Twilight quarry

I read a great quote in Thailand the other day plastered on some kind of advertisement. It asked, “Why are children so intelligent & men so stupid? It must be the education.”

Growing up is hard & often sad when we think about what we endured as kids, especially when we put it into perspective as paranoid adults looking to undermine everything & judge every action based on whether or not it’s safe or just plain acceptable or not. There are too many rules & rights & wrongs now it’s disgusting. Do you think this is what we as humans were meant to be doing here on earth? Maybe. Perhaps we are here to make plastic since no other being seems to be producing it. & when the earth has plenty it’ll find a way to kill us off by turning our own minds against us. Maybe we’re here to kick & scream & blow shit up. Maybe we’re here to squash bugs. Unfortunately no one left a manual that any two groups can agree on so we’re pretty much screwed, & everyone gets to be God.

I had a great escape the last week. I hadn't left the country since 2007 prior to this trip. That was when my passport expired. I didn't bother to renew it till last year because I'm not much of a traveler. I'm more of a dreamer. Plus I'm not a fan of going to any places that I can't simply walk to. So don't try & ask me to travel with you. Unless it's time travel.

It's such an odd feeling listening to my favorite songs in a distant land. It felt just as strange writing in a foreign country.

When I was younger I used to trip out at the thought of staying in a hotel room. Even if I was sharing a room with my parents & siblings, there was still free HBO, a pool, never ending hot water, amazing hotel beds you could bounce on from one to the other, a phone you couldn’t use, & a mini fridge full of food you were never allowed to eat because everything in there was too pricey.

Once upon a time, a twelve year old lad went on a beach trip with his family & grandparents. We went on these pointless trips a lot, but I remember this particular one vividly. We had conjoining rooms to satisfy the sleep requirements meanwhile retaining the togetherness of a family vacation. This was before the term staycation was a thing. I've always hated that word. Along with selfie. A truly awful word for a pretty amazing photographic tradition. Believe it or not, the self portrait is not narcissism associated specifically to the modern generation. It goes way back to as early as the 1800's. The daguerreian process brought us the daguerreotypes, & it was created by Louis Daguerre. What a creatively quaint name. It surprises no one, though, that the guy who invented capturing your narcissism in vivid detail named it after himself. Tangential to the primary story.

Upon arrival my elder sister immediately began calling between our rooms & pretending to be someone else each time. You could hear her voice through the wall so she wasn’t fooling anyone, yet I’d still answer the sustaining old fashioned ringer to deliver a proper shut-up or quit-it into the receiver as young persons of blood relation are allowed to do to each other. After 10 or more minutes of this game my grandmother stepped in & broke up the excitement, bothered by the ringing of the phone & ringing of the ear caused by hyper children. Then the phone rang again, & I’d like to think my nanny cursed, even though I know for a fact the dirtiest word she had ever muttered with foul intentions was the word bologna. Still, at the time of the incessant telephone game, something provoked me to answer the phone matching nanny’s hostility that only a child can mime since a child doesn’t really know what the problem is to begin with. "Stop it, idiot!" I yelled. The line was silent for only a second before a grown man’s voice repeated 'idiot' to me in the form of a question. "Idiot?"
"No, this is Shahirwan," I nonchalantly answered. This would mark the beginning of a long career of talking to strangers.

"This is sergeant so & so." I was confused & a bit scared thinking my sister’s obsessive use of the phone had alerted the police department. Or worse, they had found out that about a year before, I had smugly larruped a football & missed the goal completely but broke the rearview mirror of a parked police car. I put my granny on the phone & listened to her say bologna a lot. It turns out they had just dialed the wrong number. Talk about getting a nuisance call from the cops.

As an adult newbie I’ve lost that loving feeling for hotel rooms. I don’t even see them anymore. They all look & smell the same to me. Some have room service all night, & others stop at twelve as if the cooking staff is related to Cinderella. The only thing I care about these days is how fast the WIFI is, & whether or not it’s free. I suck. When I was younger, whenever I stayed at a hotel I made sure I wadded up wet wads of toilet paper & threw them out the window onto roofs of cars. These days I barely take the time to turn anything upside down. I’m a pathetic adult boy. I no longer have edge. I wish I could live within the somewhat poetic & imaginary realm in my head since the reality painted inside is usually a lot more aesthetically pleasing than life in a hotel room.

I'll see you next time except I'm never going to do this again.