Pardon my poor memory for other people's solutions, yet it appears, in the crude language of a skinflint psychology, to resemble the compensation that never compensates enough. We want because we want. We spin in viciously square circles, biting off another chunk of something that's only going to make us fatter, blinder, hungrier! The only real solution for most of us is to fuck as much as we can! For we have nothing but imaginary desires - and they seem created especially to beggar our deprivations.

Am I fated to be trapped in somebody else's cliche once more? Think of all those poor graduate students sucking on the impenetrable thinkers... Weep for them, dear Lord... Endless models of theoretic and imaginary reality deck the halls with seams of coal. Is it too dusty..? An intellectual idea bought and sold doesn't seem so real anymore, especially when you see that such ideas become meaningful because they can give their creator status, insofar as it is consumed by a mass audience who then must "officially" study the ideas of that particular intellectual: if you are lucky enough for that to happen to you - then you are also liable to realize that your special idea can almost be any old idea at all - because you are likely to see that being able to sell it to an audience is actually more important for earning respect/consumption than the actual intelligence and originality of the special idea. Do I really believe that? Yes, I do. Look and look again at all the absolute nonsense that gets sold as truth today, like wanky scientology: boy, old Ron really knew how to blow smoke on them microbes... You want to buy something to believe in... The goofier it is - the easier it is to sell to people who need to believe believe believe nowadays. Astrology, numerology - all kinds of hokum does well now. ...Did you call yourself an artist, an intellectual, once? After you gave up on the dream of creating authentic art - then, did you really prefer gold instead - for itself, because you think it is wisdom?

At least I try to be original, even if I'm disrespected for the audacity... Put it like this: the problem will not go away: we hunger for love and prone we lie, unfulfilled. Ah, but when you know the answer to a problem, and yet can't find words for it, it's like smelling that sweet iron hint of rain just before the rain really falls... Now why is that, dear heart? Why can't we decipher the true cause of our distressing compulsions? Because we can't rise above the experience of being-on-our-knees, and lapping up the tangy cunt of raw need. Response and reaction, the active drives, physical and spiritual sensations, all of the deepest feelings - our hungry instincts - these are wordless movements: their inspiration can never be ascertained. We do create - because we must. While we wish to behave in a coherent and creative way, the internal process we go through is often something very contrary to what we have to go through, materially, to achieve our aims, (ie.: what we have to do to buy enough time to create may block pure creativity.) Ultimately, the artist must realize that the social world and the creative imagination do not get along well. But that doesn't really matter very much - because, if you really are an artist, then you will create easily, despite society's need to destroy your freedom, and the absence of culture, your mind.

Psychologically speaking, and with respect to our moral preoccupations, we are faced with trying to understand the interaction of all human sociocultural formation; and in doing so, we must take into consideration all lucky givens, unfortunate deprivations and earthly rigors: the demands of acculturated belief, environment, habit, educated opinion, and having grown up in a prosperous or impoverished homeland - all the shared worlds of personal and locally conditioned response. Beyond all this familiar reality, and its attending jargon, lies the simple world of being alive: poetry, philosophy and psychology arise from the juxtaposition of private, personal and internal domains with the external social reality of community and the living and mostly inanimate facts of the universe. But we know that already, without ever seeing what it means... How strange.

A good reason to start another paragraph is the fact that nobody knows what you know... That's why you write, isn't it? I don't know how you center the universe, nor how you need to see everyone (un)like yourself as one more idiot and failure. If you're leader of the band, chief of the local gang, a captain of industry, the accomplished spokesperson for the collective personality of your nation, okay, I won't stand in your way. I won't mind feeling lowly while you enjoy being high and mighty.

Because they're still cracking rocks and shouting for me to come up and join in the gang-bang... I'm just too tired, so I ride on, hoping for the bridge. It's built over a very narrow gorge through which the Sutlej roars. The span is made of hewn stone. A military watchtower is perched by the bridge. Barbed-wire scrolls round the rocks. A bluster brings drizzle down.

As I reach Tsamda, the sun bursts through again. It's a very small town with some redeeming qualities. Trees! They are the first big bunch I've seen since Xinjiang... The trees line the main street into town, and a large plot of them is planted in back of town. The leaves rustle coolly. I should stay for a couple of days. It's such a green contrast to the sandy barrens surrounding the place. The main street is really the only street. The Guge Hotel overlooks the old monastery of Toling. The manager charges me only 25 yuan instead of the usual 50 for foreigners.

Nothing to do. Wash clothes before the sun goes down. I bath in the chill spring water and it feels so good to scrub my scalp twice clean. I dine alone beside a table full of serious and even sad-looking Chinese cadres, maybe officers out of uniform. But the food here is refreshing. Back in my room, two Uigur truckers have moved in, and they are amused to find a white guy lounging about. However, I'm deeply sunk into my carapace. The shell of time that I've spent alone isn't easy to crack. I'm not irritable, but I feel that, whenever somebody looks at me without words, they see the image of a painting, like a wall of a man, denuded of all aura; it's as if they've already seen too many silent travellers exactly like me... Even so, I try to make the back of my wall smile. I feel so glued to this solitude, why bother trying to explain it?

Comfort is a cozy bed. For once, morning comes without letting me know. Sleep a little longer. I love to do nothing but wash clothes, read and smoke a few cigarettes. An active disposition can't stop moving or doing. Needing rest starts me thinking about lazy people. There must be a few amenities attached to the monotony of sloth... One great thing: nobody bothers you or notices you at all when you just lay about. After all, who cares whether you earn any respect? If you do nothing, and so make existence value-free - then judgements can't touch you either...

I don't exactly have the spiritual resignation preached by Taoists in mind either. Just how pleasant it must be to be carefree, and that means, to be above misery... To relax and forgive yourself for not caring a damn what others dream for you: to release yourself from responsible burdens, all the material cares we're supposed to share with each other. Ah, but to give up our cares is a sin in many societies. To be "free" like that is considered the ultimate selfishness, a disregard for other people's welfare. Maybe it's not. Maybe you really need to be alone first - far from everyone you know - only then may you sympathize with a vagabond's dreams.

Today I know nobody. I've expended so much bodily energy, and have arrived alone. Nothing can compel my compassion. What's wrong with me? My imaginary suffering reduces deep moral fables to grotesque caricatures. You can't care anymore - because you've tried too hard already, and it's as if you are repeatedly burned by the indifference of people whose experience is too unlike yours: perhaps they're only slightly more fortunate. It's an especially modern disease... How exhaustion becomes starvation.

I am the husk of conscience today in Tsamda. I smile when expected and hope that suffices. Other foreign travellers are here today. Some Koreans whom I mistake for Japanese travel in a group guided by Tibetans. The Koreans come into the restaurant, too. They look travel weary. But this place is so beautiful: you only need to go outside to feel it! I suspect the Koreans are depressed by the unconscious realization that they come from a city deprived of empty, open spaces. Perhaps someone's mother has died? Or maybe they don't think this banana biker can make it home alive... After dinner I see a desert rainbow blossoming yonder...

I talk to one of the Koreans. He's very friendly and surprised to learn I'm riding a bike. Later, one of their women comes into my room for a quick gander at my bike: and what a lithe little shopper, lush in her stretchy pants. Good at that sexy sophisticate air, too. But she flutters out before so much as wishing I can hook her... Ho well, back to fighting myself again...

The room gets busy with more truckers. I feel unduly shy. Then, I realize the Tibetan fellow guiding the Koreans is sitting on the bed, and he's waiting for me to become sociable... So, we talk about travel in Tibet. His English is excellent and it's nice to relax and chat... Pasang is from Lhasa, and only 23. He's guiding the Koreans. It's a summer job. He comes from a well-to-do family: he says his parents own a carpet factory in Nepal. We agree that Tsamda County is certainly one of Tibet's most beautiful places. He tells me this place sits at 3660 metres above sea level, the same altitude as Lhasa. The river valley really is one of the prettiest places in Tibet: Tsamda town occupies a broad cornice two hundred metres above the river flats. The precipice overlooks the river and green pastures, trees and thistles. The vistas are spectacular: huge and lovely sandstone mesas, crenellated ridges - the infinite nuance of light is as peaceful as any dream of paradise...

He asks me what I think about Tibet and its people. This is always the first question Tibetans ask foreigners travelling in their country. His curiosity is sincere, an implicit comment on the viewpoint Tibetans hold about their own society. They want to know why the outside world is so interested in them. Yet, they don't know much about the rest of the world, and so naturally enough, Tibetans are ticklish about revealing their true feelings to outsiders. Perhaps they are too hard on themselves and suffer a shame complex about having to live in this modern colony; it's an experience few dare discuss. So much have the Chinese given, yet so very much have they taken away! The fixed way of interpreting a culture - through the wall of our imagination - can only be broken down when we meet and talk to articulate men like Pasang. He's so open about everything. I wish I could meet more like him, sinofied or not...

Pasang asks me if I've seen the Dalai Lama. Yes, I say, on live television in Taiwan; he was fielding questions about Buddhism, explaining that the way into enlightenment was difficult to understand and difficult to achieve. Pasang wonders what I really know about Buddhism in Tibet. He explains that most Tibetans follow the Nyingmapa school, which represents the first condition of Buddhism in Tibet when it was first adopted from Indian Buddhist teachings. It's true. Translations of Indian works and commentaries inspired all Tibetan Buddhist schools.

But a single school, Tibetan or Indian, cannot really account for the whole story of Buddhism and religion in Tibet. Before Buddhism came Bon and before Bon came the folklore and religions of ancient Tibet. Accurate descriptions of Tibet's cultural and religious identity are only available in landmark works like those by Tucci or R.A. Stein.

Pasang gives me his phone number in Lhasa, in case he's at home. He suggests that I return to Tibet in future, especially if I want to organize tours for Taiwanese or Canadian travellers. I go for a stroll around Tsamda town. You have to understand that very very few people live in this western region of Tibet: outside the arctic regions, far western Tibet and the northern plateau are probably the least densely populated places on Earth. Some villages do survive up and down the banks of the Sutlej, but they are tiny.

Toling sits on a cliff above the Sutlej, and it's one of several monasteries established by Rinchen Zangpo, a renowned promulgator of Tibetan Buddhism. He is legendary for establishing 100 different temples and monasteries, many in western Tibet. The temples of Toling date from 1014 to 1025 A.D. Of all the temples attributed to Zangpo, only those at Toling, the Guge kingdom and in Ladakh, India, survive to this day.

The outer gate to Toling Monastery stands open. The temples appear well-kept and recently painted, some of them in the traditional muddy scarlet hue... I walk around but see nobody. The Koreans already told me that the buildings are closed to the public. But I find my way into an annex beside the big red temple. I climb time-polished stairs and reach a typical monk's cell. In it a portly gent dressed in scarlet robes reclines on his carpeted couch. I startle him because everything is so peaceful and quiet. He's got a radio and somebody has left him some fresh spinach. I have nothing to give him, after all, and maybe I should be embarrassed. A huge key-ring sits on the altar, but he doesn't want to get up and let me into the temples. There are no other monks around. Are there any besides this old abbot? I don't know. Since the old monk looks nervous and tired, and his big belly is a heap to lift, I leave him alone.

Out I go and make a clockwise circle around the site... If visiting Tibetan monasteries it's important to walk around them clockwise, because that shows respect for the religion, and reflects the progress of nature's cosmic order, too. There are two big temples, and both have been restored. One is the assembly hall. No sign of life, however. Only recent restoration work evidences renewed care and interest in the holy place on the part of official authorities. Unless they've gone travelling, no local order of monks appears to live here. That seems sad - the place seems so closed up: big padlocks weigh heavily on the gigantic timber doors. One tiny plaque is affixed to the outer wall and it mocks history. The wording will not admit remorse or responsibility: the People's Committee for Cultural Relics in West Tibet wants us to know they have restored the site to proclaim its importance for everyone's heritage... Not much mention of the destruction perpetrated by those heroes of the sixties, the Red Guards. China cannot make mistakes, even in another people's country!

The populace of Tsamda comprises an enclave of Chinese soldiers, administrators and technocrats. The postman is Tibetan. Most shopkeepers and laborers are Tibetans, too. A restaurant is kept by a Chinese man and his Tibetan wife; he's probably an ex-soldier who decided to stay here for climate and beauty...

Soldiers perform martial drills inside the PLA compound, barking out their exercise orders in noisy unison. Children walk the streets alone and join the Tibetan women folk who gather for sunset chats. A few traditional Tibetan homes and gardens are situated near the monastery. These homes are plastered white and built round a small flower-filled courtyard. Near the homes sits a modest school with a basketball court, empty and quiet. Behind the school sits an abandoned group of tiny brick row houses, not very comfortable. Towards the other end of town, the people dwell in two storey block apartments; many of the windows open onto tiny banks of solar cells hooked to battery chargers: everyone wants to light a bulb or listen to their radio.

One day isn't enough to give me the rest I really need, but I am excited to visit the ruins of Guge. After all, I've come 1800 kilometres by bike especially to see this most beautiful place, just up the road a ways...