Know - there are regions of Earth almost untouched by life of any kind. The Karakax Valley is like a place no man was meant to see: its desolation is a good hiding place for the earthly frustration placed upon our backs by divinities. The deeply etched surface has a lunar character, and seems unable to invite life. The grass is gone. Instead, there's a blasted waste of stuff that looks like concrete mixed with rusty brown lumps. It's color and emptiness might be mistaken for Mars. A valley so barren as this, bereft of gold, makes men lost with interminable emptiness.

One more truck lies upside down in the ditch; it's easy to picture the sleepy driver - as he hurries to arrive at some civilized place - anywhere besides the emptiness here! Already, help has arrived, a truck and a machine from a nearby base help upend the whole affair. The guys working on it look none too happy about the situation. I offer them a smile and a grimace...

The map indicates a town called Shaitulla is supposed to lie at the junction of two rivers. But the town of Shaitulla eludes my senses. It isn't at this point, as the map suggests. Instead, I find a lonesome white tent with a Tibetan signboard advertising home-cooking. Aside from the few Tibetan truckers back in Kargilik, this is the first real evidence of Tibet. Shaitulla was once the locus of Tibetan encampments, but long ago. I keep riding and see an elderly Tibetan man walking along the road towards me. Perhaps he lives in that camp tent and he's the cook. He looks surprisingly like my own father. But I go on, not feeling any hunger.

I recollect the Chinese guy in the jeep mentioned Shaitulla has several buildings and an army base. But I'm neither here nor there with the god of this valley... I ask four Uigur road workers lounging by the way to point out where the army town lies; they say that I'm already going the right way. But I don't know why - I don't want to believe them. I want to turn around and go back a couple of kilometres towards the old man's tent. But before doing that, I wave down two trucks to ask the drivers where new Shaitulla is... But they keep going and say nothing, as if I shouldn't exist, and I'm not really here. The heat is a shimmer of dry silence and mocks my uncertainty.

I'm not with it, and so ride back towards the conflux of the two rivers at old Shaitulla. Finally I realize that I am an idiot who can't trust his own instincts: I turn round once again, the proverbially trapped mouse, and I return to the road workers who seem surprised at my confusion. They insist that my first direction was correct. I keep going - afflicted with a fatal skepticism - disbelieving completely that the town really is ahead... Over the next rise, I see it.

Go home - your heart tells you sometimes. But there is no more home. Maybe I came here to forfeit my last chance for going back. Perhaps I hope to lose that little wish to turn around again, and so learn never to change my mind again.

I'm too crowded by the heat. I must eat meat and vegetables, or the mountains will stop. The village of Shaitulla is an army base, some restaurants and a road repair crew. The newest and nicest buildings are on the army base. Outside of the army's newly-built compound is the usual squatting arrangement of shacks, with only one or two more solid edifices by the way. I duck into what seems to be headquarters for the local babe scene. They're all Chinese waitresses, and pretty lonely.

The town supports a sizable contingent of Chinese army. I suppose that the soldiers are the only ones who get to use the few pretty working girls living here. The Uigur workers appear somewhat shy of the Chinese girls - and quite likely - too poor for them. Even so, all along the way, these turks have teased me about how good the Chinese girls look. The restaurant serves up a big bunch of fried rice, three eggs and sauteed spinach. Not to eat too quickly, not to betray the desperate emptiness of my tummy. The women are busy washing up and ignore me. A couple of senior officers come in for a drink and a joke, no doubt, about the low level of my intelligence; or maybe they're laying odds on my survival chances, or which woman I'll end up with. Who cares.

I smile and point directly at the grey-headed sergeant-major and say, "Lao-ban" and that means "boss" in Mandarin Chinese. I smile then drink my beer and refill my bottles with fresh water. Through the walls of the restaurant I hear one of the pretty dolls console herself with old-style Chinese opera music - high-pitched er-hus and grieving zithers. I buy yogurt and some cookies, a watermelon and dried beef riddled with oil and chili. Leaving, I pass by the army base and grinning soldiers who lounge by the canteen at the gate. As I leave town, I meet some Uigurs with mules; they all look glassy, smiling wearily at something I don't see in the vast space before me. They know the place too well. Something is there and I have to face it. The wind.

The Karakax Valley drives a long wedge up into the west. The valley ramps up to meet the gargantuan plateaus of Tibet. Wind comes from the head and doesn't slow me down much, since the road's already too rough. Then a sandy ridge buffers the wind. But beyond the ridge I'm exposed to a powerful surge exactly like a wall falling on me. The wind is wet and pours ice into my blood. It sluices through a cleft between two peaks right beside me. A glacier hovers still and chill between the icy knives. This phantasm of rock and snow wears a grey face, shrouded in froward, frigid clouds. The wind is twice as forceful as yesterday over the pass. But it's coming from the side, so I lean against it. It's late, 4:30 P.M., when an unexpectedly fierce gust pitches me off the bicycle. My thigh and shoulder take the hard gravel. I get up, but very slowly. You have never experienced a force so strong as this: I know. The wind makes it harder than you can imagine to stand up and lift the bike. My heart jumps as annoyance turns to fear.

Nature's slug-fest threatens to overpower me. But I walk, forcing the bicycle into the wind. I brace against each fresh gust then creep ahead. I play snails with the impossible side-wind and at last it begins to fade. In an hour I spot shelter near the silver Karakax. Wind and water have dug their fingers between shallow ravines above the river flats. So, I pitch my tent, sheltered on the polished sand below two dunes. The night is long and the wind is restless and mad. It sprays noisy drizzle on the tough nylon flesh of my alpine tent. I can't stop thinking: how strong nature is, and man, how weak... Words from my travel journal convey the experience more directly than hindsight:

"Intense nature: I had to walk a couple of kilometres past the huge peak. I am so small and nothing to the vast cosmos. All the vanities of the twentieth century mean much less than we'll ever begin to know ourselves. I found a slightly sheltered spot in the river valley behind a wind blown heap of sand. The weather is so moody! Unpredictable changes of wind direction and the glowering clouds are blown away in minutes. Hopefully (the oft-repeated - hopefully) the weather will be friendlier. Add more camels, that makes 41 I've seen so far. Temperature plus 2 this morning when I put away the camp. Sleeping bag is warm, but still need to put on a shirt and my vest to feel safe. By 9:00 or 10:00 P.M. you can tell if it'll be a cold night or not. Should have a good crap in the morning. God I hope that I live to see someone, all the ones who love me again. Not that I deserve to."

~ Everything - every idea seeks its person and each person needs to find something in which to believe. None of us can be comfortable unless we do find beliefs. Civilization is made of convictions. All heresies are past, and people accept truths and falsehoods alike. We have reached the point of mind that permits all thoughts and if we experience too much doubt beneath our senses, befuddled by the barrage of information and persuasion we suffer daily, then we are quick to fix ourselves in a permanent outlook that appeals to disposition and formation. But I still think we are big to be fooled and small to find out the truth. We talk of needing more "perspective" today, but it eludes us. Ideas are as large as ever - more than we want them to be. Ha - but the more naive and argumentative our world becomes, the more we need to retreat. We often leave reflection behind for stubborn convictions. Religion will never go away. Even if some believe that none of these modes are necessary, we cannot escape ideas and creeds. And why should we? They're older than the races we run...

Always, we learn that life is more than an appetite for conjuring apparitions of ideas that tantalize us with promises to satisfy the wish for knowledge and certainty. Yeah, sure.

So, at the same time we admit to ignorance, we still need to find answers when we understand that nobody can convince us what to believe anymore. This simple fact may have a lot to say about defining the nature of freedom today: it truly is a daunting freedom of mind. Sometimes, when faced with a dearth of answers, we explore the background of our culture, fumbling for religion, or some memory of youth. Some few of us must fall into fanaticism and reaction. In case you haven't noticed, the fanatic is actually desperate to reintegrate his beliefs, and yet, the more he needs to believe, the more improbable his situation will seem to have become, since, after all, he cannot realize his ideals...

There are so many different kinds of problems brought upon by the modern "freedom of mind." Curiously, the ubiquitous lack of self-enlightenment that we endure as companion to our freedom, also makes a profound statement on how earthly problems affect us...

Too many of us exhibit an over-eagerness to believe - a gullibility for being told what is true and what is false. This susceptibility is made of custom and tradition - usurped... Even if you want to call yourself a conservative, it isn't really possible anymore! The fabric of convention was pulled out from underfoot a long time ago, like a carpet, by some agent of repossession. If you let them, familial and acculturated roots evaporate as if they never existed. We may try to retrieve them, too. You are - as you wish to behave. So, the bedrock of your self-conception is made of soft rubber: do with it as you please.

Disavowed of standard self-conceptions, you can say that all of us have passed behind some sleight of hand: even if God still exists, we are inclined not to think so. Maybe it's a test of faith and imagination. It would be wonderful if people could live and flourish beyond their roots. But while some of us are blessed with clever wit, many seem blanketed with darkness - an inability to discriminate good from bad, and justice from brutality. Fear of this darkness beckons for the proven tenets by which we have long tried to abide. The attempt to legislate faith in mercy was the prime word of the Western god - made human. Ah, but what does rage express - but futility? Calm accepts it. We sow again.

The truly fascinating thing about our changed condition - the access of divine knowledge, and our ability to articulate primal spiritual truth, is that we did not need philosophers to speak up: it happened to us before the Greeks. People spoke then wrote down the thoughts of God. Surely that was one of humanity's most magical achievements. Now that's what interests me most about the progress of history: we humans are responsible for speaking out the definitions and truths of all things divine. We didn't discover them buried under a rock. We wrote it all ourselves! Civilization was transformed by creative imagination. Was that an easy job, I wonder, writing the bible? The effect on our meditations was unprecedented. Inspiration carries at least as much insight as it invites confusion. Nevertheless, the making of love, civilization, and this weird writing, too - that makes and shapes our disposition - the characters we share and see in each other. We were uprooted without much feeling the disjunction, because science gave us new things to believe, whether we found them agreeable or not! It only took a few generations to transform human identity, age over and time again.

In this world we happen upon - we appear larger than we are. Because, I find myself very small in the desert of the Karakax Valley. Wander deliberately into lonely space? Why would I want to, and why am I not afraid of it? I don't ever really feel afraid, a bit irked sometimes, but more often - awed. Please realize curiosity alone didn't bring me here... To leave places and people behind... Find a new place that I'd never seen before, to experience a feeling of isolation.

Nature lies before me, holding me, keeping me alive, and yet threatens to kill me with barren cold. This strange desert has less to do with life than being here to see it all has lead me to believe. One idea is sure: it means little to say: "We come from nature."

Is it all so obvious to me? Surely, we are natural beings! To say that "living dust" is an easy metaphor for the incomprehensible fact that life happens amid dead matter ( and the absence of it in the emptiness all around the earth above the atmosphere ) must suggest an all-creative entity like a god. Well, why? If all of nature were a singular nexus of living creatures - instead of being what it is - mostly a mass of mostly inanimate matter, coincidentally prone to natural accidents that occasionally originate intelligent life among that vast emptiness of space and star gas, then we might be far less likely to assume some external creative Being was necessary to make us from dust... You see that the condition of human mentality is extraordinarily subject to impressions given to us by the world we come understand. That world includes the natural one we are given and within which we abide, along with the world we imagine, too... But they're not really the same, these two homes.

...We do not see how we come to be alive, only that we are alive. The trees and rocks remain at bay outside us. The inner ability to distinguish essences are limited since we find no necessary sensation of essence in the appearances that shroud the causes of our being alive. We have become conscious enough to notice ourselves, that's all. This peculiar state of mind is especially human! We can't even imagine an "intelligent" life form as anything but the embodiment of a complex integrity - final, whole, perfectly equal to almost anything we imagine ourselves to be. So much are we such "a piece of work," that we tend to define everything within the mirror of the mind. Reason, faith and imagination - we can as easily choose to live with, or without.

The only thing I'm certain about today is that I'm in the middle of a desert 5,000 metres above the sea. I've made myself completely alone, without any companion. I like that feeling. It frees me to breathe the fresh air, see beauty and feel absolute solitude. It's a dream of elation we ought to fulfill, but cannot figure out how to access, especially after waking up.

Out here, I've outgrown all my excuses, but I remember feeling sheepish, as if I'd never really seen myself. Well now, does it matter? I'm in the desert, limited, too mortal, yet ready to remain alive... Holding myself hostage to the little lie of aging hopes. I can't find words adequate to describe how I stand with my back to myself.

Constantly, we tell each other to feel guilty about doing the things we are made to do. The middle class has done itself proud, looking down on the artist, always telling us to try something else... Seldom can we artists live and act without feeling some regret. But I try to live with none. Maybe that's why I came to this remote place. If I had never come here, I would never have been free of that past full of ready-made emotions.

But I could have been writing more plays instead, or even more fun, chasing the prettiest girls in town! Holding down some job, a mob, a wife, whatever, I don't care... Oh, fuck it! It doesn't matter what I do! I haven't seen the whole world yet: that's a good excuse.

I'm fated to leave things behind everyday: people, the past, dreams, the glorious beginning. Exchanging great hopes for the pecuniary end - that's how people force each other to grow up and be wise... We don't really want to know anything. We prefer being dumb - splitting the hairs. Less anguish, pretending that the big questions are for crazy people.