taipei, taiwan – near nanjing fuxing station
it’s not immediately obvious what i’m supposed to do. i’ve been silently hemming and hawing, shifting the weight between my feet, with a hotdog bun in my left hand covered in plastic and titled “big bite”. there’s a sign in front of me that says ‘do not use metal tongs’ right next to a pair of metal tongs. there’s a single hotdog left. i went to the 7-11 nearest to me and they were out of them, out of hot dogs that were filling my brain with their space, so i scanned the map and found the next closest one, and inside the sliding doors, found this final soldier rotating steadily on the hot irons.
it’s 9pm-ish, and i had a craving. a, from the soul, dynamic, toe-curling craving, for a familiar food, the classic american dish. i have been eating so good these past days. Sadhguru keeps saying in my head, the food you consume becomes your body, and this is true. and i have been putting my palms together before every meal, reciting my gratitude for the annihilation of plants and animals that allows me to continue to exist. for purposes imaginary or pathological, food has tasted better, and this is coming from the person who, for the past 10 years, has said that every meal is the best he has ever eaten. i’ve eaten so good lately, so many salads.
i ask the women cashier what i’m supposed to do here, but she is working alone and there is motion in the store, things going on, and it appears she doesn’t speak english, so we’re at an impasse. a tall guy next to me answers for her. open it, he says, and points to the plastic bag in my hand with the hotdog bun in it.
i do, the crinkling sounding like an explosion. i’m trying to figure out if the bun is pre-sliced. maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but over the course of the next 30-seconds i turn the bread into chaos. i rip a jagged line in it, and lumps of dough are forming like bubbles where i’m manhandling it. eventually there is a crevice in the bun. i put the bun in this paper sheath thing that i find near the hot dog stand – it too says ‘big bite’. I use the metal tongs – the prohibited metal tongs! – and get the last man standing off the grill and onto the destroyed bun. an arm’s-length away there are small packets of ketchup, mustard, and ‘pickled cucumber sauce’.
i go grab a low-calorie beer, and bring these two items to the cash register. i wasn’t thinking exactly straight, so the plastic wrap is still in my hands, with nothing in it, along with the hot dog and beer, and i’m clutching it all together in an iron grip, and the woman extricates it, the plastic, from my fingers, while looking any direction but at me, and goes to throw it away. scans the food and drink, and i’m a happy oyster, ready for dinner.
i’ve mangled the hot dog contraption so much that the meat itself is on top of the bun instead of inside it. i tear open the ketchup and relish packets and they explode on my hands, then i drip them on the hot dog and it all runs down the outside of the bun instead of falling into the misshaped crevice. i’m making a mess and giggling – internally. there is a distance from myself that i can’t see details too well, or a certain kind of detail at least, because of my lasered eyes, and so i am lost trying to figure out how to open the mustard packet. i give up, because the hot dog is dripping everywhere while i’m experimenting, trying to find the notch, the tear, that gives freedom to this final essential condiment.
i get more food on my hands than in my mouth, and as i’m looking out the front window of this place i see a security camera pointed directly at my forehead. i hope someone’s watching, kind of. the dusty traveler in his new clothes, dissociating while chewing calories on a wednesday in the post-modern orient – a day that had a hot wind blanketing the city – super weird! – and where had I gone?
right! early morning tai chi. but not so early because i’m closer to the group now. instead of a two-hour commute, it’s 30. a three-minute walk and two gentle, consistent trains. but before tai chi, i’m up early anyway. i’m letting a new guy into the airbnb space. he’s from georgia, learning chinese at NTNU. this is also, curiously, what i want to do.
at tai chi, my instructor was smacking at my hands today – “too relaxed!” and correcting the million corrections that have to be tightened down and locked in by just over a month from now. near the end of the session, the other american showed up. is here american? maybe? tall guy. second time i’ve met him, and each time he gives me the robocop scan. the cyclon workover.
‘you need new shoes’ is the first thing he says to me, not impolitely, just as a matter of fact. he is right, they are on order. also, i bought some other flat shoes but the soles fell off on another hot and humid day. i bought glue to fix them but haven’t had the time yet to put two and two together. so my shoes are incorrect. i do what i can.
‘your hip is forward’ he says. he is dressed, a little like a movie character. black arm fabric with thumb holes, up past his elbows, pants like a genie. he is very serious. also, he says, when you’re doing this, you have to stay down, and when you’re doing that, you have to stay down. i checked later, for one thing he was correct. for the other, when the golden rooster is standing on one leg, all the world champions go up. so, there’s that.
when i got back i had a salad for lunch, with spare meaty parts like chicken and shrimp to go with – boiled edamame? the shrimp was from elyse’s plate, and she is using her chopsticks to drop them off in my bowl, because i have been using my chopsticks to cover the top layer of her bowl with crispy lettuce, like stiff green blankets, while she is talking with her coworker about spreadsheets, and we are collectively talking about times in the desert. i am not paying attention to the process of chewing, and end up breathing in a piece of that crispy lettuce when i’m telling a story about spoons.
this lunch was when the hot wind was the most like a cat’s rough tongue, scraping over the city. the other two left to go back to work, and i’m eating the last of the rabbit food, after which i exited, a solo adventurer, and if i had been wearing a hat, the waves of air, like a gigantic hair dryer, would have blown it off and sent it down the vibrating street.
i went out on a mission again during the late afternoon, to find an icon of Ganesh, some shorts, and again, searching for some cotton wide-leg panamas, i don’t know why they’re so hard to find. i went to the longshan station, to the temple, where i know the underground bazaar has some stuff. i found ganesh, small with reflective golden detail work, he is with me in a vacuum cube now, an idol for communication, a connective thread to the history of Hindu.
i found shorts. i need another pair because i only own one and they smell like hot gravel from the bottom of a boiling spring. i need to wash them. i can’t wash them if there’s no other pair handy. now i have another pair. easy. i didn’t find the panamas, but i found some three-quarter length genie pants, gray, that the woman said would go with my t-shirt. i think this shirt is the last one that i have that i bought during the brazil trip. the others have all fallen away.
i’m wearing another pair of flat-soled shoes on this trip – i bought another after the soles fell off the other pair. similar, but different. they look like bowling shoes.
the right shoe fits like a glove, the left shoe is scrunching my pinkie toe, and it’s distracting. my socks are too thick and the shoes aren’t broken in yet. i can’t walk far – i’ll have blisters and blood before too long. the genie pants, ganesh, and the shorts are mine.
i’m back again, back again, all the journeys today complete. i have added love to the world. i have behaved with peace and joy. these are my functions. these are my big-picture items. i’m researching when i can do a vipassana retreat – i feel like this is an appropriate activity. 10 days of 11 hours each of meditation per day, as i understand it. i think you can’t talk at all either? there’s a company, i guess, of some sort, or organization, that gatekeeps. there are two places in taiwan, fully booked for a long time. i’m looking up possibilities in thailand and vietnam.
outside longshan temple i gave a monk the coins in my pocket, put my palms together and bowed to her. she did the same motions back to me and started talking to me, bright eyes, a story of some kind crossing her lips. i didn’t understand the words, but i understood the energy.
i’m back, back again, all the journeys, all the journeys, complete – peace, joy, love – but sitting down, i immediately have to get up. i put on the new genie pants, spray the bottom quarter of my legs with mosquito repellant, and head out into the dark night. i have a desperate craving for a hot dog.
