Calendar of Regrets

November

January February March April May June July August September October November December   & & &43' 11.02.76. Well, I’m here. Third floor. Right set of shutters. I thought it couldn’t get any muggier than in Thailand, Taru, and then I stepped off the plane in Rangoon and lost the little appetite and desire for sleep I had. A two-inch-thick mattress on a narrow bed, damp sheets, a pillow smelling of someone else’s hair, a rickety side table with one leg shorter than the others, a lamp without a shade, flaking white walls blossoming with mildew. At night I lie here sweating, crashingly jetlagged, listening to people jabbering nearby in a language that doesn’t sound as if it could possibly be a language. Now and then insects built like tanks miniature heavyduty assault vehicles drop off the ceiling onto my legs and belly. Handcarts, shouts, the giant mosquito engines of tuk-tuks starting up outside the moment the light ashes toward dawn. Yesterday I crossed this border and suddenly became a blurrier version of myself. That’s how it works. 44 b & LANCE OLSEN ' 11.03.76. Wandering through Shwedagon Pagoda complex this morning, note-taking. No sandals allowed, even though the marble floors are blistering. They call this “the cool dry season.” Lower stupa plated with 8,688 solid gold bars. Upper with 13,153. The tip is set with 5,448 diamonds and 2,317 rubies, sapphires, other gems. At the top, a single 76-carat diamond. All that for housing eight hairs from the Buddha. People check you out with sidelong glances when they think you’re not looking at them as if you were missing your hands. These monks refused to see my Polaroid and me. They treated me like I was invisible. It hit me this morning: yesterday was my birthday. I’d forgotten. Must have slid into travel’s elastic time. Wish me a happy 33 when you get this, okay? Man, do I miss our late-night conversations at the bakery. Man, do I miss you. & calender of regrets ' b 45 11.03.76. More Shwedagon this afternoon. The sweeping women go round and round the complex clockwise, cleaning. Out front, vendors sell wooden dolls, good-luck charms, books, incense sticks, gold leaf, prayer flags, Buddha images, candles, warm cut-open orange melons crawling with flies. I bought a bottle of water from this cute kid, sat down to drink it on a low wall outside, and noticed the seal was broken. When I returned to show him, I discovered him refilling plastic bottles at a spigot around the corner with his friends. Women and children wear pale yellow bark powder on their cheeks, foreheads, and noses as makeup. It occurs to me, sitting under the shade of this banyan tree, drinking a warm Coke, beige dust fogging the air, perhaps the greatest thrill of traveling is to be the one to tell. 46 b & LANCE OLSEN ' 11.04.76. The reclining Buddha at Chu Chaukhtatgyi Paya is nearly 200-feet long. Its gargantuan feet are covered with 108 sacred symbols. I have no idea what they mean. No one who speaks an approximation of English in the vicinity seems to know, either. The plaque at the base is in Burmese with its string of half-circles and round doodles broken by abrupt right angles. Studying it, another case of reading blindness comes on. As with the rest of the signs in this country, there’s no chance I can tease the script into meaning. I find that sort of sight loss appealing. Most tourists prefer the guidebook to the confusion before them. They want those Michelin reductions that impersonate knowledge, even though the day after tomorrow they’ll have forgotten everything they wanted to believe they took in. But isn’t travel, Taru, all about the opposite of that? Call it the Aesthetics of Misreading, a continuous reminder of the disorder of things. & calender of regrets ' b 47 11.05.76. What I guess I’m trying to say is that movement is a mode of writing, writing a mode of movement. So it suddenly feels like I’m cheating when I try to picture the travel article I’m supposed to be putting together. You know what I mean? Its heart seems diminishment, its prose the kind unaware that travel was originally the same word as travail, that...