Digital Losses

We almost lost IP-2 in Japan when we forgot to wake him and nearly left him behind in our guest house one early morning. We almost lost DC when he took a nasty fall and smashed the lens of his eye on a rock in the northern Thai jungle. And so we swore to ourselves never again would we let moments pass without putting our babies' utmost care, protection, and safety first. It was love they deserved and so love is what we gave them. And they reciprocated that love, demonstrating their devotion, each one it its own unique way: IP-1 dictated every word of The History of Love to my girlfriend, Shulamit, while she worked on her tan on the poster-like Philippine and Thai beaches, IP-2 read me The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as we rode the Shinkansen Bullet train through the towns of rural Japan, and Crime and Punishment on the railways and seas of Thailand, and DC captured with deep focus and great pixilated detail many of the remarkable and unforgettable images that we encountered in these faraway lands. Grateful cannot even begin to express the feelings we have had for their accompaniment on this occasionally bumpy road. But on a sunny Mid-March day we submitted to our egos and let the altruistic side of ourselves slip away. It wasn’t our faults. It was the ridiculous god forsaken place we had chosen to visit. It was the relentless and astounding beauty of the Northern Palawan Islands, with its fancy magnificent limestone cliffs rising out of the ocean in every direction, its elegant sandy beaches, great multi colored and shaped vivacious coral, water more turquoise than the color itself, and hidden treasures like the beach we found directly on a mangrove, crawling with cute Filipino children who laughed and followed our strange, white skinned selves, as we engaged them in performances of slapstick comedy. It was the promise of a new day here in the town of El Nido after finding a boat ride home from a fishing villager during an unforgettable sunset at the close of our first day. The awesome potential of this absolute paradise was what caused Noah, myself, and Shula to forget that despite the picturesque landscape, nature is never merciful. There are still hazards, horrible and fatal perils that must be heeded.

On our second day in El Nido rather than hire a boat provided by the guesthouses, the three of us opted to rent a small paddleboat off a native in order to save some Filipino peso. We were attempting to get to an island a few clicks offshore, a supposed magical snorkeling area with a desolate palm tree lined beach. Upon our arrival to the take-off point, the beach at the foot of our tree-house-like guesthouse “The Alternative”, we saw that the bamboo boat appeared small and fragile. But what could possibly stop us? We were armed with excitement, adventure, and above all smiles. That obvious answer came almost immediately in a peninsular town. As soon as the three of us were settled and paddle-armed, the boat began to take in water. I knew our children were hopeless swimmers so like a good protective parent I quickly and instinctively reached with all the might I could muster for the REI backpack that housed them. I knew that if I got to them in that instant their lives could be spared. But my efforts proved futile. The bag was hung up on a nail. As the ship went under my eyes filled with salt water as I watched IP-1, IP-2, and DC sink, along with my hopes and dreams for their once so bright futures.

Shula frantically grabbed our babies and brought them ashore. She checked their digital vitals, but there was no hiding the truth, their power had gone out. The three of them together had expired. A sea of guilt engulfed us survivors. How could we have done this to them? How could we have chosen our own selfish desire of one day's worth of digital accompaniment over safety? Was nature in all its glory not good enough for us? Did the crash of the waves and the chirps of rare and exotic birds really need to be accompanied and flushed out by the sound of George Winston’s piano? Was it worth risking the possibility of many marathon music-less and audio book-less bus rides we had yet to make? Was it that important to better our face book profiles and Iphoto Libraries? Was it worth risking the physical proof that we ever even left Boston? And was it worth possibly losing three of our most cherished companions? We couldn't go one measly fucking day without our digital babies?

With nothing left to do but sulk, Noah, Shula, and I took to the paradise beach on a much bigger bamboo boat. Upon our arrival we looked up to the heavens and toasted our deceased friends with a big lachayim of packages of individually plastic wrapped crackers that survived the day's tragedy. Man, the makers of Skyflakes Crackers are all geniuses.

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Fuckit

One of the most amusing days of the high school, or occasionally, latter middle school, calendar is The Drug Awareness Day. The program is always the same. It opens with a display of photos: First comes the traditional blackened lungs from cigarette smoke, then it's missing cheeks from smokeless tobacco, followed by grown men drewling on themselves on a park bench in shaggy clothing from alcohol, and finally a sanitarium on a dark misty night looking like the set of a horror movie, in order to display the imminent outcome of acid use. The day platues with a formal training headed by the school psychologist to teach every child how to respond when a kid sporting a green mohawk accosts you with a lit blunt in the bathroom and blurts out "It's just a little weed." Then comes the climax - a real live drug addict who comes to lecture you on how much they love drugs. By the day’s end once the bell has rung every kid has the opportunity to share and tell with his or her friends about the stories they heard from their new-found favorite friend drug addict.

My brother Jordie had the pleasure of meeting one such lady addict that was fed up with her good friend Mary Jane. While she may not have deterred any young potheads from smoking more cheeba, to her credit, she did give it a go, and offered words of great wisdom. "The Problem with weed kids, and the reason it should not be used, is because it gives you the Fuck-Its, you stop doing anything, you just say Fuck-It." Leave it to a drug addict to aptly describe the real problem with marijuana, not the politicians, teachers, and shrinks. I’ve never heard any adult or child make a remotely sensible and accurate description of the harmful effects of smoking a bowl, but this woman was right on the money.

Now that my days of getting stoned are extremely few and far between (I do still have my fun with pharmaceuticals) I kind of missed that free feeling she so appositely described. After being in the overwhelming ridiculous mayhem of Bangkok many days in excess I found it only natural then that my girlfriend Shula and I should go to the island of Phuket, pronounced Poo-ket, but not by me. So I booked us a place at the fuck-it backpackers hostel, just off of fuck-it rd., rented a moped from the fuck-it bike shop in the heart of fuck-it town, rode on the left side of the fuck-it streets along the wide white sandy beaches of Patong, Kata, and Koron which are lined with fuck-it resorts. We also sought out some rural fuck-it territory away from the fuck-it tourists witnessing traditional fuck-it markets, fuck-it villiages, and fuck-it peoples, and took the fuck-it ferry to the astoundingly gorgeous paradise island of Go Pee Pee. Fuck-it really has it all.

The title of this beautiful diverse beach city embodies the quintessential spirit of the backpacking mentality. Our journey began with myself, a filmmaker AKA a slave and bitch for the movie industry, and my girl friend, who put a career in social work on hold to explore her artistic inclinations in the field of graphic design, quitting our jobs and moving out of our apartment. The goal was to get the hell away from the high stress part of the world in which we reside in order to attain some much needed time and perspective before figuring out, and taking, further steps in these endeavors. During this journey of ours we've met so many others just like ourselves - three girls from Montana wanting to put the real world on hold, Christoff, a naval officer from Germany needing to get away from his demanding position on the high seas, Mike from Australlia fed up with the expensive capitalistic nature of his hometown, two Swedish girls not ready for university, a man who let me call him Wolf when I screwed up his name stressed out from his task in China of overseeing safe product manufacturing before exportation, a couple on a nine month honeymoon around the world, numerous male and female loners on year long adventures, and so many more. All of us hoping, wanting, and needing something different, something better, and something more significant than our little lives back at our origins. Independently, but together, each one of us, and the thousands of backpackers we've encountered from Tokyo, Japan all the way down to Beppu, and from Chiang Mai, Thailand down to Bangkok, and further south to Koh Tao and Finally Phuket. We've all opted for the Fuck-It mentality. It's this mental state that has allowed us to let new sights, experiences, cultures, and perspectives swirl around, scatter, and jumble our once routinely organized left and right brains and temporarily hit the off switch and kill the patterned concerns and errands of typical daily life. To say "Fuck-It" is not apathy, laziness, or a lack of motivation. It means not submitting, giving-in, or giving-up. It's recognizing the need for the new, the fresh, the change. It's freeing yourself from patterns and dead-ends, and recognizing and not forcing what wasn't working. It's about listening to your inner flow, flowing with your inner go, and escaping the powerful grasp of the hand of conventional daily life. It’s about not settling for a life without meaning. It's good and healthy to ingest new experiences, attitudes, and substances and get your lips wet and your nose in the air. Don’t just take whatever bullshit shwag is being passed your way. As self help books will tell you, you need and deserve the good shit, the heady stuff, the kind of shit that will make your head fly off your body and float up to the heavens to the sounds of Jimmy Page's guitar, the shit that will give you a good, powerful, solid, kick-ass, bad-ass motherfucking case of the Fuck-Its.

In the Shores of Koh Tao

His time was near but I didn't want to let go. He had been my buddy for years. I know all the crap they say about the deceased always being with you because moments are eternal, or some such Hollywood feel-goodery bullshit. Right, and sex is best captured with the accompaniment of a duet between the harp and the mandolin, or heavy techno beats if you prefer the hardcore section. My reasons for wishing his survival were selfish. I didn't know how to fill the empty void this tragedy would certainly befall me. He was suffering, clinging to his final moments of vitality because he could sense the assholes like myself who wanted his survival for their own personal gain. But what was I to do? Allow another bald spot to take shape within me?

“Forget it,” I shouted with tears streaming down my face as I thought of the anguish I felt when the hairs began to thin from my head shortly before my twenty-second birthday. The truth is thatI was scared, petrified, I couldn't imagine my life without him. I had been dependent on the protection he provided for as long as I could remember. Without him surely some infectious disease in some form or another would come creeping around and penetrate this hole, this gaping wound that was imminently approaching. However, after wandering the big cities and smaller towns of Japan, strolling through remote villages in Northern Thailand, being pushed around and ripped off in Bangkok, and finally arriving at a gorgeous private beach of the mountainous rugged island of Koh Tao, a strange calm befell me, and I found myself ready and willing to say goodbye to this companion whose short life I have, and will, always cherish. And no sooner had this profound self-evolution and growth taken route deep within the confines of my soul, did I agree to assist my beloved companion in his expiration. In one motion I twisted and removed the disgusting, yellow, and hideously decaying toe nail from my right big toe, and buried it in the sand. From now until eternity he will be with us always, in the shores of Koh Tao.

Adderall & Bangkok just don't splice

Bangkok is no place for adderall. I first encountered this little wonder drug the same way everyone seems to, in college cramming for finals. It didn't work. This same drug was suggested to me by a doctor a couple years later when I was having fatigue issues. I was a border line narcoleptic, a condition that came partly from my own health history and partly from my paternal side of the family as exemplified by my bubbie and zadie who would come visit me in my hospital room and pass out in one of my visitor chairs within 3 minutes time, while I slept in the bed. It was a very quiet room. The gene or meme clearly didn't skip any generations as my father displays this very disorder with masterful precision every Saturday morning in Synagogue coming to a climactic unconsciousness during the Rabbi's sermon.

I'm not a judgemental person. I subscribe to the belief that first impressions are often wrong. Therefore I decided a second chance was in order for my old acquaintance, adderall. I had qualms about bringing the Doc's John Hancock to my local drug dispenser. While it did have some negative effects - sweating, loss of appetite, abdominal pain - it did have a few things going for it - sudden burst of energy, sudden urge to be extremely interested and meticulous in whatever the hell you happen to be doing, and a sudden relief of constipation. This latter positive externality of adderall ingestion was the reason I found myself eating one in Bangkok. I felt this was a better alternative to chugging a liter of phospho-soda, the pre-colonoscopy drug.

The Real problem with taking adderall is that after you take it you can only focus on one thing at a time as you wind up heaving all your senses into an all out overdrive in an attempt to accomplish this one thing. If any other issues come up like a phone call, a friend comes over, you have to go to the bathroom they are either ignored or met with grumpy hostility. The problem with this medication on the streets of Bangkok is that at any given single moment there are multiple occurrences that require your immediate attention and reaction; a man with two missing limbs begs for baht coins in his cup, A woman wants to give you a Thai Massage, a head full of dreadlocks smacks into your right cheek, a big backpack hits your left one, A tuk tuk (3 wheeled taxi) driver demands to take you somewhere, "Country Roads" can be heard playing in 10 different bars and is at a different note and lyric in every one, 3 cars are bearing down on you and there isn't a piece of sidewalk in sight, Pad Thai, Egg Rolls, and identical looking women selling a frog noise maker want you to have one and won't stop the noise-making until you buy one, and huts selling shitty sunglasses have surrounded you and you have flights to book, a train to catch, laundry to do, money to exchange, shitty sunglasses to buy, and no you can't drink that with ice in it it will make you sick. At this point in time the senses have eclipsed their maximum; the eyeballs have made one too many journeys from left to right and have stopped themselves in the up position in protest, the ears become confused and begin whistling their own version of "Country Roads" on repeat, the taste buds are drenched in heavy wok oil which acts like a ball and chain upon the tongue, and the skin is drenched in sweat from the heat and humidity. Finally the whole body gives up and you will find it is on an overnight bus or train headed way the fuck out of Bangkok. That's where I find myself.