Our VIP bus
Our driver taking a well-earned rest...
“I’m becoming a slug.”
“Becoming?”
“Very funny…”
We’re sitting in the airport at Bagan, waiting for our plane to Yangon. Our boarding tickets have the word Free written next to the spot indicating our seat number, suggesting a first come, first served arrangement. Its bright green color and scrawled black lettering indicating flight number and destination give it a look like something a middle school student council might put together for entry into the talent show. I like it. A cursory glance around the waiting area suggests a full plane, and I’m hoping whoever is in charge of the seat-to-butt ratio was circumspect in their morning dosage of betel nut.
Our exit from the hotel this morning involved waiting for a cab which I had arranged with a guy the night before. He took a picture of my tattoo (Bicycle…is good!) by way of alerting his driver to who I am, which found me wandering around the hotel lobby after breakfast kind of holding my arm out flag-like in the direction of likely drivers. Are you my guy? Hello! Taxi man? Anyone?
In the news is word of a cyclone (serious tropical depression) in the Bay of Bengal making its way toward Myanmar, and especially Yangon—our destination. Big winds! Heavy rain! Which might explain my whale-esque headache last night. Of late I’m given to serious head pain when the barometer drops precipitously, which found me eating ibuprofen like salted nuts and thinking about how far I’d go for it to simply go away. What kind of Faustian deal might I strike? I can make it go away, but a child in India will die… Only one? This some kind of a trick?
There’s a Chinese curse that goes something like this: may you have an interesting life. Remember, it’s a curse, so the idea is that interesting (unpredictable) is bad. Interesting might seem romantic to the young and naive, but a seasoned (as in: jaundiced) eye knows otherwise. I’ll take the hurly burly of plague, pestilence, and war as long as it’s happening in some dusty country far from here (as depicted on the pages of The New York Times or The Washington Post—preferably over coffee and scones.) And as much as the unflagging routine of work, eat, sleep can erode one’s sanity with the patience of water cutting inexorably through stone, it is nevertheless central to our sense of purpose and place.
Which is not to say travel is on a par with war, but it can mess with productivity, I think. To wit: When the kids were young we often drove downstate for holidays and to visit family. On the way home, there developed something of a ritual in which Grant, on seeing the outline of the Superior Dome looming across the waters of Lake Superior like the shores of Ithaca to a travel-weary Odysseus, would loudly exclaim, I have to Poop! Sure enough, he’d jam for the toilet before the car stopped its roll up the driveway. Bombs away! A bit of sleuthing revealed the sordid truth of his constipation: the poor lad couldn’t poop anywhere but the soft, cocoon like comfort of home, sweet home. In fact, Quinn and Grant would bargain over who got the upstairs toilet and who got the ground floor, the later being preferable for its proximity to the door.
And not just that. Habit is a good thing when it comes to a regular exercise routine. (Or a daily blog entry…) When moving about, giving thought and energy to where one will lay one’s head (and whether that grey, flesh-like object on one’s plate ever had feathers on it) there develops a certain triage of activities. A jettisoning of the extraneous. Arranging transportation from Yangon to Kalaw takes precedent over down dog. (And, anyway, down dog loses its draw when one is experiencing explosive diarrhea. Sorry.)
(Case in point: The preceding six paragraphs were written over a ten day period. I’m now seated in my comfy arm chair in Mandalay. Coffee cup in hand, the sound of children’s voices wafting through the open window. Peace. Tranquillity. Productivity!)
Speaking of transportation. We settled on an overnight bus from Yangon north to Kalaw, a small town in the hills around Inle Lake. We splurged for VIP which, like everything, is a relative term. A couple of hours into the trip the heavens opened and dropped an impossible load of rain. Inside the bus we were pounded with the sounds of water chiseling away at every possible surface. That, coupled with the bouncing, swaying motion induced by potholed, narrow roads and a suspension system that should have been retired with the Eisenhower administration left us experiencing something like the agitation cycle of a Maytag industrial washing machine. There was an older monk seated across the aisle from Rebecca and I. Round glasses, shaved head, swaddled in yards and yards of burgundy-red cloth, I looked to him for a sense of calm, but mostly I watched through the buses’ windshield as our driver whipped the old girl ever-harder in his quest to dispel some childhood slight which left him with the need to prove his manhood by driving right to the edge of damnation’s gaping maw, the tender lives of his trusted passengers be damned! Or something like that.
Probably less imagination would help. But, as in all things, there’s an irony at play. Were it not for an over-abundance of imagination, one would never push into parts unknown. That damned need to see how what one imagines jibes with what is can sure swing itself around the caverns of one’s consciousness with wrecking ball-like force. Not to mention the drug-like pull of exotica—which, again, takes its marching orders from that dog called imagination.
Icarus knew this plight. Or, at least, came to know it as he constructed wings of feather and wax, seeking the light of heaven. I contemplated his ultimate fall from grace while watching the wet world fly by from my exalted VIP seat, cognizant of my own crime of hubris while chasing a vision of the noble innocence of un-westernized society. Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but reflect on an article in The Myanmar Times which reported the countries’ alarming increase in traffic fatalities resulting in the second highest rate of death by said fatalities in Southeast Asia. The life expectancy hereabouts is roughly sixty-four years, below that of Laos and Cambodia, and in far left field relative to the US, with a life expectancy crowding seventy-nine. Those numbers land with the gauzy force butterfly kisses when considered between sips of coffee in the air conditioned comfort of one’s chambers, but deliver piston-like jolts of white hot clarity when flying through the night on the coat tails of one man’s thread-like tie to sanity.
“If you had some kind of a serious episode here, you’d be screwed. Period.” This from nurse Rebecca, who has a way of dismissing my neurotic nature as child-like and unworthy of hand holding and/or foot rubs. Preferably the latter. Back in Bagan we were chatting over breakfast about pain, sickness, and death by trauma.
“Basically, everyone here is in the same boat. Anything could happen at any time, and if you’re unlucky enough to have it happen here (as in Myanmar) you’re most likely going home in a body bag. Pass the salt.”
I looked around the room and registered that “everyone here” were white-skinned first world types like us. People who have grown accustomed to medical miracles within easy reach (though, admittedly, at a rather steep financial cost.) Rebecca’s comment laid bare our almost voyeuristic adventure into that part of our planet peopled with less fortunate souls who routinely succumb to such preventable maladies as dehydration, polio, and an absence of tire tread. Which is to say, most of the planet. A distinction that gives comfort, I suppose, in a most irrational way. We carry around with us an immutable faith in tomorrow—and our place in said tomorrow. Which is necessary if the human race is going to keep on racing, but not so strong a shield against the twisted metal and broken glass of highway carnage.
Maybe I’m getting old. Correction: I am getting old. Rather, maybe I’m getting into a different place of understanding. One marked by equal parts caution and cavalier. Wisdom? I don’t think so. A long life is in no way equal to a good life. The task as I see it is to allow full reign of all aspects of the imagination and to act on their subsequent impulses. Or, rather, to embrace their attendant impulses, holding them close while keeping their hold on us at bay. A willingness to place one foot in front of the next while keeping both eyes alert and open can take one far in this life.
Time to get outside.
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