I was on the shinkansen the other day doing some writing and I found these scribblings in my notebook. I thought I'd digitize them.
First was this weirdness while I was trying to get to the Agra Cantt train station back in August:
I'm rushing out to the street from the Sheela Inn to find an auto rickshaw when I'm approached by this young kid who's directing me towards an auto and an older gentleman standing beside it. We negotiate a price and I'm off to Agra Cantt Station. I thought the older guy was going to drive but the kid jumped in. The roads were full of people and every one of my senses was being bombarded by stimuli. Three camels linked together wandered across the street. People were shouting. Food was frying. Honking in every direction. We're racing through all of this, swerving around cows, kids, bikes, merchants. I'm thinkin', man, this kid's good! I wonder how old he is. I look through my pocket for a tip, I'm so impressed. I think about asking how old he is, my guess was 13, maybe 14. I say nothing though, he's 'in the zone'. We finally reach the station, I get out, and as I look up at him I'm startled to discover that in the light, this kid's actually a mustached man in his thirties. I'm very weirded out, I still tip him, and he smiles as I dart to the platform.
Next is an excerpt from Paul Theroux's article "The Exotic View" (1977):
It seems natural to dream of the exotic as to dream at all. We are born with the impulse to wonder and eventually to yearn for the world before the fall in which we may be the solitary Crusoe (with his bad conscience he is rather more credible than Adam); and who has not dreamed of being a princeling with a jeweled sword, marching across an eastern caliphate? In a sense, the literature comes later. Because the dreamer's perfection emphasizes that it is unattainable, man searches for proof that it is not. And whatever fantasy one has reveals one's peculiar hunger. It might be very simple: The island paradise. Or it might be complex: The oriental kingdom of silks and plumes.
And there's the random dialogue I scribble everywhere:
I'm a dreamer. And the thing of it is, my dreams come true. I just don't know when, where, how, or with whom. So I'm constantly on guard because at any moment, that could be it.
While in my mountain hideaway...
There is no humanity without humans. Why do you think you have to do this alone?
Really?
My tombstone will read: I did it all for Love.
Who am I talking to?
I have the perfect role for you in my fantasies and damn it, you've already nailed the audition. Yet you seem to have no interest in the part.
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