While I was travelling I was depressed about some bullshit that didn't matter

Minimal Notes on Taiwan and Thailand

The AIR Notes:
Here's some of what I wrote in my notebook while I was waiting around LAX and also some of what I wrote on the plane to Taoyuan:

[05/25/16 en route to Taipei]

Man having seizure(?) in the terminal right next to the moving pathway. Good he wasn't riding the thing. Blood on the floor because whatever it was it looks like it took him by surprise and he fell on his face. Decided not to to take a pic but I saw other people who did. Seems like that is an okay thing to do with a cell phone but rude with film? What is the dividing line there? ...I have my theories. Anyway. He looked American and since he's this far past security with me I'm guessing that this is the beginning of his vacation (it can't be business - he dressed like he's lost in the grocery store). Speaking of security, that shit was nil on my way in. I totally could have smuggled some acid into one of my books.

He's smearing blood on the floor and not moving right while some people are trying to pick him up and some people are saying to leave him alone. It's not a lot of blood but he's really fingerpaintin' on the floor. I am trying to remember what you call this kind of floor. It is not marble or stone or linoleum or - I'm just asking- what materials would we say the artist used upon install? Artist's own spit and blood on...???

Time to stop being an asshole and go get some Starbucks. "Lol."

I like the ladies selling perfume at the duty free shop. They don't seem to think it's weird that I'm taking pictures of the ads and cleaning supplies and stuff. Plus they're not even trying to sell perfume. They're just laughing.

A monk in straight up orange robes just asked me for directions. I'm only surprised because he's a white guy. How'd that happen?

American men heading abroad with gross ogrish overconfidence. What gives? They're everywhere at my gate talking, "Party. Sick bro." Like hairy forearms and an inflated chest will buoy them across all cultural barriers. Ambassador meets dignitary with a chest bump.

I just remembered how the Lyft driver who took me to the airport was upset about missing his opportunity to talk to John Mayer at a party and was very concerned with what the Kardashian fame is doing women.

I wish Zootopia wasn't so pro-cop. The character design is so cute.

Taipei 101 Crash Course:
What was written in the airport afterwards:

I didn't write down the date.
I'm not sure which time zone this is.                                               (I mean I know, but...)
I'm on a nine hour nighttime layover...

I was immediately distracted from my mission by all the dogs wandering the streets. These dogs have a better understanding the language better than I do. A well spoken and competent Taiwanese dog would  have been helpful in explaining how to get down to Taipei 101 when I was trying to catch a cab back in Taoyuan. Or in catching the return cab. Or in conversing with the guy I met on the river hauling a sack of junk who (I eventually determined) was demanding a cigarette in Mandarin, slapping my hands.
Anyway. 
I'd only wanted to try some crazy-to-me night market food but as it turns out the vendors don't stay up as late as I'd thought. Everything was closing. Everyone was smoking. The cooks right next to their food and the mechanics right next to their gasoline and the massage ladies in front of their parlor. Damn I love a good smoke. The cigarette pack I picked up had a pic of baby hooked to a respirator on it. I'm not sure if there are more stray dogs here or in East Los Angeles or in New Orleans.

Captain America is abroad and the people want their portraits with him.

It's been a while since I've been to Asia. I forgot about the popularity of surgical masks on this continent. I get it and everything but really, how often do you think people fuck with those things on around here? I could totally get into that.

My camera quit on me after only a single day of use in Chiang Mai. No replacement was found and so for the most part all I have to show of Thailand (in 35mm) is a damn Hell World, which by the way is not at all related to or located near Wat Phra That (mentioned below). Though I could have filled pages and pages, from a harrowing nighttime songthaew trip in a thunderstorm to being solicited by child prostitutes in Bangkok, I wrote nothing else but letters on this trip. 

Part of a letter:

At the peak of Doi Suthep is Wat Phra That, a temple and major site for tourism in the Northern part of Thailand. Amidst the food vendors and backpackers that wreath the site, there are people, a number of children in fact, who sit around with little birds in wooden cages. They beckon to visitors that for only so few Bhat you would be allowed to open one of those cages and set the bird free with your own hands. The business, I guess, is tied to some kind of traditional thing? Or maybe that's just a spin. Anyway, releasing the bird is to release your sins or something to that effect, but the birds seem to be trained to come back, so it's more like taking your sins for a ride in big circle. 

"There's an ecology of sound. Of speech. We have to think about what English does. Riding roughshod over national poetries that since the room is small and no one's in there why not step out to the bright light of day and write in English, think like us."

          - Eileen Myles with what I assume is some sarcasm from an essay in The Importance of Being Iceland. I guess it felt funny to read this while on a plane loaded with Chinese chit chat. Or. Well. I'm not sure I remember how I felt but I wrote it in my notebook at the time.