Day 30: The Game is Dirty

I dreaded the day before it started. Another pass and both my knees are stoking rebellion. It was the coldest it had yet been when we woke up. I don’t know how Adam found the will to remove his covers and enjoy his morning cigarette, but the man is built of tougher stuff than I and his drive to smoke has no bounds. Eventually, though, incentivized to not be the weak guy, I leapt out of bed and sorted my things. In the cold dinginess of the seating area downstairs, our Marathi made us a thin “omelet” consisting only of the one basic ingredient needed in an omelet and some Maggi, which is basically instant ramen noodles and ubiquitous in the area. With this salty simple breakfast in our bellies, and the sun finally showing itself from behind the mountain, we got on our bikes and set out for the mountain. 

I actually ended up having pretty good spirits. I felt nimble and energetic and not too in pain. The tea that the Marathi made us was nice and strong, and I had a handlebar bag full of chocolate bars and snickers and I wasn’t afraid to use them. We made good progress and quickly found our way to the foot of the switchbacks. In the process we did end up on some random older road because of construction and had to navigate some very long water crossings and I did get my shoes and socks wet but they thankfully dried out before we were in the cold and wind. The switchbacks immediately said fuck you to us by being super sandy and rocky and steep. We said fuck you right back and just walked our bikes right up them. Now that I’ve done one of these sandy passes, I’m a bit jaded to the glory of the staying on your bike the whole way concept. It’s just pain and torture and inefficient. You basically end up going slower than if you walked. So we walked. And walked and walked. Finally we found a patch that had been paved and enjoyed cycling for a bit. Then it went back to shit and we kept walking. Lord we walked for hours. It was a large pass, over 16,000 feet. And it’s not as though walking it was easy. Absolutely not. It was steep and rocky and with every step I had to fight to push that burdensome bike up. But I actually enjoyed walking quite a bit. My ass and knees thanked me, I got to use other muscles, and it was still exercise and I still got up the pass using nothing but my own body. The elevation didn’t poison me this time, probably because I wasn’t hysterically out of breath from cycling, but Adam did get a headache that lasted the remainder of the day. We were quite high, I’ve probably never been so high other than in airplanes. We still had to deal with the trucks and the asphyxiation caused by their dust and diesel clouds as they passed. And it was cold and windy. But, you know, altogether, I’ve struggled more, and it wasn’t so bad. We made it up and then we went down, you know how it goes, followed a river, it was beautiful, yada yada, and now we’re on the other side of the Himalayas, the green side! It’s nice to see green and life again. My camera died so I wasn’t able to capture the nature in its full glory but I’ll make up for it tomorrow I’m sure. 

We found a homestay in Darcha (we’d been singing Darcha wish your girlfriend was hot like me the whole way) and I put my phone to charge and I was back in the land of airtel and connectivity, so I had signal. I wish I didn’t. I’d been enjoying having no knowledge or contact with the outside world the past 10 days. It’s a really strange and not great feeling to be out here and able to look at instagram, it just puts you right back there with all of it immediately. I don’t want it. Also, and this is vain, I didn’t have any new messages. Maybe one from my mom. But that’s it. It’s official, no one cares about me. I’m sure hardly anyone read my blog which is actually a relief given how many horrible things I’ve already written, this project is for me and it is my therapy and it’s probably best that no one snoop around in the darker corners of my mind but me. My one friend Amy did read it and she told me I was using morality as a coping mechanism. The idea here is that because I tried to play the game and lost, I am coping with the loss by saying the game in and of itself is immoral. It may be true, but that doesn’t change the fact that the game is indeed immoral. Obviously it’s fun when you’re winning, and you’re not really thinking about ethics when you’re winning you’re just high on the winning. But I’ve definitely been in positions and moments in New York where I felt like I was winning, and I still felt the emptiness. So that’s my challenge to Amy’s point. Yes, maybe it’s a tad bit of a cope, but I think I can still see it all clearly. And she also accused me of coming off as superior and all that, and I know I did, but I was sort of being playful with myself when I wrote those earlier passages and I was in a dark mood because of the scams and I kind of just let it all out. I wouldn’t ever change it though. This is my blog, and I will write what I am thinking as I am thinking it and gladly observe the evolution of my thoughts. I think the high horse thing is part of the humor of the blog, and I hope it reads as self aware, and I would encourage anyone who has bothered reading to take everything I say with a heaping spoon of pink Himalayan salt (which by the way I haven’t seen anywhere yet). This blog will soon finish its purpose, which is sort of a therapy for me and an exercise in writing and getting all my thoughts down. So far I’ve enjoyed it as a daily ritual and a way to help retain my memories and develop some of the bigger ideas I’ve had brewing around in my head for a while now. I am also using it to model the main character in the musical I’m writing, and the epiphanies I have in this blog will be used to figure out where the story goes and all of that. I’m digging within myself for some kind of truth. This blog is a way of getting the engine running, putting all the thoughts out onto paper, and clearing out all the crap, so I can rev up for the big thing. And then I will be writing things that are way less real, but hopefully way more true. I am in no way trying to put down the lifestyle of people or their choices, and most of the time that I say “we” when I’m criticizing society I really mean “me”. It’s all self loathing, and I’m just hoping maybe one or two people relate. What a nightmare it’d be if I suffered from all this alone. The real tragedy is I suspect that most of the folks in New York who are doing capitalism and all that are probably just fine and quite content and I’m inventing all these problems because of my inherent failure to find happiness in anything I do. I can’t blame my sadness on myself, so I blame it on the world. That must be why. It’s your fault world, make me happy. Amy asked me why I’m so angry and my reply was that it’s so hard to be happy, and I think that’s by design. And that’s a conviction I choose to maintain for the time being, because I daren’t come to terms that it’s all self-generated. Sometimes I wonder whether I’d allow myself to be happy if all the big problems in the world were figured out. No climate change, no inequality, everything’s alright. Would I just allow myself to be content? I don’t think so. I’d probably find some minute thing to fixate on. Maybe it’s in my own nature to never be satisfied and always need to complain about something. That takes me back to the game. I never liked playing scrabble or monopoly because I’d always lose and then I’d say this game sucks and I’d hate having to sit around at the table after knowing I’d already lost and watch the other players delight in getting their triple word scores and buying the boardwalk or whatever you do in monopoly. Maybe this toxic personality of hating to play because I always lose is why I’m drawn towards socialism. I’m definitely not a champagne socialist, so I must be a sore loser socialist, you’re always kind of either one or the other. Either you’ve had a charmed life and feel guilty and socialism is a cute idea to play with or you’ve been unsuccessful in life and suffer from class envy and say well if I can’t win then nobody should. A good American is meant to be a good loser, they’re meant to shake their heads and say oh well I’ll get’er next time. They should never hate the game or blame anyone but themselves for their loss. The game is fair. It’s your fault. Try harder. Do better. I’m not a good loser. When I lose it’s because the game is rigged. I’d rather throw the table upside down than tolerate having to watch someone else win. Those smug bastards, they know something I don’t! But you know, I think it’s worth something that I never asked to play. This wasn’t voluntary. I was seated at the table as a youngster and unwittingly signed on to play a never ending game of Settlers of Catan. And my whole youth and development I didn’t take it too seriously, my parents weren’t the sort that said you better choose a lucrative career and invest in properties with lots of lumber and wheat, they just wanted me to be happy and do whatever I wanted and in those days that was a rational outlook since the baby boomers seem to have waltzed through life, and so I studied film because I liked being creative and I didn’t think about money and I didn’t realize film is a competitive game of wealth and connections and sure you can work really hard and make it on your own but the chances are fairly low. And so despite starting out with a pretty good hand for the game, white and middle class and handsome and charming, I unwittingly reshuffled and gave myself a bad hand. Because I’m bad at playing the game. Because I didn’t want to play the game. It's like when you’re high and you’re playing a new board game with your friends and your one friend is trying to explain the rules of the game to you but you’re high and you just keep laughing at how seriously they take it and you say don’t worry I’ll just pick it up as we go along but you never really pick it up and it seems like everyone else has and now you’re in the game and you’re high and everyone’s serious all of a sudden and good at it and you suck and it’s too late to really do anything about it because you’re so far behind at this point. That’s been my entire life. I laughed at the rules and I thought well surely we will stop playing soon and enjoy our wine and discussion over some cheese and chocolates and all that. But the game never ends. You never leave the table. You don’t clear the table and have wine and snacks. It’s always there. On the table. In full view. And then you die, with cards still in your hands, collapsed on top of the table and someone picks you up and courteously disposes of you so that everyone else can keep playing without interruption. And I’m not saying that the game shouldn’t exist. I just want there to be a choice to play the game. And I would like those of us who’d rather not play to be able to find a life with a little dignity in it, not having to live in shame of our supposed failure. So yeah, by all means, let this party have a fun little board game table, but let’s also have a lively couch area with snacks and wine and conversation, and maybe we can rotate in and out of those zones at will, that’s all I want! But again, I’m no better than anyone else. I’m just trying to make a concerted effort to figure out what the whole point of the thing is, and then I’ll take my seat back with the rest of the players. I’ve got nowhere else to go. I just need time to think. Raskolnikov says that too. He’s thinking. I’m thinking too. Everyone should have a little time to think. I think that’s important.