Mart-deBlog

This post will be painful to write, for various reasons. Demystification, melancholic nostalgia, vulnerability of words, expressing the inexpressible all play their parts. Not writing what I am about to write; I might as well quit this whole blogbusiness. Reader has to excuse the horrible chronological structure (and its length), any over-abused, cliche or repetitive expressions, the sorry shortcoming pictures(didn't make many, some were just black) and the fact it is yet another 'deep story', I also hope Hong Kong will have some lighter events in store as well.

So, now about the days of Psy. I came across this poster hanging randomly on the white plaster of a scyscraper: psy trance & goa on a remote beach of Lamma Island. Should I go? The earliest boat leaving from this lamma beach was the next afternoon, so I really would stay there by myself for more than 16 hours. So, a book went into my backpack, together with drinks and a nerdy flashlight. And I left saturday evening with the boat to lamma island and then with the sampan to the party [superfast, this little speedboot shot right through the maze of concrete pillars of a spooky water factory]. During the trip there was already meeting felllow Psy'ers, this never stopped. On arrival, there were wet feet, loud amplified electronics, rocks, tents, sand, happy smiling eyes, unreal warm welcomes, pills, colors, darkness, backround waves, magic fireshows, and above agressively overtaking melodies. First there was exploration, of the beach and its secret corners, of the people approaching and sharing, and then a surrendering to the psychedelic present that was there and then, for always. I danced. I danced in the water. I danced on a big boulder. I danced on the music and ultimately, I just danced. Simple forgetting, dissapearing and dancing.









































There was more. There was Kali. Kali was not any of the beautiful girls that were flirting, or the the beautiful voodoo people dancing, not one of the chilling smily faces. She was really not anything, nonexistent in experience, not one of my categories or symbols. She was a conceptual vortex asking for meaning. She was standing, looking out over the sea. I asked. She answered, 'No she wasn't waiting for the sun, the sun rises in the back.' For some 6 hours, we talked. She deluded meaning. She was over in her fifties. People glanced in their passing by and wondered what this was: the elder and the younger. They already had their meaning, they were understood. The interesting girls distracted slight attention drops, but Kali did not loose from categorisation, as these girls did in a blink. We talked with the sunrise, in our backs, and she ordered for dancing. We danced, in ourselves, through the morning; outlasting everything, forgetting and sinking in all the spoken words. Water was coming up. The DJ performing with the sea until his ankles. In the late afternoon, I took a boat and Kali another, but at lamma pier she was waiting. We had coffee and we had food, the party and the music in our limbs, everything everlasting.
Then we said goodbye.
I think we will understand eachother.
































Now, bodily, I feel I sacrificed ten years of health. I could not sleep last night either, parts of my body occasionaly go numb, I almost lost consciousness, fell from stairs, my tongue has many deep cuts, my eyes' white is completely red and won't go out of focus, my jar tightens beyond will, and dizziness: very dizzying, attacks of spin. I miss psy night. I want to go back. It really is exactly intense 'missing', a suffering from the rupturing passing of time.
I believe 'The Kali', goa melodies, new words, bass and beach all melted the very structure of my mind, now flowing around in this psychedelical revival. Reborn confused or reborn young, I don't know.

We all know that urge to be distinct, be odd, be different, be original. Is it about appearances? For some it is. For an outsider in HK, it definitely is there. As I walk across the see of black coupes, dark eyes and little steps; there it is thrown in my face: the reflection of a self in everything that is different. They are not interested, Hong Kong is a big city, it was a colony, they've seen enough outsiders, forget it, they don't give you a special curiosity in their looks. But I care and I don't understand their walks, their gestures and sounds. This confusion immediately sets me apart as I stumble and hesitantly wade through the streets. They are my instant ID, an outsider.
Its relieving, there is no mass aggresively sucking in your uniqueness, there is only a mass spitting you into yourself.

My world has never been political, at least not as it is here. Tiannamen Square, 1989, unkown amount of deaths: running in hundreds or thousands.
























Some days ago I met a girl from mainland China. History teachers never told her the story of the "Tiannamen Massacre." Parents discouraged her demonstrating or acting on youth ideals. Government talks about the enemies; Taiwan should be Chinese because the Japanese or Americans could use it against them. Tibet might become useful someday. China advances but the spectre of Big Brother Mao is still watching. Last thursday all foreign news came under the restrictions of New China. My Google runs too slow and Gmail emails can sometimes take a week. You need permission from Government to demonstrate. Japan did not apologize for WWII, you are definitely allowed to demonstrate against that! China has a troublesome lack of real enemies. No wonder the Chinese are as unconcerned with politics as I am, they do not live in a political world, as I normally do not live in a political world. However, Hong Kong does not allow this bliss, it fiercely remembers the Tiannamen Massacre and figths its erasure from history (see picture of monument right outside my door.)
Here, being an outsider, politics is visible to me and I don't like it; I hope I didn't affect the girl with too much of the outsider's pestilence that the government tries so hard to protect its people from.

Nights in Hong Kong aren't nights. They are not days. They are the virus that spreads through every brain, turning minds into overdrive when the switches flip. The days have died, trampled under heavy smog and concrete. Daylight is for work, like machines following rules they work shut-off from feeling to prevent it from sucking in all the unhappiness and dissatisfaction of the hard city life. Only dead days. Only concrete and smog.
But then the neonight sets in and outside my door there cries of chinese guys, lasers beam over the windowview on the other side, music in the rooms are turned on and the downstairs she begins practicing the cello. Outside the nightcrawlers wake up from their mechanisms while slurping their bleach noodles, they do not go home since most of them do not have a home. Their dead days can only buy a bedroom so they stay out. The neonight is their home.

It is 4 a.m. and I am wide awake, as for the past 2 weeks. I thought it was insomnia. It is not. It is the virus spreading through my cortex, fueling it, lightening it. I rfealize now, I am slowly starting to live on the flipside of the neonight.



















As I lie awake, my earphones sing moloko lyrics :
...
We have ways to make you understand
We demand you let us in
Under your skin
You tuned in to the frequency
We cant let you be
We live happily
Beneath
On the underneath
On the inside
The flipside
...

And then I arrived in Hong Kong, with futuristic skyscrapers, neon mania and urban faces flashing away my memories of China. In any case, once in a while I will write a blog to give some impression of the mishaps and happenings here, refilled with the usual sarcasm and bitterness of city, everyday life and me;
albeit turned upsidedowninsideouttwistedretwistedandscrambledeggsandlalala banananas,
I hope you'll follow.

[ps. I can put your emailaddress on my mailinglist]

You know, I had a grandma and "Kleine Omaatje" was her name. She accompanied me that day in Jiuzhaigou past Panda Lake were I saw a kabouter riding a squirel and past Colorful Lake where fairies where bathing under the waterfalls, and then Kleine Omaatje showed me the stern face of Mr.Willow clamped around a rock in the middle of Swan Lake, and the little minemidgets with the lights on their head hammering in their little caves covered by green moss, and she showed me the little ogres flashing their butts and she made me jump over the grasping arm of Jannetje Groenetand trying to snatch me under water. It became later and later and I had lost Bas. Tourists had retreated to their tourbusses and then Kleine Omaatje whispered in my ear with her soft and naughty voice and I started to speed, near to running past the fence off into the far ends of Jiuzhaigou, Kleine Omaatje giggled and it became dark, the forest slowly became alive, trees sighed and kabouters curiously stared from behind their little holes underneath the grass, maybe David was there, I hope so. Kleine Omaatje could not keep up with my thoughts and flew ahead to wait for me at the primeval forests where the elves live; and the world was far away. Then a shriek stopped my and I saw the fuckface forestwatcher with his green car and green suit. He ordered me to cross the river and he brought me to a bus that dropped me at the entrance.
I never got the chance to thank Kleine Omaatje for making me understand the fairylands of Jiuzhaigou

On Emeishan there where me, thick fog and monkeys.
On top of of the mountain there was a giant buddha, golden monasteries, and a view. I slept on top of the mountain to watch the magic of the sunrise in the early morning, but again only me, thick clouds and monkeys dressed in blue and yellow carrying cameras; a different magic on itself.



 

Looking around. It is so vast and my mind tries to grasp it but then it is even wider and my mind stretches and tries to experience the space but then there remains always more space, so you open your mind and let in more hills more clouds until nothing remains of your mind except for planes, and hills, and wide space; even wider.



 

The people I met were unreal and almost became symbols in my head. Our guide that for the first time in his life experienced and mp3 player and enjoyed to most abstract jazz music many people here would frown upon. No communication whatsoever was possible, I never found out his name (none of tibetans in my memory carry a name), he sporadically turned around from upon his horse and blinked his gold tooth. The nomadic hard working woman, with a bittered face and a painful smile; she was suffering from- as much as the guide was enjoying from the land. And the wild child, I do not know whether guy or girl, with bright red cheeks only tamed by its shyness but driven by its curiosity, running outside, jumping up into the sky then running towards me and putting its hand on my cheek and running away again. And the swarm of tibetan monks, who were astounded by my digital camera, I taught them counting in dutch and showed their isolation in the form of excitement, laughter but all without losing dignity nor grace.
I want to go back to tibet, although, I know for sure those types will visit me often in unconscious neurotics and wild or peaceful dreams. It really struck me, and it really would struck anyone who lives the real and desires the unreal.



 

[Warning: warranted cheesyness ]. Everyone knows this feeling when you travel, you intensily experience the world, the world sucks you up and everyone single thing you see becomes a thought, the past is rearranges and shifts, old problems become funny etc. etc. All very nice. But then there was this spot, driving into the tibetan area in a shabby car we stopped and I walked up the many stairs of this little tibetan temple. I wont give the details of what I experienced because they're mine only but I had never expected this overwhelming feeling of happiness and luck and consciousness I received while looking over the outstretching tibetan planes.
And that was just the start of it...