It is the astoundingly bizarre cultural contrasts that so delight the eye when one suddenly becomes jet-lagmatic and embraces an intended collision with the other worldly realm of WeHo, Beverly Hills, and the lofty Downtown art scene, all courtesy of interplanetary jet travel.
Don't get me wrong, I said interplanetary because certainly it's more than metaphorically another planet that I just dropped in from, and now here I am walking the simmering nighttime streets of L.A. after a month in the jungles of northern Laos, weeks spent cruising trancelike through the ancient royal capital, the lost mystic city of Luang Prabang, dining in 100-year-old French colonial bistros and celebrating the annual Buddhist Lent with hundreds of bright orange robed monks carrying colorful parasols, with pungent incense drifting from the solid gold gilt 1000 year old temples, flowers falling everywhere, and the mighty muddy Mekong River rolling past as it has since beyond time before time.
This is a place where one day seems like four because the basis of one’s daily life is so absolutely beyond serene…and then suddenly I'm walking down Wilshire Boulevard and worrying about my car being towed, or getting one of those damn $60 parking tickets, and I realize that despite the seething cultural diversity and a exquisite bizarreness of Los Angeles and its denizens, I can't really see how strange and wonderful the city is until at last I'm steeply descending over Malibu, dropping from 35,000 feet, queuing up with 37 other wobbling jets on final, and then entering through the Nazi interrogation portal of L.A. immigration & customs, being asked to sort through my dirty laundry and to explain the desiccated rambutans in my carry-on.
It so absolutely stunning what passes for cultural significance in this sprawling mega-urban cracked version of modern life. All I can say is that one of the things that uniquely signifies Los Angeles this its cultural diversity; the fact that half the people here are from somewhere else, don't speak English, and have no idea where they are (not just geographical addresses, but lost in reference to anything vaguely related to the American mental cultural map).
I have to rapidly and painfully adjust to the fact that for the most part the Asian women one encounters here are operating with American software. All it takes is for them to open their mouths to realize they don't carry the same demure, serene, and sensuous demeanors of the unique Asian cultures that are so easy to become charmed with while traveling or living abroad.
It is so easy to become completely enamored with the gentle spirits of Asian women as one travels throughout Southeast Asia, particularly those in Thailand, Laos, and certain parts of Vietnam.
I’ve broken down and started this Blog to try to disseminate a little bit of what I know from my decades of religiously blasting across multiple time zones, cultural dimensions, datelines latitudes & longitude's…always circling in a crazy perpetual global orbit, only to return like an aboriginal boomerang to the streets & beaches of Southern California, and the bizarre, delightful, and heart-wrenching contrasts that come from such intrepid time warping adventures.
Part humor, part philosophy, part cultural indictment...
expect the unexpected here.
Given that we’ve already reached the meridian of the first decade of the 21st century it's painful to personally admit that until today I remained a virgin blogger, but it seems like everybody's getting into the act, and I’ve become inspired to do more than consider living a life lost in the jungles of Southeast Asia and the pure heights of the Himalayas as the only path to literary expression, writing my novels on fan cooled verandahs like Graham Greene drunk and sweating in Phnom Phen ’62.
I think I'm secretly hoping to spew a little bit of this magnificent and exhaustingly acquired insight, quietly hopefully my insights will rain down a on some completely innocent stranger that by complete serendipity happens to stumble upon this Blogsite and read the musings it contains.
Perhaps they may become enchanted, irate, inspired, or discover, if only slightly, that the world beyond the mythical ‘American Life’ may be one of far greater mystery, complexity, beauty, and spiritual depth than most anything offered on this side of the Homeland Security network.
Americans are on the whole deluded in their world view, and it is here, not elsewhere, where those who act with self righteous authority are often little more than self serving and aggressive oppressors, where the truth hits hard, and those who are willing to think for themselves and to question that same authority are frequently branded as either unpatriotic, criminal, or indecent.
Read on, and decide the truth for yourself, and, I should humbly hope, be entertained at the same time you are asked to consider… my Oracle d’ Jour...Don Wanderer's Mystic Misadventures!
Don't get me wrong, I said interplanetary because certainly it's more than metaphorically another planet that I just dropped in from, and now here I am walking the simmering nighttime streets of L.A. after a month in the jungles of northern Laos, weeks spent cruising trancelike through the ancient royal capital, the lost mystic city of Luang Prabang, dining in 100-year-old French colonial bistros and celebrating the annual Buddhist Lent with hundreds of bright orange robed monks carrying colorful parasols, with pungent incense drifting from the solid gold gilt 1000 year old temples, flowers falling everywhere, and the mighty muddy Mekong River rolling past as it has since beyond time before time.
This is a place where one day seems like four because the basis of one’s daily life is so absolutely beyond serene…and then suddenly I'm walking down Wilshire Boulevard and worrying about my car being towed, or getting one of those damn $60 parking tickets, and I realize that despite the seething cultural diversity and a exquisite bizarreness of Los Angeles and its denizens, I can't really see how strange and wonderful the city is until at last I'm steeply descending over Malibu, dropping from 35,000 feet, queuing up with 37 other wobbling jets on final, and then entering through the Nazi interrogation portal of L.A. immigration & customs, being asked to sort through my dirty laundry and to explain the desiccated rambutans in my carry-on.
It so absolutely stunning what passes for cultural significance in this sprawling mega-urban cracked version of modern life. All I can say is that one of the things that uniquely signifies Los Angeles this its cultural diversity; the fact that half the people here are from somewhere else, don't speak English, and have no idea where they are (not just geographical addresses, but lost in reference to anything vaguely related to the American mental cultural map).
I have to rapidly and painfully adjust to the fact that for the most part the Asian women one encounters here are operating with American software. All it takes is for them to open their mouths to realize they don't carry the same demure, serene, and sensuous demeanors of the unique Asian cultures that are so easy to become charmed with while traveling or living abroad.
It is so easy to become completely enamored with the gentle spirits of Asian women as one travels throughout Southeast Asia, particularly those in Thailand, Laos, and certain parts of Vietnam.
I’ve broken down and started this Blog to try to disseminate a little bit of what I know from my decades of religiously blasting across multiple time zones, cultural dimensions, datelines latitudes & longitude's…always circling in a crazy perpetual global orbit, only to return like an aboriginal boomerang to the streets & beaches of Southern California, and the bizarre, delightful, and heart-wrenching contrasts that come from such intrepid time warping adventures.
Part humor, part philosophy, part cultural indictment...
expect the unexpected here.
Given that we’ve already reached the meridian of the first decade of the 21st century it's painful to personally admit that until today I remained a virgin blogger, but it seems like everybody's getting into the act, and I’ve become inspired to do more than consider living a life lost in the jungles of Southeast Asia and the pure heights of the Himalayas as the only path to literary expression, writing my novels on fan cooled verandahs like Graham Greene drunk and sweating in Phnom Phen ’62.
I think I'm secretly hoping to spew a little bit of this magnificent and exhaustingly acquired insight, quietly hopefully my insights will rain down a on some completely innocent stranger that by complete serendipity happens to stumble upon this Blogsite and read the musings it contains.
Perhaps they may become enchanted, irate, inspired, or discover, if only slightly, that the world beyond the mythical ‘American Life’ may be one of far greater mystery, complexity, beauty, and spiritual depth than most anything offered on this side of the Homeland Security network.
Americans are on the whole deluded in their world view, and it is here, not elsewhere, where those who act with self righteous authority are often little more than self serving and aggressive oppressors, where the truth hits hard, and those who are willing to think for themselves and to question that same authority are frequently branded as either unpatriotic, criminal, or indecent.
Read on, and decide the truth for yourself, and, I should humbly hope, be entertained at the same time you are asked to consider… my Oracle d’ Jour...Don Wanderer's Mystic Misadventures!
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