  I want to participate.  A sign in the little hung-up library in the common area between the bungalows there features a quote that I agree with, that say, “Life is a book, and those who don’t travel read only a page.”  What I can’t wrap my head around is this, what I understand to be, fear that so many travel with.  Fear of being forced outside of their comfort zone.  Why would I travel thousands and thousands of miles just to find the exact same thing I left behind?  I don’t want anything like that.  I just want to participate, no matter how uncomfortable or off-putting or strange the experience.  I want to be blown clear of my own comfort zone by the very cannonball of experience.  However, if the discomfort comes from the clash with western judgement and western ego than I can find anywhere in America or Europe, then I’ll just happily move along, until I find something more local to participate in.

Some Glue

Moving, building breaking.  Where have I been.  About time to start (continue) keeping track.

Landed in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia a few days ago.  Before that, Ranong, Thailand mainland for a week.  Before that, Koh Payam island, Ranong, Thailand, a two hour boat ride off the coast.  The mainland stay was my favourite place so far.

I found a room with a double bed, toilet cum shower, large wall-mounted fan, wardrobe, clothes rack, table and chair, for 300 bat (about 6.70 euro) per day (including a fresh bottle of water in the morning.  The place only offered nightly rates, not weekly, and most other lodgers only stayed one night before moving on (often connecting to ferries or buses that would take them island hopping or over to Myanmar for a visa run to extend their stay).  With so many transients surrounding, I finally felt I could sit still for a while.  The food on the streets was delicious and cheap.  The town was quiet enough, but busy enough during the day with shop keeping, and the locals were soft-featured and generally friendly, though very little english was every spoken.  I set still, I watched films on the one english channel late in the night -- Air Force One, all three Damon Bourne films, Ocean's 11.  I also watched Jet Li's Fearless.  It was much more blatant and blunt than my beloved Unleashed and Hero, but managed the same effect of the latter two: I looked up Jet Li again and tried to find a way to contact him.  Apparently he lives in Singapore now, having gained citizen ship there for the sake of his daughters' education.  I considered just catching a bus or plane down to Singapore and having a look around, maybe even lean on a large chunk of faith that I might be able to run into him on the street.  I want to do something with my inspiration that he gives me.  I want to ask questions of these people who inspire me.  Taking John Green's advice to "find someone who is doing what you want to do, better than you can do it, and listen to them."  I want to write a letter to Jet Li, asking for an hour or so of his time, just to walk and talk.  To listen to him.  Similar for Chris Smither.  I've asked myself what the connection is between the two, and I believe the answer is Grace.  These people to me are a paragon of grace in action.  The message in Jet Li's three epics, that of true power being the mastery, indeed the artistry, of your own potential, rather than excercising force and domination over others to prove one's might.  It's the message I found in that oddly great animation about the dinosaurs We're Back, and again in my beloved Iron Giant.  These beasts who have the potential to be quite powerful, given this potential without control, learning to contain it through the lessons they receive in grace.  It's there again in my well-thumbed and well-mulled story and film A River Runs Through It.  "My father was very sure about certain matters of the universe.  To him, all good things -- trout as well as eternal salvation -- come by grace, and grace comes by art, and art does not come easy."

In that same town in Ranong mainland, walking every day, I stumbled upon an open-air boxing gym.  I gestured and pointed and half-talked with some local children on their way home from school in the evening to learn that I could come back the following evening at 5pm to meet a teacher, or trainer, or somebody associated with the place.  I went at 5 the next day, and waited around until 6, stabbing my bare feet into the sand and walking slowly across little patches of sharp rocks, trying to toughen up the soles of my sensitive feet.  Eventually some men came by with puppies on short leashes.  Soon after some women, daughters or wives or friends, came to take the puppies off their hands and the men started stretching and half paying attention to me doing the same.  The sun set and we were boxing in the dark under the fluorescent lights with moths overhead.  A very young and stout child took charge of me.  He had not one single word of english, but I eventually figured out that his name was Fuat.  He was very serious with me, and I respected him immediately.  Attempting to take his gestured instructions on how to execute the cutting kick, he stopped me mid-stance and motioned for one of the other boys, who was just watching, to come over and help him.  The boy steadied the bag against my shin and Fuat worked me from ankle up to my spine and shoulders, shaping me like he was about to make a painting of a model.  Then he stepped back, looked me in the eye, and nodded, satisfied.  I kicked again and again, trying to replicate the pose he'd moulded in my bones.

The next day I arrived at 5 again, and this time an actual trainer was there.  He was Thai, though he'd been away somewhere, worked as a doctor in the local hospital, and spoke with a soft German accent.    He took the whole class, about six of us, through stretches and then exercises on the ring mat, entirely in english, for my benefit.  He worked out cores, our legs, our hips, our necks, our arms.  We were pouring sweat in the evening heat before the form lessons even began.  He started with the stance.  Then the jab, paying attention to the shoulders, explaining how the chin must stay down, shoulders up, to protect the head.  If the chin is stuck out and gets knocked, your brain has a much better chance of getting mucked around in your skull.  Shoulders up and chin down, it's harder to get the brain to rattle.  So every jab, the shoulder covers the ear and the chin tucks in.  Then he taught us one-two, with the more powerful punch being the second blow, gaining energy and momentum from the hips up.  He got us twisting our hips and feet, while keeping the steady triangle stance.  Then the uppercut and the hook as a third in the combo.  He built us up, piece by piece, and we practiced each set in tens while moving across the ring.  After that, we got out of the ring and over to the bags.  We practised the combos on the bags.  Then he moved on to kicks.  He explained in essence and physics what Fuat was trying to teach me with gestures the evening before.  He taught me how to pull the energy up from my hips, and whip the leg out like a rope, and aim through the bag, not just to the surface, like the punching I'd learned long ago in some quick karate class as a kid.  You don't aim for the surface of your target, you aim behind it; if a face is your mark, you aim the blow for the back of the head.  I kicked the bag with my shin, hard, until the the surface obtained a pale lustre like unchewed bubblegum.

After class, we watched the other older trainer with one of the older students taking his kicks in the ring with arm pads on.  Then one of the younger students got in the ring and they practised some holds.  "This, I need to think about more," said my doctor teacher. "See how he's holding his head like that?  In Muay Thai, if you control the head, you control the whole body.  Like this."  Suddenly he had me in a head-to-head lock, with his fists around the back of my neck like thick rope, pulling down, like the two figures in the ring.  He explained that he studied Judo, where they deal much more with grappling, and you have your hands free, so a shirt or extremity is a legal hold, but in Muay Thai, no shirt, and you have the gloves on.  "I want you to move left, I move you, or right.  I control the head.  So what do you do?" he challenged.

"Okay.  Well, the instinct is to duck down, to get out."

"Yes.  But you do that you meet my knee on the way up."  He brought his knee up to what would be a very awful blow directly to the face.

"Okay, so the next instinct is to pull back, retreat."

"Yes.  But then you're giving me momentum, and I still have my knees, here."  He shot a knee each up to my rib cage like engine pistons.  "So you're all target.  So what do you do?"

"You close the distance."

"Yes."  And he demonstrated by suddenly pressing himself right up against me.  "No more target, both equal, see?"

He let go of the hold and smiled back up at the teacher in the ring showing something similar to the young student.  "It's like life, isn't it?" he mused.  "You try to duck out of your problems, they hit you harder, you try to run away from them and they come back at you with momentum.  The only way is to stand up and face them, walk right to them."  He demonstrated with a quick few sturdy marching steps forward.  "Yes, I have to think more about this."

It was all so clear to me.  The combination of elements that something deep in my soul or self or skin has been looking for.  The discipline, without the brutality and regime of the military.  The concentration on self-improvement for its own sake, as a way of moving through the world and among them.  Learning not only how to anticipate and defend, but also to participate and dance along with what is happening around you.  This, without hanging your hat or your shirt or mind out to dry on some rack of prescribed religion.  Relating to nature the way it already is, and taking all these magical human insanities on board as part of the same natural soup, and learning how to move with it.  Jet Li says he has never had to use any of his mastery of martial arts in a an actual fight, and he hopes he never has to.  See, it's not about turning one's self into an unstoppable weapon, it's about balance and wisdom and reserve.

I moved on from Ranong, just to keep seeing a bit more of the world, but I miss my little room on the hill already.  The faces that were already becoming familiar to me in that little town.  The natural way I began to fall into a routine that my body actually enjoyed.  Stretching and exercising in the morning before my shower, the same exercises the teacher showed us on the mat at the boxing gym ring.  Then down to the little lady in the kid's clothes shop who also had a juice & shakes kiosk just outside for a huge cup of watermelon and ice shake.  Then over to the hard-working family down the road for a bowl of noodles and veg or soup with a bit of meat in it.  Then picking any old direction on the map that I hadn't explored yet and simply walking, walking, walking, for hours.  Meanwhile working on my orientation, keeping my bearings, a sense of where north is.  Then my date with the sunset, often enjoying a cigarette while I watch that old friend sink below whatever counts as the horizon line by then (sometimes a mountain range, sometimes a building in the way).  That's when the starlings come out.  Watching them scatter and dance, silhouetted against all that burnt gold, thinking about the speed of their beating hearts, and wondering why the dusk, why the dusk, and then clearing my thoughts of everything, any of the clutter that might be left even after the long walk, and quite simply watching the birds and the light while thinking nothing at all.

In the hostel in Kuala Lumpur I've tried talking with a few people. The words come out like they're covered in marshmallows or mushrooms, warbled and muffled and frumpy.  Sentences like bad hair days.  But at least I feel a bit more relaxed about it.  Since starting this routine with my stretches and exercise in the morning after waking up and before doing anything else, I've felt much more energy and even a tiny bit more flexibility.  I'd love to magically get all my flexibility back, but I know it will take time to re-do what has over several years been slowly being undone.  So stiff and covered in such heavy layers in that sunless Irish land.  I now look forward to my morning stretches.  Even on the sleeper train, when I woke up at 8am and still had four hours to go before our destination, I found a place between the cars that served well enough for everything except my jumping jacks.  Even the two sturdy steel hand rails on either side of the two steps were perfect for some lifts for my arms and core, especially with the train rocking and throwing off my balance, so I had to use my stomach muscles to keep in place.  See, I've been experimenting with an idea that I had on one of my walks, where I keep remembering to look for opportunity.  This requires a general direction or desire, in order to fill in the blanks.  But it's interesting when something doesn't go the way I expected it to (a missed or full bus so I have to wait in an unknown town overnight, for example).  I wouldn't necessarily get steamed or annoyed, depending on the expectation.  But I also wouldn't quite know how to dance along with the re-direction, and often would end up walking myself into a spiral where I could plant a little frustrated seed of Having Been Hard Done By.  Instead, I've been experimenting with the idea of filling in the blank to "Well, this is an excellent opportunity to ________," and seeing where that takes me.  I know myself well enough to know that it isn't a false optimism patch trying to patch over some actual anger that I'd like to pretend I'm not feeling.  It's like my other memory projects; it just gives me a little direction and something useful to do.  I've been filling in the blanks with a lot of stretching, and exercising my arms and legs, and my stressed out scatterbrain that was fearing it had lost all abilities of memory when I arrived here has been slowly coming back into sharper focus.  I've been able to keep better track of myself, and my thoughts, instead of filling in idle time with blankness and a general sense of feeling lost while wondering how I got somewhere and where I should be instead.

Cast Away

The goal of finding a place less populated with people -- or at least with familiar habits and familiar sounds -- is enjoying only moderate success.  From Bangkok I travelled down to an island called Ko Pha Ngan (or Phangan; it seems to be spelled both ways, in roman letters).  From a rough eyeballing on the map, it seemed to be a small enough island.  I'd researched for days several small island options -- ones where there are no cars or motorbikes, and electricity is available for a only a few hours per evening via generators -- but I didn't make any notes as to which island offered what.  So I pointed more or less at random, using Airbnb again to locate some secluded-looking bungalows in the hills in the middle of this island.  Before disembarking on the speedboat that brought us over here, I knew I'd chosen poorly.  Young, perfectly tanned, waxed or dreadlocked, chesty and yoga types, by the bucket full.  Everyone already smoking and drinking on the boat, getting pre-shit-faced before we touched land.

Approaching the island, I could see it was in fact enormous.  Jurrasic Park was all I could think of.  Several communication masts blinked their patient red lights from the hill tops.  The first night, walking the roads full of speeding motorbikes and cars and trucks which evidently forgot how to use their brakes, I ended up on the north side of the island, surrounded by belly-thumping bass beats and raucous party sounds.  I scoped out the long stretch of beach with bungalows featuring porches full of low-lit couples or families drinking or playing games.  The noise from the nearby rave was everywhere, all-consuming.  The farthest distance I could manage to walk along the beach wasn't far enough to escape the sound.

The next day I decided, seeing as how I'd booked the bungalow for three nights, and on a whim of the can't-beat-'em-join-'em variety, to rent a motorbike of my own.  A Honda Click 125i.  I knew I was adding more noise to the already boisterous scene, but what a pleasure to charge through the air so effortlessly, inventing wind, climbing horrifically steep hills at fantastic speeds, death or serious injury just a blink away, waiting on either side of my bare legs and feet.  To bring life back into such crisp focus and detail; what a thrill!

I ducked and zoomed and plummeted every road and back road I could find on the island.  One evening I even found my treasure: a completely deserted beach, with a large abandoned campfire left as glowing coals, the burble of fish surfacing briefly in the soft starlit water, and a crude but robust swing, strung high high up to a looming palm tree.  It took 30 minutes of determined scoping and re-reading the map, but eventually the search paid off.  I swam briefly, naked under the sky, quiet and alone and happy, and air-dried by swinging standing up on the smooth plank of wood under the palm tree.  Exiting the rock-rough water edge in the dark, I managed to puncture a nice hole in the bridge of my left foot.  It felt insignificant at the time, but examining it in the head torch light back by the campfire, I found a notable wheel of blood surrounding a dark spoke.  A proper puncture, like a tire.

It was sore, and still is, but one of my sub-goals is to toughen up my feet -- there is a connection, I believe, as Sami once pointed out, between the sense of belonging, home, self, and the feet.  Stepping even on smooth sand in bare feet sends an aggravating sensation up my spine: an admixture of electrocution, sexual stimulation, tickling, and a plainly annoying sub-tremor that is perhaps best described as a sonic gouging.  I never did figure out what that business was with my feet, back in the crazy days of Savannah, when they seemed to have a mind and sexual interest all their own.  And so I likewise understood nothing when the "issue" suddenly went away.  The auto-sentience has never returned, but the extreme sensitivity remains.  Every awkward barefoot step I take, these outdoor island days, I remember that moment in the orchard, at Evelina's castle.  Before visiting the llamas and dogs and sheep among the ripe apple trees, she asked if I didn't want to take my boots off.  I panicked, wanting to say Yes, but knowing the electricity that would be riddling my head and spine if I took one shoeless step, even on that soft grass and dirt path.  I declined, but I made a mental note that, one day, I would meet her again, and I would be able to go barefoot with her, on a walk to anywhere.  As of now, the sensitivity remains, and echoes feebly throughout my character, has even infected my eyes, I'm sure, but one day I will find I've developed leather soles, and my core being will be more even, more secure, more steady, and I will walk sockless without hesitation, and lust without terror or remorse, and be a thing that could and should be loved.  It will take time, and I don't know the path to walk to get there, but for now I'll keep listening to my body and treading intentionally and trying to be thankful, in general.

At the dentist in Budapest, the moment of truth, when he was about to administer the injection to begin the grand three-part process, the first of which is to remove ten rotten teeth, I folded.  My breath lost touch with my mind's commands, I couldn't control my breathing, the hyperventilating made my lips go numb.  He lifted the chair and kept asking "What?  What?  Come on!"  One of the assistants gave me a wad of tissues; evidently I was leaking snot and tears like a sinking ship, though I mostly remember just the loss of breath control.  I stood up and tried to walk, but the ground kept moving closer and further from my vision, so I sat down.  I thought I had my breathing back after not too long, but then the attempt to speak again brought the whole wave crashing down again.  The dentist said he couldn't work on me in this condition, so we would take a break for two days and try again.

I've been there before, this hyperventilating.  The first time it happened was after an incident at the pool hall in San Rafael.  I played with and learned moves from a trick-shot nice fellow named Jeremy.  He was usually there with his girlfriend, and they were both kind people.  A friend of one of them, Alicia, played a few racks with us.  She was sweet, and gentle, and a fine pool player in her own right, as far as I could tell.  We had a good time playing doubles and drinking bottles of Heineken and playing classic rock tunes on the jukebox.  I had turned 21, and I was trying to learn to enjoy whiskey, and to pick up my small-time smoking habit by opting for Camel Lights (via Alyssa) as "my brand."  I was attempting to elect to grow up, and so far it was a good summer.  I was staying either in the treehouse behind or one of the rooms in the basement of the Whittakers' house.  Rooni was there, KT and Bridgette too, I think.  I remember at least Rooni being there the night Alicia was late to the game.  She was running behind, for some vague reason, and before she got there I was given a very gentle going-over by Jeremy and his girlfriend.  They were sizing me up, asking what I thought of Alicia, the works.  One of them, I think it was Jeremy, said the words, "You know, Alicia likes you."  The phrase stuck and clattered and echoed and rang out with all the pleasure of a rail tie nail driver slamming into ancient stone on the floor of a silent cathedral.  Something inside my chest, what I thought at the time might be a heart murmur or a strange bi-product of severe gas -- something physical anyway -- popped.  It was subtle, but unmistakable.  I remember a blur of nodding and smiling and returning my cue to the table or wall rack and probably making up some excuse or other, then outside and choking on the air around me while walking home.

Rooni was there, on a mattress on a floor, and she saw in my face when I arrived that something wasn't right.  At some point moments later I was on the mat in her room, hyperventilating, unable to stop or to understand why I wasn't allowed control of my own lungs.  I knew and still feel I know how to use them when swimming.  My breathing during my freestyle and breaststroke is timed rigorously, mechanically, and I could always win any contest for who could hold their breath the longest.  Even my self-imposed smoking habit had its own pattern: my lungs knew to inhale half-way before every drag of the cigarette, thereby keeping the normal capacity relatively clean, and only spoiling the "reserve" area, which I only ever used after a heavy sprint after long-distance runs.  Every since 4th or 5th grade, my breathing strategy while running has always been perfectly programmed, has always been entirely under my control.

So the inability to clench shut whatever panic had been opened up within me while heaving rapidly on that mattress was made doubly difficult by the compounded panic derived from the wickedly foreign feeling of not being able to control my own breath.  I felt possessed, and helpless, and angry to be so helpless.

Last night I ventured over to Tesco -- yes there's somehow a Tesco even on this island -- to buy a larger supply of salted peanuts and a 2 litre of water for cheap.  I picked up a pack of gummy sweets as well, opting for the one that seemed softest and closest to the kind I like.  Also I was trying to find a packet that didn't seem to have too much extra plastic.

There is so so so much plastic waste in Thailand.  Maybe it's all over Asia, I don't know yet.  But I can't fathom how much extra plastic packaging is provided, needlessly, on a constant basis, nor where it all ends up.  In the states you're provided with large plastic bags at most supermarket checkouts, and you might double-bag a heavy load.  In Ireland, as with some other European countries, you're charged a small fee, about 22 cents, to purchase a plastic bag, incentivising everyone to either carry their purchases or bring their own reusable bag.  Having gotten used to this, I was blown away here in Thailand when the purchase of three small donuts required four separate plastic bags, plus scotch tape.  If you buy a bottle of water, that goes in a plastic bag, with a straw, which is also plastic wrapped.  If you buy a bottle of water and a bottle of juice and a takeaway meal and a packet of cookies, the bottle of water gets its own bag, with the plastic-wrapped straw, then the juice gets another bag, with another plastic-wrapped straw, then the takeaway gets its own bag, usually doubled, with a fork and a spoon, each individually wrapped, and of course the lone pack of cookies goes in its own plastic bag.  Of course, you can't seem to be expected to carry all these items in their plastic bags, even though they each have the standard grab handles, so all this goes into yet another bag (though the takeaway is probably too big to fit, so it might get its own larger plastic bag.  It took a day or two to scrape my jaw up off the floor after witnessing this practise.

So the gummy sweets, I felt the bag, could sense the squish of the jelly treats inside, couldn't detect any other crinkling feeling or sound.  So I got them.  And outside in the parking lot I opened them.  Unbelievable: each of the two-dozen-or-so jellies was individually wrapped.  Not small handful portions each in their own sachet, but each and every last one of the single pieces was housed in its own full plastic mini envelope.

I was just finishing the small struggle of opening and eating three of the treats and stuffing all the excess plastic back into the plastic shopping bag and finding a place for this in the motorbike hold space, when a young blonde woman approached her own bike, adjacent to mine, and shot me a warm, very friendly, uninvited smile.  I continued to load up my bike and get the gear in order, when she spoke up and asked, holding a brand new Nokia brick in the space between us, "You don't happen to have a phone like this, do you?"

"Er, no, but, uh, maybe I can answer a question for you."

"Well, I just got this, but in my pocket somehow the little light came on -- see? -- and I can't figure out how to turn it off."

"Okay, may I?"

She handed me the phone and I went into the phone settings with her watching just beside my head, and we found the menu for the light and turned it off.  I showed her after how holding down the directional pad like so can be a shortcut, though I'm not sure why the light stayed on like that.  She thanked me and I nodded and hoped that that could be that.  Already dangerous, suffocating thoughts mounting in my chest and back of my head, heat and pressure, so much heat and pressure.  All the usual storm:

Anger at having been snapped so abruptly into conversation; paranoia that this wasn't an accident, that she turned the light on as a kind of ice breaker, to start up a conversation with a stranger.  Why me.  Why can't you pick on someone else.  And her softness, and the dizzying allure of her brown eyes.  The way she punched down her long skirt against the bike seat with her knuckles when she sat down.  The purity of her shoulders and the cleanliness of her unassuming smile.  Intoxicating.  But also aggravating; enraging, even.  Sharp words of rebuke forming in my head in the mud and slick cobra coil of confusion.  The softest version I can find.  "Look, I don't want to be rude, but I'm not looking to make any friends here, but you're a beautiful woman who seems very friendly, so I know you'll have no trouble meeting other people, just, please let me bid you good night and be on my way."  I want to untie my coil in an instant of predatory lust and rip off her head in my jaws.  I want to kiss her shoulders and the corner of her mouth.  So much information when I glance at her left eye that I can't remember who is talking and who is listening so I look away, but I don't want to, I want to keep staring.  I want to take her to my bungalow stay in the jungle and lead her up the steps with her hand firmly in mine and lay her back on the all white bed under the mosquito net and left up her long flower skirt and slide down her legs whatever bikini or pants are warmly waiting there and kiss up in to her moist and breathing groove and fuck her gently in the trees.  But I also want to tear her apart -- I want her to suffer for speaking to me, for making chit-chat, for noticing me back into life for that moment or two.

I get ready to go, and wave politely, but instead I hear myself suddenly ask her if that's a holiday phone, a temporary, just while she's on vacation.  She turns around and perks up and smiles that simply killer smile again, and says yes, it is, and holds out her right hand, offering "I'm Holly, by the way."

I take her hand, electric shocks, I swallow hard, and grumble to the ground, "Chris, hi," avoiding her eyes, hoping to reclaim my original reluctance and make a timely escape.  But we start talking about the island and the bugs and the roads and where we've been and where we're going, and swapping stories about cheap accommodation.  Apart from images of lust and rage, my only other conscious thought is to be careful to not give any names, only descriptions.  She does the same.  There are more than three full pauses where I'm clearly meant to ask her for her temporary holiday number, at the very least, and exchange details, but I fill them with nodding and pursed lips.  Eventually I offer to shake her hand, aiming at a gentile if slightly cold finality, and say "Nice to meet you, Holly, be safe and enjoy your time over here."

"You too, enjoy the island."  She's clearly let down.  But it's her own fault for starting the conversation.  Anyone else, Holly, anyone but me, you'll do just fine.

I point the motorbike home and dial a less-than-safe speed into my wrist and let it out when the road ahead is clear of other motorists.  I only very rarely allow my self-control to translate emotions into motorised engines, as it's far too easy to lose perspective and the instinct of physics in that realm, but I bit hard and decided this was one of those times I didn't care.  The road was clear ahead of me and I plunged forward, hissing and spitting and barking at the air.  Spewing repeatedly every exact phrase that was passed between me and Holly in the parking lot.  Exploding internally with each syllable.  Why couldn't she just leave me alone.

Back in the bungalow, I get an email from Serena.  A ninety-three-year-old man writing for the New Yorker about the effects and experience of old age on his memory and his desires and his communication.  It's a perfectly told essay; I'm jealous of the style.  But I'm keenly attentive of the subject matter.  I don't know if I've mentioned to Serena how I'm wrestling on a minute-by-minute basis with death and mortality and the tick-tocking of the clock in my blood and the poisonous haunting of how little living I've done with my life, and how little desire I have to spend more, let alone libido to spend on the physical desire toward other people.  Maybe she just read it and wanted to pass it along.  But suffice to say it was timely enough, indeed.  The magnets that must have been there in my youth, they've not been there for years.  Coincidentally, and a little heartbreakingly, the last (and first?) time I remember feeling the wonderful mixture of friendship and physical companionship was actually with Serena, those days in her college land.  Everything felt natural, possible, and safe, and I knew her curiosity and her care and her kinship like I'd never known it with anyone prior.

So I read this article, where, near the end, the man talks about this taboo of older people having sex, being naked as couples, wanting physical companionship "even at that age."  He says he's sure that everyone wants that bare shoulder in the middle of the night to reach to, the patterns we create between our twin selves in relationships, we yearn for them, at every age.  He quoted Lawrence Olivier, somewhere in an interview, saying, "Inside, we're all seventeen, with red lips."  I thought of Holly again, her warm smile in the parking lot light, the shape of her dress as she leaned on her bike, how bitterly pleased I was to disappoint her.  I felt ashamed, and keenly lost.  I read these words, knowing the thoughts of lust, but not the natural desire, not the perfectly sensible animal kingdom desire to be close to and touch another person, or be touched.  I read this wonderfully vibrant ancient man's wisdom about how we all want that connection, all the time.  And it stung to think: I'm sorry Holly, to be so glad to let you down.  And it stung to think: we all want that connection, yes, but not me; I can't find it in me in a way that makes sense.  I only want that physical connection to a horrible, murderous degree.  And even that doesn't surface but a couple times per year.  Mostly there's just this hard shell, which doesn't even feel comfortable to exist within, but feels much worse to be outside of, there in conversation, there on the line with another person's eyes and their beautiful bare skin in the soft warm light.  A residence in an underwater city, occasionally alarmed by escaping oxygen and water leaks.

Lust lost

Travelling out of Ireland in February, where frozen wind jammed ice cold pissing rain into your ears from all directions, if you dared to step outside ... to Thailand, Bangkok, where it's 30 degrees at 4a.m., and the traffic never, ever, ever, ever stops outside; my sleep pattern is dissolved into a shambles, and I. am. wired.

So far the experiment is working.  Castration without the bloody mess.  It dawned on me yesterday: I lived in Dublin when I didn't drink, now I've come to Bangkok to get away from sex.  Odd but true; that's life.  It's most likely down to how little I know about any of the culture over here, but through my western eyes the value systems of beauty and equality and desirability and women and/or men as property and objects of each others' desires -- if not better, it's at least so different that I'm lost within it and can't get a grip.  To put it as simply and plainly as my west-soaked mind can mutter so far: I don't see how they have sex at all over here.  Back on the other side, women and men checked themselves in reflections, and responded with admiration or envy or desire or disgust based on how the other people around them were dressed, or behaved.  It was always heartbreaking and sour to watch this elitist macro drama take place, excluding from this Lookers Only club unworthy characters based on their appearance alone.  And watching this feed back into the minds and behaviours of those who were told they did not belong, knocking their confidence or inspiring them to do zany things for the sake of attention, or as a buck against the implied necessity of wanting to belong to this Club ... but still in response to the Club no matter what.  Over here, Asia land, there's some other value system that's entirely divorced from whatever has osmotically creeped under my skin from my time in the west.  Studying the people on the metro, I can see that a lot of time and care and thought went into their dress, their style, their look, for the majority of who i presume are the city dwellers, that is.  But there is a sense, somewhere between my eyes and ears, that they would dress and act this way even if no one else was around; and that is the difference.

As for the experiment, I chose to come to Asia to get away from the distraction of sex, of women, of flirtation with both men and women.  I wanted to see my own sex from a different perspective, and I decided to do this by turning it off around people.  Never for a fleeting moment has an Asian person ever inspired a molecule of physical desire within me, or even brought to mind or pores the memory of human sexuality.  That is partly why I've invoked that awkward thought -- that I can't understand how they ever would have sex over here -- because I simply cannot sympathise; I am incapable of understanding these people as sexual creatures.  I'll gladly repeat that it is mostly, if not entirely, down to my own ignorance of the culture, rather than a matter of turn-ons and turn-offs.  However, for the time being, it is quite refreshing to simply walk down streets and through subways full of people, brimming with people (especially in this heat!) without being slain on a second-by-second basis by my own bloodthirsty sexual desire that only ever writhes and storms and scorns inside me anyway, never seeing fruition, never knowing how to bridge that impossible gap.

My own sexuality, in its natural state, has always frightened me, because it has always included death and destruction as a necessity.  When lusting after any person, recognising the base desire to fuck, whether for procreation or pleasure, I simultaneously feel as purely and clean the need to maim, to choke, to end their heart beating; in fact to devour them whole. It is true more so with women than with men, but it does happen with both.  Shy of joining a brotherhood of monks just yet, I've opted to move to Asia where, for now, I feel nothing at all.

Still, with the exquisite heat and all this mid-afternoon traffic at 5a.m. noise, it's quite difficult to sleep without the aid of excessive masturbation.  Walking up and down stairs and along shoddy concrete paths for six hours today in sandals in the afternoon heat, stepping in and out of Arctic chilled shopping malls snapping pores open and shut like frozen lake runs from the sauna, I thought that would do the trick.  Though I did fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, I woke after five hours.  The traffic, the lights, the noise.  Never mind New York: this city not only never sleeps, it never pauses, never takes a breath.

Different sparks in different parks

Handing your check-in luggage over to the nice lady at the airport desk, you stop short and say "Oops...almost forgot!," then quickly remove the swiss army knife from the keychain in your coat pocket and stuff it in the side pocket of your bag, next to the leatherman you stored earlier.  She smile patiently, automatically, and you watch your bag on the conveyor belt disappear beyond the heavy rubber flaps.

Landing in Budapest, you wait with the rest of the passengers for the baggage carousel to start.  Eventually it jerks into life, and the kids have fun guessing and expecting, squealing each time a new object emerges and tumbles down the ramp.  The small crowd thins as each person or couple rejoins their luggage and gear and walks away through the exit.  Until you're the only one left.  The excitable lady in the lost & found comes out from behind the booth with a walkie talkie in her left hand, reaching nervously toward your elbow, asking "Are you .. Kosh?"

"Yes."

"Yes.  Your bag.  The airport, Dublin, are not coming the bag.  Please I need you fill your information."

"Okay."

She shows you a sheet of generic types of luggage, with codes next to each one, just like that last time at JFK, and the other time in Dublin.

"Please find you bag, you find here, and you say colour."

Exhausted, you try in vain, "They know they have my bag, but they don't know what it looks like?"

"Sorry I'm sorry?"

"Nothing.  It's a black, grey, dark green Kelty Redwing 3100."

"Yes, thank you, sorry, it's, you say.  Please to choose."

"Okay."

Later, in the hotel, you realise that of all the electronic gadgets you remembered to bring, you've forgotten the adapter for the local socket.  The Irish plug is a giant beast compared to the local socket.  The voltage is the same, but the puzzle is how to get the electricity out of the wall and into your devices, without tools, without tripping any circuits, and without any detectable change (i.e. without wrecking your hotel room).  You brainstorm, trying to open your eyes to possibilities you aren't yet thinking of.  You go through your bags and take stock of your assets: USB cables (-A, -B, mini, Samsung), house keys, handkerchief, shoelaces, velcro and elastic bands on jumper, leather belt with steel buckle.  Hmm, nothing comes to mind so far.  You look around the room some more at the other side of the problem: floor lamp with two bulbs with independent switches plugged in to an in-wall 3-way adapter; two bedside lamps mounted to the wall, with on-cord switches, these plugged in to a 3-way multi on the floor which is plugged in to one socket; TV cord feeds directly into back of the unit, same with the minibar fridge.  You screw out a light bulb to gauge how hard it would be to feed a connection through the socket.  What to use for bare wire, and how to get it to stay in place.  Did you pack any PVC tape, or any adhesive at all?  No, or if you did it would be in the checked in bag anyway.  You take stock then, with no ideas yet, you head down to the restaurant for dinner.

Pork and cabbage and chive potatoes, with two glasses of apple juice and a bottle of water, with a local version of apple pie and vanilla cream for dessert.  You stare at the plate while you dispatch your food, sometimes glancing around for items that won't be immediately missed that can be used to secure a good connection between the plug and the wall.  The cutlery?  Too large.  The WiFi router is right next to the bar; maybe there are spare wires you could use to cut up and expose.  You picture the room again from memory, focusing on the various connections in place.  The lamps by the bed, they're mounted on a simple one-screw facade, aren't they?  Should be one single screw on the bottom, then lift up or out from a hinge or hook on top.  But how to reach inside such a small space and get at that screw?  The one on the left of the bed looked more poorly mounted, maybe you'll get lucky and it's not screwed in all the way.  That's the wire tips sorted, but how do you get them to stay in place, touching the socket lead ends?  Clothes pins would do the trick, if they were strong enough.  They probably wouldn't hang dry wet laundry in a hotel, but you saw several houses en route to the hotel where people had laundry hung out to dry on their balcony.  Maybe a quick walk down the block beneath the balconies would prove fruitful.

The waiter clears your dessert plate and asks if you'd like anything else, coffee perhaps.  No, thanks, just the bill.  The night manager prints off the bill then walks over to you with a tired smile.  You can pay cash or charge the meal to your room.  So he asks "May I have your room number, please?"  You reach into your pocket to take out the key to show him the number on it.  Of course!  You pay cash anyway, stick a toothpick behind your ear, then hurry up to the room with the solution in mind.

You check the lamp on the left, which is tilted forward slightly from the base, and sure enough the bottom screw is already loose.  Lifting up the lamp at the base, the whole fixture comes away neatly.  Two handy spring-lock bits hold the connections in place between the lamp wires and the lead wires; easy.  However there's a white cable tie, cut short, keeping the wire from slipping through the hole in the base of the fixture.  Shouldn't be a problem; Shane, at your very first festival volunteer gig, taught you how to remove cable ties without breaking them, to be used later.  The tie lock is a wedge-on-tooth system, so it requires pushing the tie through its clip half way, where the wedge catch is lifted before locking into the next slot, then slipping something small in to hold the wedge catch in place while you reverse the tie back the way it came.  Normally the tip of a knife suffices.  Darn, you should have swiped a fork from the table after all.  No matter, the toothpick behind your ear serves the task nicely.

Next is the ground wire, which is held in place by a single standard slot screw.  Is a one cent Euro coin thin enough the fit in the slot?  No.  What else, then?  There's a cheap beer bottle opener next to the electric kettle.  It's hollow underneath, which provides the perfect strong edge to loosen the screw.  Presto.

You take out your hotel key and your set of house keys and remove everything from the two rings.  Each exposed wire end fits neatly in place around each ring, held in place by the natural ring pressure.  Slipping a key into one end of each ring then twisting 90 degrees, it's the perfect width to fit over each Irish socket lead tip; twisting the key again, the keychain locks in place over the socket tip.  Now, everything is in place, but the two rings, though solid enough, pose quite a risk of shorting.  If you're charging the phone through the night and get up to use the loo, what's to stop you from momentarily snagging the wire and bumping the rings into each other?  Or brushing your ankle near them and getting a nasty wake-up call?  So, the final touch: an insulator that can fit between the two exposed rings.  What makes a great insulator?  Glass.  You head to the minibar, and sure enough: a mini bottle of Jägermeister fits the bill nicely. You set it all up, then flip the lead switch, and the phone lights up: charging.

Note to shelf: originally the plan was to find a way to charge the laptop directly, and plug the phone in to the laptop through its USB cable to recharge that way.  The Macbook adapater, with the Irish plug part removed, takes a figure-8 socket lead tip.  Just after everything was set up and ready to go, I remembered my other bag, with the camera gear in it.  The camera battery charger unit takes the same figure-8 lead input, and I had remembered to pack the proper Europe lead that fits the charger.  This works perfectly well for the Macbook charger.  Which means I was able to charge the phone directly with the diy setup.  But the lesson is: always take thorough stock of your assets.  Even so, the project was a success and my love of all things Keys is now extended to an appreciation for the utility of the rings that hold them together.