enshrouded in monsoon cloud and never-ending drizzle. cocooned in mist.

take the high road.

now the cloud is below, and the mountain stretches upward, impossibly, forever. the road zig-zags up the mountainside in an impossible 20km traffic jam of churning mud, broken-down trucks, pouring waterfalls and choking smoke. from nowhere, pani puri men with trays on long spindly legs appear along the length of the snarling snake of traffic, like mushrooms from spores that lie dormant until just the right circumstances appear.

what if we are dead and this is the afterlife and we just don't know it yet?

the stench of psychosis in the early dawn
he stirs and wakes and moves a pawn

Flew via Kuwait which was a first. It hadn't occurred to me it was the main hub for Iraq. Next to the gate for the Delhi flight was a direct Washington flight that wasn't on the boards and monitors and didn't seem to be announced. It was full of State Department people and mercenaries or spooks whose cigarettes I smoked cause I had run out. Overhearing their conversations gave me a sort of chill to think crazy rednecks like this are trying to run another country.

It is the most shattering experience of a young man's life when he awakens and quite reasonably says to himself: "I will never play The Dane." When that moment comes, one's ambition ceases...

That would be Uncle Monty in Withnail & I.

I act out that Hamlet to-be-or-not-to-be drama every goddamn day...

What, you don't?