Dream Supplies

Been on the road a lot since the semester started in Beijing. I’ve seen the ancient capital of Xi’an, the millenarian Buddhist caves of Datong, and strolled the former concession metropolis of Tianjin, all as weekend trips. Right now I’m in the middle of the most ambitious outing yet: a two-week long shitty triangle across central China.

Our not-quite-triangular itinerary through east/central China

Strolling through Mao’s native province of Hunan, I can’t help but wonder. This is all pretty cool, and I got to see some crazy mountains and temples, but when my favorite parts of it all were spending the night in a tent inside an abandoned house, and looking at a bunch of monkeys for way too much time, what does that tell me about my (relatively) expensive tour?

Wild camping taught me there’s always a plan B when the sky is your roof

Planned tourist trips are fine. Even necessary if I want to cover as much ground as I’m able in the 4 months I have in the middle kingdom; but I think they might be fundamentally different things from open-ended travelling periods. I mean, there’s definitely a spectrum. Watching a movie at the cinema isn’t the same as watching it on netflix.

Mother and son in Uncanny Valley

This feeling tells me what I’m probably looking for right now is a certain”on your own”-ness, the feeling of dealing with the unexpected myself, and of being responsible for whatever happens to me to a degree.

Karst peaks are the stuff of dreams

In defense of sight-seeing, I don’t think it’s a waste of time. There are things you do keep after the pleasurable fact. I like to think of it as gathering “dream material”. Memories of places you inhabit stick with you more or less permanently, stored in the boundless unconscious. There they become available for your imagination to draw from and to melt into the countless other things you’ve seen, manifesting themselves in your dreams, making them and you richer and deeper. Like soul-fertilizer.

May 8, 2019