For one such as I, living in close proximity with China for the past six years, it is frustrating to listen to Western authorities, all partisans of some infallible Western political tradition, entirely foreign and unintelligible to the Chinese, as they speak the language of their faith on behalf of a future made of "democracy" for Asia. First, realize that American and European intellectual and political authorities make a rich living simply by following each others' hypocritical form. Being professionally two-faced is a surefire way to inflate their vast spheres of influence, as well as to keep the owners of property in control. Americans and Europeans are such perfect people; we never ever need to leave the blindness of our own home to control the whole world! But of course, my words are all too tainted with that deliberate lack of perspective that all social critics must project in order to be well-paid... (Except, I'm not well-paid - I'm washed up.) Even though there are some people in America who believe that forbidding all imports from China could save a few jobs, the single main thing to understand is that "global economy" also means the deep entrenchment of global inequality... Travel to Asia and see the vast material space between classes... Yet, strangely enough, even the rich winners of Asia often look and behave exactly like mean peasants, too. I can't understand it, and you won't either. (Work there and see. Work hard and live to regret it, mack. Often as snot, the slavemaster will take your money and then find a way to enlist someone else's blame against you as a way out of giving you the due for your hard slaving. Once a cheap shit, always a cheap shit: that's the unspoken motto most multinationals apply. As for women - they'll cramp your style till you get as small as they need to make you feel! May as well change your name to Ham Sucker... Forget it.)

Too many American pundits are still obviously in the pay of the careless and the greedy, all of whom imagine themselves to be very clever, but none of whom are actually distinguished by anything more than being able to value a fat wad of cash over all culture, enlightenment, fair play and true progress... Neocolonialism is a hard fact of life in Asia today, no matter all the positive gloss about freedom and economic development spewed by magazines and papers. ("The Economist" will never run a detailed feature about international money-laundering and its real culprits - the thieving depositors and the shut-eyed bankers? No, because the editors mingle among the same small crowd of criminals who rule the world with all the hubris that comes from hoarding unjust privileges. It's a very closed system of control, a super-rich circle of deception. It's like wondering, will a supermodel sleep with a poet? She's only allowed to get a football salaryman? I blab too much. Complaint is a breed of self-excuse? Poets get the waitresses. I'm a square. But handle me with a dish. She's ready. I never tried hard enough and I'm lazy! I know, honey. Classy culture has been completely recreated by money, many times over: it's all predictable, in-line, pre-classed and safe. Look: my name is j. b. insular... I'm an Incomepoop... ) The West will go on exploiting China and other countries in the region, as in past centuries. The establishment in each Asian country will do their best to exploit their people for themselves, and of course, on behalf of the West, too...

Today, "economic development" in most of Asia enslaves workers to sweat out their whole lives in substandard environments so that impersonal corporate entities can satisfy their need for making profits. The critical thing to note is that the profits made by the sweat of Asians on products manufactured for sale in America stays right in America and Europe! The money is seldom returned to help develop the infrastructure of Asia - except perhaps to build some hideous new factory to employ more poor sheep at wages less than they need to pay the rent and buy food for their family. The wages for all the Asian factory workers in a major Western running shoe firm amount to much less than the same company's annual advertising budget... No imported, imperial boss from the West should ever have to wonder why Indonesians and Malaysians are so lazy and ill-motivated... It's worse than domination by local capitalist military dictators... It's the oppression of you and me, brother...

In collusion with the economic powers of America and Europe, the richest Chinese and Taiwanese, and the rulers and industrialists of Malaysia and Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand are hard bent upon preserving the old orders of their local social and militaristic complex, which implies above all, absolute concentration of property and power in the hands of the mighty and the few... (The situation is a lot like a provincial literary journal or a small "national" publishing house: only the locals who know the other locals let each other in, and at the same time, the locals can only acknowledge a handful of international names at any given moment: only those very few are permitted to do good business and get big hand-outs, standing in line together, buying and selling each others' names.)

...In Taiwan, model of economic development and social advance, democracy only exists as a wishful fancy - a desire of the people for a truly progressive and free society. But the island society, despite all its wealth, free elections and social progress, remains an authoritarian state. Family and friends mean more than they do in America. Worker's are discouraged from speaking up for their rights. The more sheep and the less people - the more "stable" things remain. Only the owner's of land and large enterprises are truly rich: meanwhile, the middle class is obliged to spend most of its money as soon as its earned. It's conceivable that the Chinese and Taiwanese will outgrow their stunted psychology of repressive and oppressive behavior, and at last transcend their long history of chaos, and finally make a society in which corruption, bossy bullying, gross environmental pollution and arbitrary oppression are no longer necessary. But such a paradise is likely to be a long time coming; indeed, perhaps more than two or three generations - maybe one or two hundred years. Maybe - never ever...

Do you even appreciate the fact that almost all Asian countries are little more than militaristic technocracies? This truth is too simple for CNN et al. You don't have to pull the wool over my eyes by condescendingly urging me to: "Keep up with the times..." These are prehistoric times. So thanks - but no thanks... I prefer to be blind and poor - and only a little bit greedy... The rest of the world's dwarfs can invest in some expensive superstitions, useless jars - or whatever they need to inflate and justify grand delusions of all-powerful self-possessed importance... But all you want is to make a living, too? Okay, I can't forget about that. The hypocrite doesn't know he's living in slipperyville. She gets wet when she rains...

It is good to work hard, but it's somewhat silly when people abuse you from jealousy or thwarted desire... If the babe could only make you stick it in... If you wanted her enough! (But if you want her too much - then she doesn't want you!) That's why the Pharisee as often ends up a crippled clown as a bluff and stupid brute. To be a man is hard, ever since old croesus suggested the institution of a marketplace would be a good way to make men into women... Replace war and save your skin with commerce. Now everyone shares a desperate wish to invent creative cooperation. Today, the world is made of individual effort. Still, we have family-inherited money-power, inherited political might, mass enslavement, mass poverty, limited resources, mass liberation - and of course - the automated, fanatical and hasty politics of informed rhetoric - left and right, up and down. The practical results are often silent deliberate thought, violent behavior and chaotic arbitration... Ask yourself: where is sense before you touch it, and the mind moves your heart? So few raise their voices above the silence to speak sincerely for peaceful change towards equalizing the world's economies - the one and only positive advance that would benefit everyone... Not much need to be angry. Think about what to do. Doing is more enjoyable. Pleasure and accomplishment make good company, and they make a home and make you love. But your good life and dreams won't stop the bizarre contradictions written through the headlines... And where is the world that lives in a quiet verse? A path walked alone forgets its familiar arteries... It's okay. Few want to live below the road, in the roots. Whatever you know comes up from the below from which you grow. The only thing against gravity is you. Above - bright levity lives ideas of goodness, of thrills and the escape from madness. Feisty and laughing - certainty comes - despite the chilly predicates of love left alone. Lying lorn, feeling melancholy, wistfully wishing for her return. We always get sad remembering wasted love. The time you want is lustier than you. Where is she, your last lover? Were you good to her when she left you? Had you time for a last, lingering look?

First, I suppose a lot of innocent people are going to die of starvation, civil war and thirst... Thousands of Africans are dying from AIDS everyday. Does anyone give a shit? The practical demands of material progress do suggest that development initiates only as capital can be concentrated and then used to create a more prosperous community. But of course, many people have made a good life from almost nothing but a grunt and some exertion. At the same time, we ought not fear to criticize the rude over-concentration of material interests in the hands of too few, who obsessively heap coin at the expense of justice. Today, we see too few "utopians," and too many selfish people occupied with motives and actions quite free of any moral consideration at all. It's as if the modern "secular logic" of action, implicit to the psyche of those concerned with development and profit, has become a godhead superior to the originally innate ability to assess the good and the bad in our activities toward progress... So my stand is with the masses of poor people in Asia who have no means of articulating much less any chance to act on their frustrations.

The last word is simple: Europeans and Americans have the moral quotient of livestock. So do the Chinese. Perhaps, so do all people! Because words mean nothing to how we behave... What's a wonderful "democracy" all about after all? A ghost of an idea! An empty, meaningless word! For after we Western wolves have gobbled up all the game, only then will we begin to suffer ourselves! The first world may be the last one to die off - but we could all become extinct a lot faster than it took us to advance to our present sophistication. Unless the miracles of science can save us from ourselves.

Europeans, despite their unconscious assumption of innate moral wisdom and cultural superiority, are also the most xenophobic people on Earth. Perhaps that xenophobia results from an historical demand: many European intellectuals have needed to react against the distinct sensation that their long-standing superiority was outmoded by sensing that people everywhere in the modern time really are equal before the chance of acquiring culture, aesthetic discrimination, earning money and gaining social grace... Some few anthropologists actually discerned that "primitive cultures" were also possessed of uniquely sophisticated ethical codes and articulate conceptual refinement. Yet today, it's all too easy to suspect that the privileges earned for you by your ancestors' past glories seem as meaningless today as the notion of "authenticity" appears to those popular artists and critics who are obliged to emulate the mysterious profitability of technological mass reproduction...

Meantime, Americans still suffer from a very strange collective madness: faith in their destiny, a murderous yet glorious dream about privilege, identity, equality and righteousness supported by nobody less than God... Superficially, the American Dream does appear innocent: it makes no claim to some particular or complicated political froth involving difficult and socially impracticable rhetoric (unlike some kinds of socialism and text-book anarchism... I'm not a fascist, either, are you? Basically, politics, like the law, does its best to keep people sane... But we can't help ourselves enough. Yeah, we heard as much before, too. Nowadays the government is shooting innocent fanatics because there is a structure to perpetuate. Let me grow some more beans and lilies, how about a few of them amateur acres, have some more dippy strews and watch that notime news! I want a lady with nothing on underneath.) The American faith simply wishes to enfold a dream for personal identity and success in the same fabric with all the positive ideals of modern democracy: equality and fraternity, etc... There's nothing wrong with humane ideals - but only if all the members of the society really do strive to achieve them, collectively, and with a willingless to share with everybody else... But when people depend on their prejudices instead, as most of us love to do, national dreams seem charades, a flimsy-fakey and insincere ideal... This criticism may apply to older and less flexible societies. Or, maybe you can compare something like carrots with lettuce. Sticks and goats. Because the fact remains that "class" doesn't have much to do with with how Americans are conscious of each other. In the eyes of Europe, Americans lack social grace. But Europeans appear chilly because they're too hermetic. Some of us can subdue the protective gloat, the uncaring resignation, the blithe excuse, the flippant reply, the nodding agreement, the shrug, even the shrug... But not often enough... Release from world. Religions lets go of what philosophy wants to grasp... The folk are bent over backwards... There's a girl under every wet rock... The cliches fizzle and we seed our chickenfeed again. I am past your ideas of maturity. My freakish wit. All I had left. I swim pretty hard sometimes, bunny-buns. But say nothing about your fear of you. Sleep with me anyway. I'm not that costly. The lady was shapely. She likes me. She made me get on a sinking hip... Another burned out cliche! I come home the detritus of sharp sand and powdered coral under your feet. Not quite there yet! I'm feeling the hot embrace a summer thunder cloud. But wilful and collective bigotry seems to be second nature to the character of most national peoples: we seldom question the opinions we love to share, especially if those opinions engorge our self-security mechanisms. No matter how weirdly unreal things may happen to get, it never much matters. Middle class people in developed countries hoard their privileges at the same time as they see themselves left out in the cold by wealthy political, corporate and legal managers. Many of America's middle class and poor get by just fine, oblivious to how everyone makes each other believe in the same wrong things, and oddly enough, without ever having to wonder why they are so misled... You got to get a gun; better build another new jail for the black man; brotherhood and liberty for everyone but those illegal immigrants - whatever - it's all contradiction now... Consequently, Americans have unwittingly become the most cynical people on Earth. Freedom Americans do have, yes, and most of them believe in it. But too many Americans have acquired their wealth, might and right by stepping on the little guy, without being willing to admit it. Most everyone knows that, too. Nobody wants a boss anymore. They're relics of the past... Some of us are just too smart, and we don't need people to tell us what to do: we can figure things out for ourselves... (Unless you're too dreamy to try for a real "career" - like me.) These Tibetan guys look free enough, don't they?

America and Europe would do well to export finer knowledge and humane technology instead of exploitative economic ideology, class racism and the same old forms of industrial domination that continue to perpetuate mayhem around the world.

The "better wisdom" of today's technological era is little more than a frustration that gives birth to contempt and cynicism. We complain all the time about everything... Look at my line: to feel good about being so grimly selfish today, we put ourselves to sleep, and replace all profound culture with a rigid march made of buying and selling. That's it! But nobody bothers to think about what we should or should not buy and sell! Nobody in a corporation is allowed to care about anything except maximizing a profit, at the expense of even the slightest traces of humane scruple... The corp doesn't want to talk about it five years later. The poisoned minions always do though. A rioting Viet Nam vet can crank out a wild tale that can teach you a lot about living with your own headcase. Just keep it well-padded and you can call yourself Rubba-Dubba. But believing is not having been there. Plug me into it directly. You have to go places to be aware. (Of course, I am exaggerating - just jerking your chain a little. The munchkins are through with me and you knew it, too.) I don't know nothing or nobody. That doesn't matter much. Laugh with me darling. I want to make you. Used to. Still do. I don't know the young woman very well. But sometimes I meet someone new. The world of crackerjack causes leads to small effects. I already know that, smartie. But smartie isn't wearing my pants... Maybe she wants to. Let's hope so...

My main concern wants to answer this question: is being self-centered and fantasy-driven important and good? Does a lust for distraction compel us to avoid the fear we have for each other? Do we teach each other to grow? Does obsession with trivial appetites manifest our fear and incapability for addressing serious questions? Conquering your neuroses is nigh to the knowledge of how to open the flaps on your little box and go out for a look around. That's why a lot of mobilites get off doing physical things - to assert their independence of mind by using the body to express love and knowledge. But don't drink too much coffee. I'm trying to find a way out of myself. Don't let yourself get angry when provoked (especially when the cheapass shit is doing it on purpose so the big corp can turf you to save a few extra dollars.) That's very important to remember. Diplomat eunuchs get higher salaries! Work for really big companies. Come from a really small country. Ha, ha! Anyway, it doesn't matter. Writing's an escape. What the fuck do I believe in? A form of life... Sometimes things make us look as if we wanted to become stupid - because we were afraid of knowing what's best for the real world we are supposed to be responsible for making. All we really want is "Business and Sports..." I do, too. You don't need to think about nothing... I don't want to either. I was swilling and now I'm told to chill out. Ha, that's easy. Swell enough to make her laugh. Meanwhile, so many people around the world can't get any scratch, or even a little bit of learning, to make any development happen. The world is oppressed by sleepy habits of doing no more and no less than buying and selling. It's a great way to live... Only among the people of the already developed world: rich to rich - to each other. When Americans and Europeans visit the poorer side of the planet, they stay locked up inside their bubbly dreams... Well, why not? You would to. Marry a local girl and you're busy all the time. A freaky bitch wants you to figure her through. Then when she loves you too much - you don't love her enough. Then you gotta go. Or you loved her too much and she gets bored and falls off the routine. Woman has that knack for flowing her own way... She expects to annoy you and then a month later she walks back in. They have fire hydrants for hearts... Hydraslass can get too high too. Have a cup of memory. She wants this and then you got to beg her nice for the same... A sensitive heart is something you give away and hope to get back! But Bunnycomes - where has it gone? Hardupwhat? All guys and girls forget themselves for each other... Remember when you were chasing me with the rubber crop? Because I wasn't hard enough? Ha, ha. That never happened. Only once! I get hard just looking at you the first time. Then when we get bored - wake me up with your wet mouth. I eat first. You always come fucking, too.

Real life is good to you at last. You can make peace with all the guys who had it first. You can be big if you decide to. Women will love you for being you no matter what you imagine is right or wrong with yourself. Human beings are very young compared to the infinite universe that bred us... We're not something holier than... A dream for wisdom may come as close to sanctity as we can get. But do we really care about being good, or the identity of god, even as we proclaim selfishness as the natural prime of our human condition? Those who pretend to be important have concluded that not one word of poetry can actually change who we are for the better. I don't entirely agree, but I'm still not optimistic about literary artistry: the poets - the unacknowledged legislators of the world have done precious little good so far as I can see. We have put whole cultures in touch with their emotions and then encouraged sensations built upon spirit and intellect. We have given great ideas and evoked the tragedy and the comedy inspired by mortal existence. We know a lot. Even so, I have to conclude that we have encouraged sophistry of sensibility, and not enough sublimely practical insights... We poets - we actually do very very little... So, like the best of my breed my solution is plain: lie low and try, very hard, to forget the flat liars and simple cheats... Maybe - after I give up all hope to save even a few coins - only then can I find time to write another story, a new novel.

Here is something to really think about: if we are destined to evolve positively, accident is likely to have the upper hand, and less likely, design... The accident of discovery leads the design of the scientific and artistic imaginations... We have yet to clone our first man-made person. It hardly matters if we can do that or not; because, for the time being, too many human beings born naturally today are destined to perish under conditions of disease, hunger, poverty and war. The real problem facing humanity is how can we ever get the over-fed and the under-fed to unite? The West and all its brilliant lights live in a bubble of intellectuality and ideals that do so very very little to resolve real problems in the real world... You wanna be a man? Let me tell you something. If you are a man - you don't sleep with, work with or hang around with nagging women. Got that shit? No nagging, no fighting. Otherwise - move out. Find someone else to make love to. Take no bullshit. If you flunk, you're a dump, too. Go away and be free. That's all.

~ I hold the woman in my arms. She's dreaming of her Teddy bear and needs me to remind her of love again. I'm locked on these young things sixteen to twenty-eight. To hell with the rich old ones! Ms. Y is nearly forty. Sensitive, intelligent. Warm up honey! Call me insecure - Mr. No Tanks. Great for talking, but she switched on the aircon three years ago... I'm too the left overs in back of the fridge. So, I leave her alone with that sad wish for getting a new hubby... But not before we agree to visit the Potala tomorrow.

Last night I ran into British Paul, the fellow whom I met in Ali in Western Tibet weeks ago. Paul was unable to hike to India from Purang. He did hike around the mountain and almost perished of cold rain in the process. We sit on a couch and chatter about keeping alive under harsh circumstances. I say goodbye in front of a hotel. He's going back to India in a few days. What else? Miguel ran into Hutch at the Bank of China. The aging American did him a good turn by asking the credit manager, whom he had previously befriended, to recheck the record of recent TTs. ...Lo and behold, an oversight; Miguel's money has been waiting for days... Wow! It's time to collect the small change he still owes me! He returns the 600 yuan and he is genuinely grateful. That's nice. I feel content. Humans can be so good for each other.