Travel Sketchbook - Sui Dragon

Detail from a stone bridge balustrade. At the National Museum in Beijing.

New Theme Song - "Motorcar Madness", by Everyone Involved (1969)

New theme song.
http://www.awakeman.co.uk/soul/either-or/motor%20car%20madness.htm

I've travelled the world
and everywhere it's the same
It's the motor car madness
Is driving the people insane
Have people forgotten
that cities were meant for them?
Have people forgotten
that cities were meant for living in?

 

It's the motor car madness
is driving the people insane
It's the motor car sadness
The motor car.

I was once a happy human
Used to love that city heat
Now I'm just a traffic nuisance
Made to cross beneath the street...

While...

There's my brother
My wonderful warm
Car-clad brother
At fifty miles an hour
Well-protected
Unaffected
Fuel-injected
It's all right for him.

It's the motor car madness
is driving the people insane
It's the motor car sadness
The motor car.

A pedestrian is a woman
Made to stand in the rain
A pedestrian is a man
Made to suffer traffic pain.
A pedestrian is a woman
Driven under the ground
A pedestrian is a man
Made to walk the long way round.

It's the motor car madness
is driving the people insane
It's the motor car sadness
The motor car.

A pedestrian is a woman
Without a car round her
A pedestrian is a man
A man without a car
A pedestrian is a woman without
A pedestrian is a man without
A pedestrian is a woman
A pedestrian is a man.

Music by Michael Klein ~ Lyrics by Alan Wakeman
Arrangements by Everyone Involved
All words and music copyright © Arcturus Music Ltd. 1969 & 2012

Travel Sketchbook

Burly military guy slumbering with his AK on the overnight, windowless train from Yangon (Rangoon) to Mandalay. This guy was across the aisle from our seats, facing our direction. Got nervous whenever he'd rouse himself to slap a mosquito.

Behold

TO THE LEFT is a tablet Maps screen capture
TO THE RIGHT is a laptop Maps screen capture

This is part of Staten Island.

Happy Hour in Bridgeport, CT

Two-dollar Bud draft at the pizza place; plus they got Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers in baskets on the bar, right out of a bulk container of Goldfish that looks and pours like a giant milk carton. All the liquor behind the bar is economy size. R asked, “If you were a small person, how would you be able to pour those?” These are hefty jugs. “I’ve never seen bottles that big in a bar before.” The man does a hefty pour for the yapping dads-on-the-loose in here.  He seems like he’s not getting around to us, he’s ignoring us, but he isn’t. He’s there right when we need him, without making a big deal about it, like a good father. He discounts our drinks for no reason.

Vampire Bats (At the Zoo)

All asleep in the corner where the wall of the cage meets the ceiling. Some half-hearted stucco detail suggests “cave” but it’s a cage. The animals are prisoners. Some, like the seemingly friendly toucans, are less put out than others. The toucans sit on the wooden railing that crosses the duck put, right at chest height so you could pet them, if you were an idiot. The two toucans sit side by side and occasionally one of them clacks its great loud beak over the other’s. Their eyes, within their little neon rings, are like little rave-hipsters’ eyes. The eyes are incongruous next to the giant protuberance of beak.

But the vampire bats huddle together upside-down like stressed mice. They make shivering movements, tiny yawns with needle teeth, twitch their oversized delicate ears. They’re living dustbunnies hungry for blood. How are they fed? For the bats there can’t be much pleasure in the process, whatever it is.

Maned Wolf (At the Zoo)

A scary animal from South America. From the age of the strange South American mammals. The last representative of its category of animals, it lopes across its fake pampas. It looks like a wolf in a nightmare: lean, shaggy, with sway back and snaggleteeth. A monster wolf running laps around an unmowed lawn.

When I used to have dreams about animals, I considered them important. I wrote them down, under the heading: ANIMAL DREAMS. I can remember being the person who considered these meaningful enough to record, but I can’t remember how that person felt about the list, or about the self-assigned task. The meaning of this documentation has been lost. Lost and now given over to a weird private archaeological investigation. Like lots of junk, lots of stuff I’ve either found or remember doing but can’t find or don’t care about finding.