I'm poor today and will be tomorrow. I work for almost nothing to give you this gift. That's humility, isn't it? I don't care because I don't know what else to do. I'm stupid and I know it. A program for staying afloat? You tell me, doctor. We're the sum total of two thousand years of self-consciousness. Say it again: we're fond of inversions and perversions because, using them we reveal ourselves and find a new delight, even as we imagine freedom remains impossible.

Originally, this universal compulsion for liberty has driven individuals, naively and brilliantly, against the repressive order of their societies; such rebels have always had a wonderful notion of personal freedom that they wanted to share with their entire society. But nowadays, it appears that far too many guerillas and rebel soldiers have lost their honor and have descended to a lowly self-serving status, becoming spoiled and greedy, out to satisfy themselves first - with absolutely no plan to help liberate their fellow citizens from the bonds of foreign domination. I suppose these times have rubbed off on everybody. We're all the same. At first, modernity made people suffer great pangs of conscience. Rage has become as normal an emotion as respect for religious icons. Wealth, intellectual and social authority are no longer tolerable as the sole regulators of personal identity. That is why modern poets were able to name themselves the unacknowledged legislators of the world: intellectual freedom grew more powerful as it became more attractive to all men and women - whatever the social place. Today in the West, after the need to rebel has been largely assuaged by a fashionable (and very slow-to-die) mood of cynicism, we remain sick because we have forgotten the original and most noble compulsions, having exchanged hope for wholly selfish ends... Selfishness displaces all reflection: the innate capacity for compassion is shoved aside. Greedy emptiness has stuffed us up; crassness displaces ideation...

If indifference defeats concern, then we see a larger problem, a symptom of something immensely "wrong" with us. A fresh analogy is wanted to help manhandle this beast to the ground... Entertain the notion of "distracted attention" in the same breath as its opposite, "deep contemplation." You can't... It should be: sadness-pathos and joy-wonder... So, if the human affliction is insensitivity - like a bad mood that won't let up, or a gang-boss who never smiles - then behavior gives back an inevitable reaction, the elaborate armor of the self-protective ratio. It's like some universal refrain, a maxim governing everybody: "It's not my fault..." Ultimately, the result is difficult to translate: does the inversion of conscience characterize us after all? Do man-made problems like pollution and overpopulation fail to scare us because of faith in superhuman progress? We grow, lest we collapse. But for civilization to grow is also to lose control. We witness a metamorphosis: the sense of mysterious spiritual genesis changes into a social and genetic equation for humanity. This is more than word-play dear brother and sister. It's a cry of realization that is stifled by ignorance, call it the inarticulateness of intuition. We forget our dreams, and still, we adhere to old superstitions.

Have you ever heard of the idea that we need to be afraid of knowledge before earning the courage of truth? But you can't just be too proud and stuck up and pretend you've earned it. Like an entertainment baron who sits on his ass all day - and still tells his minions they can keep their temporary positions through hard work alone. No sense in that kind of Pharisee. But we peons work, what else can we to do but slave? Perhaps the failure to realize our best nature is the ingredient that's lost on us - and this sorry state - our indifference truly masks... We are indifferent because we need to be. It's an easily shared social ploy. To be cool is to relax and let things be, more than ever... Since we live in a time when everyone spends all their energy cultivating such careful poses, indifference saves plenty of confusion, time and effort. If we don't care, we avoid thinking through "impossible" problems. The irony, if you can call it that, arises as we see through the pose: inside, deep down, we feel a squashed little pang of conscience. Then you see that highest measure of intelligence is a distaste - for finding yourself stupid! So we fight ourselves and realize we cannot cease being human. This pain is something we can't escape.

Today, we laugh at each other if we don't try to sell out. Because money is freedom, nothing else need be thought. Just like myself, absolutely everything besides your buying power is part of the past. Maybe these "cool" and sociable kinds of indifference aren't completely dumb. If we follow fashions, and pay scant attention to nothing but whatever everyone else is buying and selling, then we don't have to think any longer...

We may create whole new life-styles that are made entirely from communicating shared sensations. Consumer religion has arrived. Investing energy sufficient to fulfill that recognizable social form becomes an orgasmic experience. Personality rules the roost, and images seal our thoughts. This is all fodder for another essay, and involves physical and social psychology instead of a moral critique. However, I'm still fascinated by the need to protect each other with common social motives. How do the mechanisms of economy and the status quo connect to the desire for fulfillment? Do people see through their all too parallel desires, or is it obvious that we have no need to see through anything - except the fantasy underpinning our wish to escape? We suffer from "better-than" illusions. Getting ideal lovers, or the perfect career, and having the smartest child. So, we do participate in a social orgasm. The idea of the individual is now communicated through subsets of this larger collective mind: the "mass" culture of the technological era has allowed for a new kind of group approval and tolerance that wasn't possible before. At least you would hope so... (Perhaps I've neglected to mention that this grand scenario doesn't work unless you have an education and some sufficient material comforts in common first... and you'll have better luck if you grew up in America or Europe, and not Afghanistan... Or, maybe nothing works in the analysis of this social organism; maybe it all comes back to the individual mind, simply, in its infinite pretence to rule over matter.)

Mentality is infinitely movable... But the truly ultramodern individual, he or she is as removed as ever from having a rooted place... No matter how long we spend all our lives in the same city as everybody else, your mind and my mind may find no civic objective. Perhaps, in the far future we will link our nightly dreams and record movies together. The hunt for individual creative originality will seem like some archaic desire, a rustic ruggedness that no longer peals anyone's banana... especially after we have replaced all interior contemplation with going out on the town to satisfy the requisite and socially forward taste for novel physical sensations.

After the old wall, morning comes again. We wake inside a nearly abandoned hotel... Our drivers are very slow to get up. Miguel is a fool, and so, from impatience, he tries to rouse them. I lounge in bed, reading the morning away. Then I go for a walk... The dew is wet all over and a field of rapeseed is blooming. It's so pretty, I don't care to hurry. The day feels good to be alive. I'm smiling and have grown used to unsocial Miguel and his prowling about like a caged and finicky cat. Some homes and a more popular trucker's hotel lie beyond this rapeseed patch...

I don't find out till it's too late that a hot spring is available somewhere up the road. At noon, the drivers tell us we can't go any further with them, apparently because they don't have the right permits to carry us. I get angry, but not at our drivers - at a nosey Chinese guy dressed in a green army uniform. He doesn't say why, but he's telling the drivers that Miguel and I can't go any further with them. I get angry and shove the pushy "soldier" back a few steps for telling everyone what to do. Then, surprise, the Chinese truck driver silently returns my two-hundred yuan down payment we gave him for the ride. We don't understand at all why they won't take us; so, we go to the road and wait for a new ride.

A few trucks arrive after lunch. Here's a huge lorry heaped high with baggage and ten Tibetan riders, all of whom are male but two. There's plenty of room. All these Tibetan guys have long hair. The musician and his dancer mate do it for money. It's a sunny day, great for an open-air journey. Off we go, lumbering over the road, as if riding upon some leisurely leviathan. The travelling Tibetans are happy to be on the move: they shout and hoot enthusiastically. We stop near a junction and wait until another passenger truck catches up. The appearance of this second truck, heaped up with suitcases, creates an opportunity for the drivers to confer and insist upon some payment from all the riders, especially those who want off at the big village yonder... The men form little orbs of discussion and their gesturing babble goes on and on. The money talk takes half an hour, is anguished and complex, and too horribly repetitive for my powers of observation to fathom.

We finally set out again until we arrive at a village. A husky young woman unloads several sacks and a duffel full of personals. Her family is here with warmth and embraces. She's all smiles, yet the girl looks a bit shy and awkward, as only Tibetan girls can be, as if she has some secret story to tell of a jilting husband... We drive up the road but pause to wait for the world to blow up at a little cafe next to a gas station. I mosey over for my first Lhasa Beer only moments after a carload of drunk Tibetans carry out one of their own who, shouting, isn't quite ready to give up drinking yet... Miguel slips a cassette tape of Russian disco-pop into the stereo - a replica of late-Western electronic sex-pop - and I feel wonderful. I ask Miguel if he ever gets drunk? He smiles but doesn't want to admit vices. I suggest we ought to get drunk together, if we ever get to town...

Late afternoon and we climb over a pass: a spectacular sunny vista. I give sunflower seeds to the Tibetan wearing copper sunglasses beside me, plus an elderly Tibetan gent nearby. As soon as we're on top, we cruise down into a narrow ravine; it isn't an hour before the next delay happens. We pass some road workers. Somebody has left a big wheelbarrow in the middle of the road: our truck runs right over it. We stop. Another noisy discussion ensues... Everybody has to spiel their two cents at the pitiable road crew. One of the crew is a woman, and she talks back; in true despair, she wails and screeches over her ancient, ruined wheelbarrow.

We go on. The hulking truck descends and sways to and fro like a swaggering elephant. The driver does his best to keep us from pitching overboard. I cling to my bike and hang on to a rope both, like a cowboy on a bronco. The truck slows to a caterpillar crawl as we find ourselves driving along the middle of a riverbed. A huge construction project is underway here: the Tibetans have been conscripted to hand-build a new stone road up from the Lhartse valley. It's a hundred kilometres long and will take years to finish. Men and women both labor together. I've seen this kind of road job before, in China's Guizhou province. It's the same style: first, the workers create an elevated road-bed supported by rocks hewn into just the right shape... Constructing the retaining wall for the road is slow, painstaking work. So many hands and fingers are involved. Thousands of heavy rocks are needed, and each big piece must be chiselled into just the right shape. In what we would imagine to be true communist fashion, it's interesting to see at least as many women working on the road as men. But I'm sure there were no women laborers building the road I saw in Guizhou. Perhaps entire Tibetan villages have been imported to do this work: it's difficult to describe this scene so you can picture it. After nearly 80 kilometres of road construction, I noticed only three big earth moving machines. Most of the construction is done by hand: the laborers screen the sand to make mortar in portable mixers. Others use hammer and chisel to finish the rocks. Then the rocks are carried up to their respective place on the road, upon bent back or rickety cart. For the time being, everyone lives in summer camps right beside the road.

We encounter a lovely valley. The riverbed doesn't end here with the setting sun. As we drive along, we pass several motorcyclists, male and female, coming up the river. Only the Japanese would do this. How they brought in the off-road enduro motorbikes is another question I don't care to pursue.

Like a dream of a long lost friend: telling me about all the years between now and when... He speaks with that voice you knew ten years ago. A west county accent, with a somewhat demure lilt. A happy hello, a hopeful glint in the eye and that up-climbing tone that he inherited from his mother. Where are they - your lost friends? We remember all the crazy things that happened to us. Maybe we could even exchange our current opinions, but who knows if we could still know one other as intimately as children. That's my only regret about wandering: it makes me feel so like the lost man who knows he isn't lost. If you wander, people back home imagine that you're lost because they haven't any idea why you enjoy the wide world. The lost man who knows he isn't lost is merely a man who evades his self-knowledge. And playing the failure isn't so much fun as doing a winner. It's hard to lose on purpose, when there's no real reason to lose. It must be insanity - a crumpled-up tinhorn full of regret, a groundless and foolish resentment - to lose on purpose. I hear the accusations from the world of mass fodder, that thin world of selfish media images and golden plastic: "You are a resistance, a soil that won't raise the seed. The Earth is not flattered by your presence..." Well, I could care less, ya. Too stuck. In the dead mind of history, the mire of man-made misery forgets easy pleasure. If only we'd open to it - to touch and be touched...

The truck gets bamboozled as it skirts an emerald lake and we have to clamber off to pull the vehicle out of the mud, tug-of-war style. At dusk it all happens again: a big ditch right across the road sticks us deeply. It takes nearly an hour of pushing and pulling to dislodge the heavy truck - a wearisome farce. Darkness comes and we hang on all the harder, slowly negotiating the last stretch of riverbed.

The funniest event of the day turns out to be the police checkpoint. We are instructed to crouch and lie flat between the baggage as the policeman shines his flashlight over us. Luckily his poor Tibetan eyesight misses us and he sends us on our way. A Nazi would never have done that! Lucky us: we are free to reach Lhartse county town, called Chushar in Tibetan. Chushar is a crossroads for the civil and military administration. According to my information, it was a lot easier for the Chinese to get permits to open new businesses than it was for local Tibetans. The government made it an unspoken policy to encourage Chinese from places like Sichuan to migrate here.

We eat dinner late at night. The waitress runs next door to find sufficient ingredients for us. Scarcity is writ large upon Tibet. In this cafe, all the Tibetans make do with a few bowls of noodles and some tiny morsels of goat meat. Everyone is poor here. Some guys in the cafe only read the menus, but they order nothing. It's a sad scene. They are curious to see what we foreigners are like. We eat avidly, don't we? Believe me, hunger knows no guilt. Then, we're off to find lodgings. Miguel runs out of money. I lend him a little everyday, till he can get more wired from Belgium. He's desperate without having to admit it. He sits strangely upon a world that he believes is out to crush him. So, he reminds me of a vigilant viper: it's as if he wants to know everything faster than he's willing to spend the time needed to discover it. A lot of us are like that now: no patience for anything but the world as we expect it ought to be... We pay each other well to make the imaginary seem real, too. I suppose his character reminds me of that universal neuroses all artists suffer - about feeling hated, and for not being talented enough. May the gods forgive my insanity.

Miguel doesn't quite know what he's doing in this world, so he has to feel like everything challenges his being in the first place... Put it this way, to make friends with this guy is almost impossible. He might like you, but without showing it, and only if he believes that you're not judging him, perhaps from a skin prejudice or something. The world and his parents have been rude enough to deaden any sensitivity he may once have had. The harsh exterior masks a disturbed vulnerability. It makes me think of a good metaphor: the whole punk idiom is just a defense mechanism against feeling terrorized.

How many of us go around like this, seeing another person in the ones we pretend to know? Isn't it easier to meet the one we expect in each other, or the one we need to hate, and love, or compete with? Maybe we never see each other, but only whomever we think the world has made of us. But, to see the guy beside you as he thinks of himself, or herself, that is often beyond sensitivity. Miguel would become some other man if he could. He doesn't hate himself. No, like so many of us, he doesn't want simply to caress the woman, he needs to prod her - to make sure she's really there. So, again, like so many of us, he hides away his wishes.