Westward ho...

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.
Abraham Lincoln

Back in the UK and finding myself gently settling into the early spring now. The contrast on my return from Phnom Penh where temperatures were regularly 30 degrees centigrade plus to the cold of the first few weeks in Thetford where we experienced the dubious pleasures of -10 was stark indeed. Added to the basic challenge were the joys of jet lag, some sort of cold probably contracted whilst enjoying the recirculated breathing of 600 and odd people on an Airbus 380 and, finally, the inconvenience of a little bit of food poisoning likely due to the consumption of what seemed to be a reheated veggie breakfast at a local hostelry. This latter made any thoughts of further travel somewhat uninviting. Once or twice in the past when I have returned to olde Albion a bit too soon I have succumbed to the temptations of escaping to more tropical climes when faced with the realities of a British winter. This time though, it seems that I will have to stay for at least the next month or so.

Added to the list of reasons to stay is also a promise I made to an American neighbour to look after his garden whilst he himself has to do some enforced travelling. He is a pleasant young man who shares with many of his compatriots the rather endearing habit of calling his seniors ‘sir’. As I am very much in this category (senior), I find myself treated in this slightly over-respectful manner on a regular basis. By no means is every American youngster quite so respectful, but during my visits to the States I was somewhat pleasantly surprised at just how often this was the case.

Much like the UK, and maybe like many other cultures, my experience of the US was that folks seemed very much more friendly, as well as more polite, the further you got from the main metropolises. New York was perhaps the least friendly place I have ever been on this planet. Nobody seemed to have even the time for the most rudimentary manners. Orders were the norm, rather than requests, and scarcely if ever were they followed by a ‘please’ or a ‘thank you’. When I tried to order a coffee in a cafe in central Manhattan I made the mistake of hesitating for perhaps a millisecond. This pause was all too much for the barista serving me who took it as his cue to move on to the next customer without so much as a by your leave. On another occasion I had accompanied my elderly father to the city back in the 80s. I remember him asking a policeman if he knew the way to the Empire State Building. This particular representative of New York’s Finest simply answered ‘yes’ and turned away.

On the other hand, a visit to the Lancaster county in Pensylvania a few years later with my girlfriend of the time, Natalia, led to us discovering the joys of the Amish culture flourishing there. Driving through the rolling countryside and leaving the turnpike with its anonymous shopping malls behind, it felt as if we had suddenly entered a time warp. Horse draw carriages of a type scarcely seen for over a century in the UK plied the narrow lanes. Men with hugely impressive beards and very courteous manners greeted you openly, if a little cautiously at times, their wives and daughters adorned in a manner that would not have looked out of place in pre-Victorian England. We rented a small room for a few days just outside the oddly name town of Intercourse. Our hosts could not have been friendlier or more helpful. The local area was quite lovely too, though the early signs of creeping commercialisation were already apparent even back then. I would guess that a return to Lancaster now might leave one a tad disappointed …

After experiencing Intercourse a few times (apologies, but some lines are just too difficult to resist…) we drove on South to the inaptly named Paradise and then turned West in the direction of Gettysburg. Given the hugely influential events that occurred there, the town itself was remarkably unprepossessing. We had a coffee in the quiet and pleasant Carlisle Street before heading out to the site of the battle itself. During the American Civil War the Confederate troops, led by General Robert E. Lee, had experienced a series of victories that took them to within 50 miles of Washington. For a few weeks it was looking quite probable that the South would emerge victorious. History hung in the balance. Their advance was halted in a large and open field just South of the town of Gettysburg. I sat with Natalia on a large rock that formed part of Little Round Top. On the early spring day we visited the area struck one as utterly pleasant, a gentle breeze blew across the high ground where we sat gazing down across a gently rising field below us that led into a wood about a mile away. It was hard to believe looking down on that peaceful scene the sheer carnage that had taken place there 130 years before. 15,000 Confederate troops had directly charged across the uphill, open ground trying in vain to take the dominating position that was occupied by Union army on the hilltop. 6,000 of those men died and many more were injured. The assault became known as Pickett’s charge and, in many ways, it marked the turning point of the war.

The cherry trees were in blossom by the time we reached Washington, the capital of this great yet perplexing nation. There had been yet another drive-by shooting the day before we arrived and Natalia was understandably nervous. A quarter of a century later and this all-American problem only seems to have grown worse. At the time, it was as much as I could do to persuade Natalia to leave the safety of our hotel room and head into the centre of town. Compared to New York at least, the capital was somewhat more civilised. We visited the normal attractions; the Smithsonian, Congress, the Lincoln Memorial yet it felt somehow soulless. Mightily impressive yes, but in a way that was so obviously designed to be impressive. It left the two of us less than impressed…

All in all, I visited the US a grand total of six times but I am not sure if I will ever go back now. It is very much a subjective opinion, but for me there was something oddly unsettling in the culture. Everything but everything seemed to be in hock to commercial interests. The realisation dawned early that visiting a mall in Miami was much the same as visiting a mall in Washington or Boston or Philadelphia or any one of a hundred other cities. This was back in the early 1990s and of course now much the same phenomenon has been visited upon the UK and, indeed, on the rest of the planet. At the time though, I remember thinking how terribly similar everything was; the J.C. Penneys and the Walmarts, the McDonalds and the Wendys, the Starbucks and the Dunkin’ Donuts.

It is hard to express exactly the reasons for my lack of desire to return, but perhaps it comes down to the feeling that I was never really able to feel like a traveller there but always merely a tourist. On almost every occasion it had felt as if I had been processed, as if I had entered via the airport at one end, had the requisite experiences in the requisite way, seen the right sights, got the right photographs, bought the right mementos, and then exited via the same airport on the way out. Somehow, the experience had never felt quite genuine, never quite ‘real’.

Back home in the UK amidst the sounds of a gurgling central heating system struggling manfully to cope with the demands of yet another cold evening whilst the freezing rain spatters noisily against the window panes, I find myself wondering where my nomadic tendencies will lead me next. Madrid in April is looking quite likely (I promised to help a friend sell a flat there) although the temptation of Greece in early May is also quite alluring. There is a big World out there waiting to be explored, although it would seem that I am forever drawn Eastwards to the depths of Europe and Asia rather than the more structured temptations of the U.S.

Needing a little energy...

Much as it pains me to say, this week I find myself in tax dodging Starbucks, in its Epping incarnation, famed for its 'Swiss' coffee and creative accountancy. My excuse is that I needed a decent internet connection and also a little space away from friends, many of whom view the idea of contributing to Starbucks' coffers with some distaste.
After another week in the UK, I realise that my definition of a pleasant day seems to have changed quite drastically over the past couple of years. Gone are the days of finding 18 or 19 degrees centigrade comfortable; after spending weeks, or even months, in the mid thirties, such days now seem positively chilly. Odd too how one notices all the little aches and pains that a body is heir too in such weather as is prevalent here in the UK. In Southern China and, particularly, in Thailand, such things scarce came to my attention. Perhaps the last few years have rather spoilt me in this way, now the prospect of spending months of one's year in such a climate as here in the UK seems positively unpleasant.
One of the most positive aspects of my recent travels has been just how healthy, how energetic, I had been feeling. I am, hopefully, not quite over the hill yet, but certainly could be described as a tad long in the tooth. Yet during the past five months it has been noticeable just how well, how energetic, how downright healthy I have felt.
For much of this time I have become increasingly interested in Chinese health systems that relate to the idea of chi. For those who have never heard of such a notion, chi is defined as a universal energy that exists in all living things. To feel well, according to this paradigm, one has to find ways of increasing one's chi, or at least to having access to good quality chi. The latter, in the Chinese system, is considered a matter of clearing the body of stagnant and stale chi, and replacing it with fresh and flowing chi. The techniques evolved by the Chinese Taoists were originally known as qigong. As ever with Chinese, the sound of the words is a lot more exotic than its literal translation of 'energy work'.

Over the last few years, such esoteric health systems seem to have played a significant role in my life. At times, it almost feels as if these ideas have found me, rather than me them. My first exposure to the concept came about seven or eight years ago now. At the time I was severely incapacitated due to nerve damage from a previous climbing accident, the effects of which had dogged me for most of my adult life.
One day, whilst wandering along a local High Road, supported by a pair of walking sticks, I happened to notice an advert for acupuncture in the window of a shop that specialised in all things Chinese, and particularly Traditional Medicine. I tended to notice a lot of such things in those days. One of the benefits of finding one's normal walking pace to be as painfully slow as mine was at the time, is that one finds one has time to notice an awful lot more detail than was previously the case when I would blithely yet somewhat blindly wander the streets in good health. In my youth, I had often rushed around at a helter skelter rate as is the rather over-urgent norm of our present day society.
On enquiring how much such treatment would set me back, I was informed it would require a rather chunky £360 for 12 sessions. At other times, I might have been reluctant to spend such sums on what seemed to me to be a somewhat fanciful form of treatment, but as being confined to using a pair of walking sticks just to get about tends to restrict the things one wishes to spend money on, it seemed a reasonable idea to at least give acupuncture a chance.

I think my interest was also piqued as the year before I had spent much time in researching a book about the idea of a vital life force, and how this same idea seems to crop up again and again, being found in different guises in many cultures and spiritual systems around the World. I had managed to complete several chapters of the book covering such interesting notions as prana in yoga, huna in the Hawaiian spiritual system, odic force as explicated by Von Reichenbach in the 19th century, Henri Bergson's Elan Vital and even Wilhelm Reich's intensely sexual idea of a universal orgone energy.
Researching and writing about such things had been a pleasurable experience as I found many similarities in these various systems, and was fast confirming the idea that they were all essentially talking about the same thing, albeit using vastly different terminologies. All was going well with the book until I reached the chapter that was to deal with the Chinese Taoist idea of chi. Although it was clear that the concept was, in many ways at least, quite similar to the other examples, it seemed that the more I looked into it, the more complex and the more subtle the ideas became. In the end, it struck me as unfair that I should mislead any potential readers of the book by pretending I had sufficient knowledge of the concept of chi to warrant giving my opinions on the subject.
My first practical exposure to these ideas came with that first course of acupuncture. Many of a more scientific bent tend to want to decry the effects of this system and, it has to be admitted, there are many aspects that don't easily fit into Western ideas as to how the body works. Some of the critics tend to observe that any positive effects are probably down to placebo effects alone. My own expectations had been initially very low, but I did think that, given my parlous state at the time, it was worth trying at least.
Despite my low expectations, within a few weeks I was able to do away with one of the sticks. Within another month, I was walking unaided for the first time in quite a while. Whether I understood what was occurring or not, clearing something had changed. At the end of the treatment, I found myself walking relatively normally again and, quite pleasantly, out of real pain for the first time in years. There was a leftover numbness that stretched down the side of my right leg and into the foot, making moving the toes of that foot more or less impossible, but it seemed a small price to pay, generally preferring pleasantly numb to positively painful.
Such experiences made me quite open to the suggestion that I should indulge in a little qigong whilst I was in China. Again my expectations were relatively low, but even after a short while my flexibility began to improve. Also, my general sense of well-being, of joie-de-vivre even, had clearly taken a turn for the better.

After about three weeks I began to notice that feeling was returning to my toes and, lo and behold, for the first time in years I was actually beginning to move them again. At first the movements were slow, barely perceptible in fact. I even dismissed them originally as mere wish fulfilment. Over time though, little by little, strength began to return, and with that strength came an ability to balance on that foot once again.
My understanding of nerve damage had led me to believe that such results were nigh on impossible, but on the other hand, it is hard to deny one's own personal experiences even if they don't fit the paradigms one it given by Western medicine. In the couple of months since, the numbness has continued to subside but the old pain has not returned and, as an added bonus, the strength seems to be gradually returning to muscles that had been dormant for many a year.
Looking back on my time in China from a distance of some weeks, I have come to realise that much of what I valued and enjoyed in China were the remnants of the past, the gifts of a long and fascinating history. The philosophy, the spiritual systems, even the architecture of previous dynastys has left China with a deep and rich source of inspiration and guidance which, unfortunately, much of modern China seems to be busily ignoring in its headlong rush towards a supposed modernity, which expresses itself by way of aping the worst excesses of Western decadence and capitalism.
As I sit here, slightly shamefacedly enjoying the delights of a fairtrade coffee in Starbucks in Epping, I find myself once more yearning to go back and enjoy the best of what China has to offer, even if that emotion is mixed with a dread of the worst. Yangshuo, with its clear waters, beautiful peaks, wonderful vistas and clean air beckons just as much as the East Coast cities with their constant noise, teeming crowds and choking pollution repel.

China is forever an enigma, its history and culture being both fascinatingly deep and subtle whilst simultaneously its modern developments are ugly and depersonalising almost beyond believe. I find myself both loving and loathing the place in almost equal measure...

Same old, same old...

This week I find myself feeling somewhat grounded, back in an old hunting ground which scarcely seems to have changed since the last time I saw it. I am presently spending some time in the UK and finding that no matter how much time one spends away from the place the same old inertia and ennui seems to prevail here. Life in South East Asia was sometimes frustrating, often annoying, even dangerous on occasions, but always colourful and intense. Back here in the UK, there is a strange deadness to proceedings. It's as if the last five months never happened and life has gone on in essentially in the same way as it always does in the UK. Moderate and mediocre, the UK feels like a wet blanket of a country that squelches those who dare to show a little eccentricity, those who dare to be a little different.
Although one would struggle to realise it, there is a general election coming up in the next month. I listened to a commentator on the BBC explaining how the choice this time was starker than it had been for many an election. He then went on to explain the choice that was before us. We had the Labour party, who advocated austerity but at a slower rate than is currently the case, the Liberals, who advocate austerity at about the same rate, the Conservatives, who advocate austerity at an increased rate and, finally, the United Kingdom Independence Party, who advocate austerity at the fastest rate of the lot! At this point, I find myself struggling to work out exactly where this 'stark' choice was, as far as I could see it was just a matter of how severe the austerity would be.

.A few, completely interchangeable, UK politicos..

Still, I suppose, that unlike Thailand at least the UK has a civilian government and a form of democracy, of sorts. And unlike China, you do at least get the chance to vote for a party every few years, even if the parties you can vote for are essentially saying very much the same thing. It does feel like a very clear demonstration of something the redoubtable Ken Livingstone said many moons ago: 'If voting changed anything, they'd abolish it!'
On a more personal level, I find myself already yearning to experience different places, different cultures and different societies once more. Spain is a distinct possibility, with the idea of spending a few weeks in the Girona or Barelona areas. I have had, for several years now, an ongoing love of the architecture of Antoni Gaudi. The man lived and died before the appearance of the surrealists in Paris in the 1920's, but one can view him as something of an architectural precursor to this movement. Oddly, he lived a life of fairly extreme abstinence, but his buildings have a joyous exuberance that has to be experienced directly to be believed.

The gorgeous, and slightly mad, surrealist architecture of Antoni Gaudi...

Spain is particularly tempting at this juncture because of the current strength of the pound against the Euro. Travel on the continent has once more become an attractive proposition. At the same time, and rather against economic fundamentals, the US dollar has become quite expensive. Fortunately, this is not too great a problem as the temptations of America, or at least the United States, do not exert a particularly strong pull on me.
I have, at various times in the past, spent some months in the US, but on each occasion I found the society to be one of the less interesting, dominated by commercial interests and a fascination, almost an obsession, with getting rich quick. I travelled through about a dozen different states, but essentially found that the same multi-nationals dominated wherever one went. A McDonalds in Maine feels very much the same as a McDonalds in Delaware (and, for that matter, anywhere else on the entire planet).
There was also an extraordinary parochialism to the attitudes of many of the folks I met and conversed with there. With a few notable and interesting exceptions, most of those I spoke to seemed to harbour the most extreme US-centralism, the notion that the one and only place to be was the US, and that somehow other countries were of much lesser importance. To be fair, I have come across similar attitudes in many countries, but perhaps nowhere else was it as pronounced as it was in the US. I remember one lass who wished to assure me that she had travelled widely. When I enquired as to where she had been she responded with 'Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington...'

A villainous selection....

Of course, and to be fair, the rather unfortunate effects of the influence of multi-nationals and globalisation have not been confined to the US. It was, however, the place in which I first became aware of the process as a day to day reality. My first visit to the US was some 25 or so years ago now, and that rather depressing 'sameness' was already apparent in many of the places I visited back then. That same process, because of globalisation, can now be experienced almost anywhere one goes. From a personal point of view, I feel that I want to go out and experience other places and other cultures before the cold, dead hand of globalisation has flattened the whole planet into an acceptable but very boring 'niceness'.
As I write these words I realise my own participation in the process. I am sitting in a branch of Costas in Buckhurst Hill on the edges of London. It is one of many such branches one can find all over the UK in this day and age. Much like Neros, like Starbucks, like Pret a Manger, etc. There are the some very pleasant non-chain cafés sprinkled about here and there, but they are largely swamped by the overpowering ubiquity of these huge chains. The lack of this was one of the joys of Thailand. The multinationals had infected the larger cities such as Bangkok and Chiang Mai, but in the smaller towns there were all manner of interestingly individual cafés. China was interesting in a different way, spawning as it does almost endless imitations of the likes of Starbucks.
For now, in this particular branch of Costas, I find myself spending time planning the start of the next venture. I am not sure of exactly when and where but it is hard to conceive of living in the UK for any more than a few months in the next year or two, the temptations of travel and the advantages of alternative lifestyles are far too tempting to be ignored. My own particular brand of flaneurial activity seems to lend itself very naturally to enjoying other places and other cultures. Such pleasures are so diluted in countries such as the UK as to be scarcely definable as a pleasure at all. I find myself longing for warmer climes and the greater intensity and variety that is available in other parts of this beautiful planet of ours.

I still love the occasional peach and gingersnap tea. Man cannot survive on coffee alone!

Text mad...

          Today my flaneurial duties have drawn me to the luxurious and highly impressive surrounds of a brand new Mall of four floors standing on the edge of the main junction into Chang An. It seems very salubrious and swanky, decorated tastefully with hanging sculptures dangling from the type of roof one that would have made Frank Lloyd Wright proud. Indeed, the whole design of the mall reminds one of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. No doubt this particular architect owes much of his inspiration to the genius of Mr Wright. So close are the features to Wright's design that one could be excused for imagining that the designer in question simply copied the ideas...perish the thought!

          Circumstances dictate a limited choice of watering holes in this monument to commerce, so I find myself taking an Americano and a glass of water in a franchise of a particularly global, tax-dodging American enterprise. Oddly, when I asked for 'yi bai shui' (a cup of water) the waitress proceeded, as per normal, to put ice cubes in the cup, followed, as is usual here, with hot water (the Chinese rarely drink their water cold). Very strange....

          Fortunately, this particular shopping mall seems to be equipped with a very efficient air cleaning system as normally, on this particular junction, one does well if one can refrain from coughing for more than three minutes. I have had the misfortune of having had to wait for buses on several occasions at this particular environmental black-spot. It could not be defined as a pleasant experience.

          Getting to the bus stop in the first place is a life threatening experience in itself involving, as it does, the crossing of eight lanes of traffic. The traffic is 'controlled', and I use the word in the loosest possible sense, by traffic lights. For many drivers the prohibition of the red light seems to be merely optional, for taxi drivers it is like a red rag to a bull. They are more likely to accelerate than slow down in response to such a provocation. Added to this, it would seem that no law at all applies to the bicyclists (many electric powered these days, silent assassins ...) and motorised rickshaw wallahs who quite happily proceed in the opposite direction to the main stream of traffic – quite comical at times... if it wasn't quite so terrifying. This trepidatious pedestrian feels himself in mortal peril each and every time he has the misfortune to have to cross that particular road.

          Inside the café, I sit and chat with a friend whilst observing a group of five youngsters, probably around 15 years of age, sitting around a table together. None of them though is actually talking to another but all are absorbed in the process of texting on their smart phones. This is a very common sight in China and, to be fair, almost everywhere else one goes in the World these days where these devices are readily available and affordable. By the look of things, these youngsters seem to be involved in earnest text conversations with friends not currently present. I often wonder in such circumstances if, when they finally meet up with the friend they are texting, they will then spend that time texting the friends they are currently with!?

          Apparently a whole new form of etiquette has formed around the question of the answering of text messages,  American youngsters in particular being prone to its demands. It seems to receive one and not to respond is considered the height of rudeness. The fear of being accused of such a social faux pas has lead youngsters to going to bed with their phones next to the pillows, ever ready to answer such profound enquiries as 'Are you  still awake?'

          Once more, it seems that the thing we think we own somehow ends up owning us...

          It is a decidedly odd paradox in modern life that seems to occur with alarming regularity: devices described as 'labour saving' or 'time saving' commonly have the opposite effect. Mobile phones were touted as saving us time and the need to be near a static phone – the reality has been that there is now nowhere to escape to if you have such a device (I often leave mine turned off ...).
 The wealthiest societies around the world are equipped with many such 'time saving' devices and yet the more they own the less time people actually seem to have. The opposite is also true, if you look at the 'poorer' societies in the World, the lack of such devices as phones, cars, computers, washing up machines, etc., etc., actually seems to magically leave them with more time. A very curious state of affairs.

          This paradox also applies to town and country. The places where most time saving devices are concentrated, i.e. cities, are at one and the same time the most frenetic and often least pleasant places, where people seem to be in a headlong rush to get ... where exactly?

          I take another sip of coffee and observe one of the youngsters now staring at the screen of his device whilst swishing his thumbs back and forth across the surface as it makes little beeps and whistles. He is strangely absorbed and yet at the same time agitated, gradually getting more and more animated in his reactions, his lips curling into agonised grimaces, limbs occasionally jerking to one side or the other in an attempt to control some process or another. One feels like telling him, if my Mandarin were good enough (which it is not) that he is looking at flashing lights on a tiny screen which is making rather silly little noises ... it really doesn't matter that much. I would guess the reaction would not be a pleasant one!

Wiser to keep my counsel methinks...

          This coffee shop is quietly efficient but could be located anywhere on the planet. Indeed, much the same could be said of the shopping centre itself. A mall, is a mall, is a mall – this one a particularly fine example of the flattening effect of the globalisation. It is clean, anonymous and ... completely without character, other than at the most banal and superficial level.  The idea of 'Globalisation' itself has become one of the sacred cows, much like such erroneous and socially damaging ideas as subjecting every aspect of life to 'market forces'. Its effects have created a world wherein, once one finds oneself in such a mall, one could be anywhere on the planet.

          As someone who considers himself something of a nomad, I tend to treasure the differences between places, peoples and cultures. In this way, it is sad to see the world getting smaller and smaller and less and less diverse. The whole planet appears to be settling into a globalised culture that is increasingly fast but equally, increasingly shallow and terribly anonymising. People reduced to being mere consumers, forever rushing around, whipped into a frenzy by manipulative and ruthless advertising, fearful that they will lose out on the latest 'bargain'. There seems (fortunately, only seems ... ) to be but one game in town, and much like the computer game that is obsessing my fellow customer, it is a pretty superficial and banal game at best.

          My young fellow customer has finally finished swishing away at his screen and now has returned to his texting duties. I have been writing for quite some time now but scarcely have any words have passed between the group of youngsters sitting at the nearby table.

          Ah, the joys of the dizzy social world of modern youth...