Well i can't believe that IT's happening, but i am choosing of my own free will to get back on the road with Tiffany.... i have been invited by her to take a hard seat train for 34 hours straight down southwest to Kunming in Yunnan province, and meet back up....
My experience is that i feel entirely adrift with no clear direction, except to understand that interaction with people is of primary function in my life, and i can either wander around hoping IT will happen (which IT might!), or i can make a choiceful decision to go where the interaction is, and take IT from there.... This choice also provides travel direction at the same time, which is something i really don't have a clue about right now....
So there IT is.... May this choice direct "me" towards people and places where i may be of some little help or use.... Praises to the universe's wisdom behind my idiocy!
*Hell Is A No-Seat Train Ticket*
- (While buying food for the trip) Ok.... i think i've figured IT out.... The No-Seat Ticket on the train to Kunming (or anywhere, for that matter) is like jail! You go in, and you can't get out and are very uncomfortable for the next 34 hours! The main differences are: a) you go in willingly, b) you get to keep your stuff with you, c) you get to take whatever food you want in with you, d) when you get out, you're somewhere else! Well, i guess everyone gotta go through the trial by fire - my turn has been spun on the great wheel! Here goes nothing....
- Great! i find a little nook by a door that doesn't seem to be being used, and straightaway take up the whole floor, sitting with my pack and guitar.... i have a feeling that they are either gonna tell me that i got to stand up, or they'll let me continue sitting on the floor here because i'm white.... one or the other.... Maybe if i play some guitar, IT will ply them into pity.... :-P
- My guitar playing has attracted a new friend, "Danny" (actually Zhen Kun), with a winged basketball tattooed on his shoulder and a very familiar easy-going team-player air about him.... he speaks some english, and sits with me and asks if i like basketball; that's the right conversation-starter for me! He's 22, i'm 36, but we see eye-to-eye and have a great time getting to know each other! His friend (can't remember his name, army officer with the big-cranium-small-triangle-face with much conversation about love & marriage) and several other friendly dudes wind up joining in the conversation, with Kun and i madly translating to each other with our phones.... Soon, Wang Zheng (Wang Chung! A cool and sensitive dorky guy) and his crony-buddies come to hang out as well, a gaggle of engineering students at Hunan University finishing up a two-week internship in Zhengzhou, and we're all packed in the small metal hallway having a great time; IT's a regular party back around the comfy nook! Only one problem: the nook is comfy only as long as the train is in motion! The formerly-unused door turns out to be the MAIN door for letting people on and off the train, and the hardass brusque Trainmistress comes out of nowhere many times and slams the door open, throwing a heavy metal walkway down and yelling at the top of her lungs, at which point we all have to scramble up and plaster ourselves flat against the walls, as dozens and dozens of people with huge bags squeeze past us off and on the train.... This is not the ideal snooze-spot i had envisioned!
- After demonstrating improv on guitar, showing Kun the Moment Myspace site, and exchanging some emails, i have the happiness to note that as a result of my choices, i have gotten to meet these good folks tonight and make a new friend, have interesting conversation in which we're all learning from each other, and realize that i'm not "alone" on a mountainside somewhere.... i feel full and, uh, "useful".... the guys all express their appreciation for me and i give IT right back to them!
- Kun gets off at Wuhan, where he lives and works (although his beloved hometown is Guiyang) and now IT's the middle of the night and the nook is gone, taken up by a pack of newbies.... Now comes the standing by the sinks with literally nowhere to sit (too many people everywhere) and some blank-faced guy, who feels like he knows how to make more room for us all, picks up my pack and puts IT over one of the sinks, right in a bunch of water and spilled yuck.... i give in to his wisdom, as he smokes his cigarette in my face, and have a really sour time standing exhausted by the sinks for a while....
- After a time, i see my course clearly: the sinks in the next car over have a patch of space clear on the edge of the area, right before the proper seats begin.... i grab my pack from behind sleeping blank-man and wrestle IT over a bunch of waist-high heads through to the next car.... Sitting on my pack with my head against the wall does not turn out to be an adequate sleeping position, however, and i move on to head-on-knees position, which seems like IT might work for a while, until i lose all control and almost tumble off my pack-perch as i fall into deep sleep....
- At this point, there's nothing left to do, and i lay my pack on the floor and lie down curled up lengthwise across the sink area.... i am lying right across a two-inch raised rail on the floor, in the sink and garbage yuck, and IT is very uncomfortable, but i'm so exhausted there's nothing left to do.... i sleep somehow, while people are tripping over me and washing up over me and opening the door painfully over my toes (i am now the biggest space-taker-upper of anyone in sight).... The guy in the bathroom is hacking up loogey after loogey, so incredibly loudly that IT sounds like he's throwing up, and he won't come out, while a lady bangs and bangs on the door to encourage him outward.... This lasts until we are nearing a stop, and suddenly i sense many, many people walking all over and around me; the Trainmistress is grabbing the garbage and mucking the bathroom floor, and i have to get up....
- i now stand miserably against the sink wall, feet forced onto the rail by the amount of standing people (all smoking in my face), and try to sleep against the wall.... Between the smoke, the wrenching loogeys coming from all directions, the sign-language guy who is REALLY PISSED about something and is telling his girlfriend all about IT right in front of my face.... IT doesn't work
- i see a primo spot by the first row of seats, sort of out of the aisle, and plant my pack there.... i now re-try my head-on-knees experience, which may be worse than the first time, as my level of exhaustion increases and the night hours tick onward.... Slowly, the grey light begins to creep into the flitting trees as the sky rushes by out the windows.... And soon, despite the almost-complete lack of sleep, IT seems like IT's time to get up, because a new day has dawned....
- i see a luggage rack spot, and a plan of stashing my pack up in IT quickly forms in my bleary brain; after which, the next thing to do is to find hot water to eat my bowl of ramen noodles.... Fighting my way through the packed aisle, i track down the water spigot, and nervously fight my way back to my pack to eat, since all IT will take is one passenger's inadvertant jab to my wrist and my meal is done for.... i have to go back to the sinks to find a person-square of room to stand, next to the garbage and giant stacks of some women's box luggage, three across and two high, each of them filled with cartons of cigarettes.... i eat my noodles with visions of some unconscious passenger knocking the bowl out of my hands with their elbow and scalding hot soup flying everywhere (which fortunately does not happen).... As i finish up, a wise-looking old gent throws his half-finished cigarette, still lit, into the garbage can filled with all sorts of paper products; this prompts me to be slightly disrespectful to an older person for the first time in as long as i can remember, as i have to say to him, "Uh hey, maybe you shouldn't throw LIT CIGARETTES into the garbage, huh?" He looks at me quizzically and walks away, as one of the luggage-women closest to the sink douses the garbage with water....
- i go back and fuss with the dried peas which have opened up in the mesh-pocket of my pack, and are threatening to pour all over the heads of the seated folks underneath; as i'm doing this, several people all around me get up for departure at the next stop, and suddenly i have a seat! Like manna from heaven, and i'm so out of IT i don't even know what's what.... i just PTFO, my head on my arms on the little seat-table, and don't wake up until some guy is poking me, telling me that my peas are spilling all over people's heads as the Trainmistress moves my pack around into a position she likes better....
- Intermittent exhaustion and sleep, as noon approaches, and a different Trainmistress comes around to check my ticket.... my No-Seat Ticket! The jig is up! i mentally steel myself to head back to the sinks; but rather, she looks at my ticket and just hands IT back and walks away.... i continue to sit and watch the beautiful mountains in the mist flit by in the window.... Thank the railway-stars
- A pleasant passing afternoon, with more noodles, writing these entries, musing on the Court Cards of the Taro, having Trainmistress take a shine to me and protect me from too much scrutiny from the police officer who comes aboard to scan-check every passenger's national ID cards.... IT turns out fine, with everyone seeming pretty normalized to the whole thing without a bunch of fear, and the officer being fairly pleasant, but the vibrations of "1984" and such thoughts still go hard with me.... Anyway, he soon passes on by and Trainmistress has fun playing with my phone & solar chargie and laughing.... She wears a little silver Laughing Buddha around her neck.... In the trash, when i dump the crumbly dried peas from my pack, way deep down in the can, i see a cutoff corner of the Card of Love.... happy path this Hellride! ;-)
- Buying rice, tofu, meat :-( & veggies from cart-pushing woman in the aisle for ten qwai, in an attempt to try to give my bod some regularity and nourishment for the upcoming night of general lack of sleep and such.... IT does the trick, and i am doing okay with my purchase.... until halfway through my meal, the cartwoman comes back down again, hawking the same food for five kwai! i grumblingly decide to let IT go....
- People on the trains just throw their trash straight on the floor 'round these parts.... which requires regular sweeping of every car, under all the seats, producing unbelievable amounts of gnar every time.... Trainmistress sweeps the latest bunch of trash and crap down the aisle, and there in the middle of IT all is the Card of Obvious Answers with ITs head ripped off....
- The kid next to me with the good singing voice, Chen Ji Han, takes an interest in my Ta Luo Ka (Taro cards), so i show him and the other folks in our seats both of my decks and my journal.... They are all amusedly interested.... Ji Han asks, "What does this mean?", and i say, "i've been asking myself the same question for the past two years!"
- Passing out around 10, i keep sleeping until a loudly shouting Trainmaster wants everyone to know we are coming to a station at 2 AM.... He then proceeds to quiz me in Chinese about where i'm from, where i'm going, how laughable my lack of Chinese understanding is, how silly my hat is, which draws quite the crowd of now-awakened and amused fellow-passengers.... i blearily yet gamely play along.... Finally the Trainmaster finishes toying with me and goes on his way, and i fall back to sleeping with intermittent bouts of waking up my fallen-asleep feet and/or buttcheeks....
- 6:30 AM and i awake to Trainmistress's shrill cries of "Kunming!" With my stuff at the ready, i watch her sweep the biggest pile of garbage yet down the aisle, and am quite amused to note that there is most of an entire deck of cards someone lovingly just dumped on the floor in the middle of the giant crap-pile.... Cosmic messages down the drain! With a smiling thanks to my friendly jailmarm, i disembark for the early-morning streets of Kunming, the Springtime City of Zhongguo....
EPILOGUE: In the end, my hell-on-earth of a train ride lasted about 12 hours; the other 22 were spent in someone else's seat in relative comfort, and i better watch out, because i had such a wonderful time that i just might be tempted to take another No-Seat Ticket one of these days! (-D
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