Noah's Travel Journal - China, First Entry

It Begins Again

I declined to wipe the spit from my face, fearing further provocation. A healthy three-figure audience booed The Man locked on cuffs and a Riot Instigation charge for yours-truly. His partner-in-crimefighting keyed him into the fact that a power-tripping law official is much more likely to lead a crowd to pandemonium and revolt, than five fire dancers giving a free public show. In Ecuador, even a friend's misplaced fireball (found at the feet of a back-row audience member) during a non-permitted show outside the front window of the police station brought nothing but riotous laughter from behind the pane of glass. Where was the responsible, middle-of-the-road enforcer to be found?

So ended our thrid and final show together. Five individuals, three collaborating performance groups, one cause: the Now...oh yeah, burning stuff too. The Instruments of the Now had arrived at the multi-faceted theatrical collective of performance, prose and passion we'd envisioned since a rainy-day brainstorm in Huaraz, Peru. We saddled up the ineffible and counted on the rodeo clowns to dance to the rescue after we were bucked from a ride the spectators would never forget. "Dance" and "rescue," were probably the last verbs I would have pinned on the donkeys that accompanied our harsh, third dismount. Our collective disbanded with vivid aspirations and the tentative regrouping date of "the future."

As much as I despize time-tables and schedules, I let my obsessive-compulsive alter-ego play big-boss-man for a night. I woke the next morning and cursed my schitzophrenic time-share descision. My room was stripped of all visual stimulus and character and clad in nothing but a single, 3' X 5' dry-erase board, hung at the foot of my bed. The color-coded map of the next six weeks of my life came with the engraving: "You'll thank me later..." One cannot buy a calendar as large or drawn with such immaculate perscision, because obsessive perfectionists like its' engineer are given pink-slips and taken off the project by mental health specialists.

As much as I complained, six weeks was all I had to reinvent myself physically and mentally, and tie-up multiple pages of loose ends on my "To-Do" list. By the end of those precious few days of training and purification, I would again set sail on the seas of uncertainty and voyage to the edge of my known world where the water plummets into oblivion. I hoped that when this time came, I would have some clues on how to skirt around disaster and dispell this archaic imagery with new knowledge of a three dimensional earth.

I turned 23 a week into the mission and simultaneously lost my health insurance. This exciting rite of passage into adulthood reinforced this diabetic's need for staying healthy and the daily conditioning practices I executed religiously. I stretched my muscles not merely to avoid injury, but with the goal of making any onlookers whince, cringe and doubt if I were human. All the ankle, shoulder and joint injuries from failed skateboarding and break dancing executions on cement, got the simple physical therapy I had previously been too busy to remember. I started taking the art of performance seriously because the only person I was short-changing was myself. My To-Do list diminished alongside the time I spent socializing with good friends. I didn't say the fanatic alter-ego disappeared after his little stunt, he just became a backseat driver.

The judgement day came at last, bringing warm air and a Northbound wind tunnel. Two years prior, Halloween became my spiritual birth/independance day, so I figured a progress report was in order. At the time, all of my creative energy was being syphoned off by the nuclear waste dump of network marketing/pyramid scheme/"new hottest thing that'll change everything that's anything!!" I initially investigated the unstable radioactivity as a possibility for funding a diabetes camp or feuling other socially benevalent causes. 16 months later I found the fanatic in me had mutated into something that, short of agreeing, was justifying the group's intensely right-wing ideals of unabounding capitalism, shunning friends and family, melding religion and business, and crucifying individual creativity in the name of mass-brainwashing. I had been molded into the minion they preached about, and sold my identity for ego gratification from the pilfering peddlers of the American Dream. A nightmare to all sociologists and a wetdream to the few who can stomach its' study.

This grim scenario (similar to the plot of the film "Boiler Room") and a serious self-analysis, played through my head as I trudged up Spencer's Butte with my brother at my side and a gleeful Halloween spirit posessing us both. On top of that mountain I was finally able to see clearly down a new life path that could lead me to everything I could ever need or want. I walked away from the Butte and the business scheme that day, with the knowledge and energy to put into a life changing trip to South America with my brother. Something too large to fully comprehend began that day, and it was time for a bi-annual pilgrimidge.

The wind howled in my face as I arduously progressed across town, strait for the source of the maelstrom. A couple mile uphill bike ride is required to reach the trail and the spirits' maliciously tried to deter me with a headwind that died completely upon my sweat-soaked arrival. The cloudless sky was ashen when I breached the treeline near the summit. Rain lashed in sideways as soon as I, the sole visitor, reached the pinnacle. In less than 10 minutes a hole opened in the clouds directly above me and the wet, reflective rock faces all smiled with blindingly golden teeth. Not even the expansive view offered a single other sun-lit plot of earth.

The answers and changes I had anticipated didn't come during the heavy dose of divinity. The experience had only reinforced the countless realizations I had during the six weeks of purification leading up to the pilgrimidge. I had not cheated myself on any of my goals, and the physical and mental triumphs were impossible to overlook. I always reference the power of creating one's own reality in the moment, but preaching isn't as inspiring as prooving. Conscious self-mastery was the navigator I'd drugged and Shanghai'ed for the second part of my voyage, and as soon as he regained consciousness there were nothing but limitless, inter-connected waterways to explore.

I have loads of unsubstantiated expectations for the next phase of my journey taking place in Shenzhen, China. The most daring change besides moving to the province where the bird flu originated, is my exchange of travel partners. I've traded in my brother for a much more beautiful and feminine travel companion by the name of Bhavana. My fraternal comrade has his own shennanigans to brave in Central America, and the craziness provided to me when accompanying a drop-dead gorgeous woman, is probably more frequent and ferocious. No offense intended to my hetero-lifemate, for he knows this to be true.

As when I ventured to South America, there are so many aspects to the journey that I find it hard to explain all of what I'm trying to do with words other than: "I forget." Until I actually follow through on something, you'll have to work off of this action-hero promise pitch:

[Epic background music starts (probably the symphonic theme song to "Jurassic Park")]

Writing about experiences faster than he can live them! Leaping over language barriers with a single circus trick! Banking on the international tongue of juggling, the funky diabetic heads to China to study the age-old martial art of Wushu while using a volotile and aging insulin regimen of NPH and Novolog, just for laughs. Teamed with the blessing of Lifescan, he will leave no overwhelmed Chinese diabetic organization unpestered. Emails will flood American diabetes publications until they're blocked out by Spamware! Armed with a suitcase of hand-crafted juggling toys, he'll force the art upon the maleable minds of local youth, despite pleas from their mothers...in the most tactful and unfrightening way possible. Since he does not yet possess the power to see into the future he has obviously overlooked hundreds of other engaging endeavors! But, ABOVE ALL, he will execute all of these feats calmly, while balanced on one foot...

[Epic music fades into a drumroll]