headache, diarrhea, impatience, kashgar

Arrived Kashi 11:48am. Spent 45 minutes roaming to and fro at the train station, trying to get to post office 100 yards away had to walk quarter mile around toll booth and back and then again to return to train station. Because there were police every ten yards forming a cordon. Is that normal? It felt scary, like the last moments of a regime or something. But what I do I know about what that feels like. Had to wait in line for train tickets back to Urumqi. Angry Uighur police officers said, “You didn’t hear what I said? Wait in line!” then pushed me. I was scared that something was going to go violent and I wouldn’t have control of it. Very glad to pick up my train ticket, get in a cab, and go to town. Didn’t understand lone boy furiously digging up sandpile. Severely dilapidated buildings with severely dilapidated pool tables out front. Found hotel. Room smelled like feet and/or diapers. Book day trip to Karakul Lake. I wonder if I’m going to get very sick tomorrow, with this headache tonight and the 0' to 10,000' back to 0' change in altitude tomorrow and the diarrhea. I'm leaving destinations in my toilet bowl. This morning: the Korean peninsula. Wonder if this is God's way of pointing me to the next adventure - like Carmen Sandiego! A clue via travelers' diarrhea about the next place once should go to get travelers' diarrhea. T.'s story about getting an icy IV in Xinjiang comes to mind. Thought about women, drunk yahoos, yobs. The police state. Police and PLA presence is a lot more demonstrative here. PLA walking around with assault rifles. When have assault rifles in the hands of a police force ever had effect? DC cops carried assault rifles into the Metro after 9/11. Why? So that they could kill off whoever the suicide bomber didn’t kill in a hail of bullets intended for the perp? Bought a bagel then ate a burger and an egg tart in a fast food joint and watched a father play with a child. Adults engage a lot more with kids here. Generally. And kids wear pants with a slot up the crotch so their naked asses are revealed, so they can piss and shit right on the street instead of having diapers. Which made me realize that the onesies I bought Wu Fei are the dumbest thing to bring ever. Wandered around old Uighur town. Into music store. I am going to buy an instrument before I leave, I know this, the pretty longnecked one with a snakeskin drumhead. Found my way back to bing guan. Paid for tour tomorrow. Wandered out again. Walked slowly. Past kids getting out of school. So much to think about. Traffic patterns – opporutnitistic, just go whenever there is a hole for you to pass through. Career through might be better word. Death within inches everywhere. Made me think about that fool of a journalist and his description of Indian traffic as “human ballet,” as if there was a dog ballet or donkey ballet or any other ballet that is not human. Why do I find the memory of that man so contemptible? His toothsome privilege, perhaps? His self-promotion? Then to Renming Gongyuan (old people doing drumming calisthenics), Dong Hu (pretty, empty, dusty pollution, old workers yelling at each other while trying to hang up big red lanterns along the promenade). Walked to bazaar. So much crap everywhere. Maze-like. Rows of stores. Negotiated for and bought backpack to look more like Chinese school boy. Walked back through old town. Felt like Nepal. Dust. Broken down everything. Men sitting in front of their crappy broken store fronts working over anvils, ding ding ding, making hinges and axe heads and tools. Kids playing in dust and trash heaps. Man with pickaxe picking down a brick wall. Bricks and scrap everywhere. This is why 20,000 people die when there are temblors. The houses are thousand year old messes of shit held together by fix-its and scrap lumber. Motos and cars zipping by, grazing me. Honk honk honk honk. Most of the time, I don’t get a second glance. Thank God. But sometimes I did get the face-chest-face glance. So much of my energy I realized is looking at other people to see how they will look at me. Piles of lumber, of wool. Behind the man with the lathe, a thousand cylindrical dowels waiting to be shaped into bedposts. Wool being fed into a machine to turn it into – thread? Four sheep skinned, hung by their legs, butcher hacking off pieces. Wasps flocking around candy/sugar seller. Carpets. Rows and rows of carpets. Plastic sacks of walnuts, almonds, peanuts, saffron, hot chilis, spices, dried persimmons, raisins, beans – everything. I’m afraid to buy anything lest I mistake a prayer rug for a table runner. Two dozen people squatting in the street next to vendors eating steaming bowls of something. Tried not to step on a man going down in underground pedestrian walkway. Food: a stack of lard and on top of that a coil of sausage. You point and he hacks off a piece. Lots of shao kao kebabs. Warm dead fish hanging over the edge of a plate, hacked off by the piece to be fried in front of you. Candied cakes of almonds and sesame seeds and walnuts topped with raisins. Appetizing-looking golden baked buns that I bought two of that turned out to be filled mostly with sheep fat. Disgusting after two bites, I fished out the lard with a finger and tried to eat the bun which was tasty, but still my mouth was waxed with mutton lard afterward and I felt queasy. I sucked yogurt through a straw also. Dinner was suoman again in a Uighur restaurant, but it came not as pulled noodles but more like fan-shaped pasta. Suoman is tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, some chopped green, peppers, pepper. Sort of pasta like actually, but the flavor is a bit saltier and spicier. I think mine had beef but then I came across a piece I chewed for a full minute before realizing it must have fallen off the rubber tree. I swallowed it. So many sights to behold and thoughts to process. Uighurs mostly. Not a lot of Chinese. Uighur men ogling a bosomy foolish Chinese girl with dyed blondish hair who rode on a camel next to the mosque and had photos of herself taken. Most women covered up – scarf halfway over hair – some with kerchiefs draped over their heads, some with more formal scarf with eye slit. Seems pointless when there are hussies wearing short skirts too, both Uighur and otherwise. Lots of kids eating popsicles. Why don’t kids wear helmets if China’s so fussy about only having one kid and everyone puts all their hopes on that one kid? Or maybe Uighurs are permitted to have as many as they want. Just had to stop typing for half hour to sit on the toilet and have diarrhea. Uhoh tomorrow’s not going to be a good day. Knew I should have stopped at CVS on the way to SFO and gotten anti-diarrheals. I can’t remember other images from today I wanted to remember. Weird shit. I felt like I was in Indiana Jones. I felt like I was finally where I wanted to be as an 8 year old captivated by adventure stories. Now I need a quest. I need something to happen. Poof.