On the highest spire (?) of Pre Rup – the sun is descending behind the clouds – no one is watching. I am not watching either but watching the no one watching and judging them. I am calculating the percentages and saying that 50% – 75% aren’t watching but I have not counted and I have no way of knowing and am probably incorrect in my grandiose assumptions about what percentage are watching. Nonetheless it seem like a high percentage (that are not watching). Instead they are taking pictures and talking to each other about the day or how hot it is/was or how many people there are on the highest spire of Pre Rup (not) watching the sunset. I imagine many, when not chattering mindlessly, are thinking – it crossed my mind – “How nice this picture will look on facebook! How my friends back home will be so impressed with my trip to Cambodia and the fact that I stood atop the highest spire of Pre Rup (not) watching the sunset over the Cambodian plains!”

It is stunning how much garbage cycles through the brain – the digital shutter’s klik, klik, klik – at this moment of beauty that so many travelled so far to see. Instead of actually watching the sunset, the sunset becomes a moment missed, a moment viewed through the filter of the tiny digital viewfinder when all it takes is to raise one’s head and actually watch. Instead of experiencing and enjoying the ephemeral sunset, the sunset is sacrificed to the future and is quickly relegated to the past. Without ever having seen it, the moment of the sunset becomes only a future moment told to a friend or acquaintance in the interest of making oneself feel different, special, or otherwise privileged: “Oh my God, then we (didn’t) watched the sunset from Pre Rup and it was a marvelous end to an amazing day!” (Subtext: You are a loser cause you haven’t/didn’t do the same.)

And it is no different for me; I who stand in judgment of these clickers and chatters, as I too set myself apart in the moment of sunset, by attempting to rest in mindfulness during the moment only to come now to rehash and rewrite and provide comment. My picture too will wind up on facebook – the story will be retold – I write this now. But the sunset is long over, there have been other sunsets since that I have missed or not cared to watch. Yet I will use this past moment; I will enter it into the calculated glory of my feed to magnify my difference, my otherness: I am an individual who watched the sunset over Pre Rup and I did it better than you.

[There was a moment however, towards the end, in the sunset’s last remaining seconds, that I cannot quite comprehend. I am not sure if it damns or saves the assembled throng (of every cultural background: Japanese, Chinese, French, American). Just as the sun dipped under the horizon, sending off stunning waves of myriad hues of the purple/red variety, a squadron of ducks/geese/herons/ibis(es)/something flew directly across the dipping sun in the V-formation such animals are wont to fly. As the birds approached the crowd hushed and as they passed it cheered. Nature, in its majesty and synchronicity, had enhanced their facebook feeds to an uncommon degree. It was not only “Sunset at Pre Rup” but “Sunset with birds at Pre Rup,” but not for me, who in a need for separation – a magnification of otherness – had put my camera back into my bag. They will forever have proof of the divine visitation, while for me, the birds remain only in a dead memory to be soon forgotten.]

Later I read this in Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings:

Do you want to fly halfway around the world so that later you can say you were with the Buddha? Many people want to do just that. They arrive at a place of pilgrimage, unable to be in the here and the now. After a few minutes of seeing the place, they rush to the next place. They take pictures to prove they were there, and they are eager to return home to show their friends. “I was there. I have proof. That is me standing beside the Buddha.” That would be the desire of many of the people who would go there. They are not able to walk with the Buddha. They are not able to be in the here and the now. They only want to say, “I was there, and this is me standing beside the Buddha.” But it is not true. They were not there. And that is not the Buddha. “Being there” is a concept, and the Buddha that you see is a mere appearance. You cannot photograph the real Buddha, even if you have a very expensive camera.

I think he says it nicer. 

“My Balkan Holiday: Sarajevo” is taken from the longer “My Balkan Holiday” piece that details my month or so travelling through Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro a few years back. It was an intense, meaningful, and important trip for me and my time in Sarajevo in particular was profound. The gist of the essay being how to balance that personal profundity with the reality of the situation as experienced by Bosnians — that I was ultimately being invigorated by a tourism of despair. This is the only part of the larger piece to yet be published, but I hope to have it out as a complete work at some point.

The Rattling Wall has released a lovely video with some background about the editor putting the book together and snippets of the reading and release party in L.A. Check it out and order the book!

1) I originally wrote this as fiction. I first drafted this piece quite a long time ago, as fiction. It is being published as nonfiction. I believe everything in it is true – I have been mostly publishing nonfiction lately – this characterization of “nonfiction” seems to follow. I think there are two reasons I did not think of this story as nonfiction when I wrote it: a) at the time I wrote it I did not know what a lyric essay was (nor had ever heard the phrase), b) the subject matter is uncomfortable and embarrassing. I think I was more comfortable writing an uncomfortable story with the idea that it would be considered fictional, or that it would be published as fiction – and the reader could then decide how much of my personal experience went into the story and I could put it out of my mind. Without calling it fiction I probably wouldn’t have been able to write it.

2) This story was part of my MFA thesis and got the most interesting, to me, reaction in my thesis defense. It was not well liked. I understand why. It is an uncomfortable story. One of the people on my committee said how much they disliked the character. (As fiction, “the character,” as nonfiction “me.”) The same person, the only non-writer on my committee, also said how uncomfortable it made him. (He also said a bunch of really nice stuff – particularly about Chai Vang – and it seemed to mean more as it wasn’t couched in writer-speak.) I said I agreed, I found it to be a very uncomfortable story to write and I didn’t much like reading it. At this point, Michael Martone, in his manner, said matter-of-factly, “This story makes me nauseous. That a story could cause me physical distress is a helluva achievement.” He probably didn’t say “helluva.” Regardless, the sentiment was pretty cool.

So yes, I wrote this a while ago and at the time of writing it I considered it fiction. It’s not really fiction, all that stuff did happen. But I called it fiction because it made it easier to draft. It then sat in a file for a few years until it was added to my thesis in the interest of beefing up the page count. Then it sat for about another year until I dug it back out and took a look at it and decided to turn it into “creative nonfiction” – this did not require much. The piece is quite formal and these lyric essay things I’ve been doing of late are quite form heavy, so it fits with the general aesthetic of some of the work I’m doing now. (The heavy formality was probably originally to hide my role in the story – to mask my presence as narrator/character.) I then submitted the story as nonfiction. It was quickly picked up. It now appears in issue number 2 of Flywheel Magazine as “creative nonfiction” and all the old embarrassment and discomforts I have with the story and the events recounted in the story make their way to the internets for any and all to see. But at this point I’m growing old and unattractive and don’t give it shit if I’m uncomfortable or embarrassed by a story, so fiction/nonfiction, what the fuck ever. It’s all the same to me. Enjoy. Don’t. Read on an empty stomach. Vomit.

PS. Four authentic factoids: a) the title is of course an allusion to Walt Whitman b) the tale related occurred in the Fine Arts and Music Department of Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, MD–a fine library and a wonderful place to work, perhaps even my favorite job ever c) another story I wrote around this time also begins with an equation – it was a phase d) the cafe where I retreat to coffee at the end is the scene of one of the more grisly things I’ve witnessed in my life, when a woman, not unlike my friend Mrs. P___, jumped to her death from 5 stories to become the sidewalk. Her shoes shot like 15 feet, her stocking cap, a foot or two. All this will be related at length in my novel “Notes to the Libretto,” started around this time in Baltimore, of which this piece is likely part, should I ever continue writing it. (I have the general idea to go live in Chile for a year at some point and finish the book–the book ends in Chile–I’ve never been.)

PSS. Last night I read the companion creative nonfiction piece in the mag, and really enjoyed it. Weird synchronicity happening in the world, as I’ve been getting back into pranayama and meditation and have been exploring options to formalize my practice in Vietnam. So after some googling, I discover there’s a Sivananda Center in HCMC and it’s like a 5 minute walk from my house, crossing one gnarly large street, so I go, and start banging on this closed metal gate and some California swami white guy opens the door and is like “Namaste.” Oh, jeebus. But he’s a totally nice guy – as all those guys are – and we talk about a meditation retreat they have coming up, which I just might have to attend. I’m all glowing and feeling yogic and come back and read Joshua Schriftman’s piece The Yogi Who Could Blow My Mind, and ha! Not so fast! Anyway, funny, good stuff. And fits in well with the white liberal guilt of my piece. Read it!

The Candidate (after Matthew Barney)

Here’s a link to Matthew Barney’s film that inspired me to write the story. It was Cremaster 4 in particular that I was thinking of; watch the cars race around for a while and you might see the connection. There was also, admittedly, something about my own impotence in the face of a trying situation that quickened the gestation of the piece.

The Celebrity and The Greater Celebrity also bear some resemblance to real life figures in the milieu of Barney – I will leave it at that.