sauerkraut in india

fukky risotto and a sadoo are riding the marudhar express when a tourist across the way says - look, there’s the taj mahal. the sadoo says no that’s the mona lisa. the tourist looks confused and annoyed, says it’s obviously the taj mahal. the sadoo says you obviously know nothing about signs

jokes for outliers

 

the air india attendant at narita asks to weigh my carry-on - limit 7kg. i know it’s over because of the food. so i take out the food, put it on the floor and weigh my bag without it: 6.5kg. take the bag off the scale, return my food, leave

 

more jokes. a german, a swede, and a canadian are sitting on the rooftop of a guest house ...

 

why travel? –

• to record humanity in its dusty dusk
• to resavour the wilderness
• to hear the silent song of the plant
• to keep the bow taut (for contrast, for the sameness of things)
• to see the moon and sun
• to trip over time’s mirrors
• to reanimate death
• to ask this question
• to have the eyes scrubbed and the body bodied
• to virtualize nature and skin the internet
• to re-eroticize absence and presence
• to participate, however tentatively and disdainfully, in my fellow species’ orthodoxy - money
• to immerse myself in that film about flesh, the common human plot - and there plot that plot in words
• to put poetry in its place and replace place
• to glorify unpasteurized organic sauerkraut

varanasi and jerusalem - coital spirit partners in the production of religious babies (with astounding longevity)

you see, in this world, there's one awful thing, and that is that everyone has their reasons

if you don't know the rules, you're crushed - but if you do you're cut off from your own nature

so simple and so labyrinthine, so guileless and so angry, so innocent and so dangerous ...

depicting the failure of love, the failure of society, and the failure of humans to rise above the ridiculous

 

do indians get sick when they visit the west because it's too hygienic?

everyone on these longhaul international flights just sleeps or watches movies - don’t they have minds to use while briefly transiting through life?

 

whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate

                but we have a drug for this!

 

i see the world is mad

if i tell the truth they rush to beat me

if i lie they trust me

  keep the slanderer near, build it a hut in your courtyard -

  for, without soap or water, it will scrub your character clean

gote noats

the proprietor of a guest house says he plays the tabla. i ask him if he plays out anywhere, in public. no, i only play for god. probably doesn’t tweet either

 

the night lit loggias of bundi cornea of aravalli, sockets of worms, apertures onto the days when junglī suar wandered protected on a greener, less regulated, and threedimensionally more vicious earth

 

the 5hour bus from jaipur to bundi in its 49 numbered seats holds 71 passengers, 8 on top, 9 goats, obese sacs of produce heaped mercilessly in the aisles, 3 employees (driver, bus manager, ticket operator), no washroom or a/c - it’s midday and 34°. deluxe, the agent had told me. my body doesn’t fit anywhere, only hindi’s spoken, no shocks on this bitch and the road’s all hole ... i’m a conscious turd flushed onto the laughing dirt when the receptacle of hadoti finally welcomes.

i had hardly believed him

the celebrations, festivities, pancoloured noise, parades occur multiple times daily. gods, death, marriage, birth (and what’s the bloody difference?). some ridiculouslooking male dressed in a silver suit and flowers is plunked on a horse that’s so weighted in decoration how can no one laugh or protest (where’s friedrich when you need him ... maybe b. tarr can direct the bundi horse)? a few dudes beat relentlessly on big drums for 30 minutes before the procession - which includes the requisite 20 following females and blaring tuktuk - begins to jolt and belch its way eastward. it’s all religion and it’s all the time

a bordeaux man - almost comically friendly, pulls up a small stool to sit and chat to me, misses the stool falling on the floor (feel like i’m in a chaplin skit) - asks me how long the flight is home. about 15 hours i say. i thought it wouldn’t be much longer than paris he says - isn’t there a way you can just zip over the arctic?

 

in my homeland i never say i’m a writer. in that world of privilege as language and language as privilege such a designation is too pretentious, wearied, photocopied, easy, meaningless ... lumping me with gangling cheese strings of humans i have no affinity with, embarrassments to language, nocost writing, workshop factories, bud lights of Word. but here i use it as an efficient conversationending explanation for why i don’t do tourist things but sit stupidly around staring into space like an incarnation of the god Vapid. everyone (europeans, indians) seems satisfied, asks no further questions. you're a writer, you don't belong, they get it

 

the second night in rajasthan i ascend to the rooftop terrace of my guesthouse and a young french couple is dimly fucking on a chair. is clearing my throat sufficient international language? should i pull up a chair and watch, yank my dick out and cum on their faces? i go to a table, pull out my notebook and begin writing. i could abdicate the public space to their intimacy but to fuck in public is to invite voyeurism. i don't care about watching or listening though and they seem indifferent to my indifference, i just want to be alone on the rooftop with my devouring horny notebook