slow boat

huay sai, laos

a month before this trip began, a friend and i attended the secret science club at the bell house in brooklyn. they showed a nova video and had some quirky little astrophysicist give a funny talk about dark matter. the next day at the farmers market, a man affectionately known as mr. science dropped by my tent and ten minutes later was lecturing about a dozen passersby on the basics of the universe. it was a funny scene and i was thinking about it today. why? i was looking at the river go against us and i started thinking about spacetime, that fourth dimension of physics that explains, well, time and how it passes and its interaction with baryonic matter. it made sense to think about at the time.

you see, i'm a thinker. i try not to talk about it too much, but if i told you the thoughts and their tenuous chains and the way they flash through my mind, you'd probably classify me as neurotic. not like the thoughts are bad. okay, sometimes they are, not usually. if anything, they're random. what's distinctive for me is that speech and language do something so cruel to thought and a favorite pastime of mine is a good stare. take those eyes of mine, put something aesthetically pleasing in front of 'em, let the mind back up its software. sometimes i fear that nobody will ever no me better than the passing terrain behind a dirty glass window. i comfort myself in knowing that its pretty harmless and i don't feel right if it's not done.

i've covered the bases by now. i mean, here i have. all that emotional, professional, personal baggage that comes with the 'participant' medal from the field day of life. there's no shortage of mind fodder for that life, but i've been traveling for long enough to feel away from a lot of that. feeling a little bit more here, now. that doesn't mean i don't still like a good think, it's just that now i can get a little bit more random, kick it a little more freestyle, and it's all good.

which is all to say that the past two days have been like spiritual porn for the thinker within me. a two-day boat ride. a slow boat ride. going against the million-ish liters of water per minute that comprise the proverbial grain of the mekhong. a boat no wider than two meters, a wooden roof the same, and about twenty to thirty meters long.

no windows, but a movie was playing for me between the wooden posts on the starboard side. a movie starring water, showing its range in a gritty performance filled with everything from placid calm to white-capped rapids. rolling mountains and verdant palms appeared in noteworthy supporting roles. small villages and villagers and limestone outcroppings were but a handful of the stellar guest appearances and sun killed it with the cinematography. i've reached the destination, so i guess that ruins the ending. i recommend your own personal screening nonetheless.

it's getting to be time now. tomorrow i cross into thailand and the next stamp will happen at an airport. trust me, i'm not whining. i still have more time remaining than most americans take for their annual holiday. i'm just saying that this splendid boat ride felt like the beginning of the, not end, but of the return. a content counterpart to the trail of tears. enough time remains that i don't have to think about imminent reintegration and the stresses of the other life i supposedly lead. but i could start. the pressures not on, as i'm sure i'll be able to think of more random topics, be they in physics or otherwise.

another thing i was thinking: the larger, cultural equivalent of this boat ride. we were going against the river, so i initially thought about apocalypse now, what with the whole being in laos thing. but that wasn't it. i had an a-ha moment at some later point i can't remember and realized it was the great gatsby. as the big boy wrote, i felt like i myself was beating on, boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.