Wandering the ‘Lonely Planet’

Happy New Year!!!

All is well ´´down´´ here in South America. CJ and I have made it out of the woods again without tripping into the Patagonian crevasses! The following photos are of Mt. Fitz Roy, a beautiful peak in Southern Patagonia. We spent four days out here trying not to be blown off the mountain by the incredible 60+ mile an hour winds. The weather out here was extreme, to say the least, and really made me think of nature like a power plant. Consequently, I felt like a kid awkwardly fumbling around trying not to stick his fingers in any light sockets. Well, onto more important things….supossedly.

So New Years came and went like slap-it bracelets from the early 90´s: quick. Cj and I ended up walking around a small sleepy town to finally settle in in a foreigner’s pub (the only open bar) for the new years. And I just….or rather….simply put: I must have some weird social phobia that kicks in in pub settings. Because after I sat down at the table and ordered a beer, I instantly felt out of place, uneasy, and apart from all the other smiling patrons talking about nonsense and loving every second of it. I remember thinking, ¨Simon, you just walked into this place with the wrong attitude…you need to come in with positive energy, looking for a good time, with zero expectations of people, scenarios, and communitas.* That’s the right attitude!¨ After stopping the third person dialogue about myself in my own head (hmmmm), I realized that CJ was there sipping on a beer and twirling his hair. Hair twirling translation: talk to me.

So after a few words about writers and so on and so forth, I suggested that we lock ourselves in a cheap hideout for two weeks in Bolivia to create nothing but art, art, and more art. Cj, being an artist and of artistic mentality, of course thought it was a great idea; he reminded me that this was essentially what he did in Brooklyn a few months back, and that he loved every tortured second of it. To me, this was/is an intensely romantic notion that I figure will yield a few pages of prayers, a few hair pulling short stories, and a taste of the madness that writers live. Thus, in Bolivia I begin Bohemia.

On a completely separate note, for the first time I have understood the essence of the world being “flat” (though not in a competitive sense, but thank you Tommy F.): The Lonely Planet Guide Book. For those of you unfamiliar with Lonely Planet, it an infinite series of guidebooks that has mapped out every bus schedule, town, recycling center, hair salon, activity, pizza place, hostel, and piece of trash left behind by the blue-north-face jacket-wearing-tourist who just walked out of the ´´local´´ dry fruit stand in every corner of the world. In other words, Lonely Planet has turned the world into a giant cruise ship where travelling is more akin to flipping a page and ´´choosing your own adventure´´ within the confines of the ´´ship´´ while constantly bumping into all the other ´´passengers´´ along the way. While this is beautiful in some respects (i.e. exposing the world to itself from its nose to its toes), it has also become a powerful system of alienation. Which is to say, traveling itself has become a product of kitsch consumer culture, where all you have to do is open a book, choose a pre-organized activity, and never think about/interact/explore all the people/places/processes that allowed the existence of the activity in the first place. In other words: Lonely planet has created a ´´traveling bubble of tourism´´ which follows the traveler wherever he goes, veiling the more diverse realities around him (i.e. local people, local culture, local geography, local everything), giving no strong incentive to explore beyond what has been discovered. But maybe that’s how its always been to a lesser degree.

Regardless, within a week I hope to throw the lonely planet aside, throw caution to the wind, and throw myself (with CJ of course) into a road map, outside the lines, into the space of the uncharted, the un-lonely, the un-commoditized rawness of wandering.

With light and love,

Simon

*Communitas: Concept of losing your ego in ecstatic moments when large groups of people focus on one thing (i.e. when a baseball players hits a grand slam and the whole stadium goes insane). – Victor Turner