Sam Hobbit

Traveling in Asia has been a mengelmoes of undocumented randomness. As much as I love to write (occasionally) I'm not a 'dear diary person', I enjoy the idea that some events and people in our lives go undocumented and 'forgotten. I understand that this proposition - to resist using mere words in an attempt to describe, analyse and understand every damn thing that happens to us, will most probably be beat and left for dead by avid bloggers and dreaded scrap-bookers alike. However, it works for me for a multitude of reasons, those being:

1. Events, people, landscapes exist in their own right as I saw them and understood them at the time.

Cat Ba Island ~ Northern Vietnam

2. the above exist as memories which change shape over years, growing and expanding in significance as I'm subjected to even more of the world and its inhabitants.

Hu Tong ~ Beijing, China

3. I don't morph into 'that person' who spends the whole holiday desperately searching for that 'it' photograph like Crack fiend searching for his next hit.

4. And finally, maybe it's time to learn to purposefully document smells and textures.

Streets of Hanoi ~ Vietnam

 I once worked with a guy who had claimed to have 'traveled' the entire world. He worked on Carnival cruise ships which docked in "every" harbor (you can imagine, dear reader the 'jungles' this here pioneer explored). Why, he sported photographs of himself busting grins in front of the Eiffel Tower, Great Wall of China, remains of the Berlin Wall, Robbin Island, Big Ben blah, blah, blah (vomit a little in mouth) and so on. He lacked the social graces one hopes to  gain by traveling and learning about other cultures. This same American man had the great ambition to eat out at every Hard Rock Cafe on the Planet. Dear reader, doesn't that excite you beyond belief? I tell you, the jealousy that grew in me like a terrible gangrene every time he spoke of his noble ambition, ate away at my core and left me as the bitter and jealous person writing this very blog. But,  enough about the strange beings I've met along the way as these clowns surely have no place in my Asia blog, but then, what does?

Her Pale African Skin

Pale skin adorned by eyes,

reflecting the uncertain color of the Umkomaas River.

Indeterminate coloring like its traveling waters which run and stand in those places,

caressing those bodies and witnessing those things that they speak about.

"Those waters are dirty, they flow through the

Townships -

Those people shit in it

and shed their diseases" like a man (those men) who enters virgins in hope of a cure.

The bile-green waters like the flooded murky portals on her pale "oppressive" face

continue to race toward the bounding main, where a plethora of colors and their diseases merge.

And succumb

to the ebb and flow which apologizes for nothing,

yet considers all in it's retreat and returns with force,

offering gifts. 

Azanian?

1 comment

~Samantha King~

How are you celebrating Halloween today?

I'm not celebrating Halloween. In South Africa we don't normally observe this holiday, it feels strange to take part in a celebration I know

VDay in Seoul

Britney