I would be alone forever if I didn't enjoy making love. But when you come to Tibet, it is easy to see why people here devote themselves to God... The Buddhists enjoy the wilderness because the wide open spaces cannot possibly oppress you! The Tibetan nomad wanders in freedom. Being in nature does free you from others and gives you independence. At the same time, city people seem locked into an unnatural fear of manly, vigorous action.

Open space is a threat if you don't have time enough to let it open you up. I haven't enough time! It would take a year for me to adapt completely to this empty space. Then I would be free to wander off in any direction, across the Tibetan wilderness, with a road or none! I feel strong enough to ride the bike, but that's all.

Sand and mountains live in my mind - as symbols of eternity. The mountains watch you in silence. You may wonder what they think about you - but they show no sign of emotion and no recognition. Pure nature can give you that impersonal sense of being alone in a world that can't know you are alive... Rocks and mountains are powerful eternities. Earth untouched by man is perfectly the same when we go away.

Immensity of Earth! I feel weak with solitude. The mountain doesn't believe in its spirit, but some people do, on its behalf... What gets me - is the permanence of this mountain... While people are already passing by... We move through reflections of light, and barely notice the matter that makes us real.

Nature is the basis of our reality, the one unquestioned given of all existence. We measure matter with time and space. So, the Earth is young and old at once. It won't go away after humanity is extinct and forgotten. Yet, freedom nature makes for us is to learn that we are not limited beings at all - but self-creative. Really, we are prone to imagine an understanding of reality. While this unprecedented talent for knowledge suggests that nature is unlimited, we are given also to suspect the absolutes which we presume to comprise reality; and so, we begin to shape our human nature of the constant search for messages and meaning: the blank emblem of a bough, and we may carve it into a stone face... Art is allied to contemplation and is our purest activity. With art, we realize that nature can't reflect us without thought. The first thing we see - before we create anything - is ourselves.

Why bother pitying myself? I'm already left behind, old-fashioned, out-of-date. Nothing I can say will faze you. Nothing I can produce from my pocket will surprise you, unless you're a naked girl... Life isn't long enough for me. Yet, already I want to die. But not in this desert: strangely - I want to live because everything here is dead. That's the mystery. Give a man ten reasons to live and he will find eleven to die. Because we don't know anything, we are so ignorant as to imagine it all... The Earth of nature will persist beyond our span. Mortality could be a basic metaphor for the destiny of civilization. You think it's too soon to tell!? Well, maybe it's already far too late - only we're too stupid to notice...

Nature is strong because it's irrefutable, unmovable. To flourish we need to make nature do what we want. Why can we think? Because we need to live. Humanity is a small monkey, an endangered species in the beginning, and it's the same today. Nature was a trial, before we became our own best menace. We often personify nature with wishes for good will, and a weakness for evil... Nature kills us, but not because we are targets... But really, nature is neither for nor against us - only we are. But you say that nature is stronger than us. Why so? What do we lack that we cannot yet master?

Nature makes many choices for us, except we fail to notice the significance of that. Up to now we prefer seeing ourselves as beings without cause. But we are certain that we are here and clever enough to sense a mystery. The being of intelligence among inanimate essences inspires the wish for God. Yet God hasn't been a good enough answer to satisfy Western humanity. Do you realize that Eastern wisdom didn't even need a God in the beginning? Can you even see the wishfulness behind the root word: god = good... We are born to say, "Here I am." But the rocks and sand say nothing to me. The sun and wind push me along, that's all.

Nature is stronger: but I am strong enough. I feel weak beneath the blankets at night, shuddering as the 5000 metre temperature falls. I curl up, a fetus, and somehow I sleep even as the calories burn through the shivers I expend to keep some small heat inside my body. At daybreak, I climb through the stiff and icy nylon tent skin. It's nearly ten degrees Celsius below zero! I scramble out quickly to pack away everything, waiting for the sun, so lazy and slow, to climb from behind the cloudy bank...

The Earth does not really need us. Nature doesn't know me. We are chance freaks of creation. Even if the human design is divine, we cannot say so. We strive to match self-conception with the efforts of creativity. In this respect, the Earth is a tool. The nature of life means air and water. They made us. Perhaps God used them to make us. You decide...

Mortality. The living matter of my body, the still silence of the barren soil. Nature leaves me alone like a dying mother. My mom is still alive. But I want to forget everything that I remember - even my family. This is why I came. Nothing worries me here, I've no concern about other people's choices for me. I've ridden past having to come home, too. Nature is essence, but the home for the heart is the one we imagine. Humanly personal identity is given and taken by creativity, and by making up your mind.

Some of us grow up trusting that home is as real as our good fortune. Others are born deprived of a home, and this idea which so many take for granted, never touches those with no home, except as a dream, a wish, or a despair... Why do we not see that myths are not universal truths at all? Ah, but we are too shy to ask whether or not our myths, and pride, faith and hope depend, perhaps, upon mere chance alone...

Maybe I had a home, but it didn't matter much. Or it did matter, but I pretend to forget. So, I end up wandering. Anyway, why should I pretend to some illusion about a heritage, a unique cultural "identity." If you can think for yourself - you'll soon see there is no such thing anymore. ...Is there something wrong with me? No, but many people remain adamantly stupid in their insistence upon imposing certain modes of "correct" thought. Some morons even pretend that a writer can seriously take a conservative or a liberal stance. But writers just write - they see the world and express themselves - as they are, not as political ideals...

What could happen: what's the consequence of ignoring the fact that we assume superiority over nature?

I'm not there yet. Like the last season of a sit-com: they've gone way beyond talking about what they already did in the first season; now, after cancelling the show, all they've got is three years to write their first movie while sailing around the world, fucking right by me, ha... Haven't watched tv since I was a kid, and happy about that, too. Now I am pleased to be a wanderer, unaware of that whole other world of easy box office wealth. Passed and crazy - no matter - I still hope to write poems amp; novels and won't waste any time begging permission to write soggy shit for hollywood...

Entertainment has made a lot of money making a fool of me. Make the audience laugh and cringe, you're good at it! Big words and ideas are for nobody. Use some slang. I was feeling up to an insult, a compliment, even though I don't want in a school, either. I enjoy being dumped. Picking up's the thrill. Slut life is more. Sure, I know... Costs a lot more, too... What costs more? Marriage - or divorce? I'm over-populated by the running away. Linger among my feelings if you dare. Then you can try to wander home again, too.

Shard Bard. Flat in red. Whiles by white. Hepped and heaped. Cleft crofter croesus crept. Then bit my strop. Put me to bed with puss. Nerd and Wuss. Priss and Cush. Kiss and cuss. Whish is whorse: fling or beldame? Stay at home or run amok? Drink or drive? Pretty showboys can't risk losing out on all that high-class, performance-grade pussy! ...Again, I hear: "Nothing!"

Morning. Here I am, getting up. And you know something? Memories seep through sleep. I feel some trepidation about going back to the road, imagining that, as soon as I touch it, the Earth will wind-up and spit another big wind at me - lay me low - and laugh at me again. But the air this morning is warm and very calm, so once I get back on the bike - I feel okay. Nothing to stop me now: I just go. It takes muscle to slip up the big grade.

The Earth grinds over the Karakax - so far as never-ending. I can barely make the top of the pass. I have to get off and push, gasping all the way. Maybe I overworked yesterday. Maybe it's the thin air. I see a velvet yellow plain far below. The road goes straight down into a faintly green plate, it's a big boggy marsh fed by underground springs.

The mountains left of the bowl are tall with amazing perpendicular faces. They are brought closer by a palpable shroud of icy cloud - a hungry jaw hung with frozen enamel. I'm looking for blood dripping off the fangs. I see similar vivid mountain faces, upturned and snapping sharply at heaven - far beyond, at the vale's end. Below boiling clouds space is perfectly transparent.

All I manage is to bounce over the ruts and overtake two trucks stopped in a chill mountain creek. The water courses over the roadway and the second truck is up to its knees in water. I stop, yank free my bottles and slosh bodily into the water to fill up. I can see the truck's driveshaft spinning - but the transaxle gears are stripped cleaner than the closest shave. Probably the driver missed a shift coming off the last pass. Besides the nervous driver sits a cute Tibetan girl, looking most sheepish about a delay she doesn't understand. I drink the pure river and keep going.

A few kilometres further up the road and what do I see? A man is walking at me from the sidelines. A tiny Uigur guy, looking like he doesn't believe I'm in his eyes. He's waving and sometimes with both hands. His signals are as if I might not notice him waving... So I stop, feeling a little bit tired of pity. Yet I do feel touched - that someone out here might actually want to see me... I wait for the guy to reach the road. He takes me over to the commune, yet another dirty brick affair, run-down and rugged... It's the kind of building people live in because they have no other choice. ...To know a choice: do you appreciate that blessing? Nah, you're a spoiled brat, a soft customer. I'm no better than you? We all have to buy everything for far too much, yeah... You haven't written home in years. You won't give a dime to beggars unless someone sees you doing it. Fucking shit of the world! Or, maybe you're actually one of those honorable wretches, and every time you give, it's because you think you're finally going to get well tomorrow and so forever free yourself of curiosity, fear and pity. The nature of man is to do good: still, we go on trying to teach this, or at least force each other to believe it - until man needs to cheat and steal. Ah, it's not a crime in the beginning, is it? Are you wondering how come I accuse without knowing you? I do know you - because you're reading this my friend, and I've had 36 years to understand what's wrong with me...

The first thing I do is find a place to wash my clothes. Almost unbelievably, a warm natural spring rises into the marsh behind the Uigurs' volleyball net. The warmth feels real, either that or my hands are chilled to the marrow!

The Uigurs chat with me, with the help of yet another English/Arabic dictionary. It's a regular thing, I'm getting used to it, just another dumb popstar accosted by the sleepy-head press. Time and again repeating the same load of crap. The only thing to note is how pointed the questions are - and how meaningless they seem to me - yet the questions are very meaningful to them! Okay, here it comes again: do you eat pork? Yes. Are you a Mussulman? No. So I guess that means they know now that I'm the Infidel - the dreaded white from far away! I'm the hunted beast, a creatureless being without any soul! All right!

Even so - to see me is to feed me - and they do. A bowl of rice, yellow tubers and grilled mutton. These guys are naturally friendly - because they are alone. I share my smoke and make myself comfortable. The next morning I get up before anyone else does.

The sleet doesn't start until I reach a dry riverbed. I put on my windbreaker and all my warm things. The wind pushes me ahead as the sleet changes to big, goofy snowflakes. The road hugs a sharp escarpment that climbs up along the river flats. Around a corner, at the bottom of the cliff, I spot yet another smashed truck - twenty or thirty metres below. It's all crunched upside down on the weedy rubble. Impossible to stop. Finally the snow abates as I leave behind the Karakax trough. I pause for a few sweet cookies. So little food left. But the world is beautiful today - all blue and silver - iron Earth is a table below a prism of blue clouds that open a delicate fan painted with setting sunlight...

I climb the silvery sand and pass another upended truck; its load of watermelons are spilled, cracked open red everywhere across the gravel. Finally, I reach the lonesome army depot of Dahongliutan. That makes two weeks riding so far - a total of nearly 800 kilometres. I'm sure to go all the way, despite the vast nothing of the Aksai Chin plateau, yet to be traversed.

The army base here seems dormant, but the army truckers driving the long convoy to Ali are lined up and waiting for each other to finish dinner and a nap. I enjoy a beer and a couple of meals. The Chinese women cooking are so pretty, and the army boys, so cute.

I'm in bed in the depot commune as someone walks into the dorm, unscrews the light bulb and walks away... I chase him down to get it back. He hears my curses and finally brings back the bulb. Then, an English-speaking Israeli hitching down from Tibet arrives to talk about what to expect tomorrow. Nothing. Sand, mountains and more emptiness.