The Dysfunctional Relationship Artists Have With...Everything

For this post to make sense you'll need to reference the previous and watch that video.

I spent the night, probably my sleep, and most of my snooze button soft crash into wakefulness chewing over the notion of 'having genius' instead of 'being genius'. I'm a little besotted with the idea.

At a glance I imagine it's distasteful to some, pushing, as it does, the idea of invisible entities be they called muse, daemon, genie, angel, faery, spirit, Fred. What Gilbert is trying to sell, however, is not belief in these things - that's a whole other conversation in which I admit I'm not much interested in - but the usefulness they serve as a mental construct.

She speaks of the emotional risks inherent in the creative process, which resonated with me. There are the obvious stresses associated with placing a work in the public eye; will it be liked, hated, understood, will it be successful, will it be rejected entirely and never be consumed by the public because you are the crappiest artist in all the history of all the cosmos; these are the natural doubts when you put yourself forward for anything.

However I choose to believe that she was speaking of the other risks that come well before considerations of audience reception come into play, the risks we take with ourselves while in the process of creating the work. We pour ourselves into it, we draw upon lessons, memory and knowledge that we may not wish to visit, we take on aspects that do not come naturally to us. I've always said that for writers in particular, the act of writing a story is not unlike forcing the literal definition of a split personality upon yourself.

And, I don't know, the creative process defies predictability and repetition, and I do not believe it is destructive, but it is not always nice, and doing these things to yourself because you love what you do, tearing yourself up because the work requires you to do so, they are hard things.

To then be able to say, "That kinda sucked, and you could have been a little gentler about it," in a disgruntled, passive-aggressive manner to some intangible thought construct and lay some of the responsibility for what happened upon it, well, any less ammunition for the artist to use upon themselves is a good thing, right?

It's this idea of distance. It smells fantastic, like freshly crushed coriander and cummin all mixed together. I'd eat it but I can't stop sniffing it. Distance not only from the work, but from the idea of talent as well.

To be talented is a crippling thing.

I have been told that I have talent. The people who have said this to me are not individuals with a vested interest in keeping me on side and gain nothing from stroking my ego. They were not speaking of craft, but of that part of art that cannot be learned, that essence of creativity that can't be picked up or passed on.

For the creative mind to consider the fact of its own talent is probably one of the most dangerous thought paths to follow. Might as well drive a steamroller over a minefield.

It's one thing to entertain dreams of grandeur and quite another to realise they could be a reality. That maybe you have something that is unique, and that others can see. Suddenly, there are ramifications to everything you do. Are you living up to your talent? Have you wasted it? Do you meet the expectations of those who have recognised it? By having this talent you did not earn are you bruising the already sensitive egos of the creators around you? Will there be a price for using something you haven't earned? Is it possible to exercise control over something entirely unconscious? What if you come to depend on it? What if it goes away?

This is not about any alleged talent I may have, but the weight and damage that merely considering it did. To consider talent left me terrified of using it. It has taken years to be reconcile myself with the idea, all of which has nothing to do with anything I've produced. The work goes on (or not) regardless.

But if someone had given me permission to disown the idea of talent, I daresay those years would have been spent being decidedly more relaxed about my writing.

There is a parallel with photography. I have absolutely no technique, skill, technical or theoretical knowledge, and so I don't feel I can claim ownership of any of the compliments my photographs garner. "I didn't do that," I say. "The world was there, I pressed the button and the camera did the rest."

Now of my stories I can say, "I didn't do that. The story was there, I opened to a new page and the [ ] did the rest."

The difference between being a vessel and a conduit. Gilbert's speech resonated so powerfully with me because she gave voice to a practice I've been slowly and stealthily ninjaing upon myself for some time. A space that is me, but not me. A trapdoor to the subconscious, down which I will deliberately shove stories and let whatever it is down there do whatever it is it does until it is ready to release the story back to me. There is something that is me, but not me. Something over which I have no control. Something that does not come from me.

I'm not going to call it Fred.

But, there is always a but. When you change the creative process from one of dictation to a conversation, then there must be another party with which to have the conversation, which means you are essentially engaging in a relationship with something that is Not Called Fred.

And when I turned this over in my mind, all I saw was a whole lot of issues. Like, not trusting NotFred to actually contribute. Feeling betrayed and rejected when NotFred does not produce the goods. Trying to make myself infinitely more attractive to NotFred, or NotFred's friends. Wondering what is wrong with me that NotFred&Friends talk to everyone else but not me. Deciding this is because I am hopeless and useless and worthless.

Etc, etc...

Which probably says more about me than anything else, but I believe that that poor, insecure, fragile, hopeful and despairing creative mind can find weapons to use against itself no matter what thought constructs are in place.

Still, I prefer NotFred to the thought of inspiration being sourced solely from within.

I find I disagree with the very end of Gilbert's speech. She has put forth the idea that creative transcendence - which we have all felt all too briefly - is not something we can find within ourselves but are graced to feel or not feel its touch according to the whims of something unknowable and unreasonable, and that a word for that something may as well be 'god'. When we are caught up in that passion which is equal parts exhilaration and desperation and in the paws of which we are tiny furious creatures, there, in our work, is god. And if god, the genie, NotFred has touched us...olé.

But then she says that even if god, the genie, NotFred never comes near us again, or never noticed us at all, yet still we labour at our craft...olé, she says, there is god anyway.

And by doing so, by putting god back in the artist when there is no god at work, she undermines that brilliant, necessary idea which was the point of her whole speech.

No. If god isn't there, then god isn't there.

Maybe god will only rip through us once, and never again. Maybe we will never channel god in our work. We can sit down and write, paint, design, draw, mould, stitch, whatever it is you are creating, and there will be no god in the end product. We can wait, and work, but diligence does not equal divine inspiration.

The work produced may be flawed, technically sound, thorough, clever, cliché, bold, unbalanced, dull, merely okay. The work produced may be the lewd loud shit of those who have not yet even begun to realise the challenges involved in creativity, or it could be the crisp precision of a master of the craft and years of rich experience.

It will not have that frightening fire to it, will not smell of freshly crushed coriander and cummin, and god won't know it exists.

It will be yours, and only yours.

And that is a thought construct worth taking pride in as well.

Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity

Pointed out by Ian McHugh.

We writers, we kind of do have that reputation, and not just writers, but creative people across all genres, it seems, have this reputation for being enormously mentally unstable. And all you have to do is look at the very grim death count in the 20th century alone, of really magnificent creative minds who died young and often at their own hands, you know? And even the ones who didn't literally commit suicide seem to be really undone by their gifts, you know. Norman Mailer, just before he died, last interview, he said "Every one of my books has killed me a little more." An extraordinary statement to make about your life's work, you know. But we don't even blink when we hear somebody say this because we've heard that kind of stuff for so long and somehow we've completely internalized and accepted collectively this notion that creativity and suffering are somehow inherently linked and that artistry, in the end, will always ultimately lead to anguish.

When I started watching the clip I became a little apprehensive, especially when she began drawing that line, that line I dislike immensely, between the creative process and mental illness. Much as I am not exactly a poster girl for disproving that mistaken assumption, I think that having wrassled with both monsters I'm in a position to say, with authority, "That is shit from a bull."

Thankfully, Gilbert continued on after the above, with this;

And the question that I want to ask everybody here today is are you guys all cool with that idea?

...I'm not at all comfortable with that assumption.

I think it's odious.

Fuck. Yeah.

And so, it seems to me, upon a lot of reflection, that the way that I have to work now, in order to continue writing, is that I have to create some sort of protective psychological construct, right? I have to, sort of find some way to have a safe distance between me, as I am writing, and my very natural anxiety about what the reaction to that writing is going to be, from now on. And, as I've been looking over the last year for models for how to do that I've been sort of looking across time, and I've been trying to find other societies to see if they might have had better and saner ideas than we have about how to help creative people, sort of manage the inherent emotional risks of creativity.

...ancient Greece and ancient Rome -- people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then, OK? People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons. The Greeks famously called these divine attendant spirits of creativity "daemons."...The Romans had the same idea, but they called that sort of disembodied creative spirit a genius. Which is great, because the Romans did not actually think that a genius was a particularly clever individual. They believed that a genius was this, sort of magical divine entity, who was believed to literally live in the walls of an artist's studio, kind of like Dobby the house elf, and who would come out and sort of invisibly assist the artist with their work and would shape the outcome of that work.

So brilliant -- there it is, right there that distance that I'm talking about -- that psychological construct to protect you from the results of your work...the ancient artist was protected from certain things, like, for example, too much narcissism, right? If your work was brilliant you couldn't take all the credit for it, everybody knew that you had this disembodied genius who had helped you. If your work bombed, not entirely your fault, you know? Everyone knew your genius was kind of lame. And this is how people thought about creativity in the West for a really long time.

And then the Renaissance came and everything changed, and we had this big idea, and the big idea was let's put the individual human being at the center of the universe above all gods and mysteries, and there's no more room for mystical creatures who take dictation from the divine. And it's the beginning of rational humanism, and people started to believe that creativity came completely from the self of the individual. And for the first time in history, you start to hear people referring to this or that artist as being a genius rather than having a genius.

And I got to tell you, I think that was a huge error. You know, I think that allowing somebody, one mere person to believe that he or she is like, the vessel you know, like the font and the essence and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, eternal mystery is just a smidge too much responsibility to put on one fragile, human psyche. It's like asking somebody to swallow the sun. It just completely warps and distorts egos, and it creates all these unmanageable expectations about performance. And I think the pressure of that has been killing off our artists for the last 500 years.

I'm in danger of cutting and pasting the whole transcript. I just watched it, so I'm still processing and irrationally in love with what she said. There's a fabulous example of putting the creative essence on the outer that she gives later in the video, from none other than Tom Waits, which made me laugh. Now I'm thinking of it again, it's making me cry.

There have been times I've been afraid of my writing, because when I've looked back at it, it was too good for me.

Telling myself that perhaps it never came from me at all? That makes it okay to live with.

But then...what if that outer interference never interferes again? What if you're touched once, and then left alone to plod on after that moment of glory for the rest of your mortal life?

I don't think I've ever come across a more uplifting context for "just carry on" than this.

Baggage; Many Copies of

UPDATE: NO SPARE COPIES LEFT

The launch of Baggage was stupefying.

photo filched from alan baxter

It was so stupefying that I'm not actually going to write about it, I'm just going to filch from Gillian's blog:

The Baggage launch was lovely, though Mr Dann and I got up to a great deal of mischief during the signings. I hadn't actually thought I would need to give a speech at the launch. Honestly. I helped make sandwiches, and people who make sandwiches don't give speeches. Which is crazy thinking, since I've always maintained that the people who make sandwiches should *always* give speeches, especially if they're the editor of the book being launched. The key role of second sandwich assistant is not the whole of my life, after all.

And all those wonderful writers sat there and smiled - they know me too well. And there were a large number of equally wonderful writers in attendance. The writing community is just warm and generous and entirely made of awesome. And Sharyn Lilley is all that and with bells on. Baggage is off to a fine start in the world. Also, three different people who had head starts on the book told me that they can't see Federation Square without Tessa's story overshadowing it.

There was something of a signature production line with the attending contributors, and while I had myself a fine time being in reach of the sammiches and playing up with Madames Deb Biancotti and Maxine McArthur, I lost count of how many copies I scribbled in. A few people (possibly the same people) at the launch and even during the con in the days following were generous enough to tell me they'd read my story and-

You know, no one says they enjoyed it, or that they liked it. It isn't that sort of story.

But they read it, and it affected them, affected them enough to speak to me, and that means something.

I suppose I should come clean with myself and finally admit that, yeah, this story means something to me too.



I took my contributor payment in books, not money. It's all part of my cunning plan to get this book read.

Melbournians wishing to get their hands on a copy, may I direct you to Borders on South Wharf? I wandered back in a couple of days back, and Baggage has prime position on a shelf end. The staff there were brilliant during the launch, and their support should be supported in turn.

Australians wishing to get their hands on a copy, I shall direct you to the publisher's site, where you may order online. (Gillian's latest novel is also up for grabs there. Nudgehintnudge.)

And for those of you overseas?

I've made queries with Sharyn, the publisher, and if you wish to purchase from her please shoot her an email. She's more than happy to work out shipping for you, no matter where you are.

Or;

There is this massive pile of Baggage sitting on my desk.

They need to get OFF my desk and OUT into the world and be READ.

If you overseas and would like a copy, put your hand up. They're on offer until they're all gone, it's as simple as that. If you're in a position to review, blog, post about the book in some fashion, I'll take that as payment. If you're not, hell, just read it and I'll take that as payment too.

Of Baggage people have said:

"Baggage is a fascinating exploration of Australian issues through characters and situations that feel immediate and real. There's little in the way of escapism here, but instead much subtlety and nuance, combined with stunning writing. From the incendiary, no-holds-barred 'Acception' by Tessa Kum to the quiet power of K.J. Bishop's 'Vision Splendid', and beyond, this anthology tackles difficult and diverse subject matter." Jeff VanderMeer, World Fantasy award winner

"An excellent cross-section of the current Australian fiction scene-and a potential must-have for 2010." Ann VanderMeer, Hugo award winner.

"Baggage collects many of the finest voices in Australian speculative fiction. Each author contributes a unique cultural perspective, with stories ranging from the deeply personal to the highly disturbing. Baggage an anthology not to be missed." Shane Jiraya Cummings, OzHorrorScope

"This is a well-rounded anthology, entertaining and thought-provoking in one. The stories were all easy to read, even the ones that made my teeth hurt (Tessa Kum and Janeen Webb’s stories did that for me, but in a good, thought-provoking way)." Joanne Kasper, ASIF

Of Acception people have said:

"Is good. Is fucking good." Deborah Kalin

"I think reading your story first was like having hot chilli before going to a wine tasting. Kinda rendered the literary tastebuds useless for anything else for a while." Ian McHugh

"There's an awful lot of you in there, isn't there? And "Colin"! "Colin" isn't a name to give a character!" Mum

"Colin is too a name! A fine name! Viva le Colin!" Me

The Enigmatic Arthur Miller

Number of people who introduced themselves to me as "Arthur Miller": 0.

I coerced Gillian into saying it, but she immediately followed with a retraction of the statement. The awesome Elizabeth reflected that she should have said it, but didn't. And THE Arthur Miller did not introduce himself, but only requested that I sign his copy of Baggage to Arthur Miller. I have seen the Enigmatic Arthur Miller! But the challenge was something of a non-event. As such I will not be shoving a whole lolly snake up my nose and making a comic out of it.

Wait.

Now I think of it.

People get books signed for friends all the time.

Which could mean.

Now I think about it.

That wasn't Arthur Miller at all.





THE MYSTERIES NEVER CEASE.

i saw two birds lost at sea

While this place has collected some dust in the last couple of weeks - the background image is entirely the appropriate texture for dust - I've done a wee bit of guest blogging, as part of the blog tour leading up to the launch of Baggage. A round up of links can be found here and here.

My contributions consist of a long-winded ramble over on that cool frood Jeff VanderMeer's blog: When the Cover Doesn't Match the Story

Exhibit 6: The taxi drivers in Kathmandu see a lot.

“No, I’m not Nepali. I’m half-Chinese.”

“But you are not Chinese.”

“Half-white Australian. I know. I don’t look like anything.”

“Ah,” he said, and nodded knowingly at me in the rear view mirror. He took me to Kathmandu International Airport without further conversation, and three hours later I began my long slog home.

He was the only person in three weeks to be unfazed by my background.

This post also contained a photo collage of my face, and because it is the single most painful graphic I have ever been foolish enough to decide to produce, I'm posting it here too.



I hate my face.

Remember, the Baggage launch is this Thursday, 1pm at Borders in the South Wharf DFO. Given who is overseeing the catering, the food will be awesome. And by awesome I mean "kill you with deliciousness".

My second blog-invasion was over on Deborah Kalin's lovely, neat, concise online cubby house, where I proceeded to blort another long-winded ramble: Tibet is... I tried to be succinct, really I did.

My life is one of close horizons. No horizons at all, in fact. With all the trees, curves and slopes, my sense of distance is heavily skewed. I assume, not wrongly when in context, that if I can see it, it is in easy walking distance. Half an hour max.

Tibet fooled me over and over. Distance and size conspired to slap my suburban assumptions upside the head every time I gazed at the world, which was all day, every day.

There are a few photos of Tibet accompanying that post, one of which I'll filch and shove right here.



This photo contains a perspective-jab. Oh yes, mountains in the distance, lovely-

Until you lean in close to squint at that little rise of dust in the middle pane and realise that is a car, tiny and distant, which means those mountains are...

And hey kids! Deb is launching Shadow Bound this Saturday! 1pm in room 203 of the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. There will be books for sale, a Mysterious Door Prize of Mystery, give aways, some more awesome food, and that devastatingly talented author Deborah Kalin herself. She's also reading, signing, and kaffeklatching at Worldcon. All the information you require to stalk her can be found here.

Thank you to Jeff and Deb for letting me mess their blogs up.

Now, it has been brought to my attention that the enigmatic Arthur Miller shall also be attending Worldcon, and has stated his intention to be present at the Baggage launch. He? Is that known for certain? To my knowledge, THE Arthur Miller is deceased, and unlikely to attend, awesome catering or no.

Well.

Actually zombies are really in at the moment. A zombie dramatist playwright is probably inevitable.

Cease, tangent! Anyway! What? Right, Arthur Miller. I do not know who the enigmatic Arthur Miller is, therefore, the enigmatic Arthur Miller could be anyone.

You see what I'm hinting at?

At the end of Worldcon, I'll report back on how many people came and introduced themselves to me as Arthur Miller. You hear that, people? I want more than TEN, got that? If we can get more than ten, I'll, uh...do something probably entirely in keeping with the character of this blog.

Shove a whole lolly snake up my nose and make a comic out of it, probably.

How To Destroy Sir Tessa One Piece Of Bloody Science At A Time

From Matt Staggs:

The Triceratops Never Existed, It Was Actually a Young Version Of Another Dinosaur

Scientists are saying that the Triceratops dinosaur—you know, the three horned one—was actually a juvenile form of a Torosaurus, the three horned dinosaur you don't know. Apparently, dinosaurs' skulls can shape-shift.

The scientists, John Scannella and Jack Horner, believe that the Torosaurus and Triceratops are actually of the same species. According to the them, as a Triceratops aged, its horns and frill became more similar to that of a Torosaurus. Short becomes long, saw-edged becomes smoothed and so on. Having them be the same species would explain why there were never any young Torosaurus fossils discovered.

Fuck you, science.



Bert Lives.

The Mona Lisa is Moving Pictures

As announced at San Diego Comic Con on the Halo Universe Panel, The Mona Lisa is being animated. The stop motion comic will be released in parts on the Halo Waypoint channel on Xbox Live.

My partner in crime Jeff VanderMeer shot me an email to draw my attention to the clip. The subject of said email was a line that, much to my dismay, was cut from the story. I shall now take this opportunity to resurrect this line of dialogue.

"Fucking fuck fuck!"

I just about peed my pants.



Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. DudedudedudedudeDUDE. They all look way more badass than I picture them.

(Cannot wait to see Henry in action.)

Seven Years in Tibet - Heinrich Harrer (translated by Richard Graves)

buy - author wiki

In comparison, this book was exactly what I wanted it to be.

(Well. Apart from the introduction by Peter Fleming, which was so full of British arrogance I nearly tore the pages out.)

Another treasure I discovered in City Basement books, this is from the sixth print run, only a year after its initial publication. It is 56 years old, and has that old book smell about it. There's a gorgeous map in the front detailing the long route Harrer and his companion Aufschnaiter took from the internment camp they escaped at Dehra Dun in India to Lhasa in Tibet, and years later, his flight from Lhasa back to India with the invasion of Red China. At regular intervals are selected photographs that Harrer took during his stay in Tibet, which have changed since last I looked at them. Rather, my eyes have changed.

I believe this story is fairly well-known; with the outbreak of the Second World War the mountain climbing party that Harrer and Aufschnaiter were part of was detained in India and imprisoned for what was supposed to be the duration of the war. They weren't really okay with that, escaped (after a number of unsuccessful attempts), and hemmed in by both Nepal and India, neither of which offered any real refuge, pushed on to Tibet, the most neutral country in the world, with long term goals of maybe finding employment in China and making it through to Japan.

That didn't happen.

After the various accounts I've read of navigating Tibet and my own experience, I have to wonder if anyone is ever prepared for Tibet.

It is a tale quite simply and wonderfully told. Harrer falls well and truly in love with Tibet and its people, and while he does not attempt to sell this to the reader, that love saturates every sentence and paragraph. He cannot help but colour the narrative with his affection for the place, and so the reader, this reader, cannot help but fall in love as well.

This is the Tibet that people want to visit. I can't describe it as anything other than that. It's the mythical, mystical, magical holy city that exists in the minds of wondering outsiders. It's a land packed full of miracles, everywhere a miracle, and a people who are as warm, kind and welcoming as we hope them to be. Harrer had a singular opportunity to study and immerse himself in the country from an outsider's point of view, and this book is but a glimmer of the insights he gained into the character of the nation during his time there.

It's enchanting, enthralling and fascinating. Like Tintin in Tibet it's enough to plant that desire to go and insert a root system so deep that desire will never be uprooted.

And then, Red China "liberates" Tibet, and it ends.

This book was what I wanted, and at the same time, what I needed. A reminder that the Tibet that exists in this book and that I yearn to explore no longer exists. Every day that passes with Tibet beneath Chinese occupation the chances of that Tibet ever resurrecting diminish.

By the time you, I, reached that point in the book, in history, I was well in love. Harrer's heart broke with the invasion and so did mine. The terrible things that happen in war were only hinted at; China is well advanced in military finesse. Tibet is a nation that truly embraces peace, all aspects of it. The resistance, the Tibetan army, such as it was...

It's impossible to write about a book that within my mind is not the shape of a book.

Verdict: When is a book not a book? When it is this book.

A Mountain in Tibet - Charles Allen

buy - author wiki

Lonely Planet Tibet contained a list of recommended reading, with this book as being for those specifically interested in Mt Kailash. Unfortunately, this books is out of print. Fortunately, I have special luck when it comes to travel-related literature and City Basement Books (which is where I stumbled across Journey to the World's End), as I located this pristine copy amid a stack of books on the carpet for a mere $6. Unfortunately again, City Basement Books is no more.

Upon starting this book I was a touch put off; it wasn't quite what I wanted. The focus was not upon Tibet, and although the various narratives related within the pages take place within Tibet's borders, the focus is not really within Tibet either.

The book concerns itself with the surveying of the Kailash region, specifically in regards to finding the sources of such rives as the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, as well as the Indus and Sutlej, and the majority of such surveying attempts stem from the British Raj in India.

After what felt like a very dry history lesson regarding Kailash's cultural, religious and geographical significance, the book goes on to detail each foray into the region which results in some of the white areas in the map of Tibet to be unveiled as each occurs in history. A lot of time is spent skirmishing around the foothills of the Himalayas at the mercy of the hill tribes. An equal amount of time is spent looking at the politics of the Raj and the wider world (Tibet played a significant role as a buffer between British India and Soviet Russia during the years of the Great Game) as well as the smaller politics and scraps between academics and scholars regarding who discovered what first and the validity of any claims made by any explorer returning from that most mysterious unknown land.

Once reconciled to the fact the book wasn't what I wanted it to be, I had an alright time with it. Although I'm certainly it wasn't intended to be a comedy, the absurdity surrounding some of the expeditions mounted by the Raj had me laughing out loud. I became particularly enamored of the Pundits, the surveyor-spies trained by the Survey of India. Cartography at its most badhorse.

The final chapters deal with one Sven Hedin, a Swedish explorer who was much maligned by the Royal Geographic Society and, in turn, not presented by Allen without bias.

Hedin became the highlight of the book. In both his failures and successes was a...I don't know that there is a single word that will serve the purpose. At once reckless and determined. His expeditions were frightening things which demonstrate either ignorance or deliberate heedlessness, his first expedition across the Taklamakan being a perfect example. He was presented as a conflicted man, doing great things but demanding recognition equal to his deeds, his own character sabotaging the good will of those who would provide such recognition (the fact that he was a Nazi supporter didn't help either) and thus poisoning his own view of his achievements.

He was a flawed man with a magnificent ego. Yeah. I empathise.

Despite, or perhaps because, being so unfavourably presented I fixated upon him of all the explorers, and went on to buy his own accounts of his travels. Possibly because of all the explorers, he went out of pure personal desire, not political.

It is interesting to see how history treats the people that come to shape it. Later, in my further reading regarding Tibet, the accounts in which he feature painted a very different picture of the man.

At any rate, I read this several months ago, and details have blurred. Although it wasn't what I wanted, it did give me a fantastic lesson in Tibetan geography which I used not only around Kailash but the whole country.

Verdict: Dry, not without academic bias, but yes, very good for those interested in the geography around Kailash.

Why are you worth knowing?

The Elephant and the Tortoise

The program for the Melbourne Writers Festival was released today. In the week leading up I tried to work up some enthusiasm, and got out my diary and pen when flicking through the schedule today. I jotted down a couple of items, and then...scribbled them out. That wasn't enough, so I whited them out too.

I kept asking myself why I was looking, why I was even thinking about the writers festival, when I am not writing, and therefore not a writer.

It hurts.

At the top of my thoughts is an obese flaccid white elephant that I'm doing my best to ignore and failing miserably. At some point during my slow fitting of the identity of writer I ruled that I would not be a "writer" by intention only. Writing is an act, and if nothing is produced then you're not a writer, you're a wannabe. A poser. Worse than someone with no luck and no skill, you're not even bothering to try. And in all honesty, there are better identities to fake than that of the shut-in-spending-all-day-in-your-head-making-shit-up home body, which is also easily confused as 'nutjob'.

Here I am. I'm not writing. I haven't opened my manuscript since returning from Tibet, nor have I given it a great deal of thought.

I'm scared.

It hurts, it still hurts, it hurts enough that I don't want to type, I don't want to type anything at all. Every now and then I try. I get brave and ballsy and start a blog post. They look long. Longish. Long enough you need to scroll even without photos. And they hurt. I wince and flinch and stop too often to flex and stretch and take the edge off.

I can't write like this. I can't immerse myself in anything if all I'm thinking about is how much my wrists hurt and how much more they'll hurt by the end.

I'm afraid to try and work on my manuscript, because I'm afraid I won't be able to at all.

Do.

Or do not.

There must be something else. This white elephant just sits there, not saying a thing yet all the while asking, "If you're not a writer, then what are you?"

I have to be something else, I have to do something else, I have to. Writing shapes my whole life. Everything I do, decide, consume, no matter how random or trivial or unrelated to anything of significance, it's all collected because I might need it later. It will out in a story, inevitably. That is the purpose I have given my life.

It is not enough to merely live.

Whenever I tackle the elephant the possibilities I feed it aren't big enough to fill the void that writing will leave. Sometimes I wonder if it is defeatist thinking. There are many who have had their dreams thwarted only to discover alternate ones that are just as rewarding, but.

Always the but.

The only thing I can think of that would consume me, shape my every waking thought and colour my whole existence is to have children.

Which is a whole other elephant I don't want to acknowledge.

I just spent $500 on ergonomic equipment. I'm using it now, and have lasted longer than I would have before, but that may simply be rum taking the edge off. This sweet little tortoise of hope peeked out of its shell when the packages arrived, because maybe this will make enough of a difference that I won't have to tackle the elephant at all.

This tortoise has peeked out before. This tortoise has been crushed before.

I don't want to do this any more.

Someone's jawbone, Kharola Glacier Pass, 5560m with snow

Somewhere between Paryang and Saga, a town that refused to give up its name.

Tibetan Goat Skull; roadside between Tingri and Rongbuk

Happy Birthday, Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso.

The Dalai Lama turned 75 yesterday.
He hasn't been home in more than 50 years.



The above video, Leaving Fear Behind was made by Tibetans in Tibet, giving their views on the then upcoming Olympic Games to be held in Beijing 2008. Some were too afraid to show their faces. Others had to show their faces.

I break down every time I watch this.

The film maker Dhondup Wangchen and camera men were arrested shortly after the tapes were completed and sent out, and are still imprisoned. See Filming For Tibet for further.

Perhaps consider donating to the cause of Tibetan independence (Australian Tibetan Council / International Campaign for Tibet) as a birthday present for the most patient man on the planet.

Tintin (and Sir Tessa) in Tibet (and a swish bar)

The one book on my required reading list for Tibet was, wait for it...



Being more of an Asterix girl myself, this is the only Tintin comic I own. It's well-thumbed and falling apart. I loved this comic so much that in Grade 4 I wrote and illustrated a 31 page EPIC which was plagiarism as only children can get away with.

This comic is why I have been determined to visit Tibet for the better part of my life. At 8 years old the mystery of a country inaccessible by both geography and choice was powerfully tantalising, and the need to explore that mysterious country for myself dug down into my subconscious and has stayed with me ever since.

On rereading it, I was surprised at how little of Tibet actually features. Tintin and Captain Haddock spend most of their time with Nepali sherpas and lost in the Himalayas; a landscape that shapes nations, but otherwise pays no attention to the those nations. The few encounters with Tibetan Yellow Hat Monks and the Yeti/Migou were apparently enough to win me over.

(I did not see any Migou in Tibet, and while I did see plenty of monks, none of them were levitating.)

monks debating at sera monastery

Having established this as the primary driving force behind my desire to see Tibet, I felt a little silly. This was erased upon flipping through the Lonely Planet Tibet and reading the brief bio of author Robert Kelly:

His interest in Tibet can probably be traced to early readings of Tintin in Tibet...

I feel further vindicated on discovering that Tintin was the first fictional character to receive the Dalai Lama's Light of Truth award.

On June 1, 2006, Tintin became the first fictional character to be awarded the Dalai Lama's Truth of Light award. “For many people around the world Tintin in Tibet was their first introduction to Tibet, the beauty of its landscape and its culture. And that is something that has passed down the generations,” said the International Campaign for Tibet's Simon van Melick. During the awarding ceremony copies of Tintin in Tibet in Esperanto (Tinĉjo en Tibeto) were distributed among the attendees and journalists.

Which is more than most of us can claim.

I found some Tintin in Tibet t-shirts in Kathmandu, but unfortunately they were all so bad I could not bring myself to buy one even for the novelty factor.

On our last night in Beijing a handful of us decided to hit up some bars, and were directed to Beihai Park, which wikipedia portrays as a lovely place to have a picnic. I'm sure it is during the day, but at night all the bars and lounges lining the shores of the lake open up and the place goes off.





Quite upmarket, some great places there. We stood out being severely under-dressed and, yanno, European, and were mobbed by people trying to guide us to bars and get a finder's fee.

Being as Tintin was floating around at the top of my thoughts, I nixed their efforts by squeeing in my pants at the sight of this:



YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT IT'S A TINTIN BAR.



YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT I WENT OUT AND BOUGHT THE COMIC WHEN I GOT HOME.

Sadly, being as the company I was keeping at the time consisted of a German, an American, and an Englishman, only the Englishman had even heard of Tintin, and he did not share my enthusiasm. Despite that, being I was the only one of us who had picked a bar from the many on offer, we went in.

It wasn't an opium den. FYI.

I think opium dens would be cheaper.

The decor was quite chic, with incredibly high-backed chairs fashioned like lotus petals in red leather, and bar that was so well stocked the bottles took up two whole walls. Mildly disconcerting was the live music, consisting of a couple of African-Americans (they must have been a hit, they were the only black people I saw the whole time) singing an odd selection of covers, which ranged from "Everlasting Love" to "What a Wonderful World" and clashed with the general vibe of the place.

The cocktail menu made me squee all over again. Cocktails based on the characters? Hell yes.

most people focus on the blow job here

I figured Captain Haddock would be pure whiskey with more whiskey and a shot of whiskey, couldn't imagine what Snow[y] would be, and went with Lotus Blue. Definitely blue curacao and malibu, not sure about the rest. Tasty, and not too strong.

It's interesting the different reasons which drive people not only to travel, but where they travel to. When in Japan I was drawn to places that where the host of not only major historical events but entirely fictional events as well, and in South America I felt distanced for having only a thin bank of literary associations to draw upon.

Stories are the ruling force in my life. Everything I buy, read, do and choose may have at the time entirely circumstantial reasons, may look on the surface as though I'm going about my daily life, but in the end it is all because it feeds my mind, and everything that goes in makes the knowledge I can draw upon richer, and it will all out again in the stories I write. I cannot help but pay homage to the narratives that have sustained me, because I hope that one day someone will stand in a real place and be delighted to be at the scene of something I made up.

They may be "only stories", but they make me who I am, and who I am is what I do.

The Apocalyptic Gulf

This has been linked widely in my reading circles.

There is nothing to say.

COOKIE. CUTTER. SHARK.

Higgs Boson: sounds like science fiction (no really)

God particle signal is simulated as sound

Their aim is to develop a means for physicists at Cern to "listen to the data" and pick out the Higgs particle if and when they finally detect it.

Dr Lily Asquith modelled data from the giant Atlas experiment at the LHC.

She worked with sound engineers to convert data expected from collisions at the LHC into sounds.

...

The team is only now feeding in real results from real experiments.

...

But Richard Dobson - a composer involved with the project - says he is struck at how musical the products of the collisions sound.

"We can hear clear structures in the sound, almost as if they had been composed. They seem to tell a little story all to themselves. They're so dynamic and shifting all the time, it does sound like a lot of the music that you hear in contemporary composition," he explained.

...

"Its so intriguing and there's so much mystery and so much to learn. The deeper you go, the more of a pattern you find and it's fascinating and it's uplifting."

The article comes with three samples of what the Higgs boson may sound like, and what strikes me is that we've been hearing these sounds for years. I'm fairly certain the harmonic signature features in the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio play.

The Higgs boson also sounds like it hasn't yet had its morning cup of tea.

Make sure you always keep your boson onside.

Snow Lion! Raaar!

I didn't buy much in the way of souvenirs in Tibet. There is plenty available which would serve well - prayer flags, prayer wheels, rosaries, yak bells and so on - and the streets around the Jokhang and Barkhor Square in Lhasa and the Tashilumpo in Shigatse were lined with stalls. The opportunities were there (and saying, "Hello, hello, hello, hello,").



Most of what is on sale are cheap imitations imported from China and Nepal, as stated in the Lonely Planet and confirmed by both our tour leader and Tibetan guide. There is a stall selling religious items inside the Jokhang, the holiest of holies in Lhasa and Tibet, and there I found a gorgeous wooden rosary. Being quite expensive and found inside the Jokhang, I assumed it must be genuine Tibetan.

I did that thing I do when shopping, and walked off to do something totally different. When I returned, the display had been disturbed slightly, and the maker's certificate in the box below was now visible, with a massive MADE IN CHINA glaring at me.

Point taken.

You know me. I don't like being thwarted. It became a quest to find something that was Tibetan and made by Tibetans, which in Lhasa is trickier than you would think. The Lonely Planet guide came to my aid, however, and one afternoon I took myself off wandering through the back alleys behind the Johkang, around to the Muslim Quarter, up some more back alleys and through some courtyards - they have different ideas about space there - and found Dropenling; a shop that specifically sells goods made by Tibetans, the profits of which go back to those same artisans.

(And for those of you who recall some of my adventures in Japan; can you believe I did not get lost doing this? Not a single wrong turn, not a single instance of heading in exactly the opposite direction! I was gobsmacked too, considering the alleys I was walking through had no landmarks to speak of.



I shouldn't call them alleys. They're streets. They're organic Lhasa.)

And that is where I bought my awesome little snow lion.

As soon as I saw him I fell in love. The big manic eyes, batty happy ears, massive toothy slavering grin - how can anyone resist? When I proudly showed him off to my traveling companions, they didn't see the love. They said he was scary and ugly.

Wikipedia has the following to say on the subject of snow lions:

The Snow Lion resides in the East and represents unconditional cheerfulness, a mind free of doubt, clear and precise. It has a beauty and dignity resulting from a body and mind that are synchronized. The Snow Lion has a youthful, vibrant energy of goodness and a natural sense of delight. Sometimes the throne of a Buddha is depicted with eight Snow Lions on it, in this case, they represent the 8 main Bodhisattva-disciples of Buddha Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha. Associations: main quality is fearlessness, dominance over mountains, and the earth element.
-- The Four Dignities, Rudy Harderwijk

The Snow Lion is an archetypal thoughtform confluence or personification of the primordial playfullness of 'joy' and 'bliss' (Sanskrit: ananda; Tibetan: dga' ), somewhat energetically comparable to the western unicorn, though without a horn. Though paradoxical, the Snow Lion does not fly but their feet never touch the ground; their existence is a playful 'continuum' (Tibetan: rgyud) of leaping from mountain peak to mountain peak.

Later, when I proudly showed him off to my mum and told her he was a snow lion, she said, "There's no such thing as a snow lion!"

If that is true, then the world is not as awesome as it should be.



The postal service has brought unto me more objects of delight! Copies of Weird Tales #355: Steampunk Spectacular, huzzah! I haven't read it yet, but don't doubt it'll be as tasty as all the issues gone before.

There are four spare copies I'm giving away, and actually while I think of it, I also have a couple of copies of issue #354 lying around as well. For the second year running Weird Tales has been nominated for a Hugo Award, with voting closing on the 31st of July. Interested in sampling this mighty magazine? Leave a comment, first in first served.

I only ask that you please post something about what you find between the covers somewhere, even if it's just a throwaway comment on twitter.

The magazines weren't alone; in their company was a copy of Ann & Jeff VanderMeer's The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals, and my snow lion got his paws all over it.

On flip through it's a delightful little book with some delectable illustrations. I made a very careful check and double-check of the table of contents. Snow lions are not listed.

Ergo, they are not imaginary.

Ergo, they are real.

And the world is significantly awesomer for it.

This week several people around me confessed to having dreams about sex. Some of them had more than one in a single night.

Yesterday I dreamed that a hostile foreign army filled the woods around my lovely summer palace and proceeded to slay everyone around with a torrent of arrows. I had to learn to fly to stay alive.

This morning I dreamed that assassins were out to get Michelle Obama, but instead of shooting her, they shot me. In the butt.

I'm getting the short end of the stick here.

Can I get a swapsies? Who do I speak to about this?

From Somewhere Else

The post office worker handed this to me, and I boggled.

"Is that sealed with tar?"
"...No, wax I think. Proper sealing wax."

As a birthday present to myself I did end up ordering a selection of books from Asian Educational Services, namely Sven Hedin's account of attempting to explore Tibet, plus a couple of others that looked too tasty to pass up. Given I selected seamail I wasn't expecting to see these for another few weeks.

The packaging was almost as much a gift as the books.

It's wrapped in cotton, sewn at one end and sealed with something that could very well have been tar at one end.

I've never received anything like it. Of course it's from another land, it's from India, but, it's from another land. Exactly like getting mail from Wonderland.

And, as is law in the multiverse, was still a right bitch to open.

Red Hot Elephant Socks

An unexpected parcel was waiting for me when I visited my parents. Unexpected parcels are always mildly alarming, as some part of me instantly assumes I'm going to be asked to pay for something I didn't order. Given this has never happened to me, this fear is entirely irrational.

It still hasn't happened to me. Instead, THERE WERE SOCKS. AND ARMWARMERS. Damn HAWT ones if I do say so myself, cue gratuitous camwhore shot;



I burst out laughing when I saw the socks, in lieu of who they're from. I had the exact same pair given to me seven years ago in New Orleans, on my first solo jaunt overseas which wasn't really solo at all given the purpose of trip was to meet some people who were and still are magnificent co-conspirators.

Thank ye, Jaimesis. <3

The armwarmers are especially appreciated. Hands are aching with the return to computers, and the cold isn't helping. The line "write every day" has been sitting at the front of my thoughts, and is almost instantly followed by "except when you're hurting", which has also been every day. As such I've been looking for some gloves that wouldn't interfere with typing too much, and these are perfect. Double mwah-mwah.

Because he matched the presents so well it had to be fate, that photo is also the introduction of a finger puppet I bought in Kathmandu. Readers, I would like you to meet Ganesh, short for Angry-Ganesh-Doesn't-Like-The-Spicy-Bone-Filled-Curry-Stomp-Crash-Raaar.



He wasn't named after a personal experience. No. Not at all. Ever.

Western Tibet

THAT SAID:

If you intend to travel to western Tibet and particularly Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarova any time in the next couple of months, you should know that the road (there's only one) is fucked.

It's undergoing some serious roadworks. They're so serious it doesn't look like roadworks at all. It looks like they're building the damn thing for the first time. There is no sealed road from Saga onwards, and if you hit a stretch that has had the rocks cleared you'll start cheering. Some stretches have been leveled, but they're rare treats. They appear to be putting in drains or something similar, which involves digging up the road every couple of kilometres and around which you must detour. You will be catapulted from your seat, you will hit your head, you will get very tired and grumpy, and you will not go far fast. If you have boobs, you will need to get some seriously hardcore sports bras.

Our itinerary was originally to drive from Sakya to Saga, and then Saga to Darchen where we would start our three day kora around Kailash. We got word from a group going before us that the 9 hour drive between Saga and Darchen was actually 16, with them starting the trek the next day. We had to do a lot more time in the 4WDs to stay on timetable (one plan that was thankfully jettisoned involved leaving at 3 in the morning) and not screw ourselves over.

I recommend an mp3 player with some sort of travel battery, and a light long-sleeved top. The air up on the plateau is icy, but the sun is incredibly enthusiastic, and when you're out of the wind it is hot. You won't often be able to put the windows down due to dust. After a particularly long period of time going through roadworks up a mountain pass, we pinged the temperature inside the 4WD at 36.7C degrees. Then we stopped, opened all the doors and the temperature dropped 20 degrees.

These are long days, by the end of which you will be in a bad mood. Suck it up. There is no other way to get out there, and it is worth it.

Slowing the Memory

In addendum to my last post about my recalcitrance to share Tibet because I am selfish and greedy and I won't share my lunch with you either, this same selfishness also manifests as a sort of anti-consumption as well.

Since returning a fortnight ago, I haven't watched any movies, nor read any books, nor even thought about starting back in my own fiction. I haven't read or watched anything of substance on the internet, be it articles, essays or clips. I haven't corresponded with any real depth.

Tibet had an effect and infected me like no where else I've been to date. This pile of books about Tibet I have I am famished to read, but am afraid to go near. I avert my eyes from news about the country even as I seek it out. I want to know more, more, more.

But to do so will overlay the time I spent there. Should I expand my knowledge of the place, I won't be able to consider my own experience without viewing it through the filter of that knowledge. There is nothing more to do with life but learn and none of us should ever shy away from it, but, but, but.

I want to carry the space Tibet made in my mind as long as I can. It's a delicate thing, vast and inexplicable, and by simply going through each day that space gets smaller. To do what seems so frivolous a thing as read a novel would only hasten that contraction. I want to savour this rare silhouette of an emotion. Putting things in or turning my mind to other matters is a distraction I don't want.

Inevitably, Tibet will sublimate as Melbourne's own idiosyncrasies change the colour of my thoughts.

Until then, I stay still and silent.

The Dream Woken In, And Left Behind

"Enough of washing machines! Of your domestic issues we care not! What of Tibet?"

Very well.

I could tell you that the trip I went on was Tibet Encompassed, and that the following photo was taken on the Qinghai-Tibet Train: I fell asleep surrounded by washed out hills subdued by generations of farming and sky lost in haze, I woke up to find the land rippled with unblemished snow, and watched the sun rise in clean heavens over this so long distant and magical land.

Or, I could tell you that the trip I went on was Blue Harvest, and that the following photo was taken at moisture farming station on Tatooine, shortly before we were attacked by Tusken Raiders and nearly trampled by banthas.



A friend pointed out quite rightly that I am selfish with my photos. Perhaps because I do not go on holiday. When I travel rest and relaxation are not the point. I go out into the world to be confronted and challenged, to learn and be surprised and learn again, to wash out the clutter in my head and heart, and I come back exhausted, wrung out, and bewildered.

It isn't a holiday. It's personal. I'm selfish because what I went through is mine; my life, my mind.

The Universe Made Me Do It

Immediately on returning from travels and before making plans for the next trip (thus locking myself into a saving budget in which there is no room to move) is the only time I can bring myself to throw large lumps of money at things that do not involve me getting on a plane.

I want it noted that I tried to be a responsible, sensible, forward-planning adult and purchase a necessary item of household white goods, and I want it noted that I have been thwarted from doing this by three centimetres.

Permanently.

Guess I'll just have to use that money on a ticket to Europe, right?

Well. Shucks. Damn. And poot.

In light of this failure, I have no alternative but to drink this pear cider and start making vegetable soup under the influence.

The Cliche In My Ribs

I drove today, for the first time in months. Had my down jacket on, which is like wearing my bed, so snug and warm I had the window down and the cold night air on my face. The music up loud. Hollering incoherently on the downhill rush.

There was nothing special about my destination, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened in the day. It was just a sudden moment of utter exuberance.

They say, "It felt like I was going to burst." As if the organs with which we produce and feel our emotions are housed in our ribs, as if these intangible moods have the power to put physical strain upon those ribs, as if there were a serious danger of physically exploding with joy.

It's a cliche because it's overused, and it's overused because it's true.

I wanted to carry this bubble of happy on and blow it bigger. A night bar hopping and talking ludicrous shit and giggles is exactly what is required, but alas, my possee are overseas or out of town or otherwise engaged.

Instead, I'm at my parents, got the house to myself, sprawled on the couch with a cup of tea at my side, the World Cup on their fuck-off big TV, nice toasty gas heater killing even the hint of a chill, and the two best dogs in world jonsing for space on my lap.

Not quite the same as mischief and mayhem. Not a second prize either. My heart is still puffed up and manic. There's ice cream in my future.

Being me is fucking glee-inducing. For no reason whatsoever. My ribs aren't used to this.

IT'S ON THE INTERNET IT MUST BE TRUE (NOW)

Someone landed on my blog by googling "what else does volcanoes spit out" sans question mark.

Answer:



Unicorns.

"Only you could come back from Tibet with BOOKS."

I dispute the above statement.



There are plenty of people within my pocket of society who would do exactly the same. Yeah, I'm looking at you. And you. And you especially.

Alas, none of these books were bought in Tibet. The only books I met in Tibet were scriptures sold in the Sera Monastery just outside of Lhasa, and while I was tempted, the Tibetan spoken language tends to flummox me, and the alphabet is far beyond my comprehension.

Besides, the last place to buy books about Tibet is in Tibet. Thank you, CCP.

From China, I present the Little Red Book (which is not a quality print job, I think it has been made from toilet paper), and The Qin Dynasty Terra-Cotta Army of DREAMS.

This second book is signed by Mr Yan. The Mr Yan. A skim around google will teach you that Emperor Qin's tomb was first discovered "by local farmers drilling a water well".

Mr Yan is that farmer.

He's not a farmer anymore. The discovery made him a millionaire, and now he spends every day sitting in the museum shop, smoking and signing books. That is all he does. He wins the prize for being the most dour, sour, grumpy and glowering old man I met on my journey. He needs to quit smoking too.

The rest came from Kathmandu, Nepal, a city that is apparently Mecca for all manner of books concerning Tibet. Baggage space limited what I came away with, but regardless, that's a pile of pure treasure.

Return to Tibet is Heinrich Harrer's account of his return to his second home after Chinese occupation. Seven Years In Tibet, his account of how he came to live in the holy city of Lhasa in the first place, is an exceptionally wonderful read.

The Tibetan-English Dictionary I snatched up as soon as I saw it. If perhaps I'd taken a moment to think about it, I would have left it and spent more time hunting for an English-Tibetan dictionary, heh.

ནང-མཆད nan-mchod 1. mystical religious service; also offerings made to deities in such a service, the most important offering being sanctified beer poured from a human-skull-cup into the cups of devotees who drink it as something efficacious against evil. 2. a sort of potion consisting of the ten impurities, viz., five kinds of flesh (including human flesh), excrement, urine, blood, marrow and (more Tibetan characters I can't make out) (semen) all mixed together, trans-substantiated by charms into (Tibetan characters) bdud-rtsi the potion of immortality, a small quantity of which is tasted by the devotees with the lama at their head. This drink is considered of great importance by the mystics who seek to obtain gifts of witchcraft; hence every offering is sprinkled with this potion.

I couldn't find the right accent for a couple of those Tibetan characters, nor figure any accents for the romanised terms. At any rate, there's a sample of the gems you get when you randomly open a dictionary. First printed 1902, and this is a reprint, not a new edition. It shows.

These two books I bought from a book shop by the Boudhanath, the heart of Little Tibet in Kathmandu. A couple of monks were going through every single magnet the shopkeeper had when I wandered up to the counter. There were a lot of magnets, but I don't think they were pressed for time.

When at last I found myself roaming Kathmandu alone, my companions having departed for the airport one by one, I was almost immediately sucked into yet another bookshop; Vajra Books in Thamel. Spent a good hour in there, just looking. It's funny how you can find home in strange lands.

After much agonising, I came away with;

• Diary of a Journey Across Tibet 1891-1892 - Hamilton Bower
• Through Unknown Tibet 1896 - M. S. Wellby
• Riddles of the Gobi Desert 1929 - Sven Hedin
• My Life as an Explorer 1885-1935 - Sven Hedin
  

They're reprints of journals, accounts and diaries of Europeans who explored Tibet, back when the land was sealed not just by mountains but its own choice. Bower and Wellby I chose after flipping through the pages, but Hedin I was very excited to see. He was a very interesting personality, and more than a touch blinded by his own ambition. Unfortunately, they didn't have his accounts specifically detailing his forays into Tibet, so these are something of a consolation prize.

Fortunately, the publisher Asian Educational Services has those books in stock and available online. Maybe that should be "unfortunately". They're exceptionally beautiful editions, all of these books, as well as all the other books I left behind in Kathmandu. There's an absolute dragon's hoard of explorer logs available there. Very dangerous site. Click at your own risk.

(ETA: Oh dude. A book on Tibet by Younghusband. I'm tempted, yet pretty sure I'd find that nothing but an entirely aggravating read.)

My To Be Read Bookshelf is fucking awesome.

To The Knuckle, Ya Hear?

After nearly a week back in Oz, I think I’ve expelled the last of the junk that China, Tibet and Nepal laid in my nose.

Most travels become centred on the excretions of the bowel, whether or not this is admitted in polite company. Mess with the diet, never know where the next loo is and have to conquer squats and cesspits – it’s all about the poop.

This trip was equally focused on the excretions of the nasal cavity, as you just can't have too many orifices expelling at the same time, and upon which I shall elaborate upon now.

Beijing

Beijing has no sky.



That is the first photograph I took on Chinese soil, the first thing I saw upon leaving the airport, and yeah, I totally freaked out at the thought of breathing for the next few days.

I’m exaggerating. Mildly. There were blue skies while I was in the city.

But the pollution. The pollution! Blasphemy.

At Tiananmen Square they raise the Chinese flag every sunrise, and lower it every sunset. It’s quite the ritual, with a squad of the People's Liberation Army marching out from beneath Chairman Mao’s portrait over the gate to the Forbidden City, perfectly choreographed so they take 108 paces per minute, 75cm per pace, and timed so that the flag comes down exactly when the sun disappears below the horizon.

It would be more impressive if the sun had not disappeared behind the pollution half an hour before hand.



There it goes.

I commented to a local who was “practicing his English on me” that no one would know if the timing was out with the pollution hiding the sunset. He told me that oh, the air pollution had improved so much since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when all the big factories had been moved away from the city. It was so much better now, amazing.

This was an improvement?

Don’t think I did a good job of hiding my horror.

China Proper left black boogers in my nose, solid like concrete. Took some blowing and then poking to get them moving.

Tibet

The Tibetan Plateau is free of China’s air issues, much to my relief. It is, however, dusty.



No, I mean it. The whole country is dusty.



Seriously.



Really.



We spent a day in this dust storm. There was more dust than air about, visibility was frequently zilch and we spent a good deal of time stopped, hoping no one ran into us while the dust washed up against the windows like water.

And that shit gets everywhere, and you would not believe how much dust your nasal cavity can contain.

The air is also incredibly cold and bone-dry. Combined with the altitude, I had a permanent blood nose. No major gushing, but a perpetual ooze.

In this regard, the dust was useful. I let it collect and act as a clotting agent. While the others were occupied with clearing their noses at every opportunity, I only got the tissues out of an evening, and proceeded with the excavation before bed. With body systems slowing down with sleep, the body struggles even further getting oxygen around at altitude, so you need all the space in your nose you can get.

This did mean that I was blowing a day's worth of junk out, and oh my lord Buddha. Some of those chunks were as big as my thumbnail, no exaggeration. Green and brown, and with blood clots. First time I was afraid I'd blown out a bit of my brain. The stuff down the nostril passage was dry and caked on too. It was amazing. Seriously, could have used this stuff as mortar in the Great Wall.

Wasn't just the poor soft foreigners either. I have a very clear and distinct and unfortunately precise memory of witnessing a woman who ran a food tent snot into her palm, try to wipe it on her shoe and then turn her hand over to inspect it when it didn't come off. I saw. Oh, I saw. It was fucking huge. Then she gave me my pot noodle.

Nepal

Coming down from altitude, we were told we'd be near high with oxygen. Oxygen!

This was a lie, as the water to oxygen ratio in the air was about equal. Plus, Kathmandu Valley does not boast particularly clean air either.



Left over blood nose from Tibet plus pollution, but less dust and actual moisture in the air meant a downgrade in the alert status of what came out my nose, which, given that normally nothing comes out my nose, still meant those boogers had punch.

Didn't need to know all that?

This is the real world, kids. Snot happens.




Nose is still bleeding, actually. I think it's a touch traumatised.

I know it's only because I'm suffering some serious fatigue and am PMSing like a feral bushpig, but today is horrible and I hope it ends soon.

Happy birthday, me.

Monday I was back.
Today is Thursday.
I am not unpacked.





Tired.