I'm working on maintaining a constant vague smile in the hopes that my face will freeze that way and save me a bundle on plastic surgery but sometimes I forget. Walking along the sidewalks, when there are sidewalks, all in various states of cracked and crumbled so it's more like stomping along the history of sidewalks with my vague smile and in the course of a block I decide I am a minor film star, on holiday and hoping to be incognito but if recognized and photographed would prefer not to be looking grumpy or sweaty or heaven forbid tripping, and so I hold my chin up, hold my smile up, lift my feet up, and this carries me most of the way home. Well a little sweaty is true.
On one block along the way a Buddhist monk wrapped in orange stops me, smiling, and I also smile, and he blesses me, touching my wrist and his forehead, and some part of me really wants to believe; would I be saved and happy if I just tried harder? He's touching my life line, head line, heart line, maybe saying something I can't hear over the sound of the scooters zooming around us because traffic never stops even if you might be having an eat-pray-love moment, and he ties a red thread around my wrist so that everyone will know I'm a sucker as I walk down the street for the rest of my stay. He charged me about $8 for the experience and I'm not complaining because I have a story and that's cheap for a story but also I can't get the thread off since scissors are a dangerous weapon I don't carry. I guess as long as people think it's a Buddhist thing I'll count my blessings. Get it?
Negotiating or bargaining is hard because people seem simultaneously very good and very bad at it. A taxi from one place to another costs between 2 and 20 dollars. I'm generally inclined to pay what I'm quoted because I'm not poor and haggling bores me but even a hag has her limits. I walked away from a lot of things I would have bought (and I also unfortunately overpaid for some things that I thought were reasonably priced and would have been, had they been what the sellers said they were). I spend time pondering the meanings of fine as in art as in acceptable as in penalty.
This trip has given me a tremendous perspective on history and politics and people and of course also myself. The micro and macro perspectives that any distance gives us: I am so mortal, we are so different, borders are largely imaginary, home is so tiny and far, home is everywhere. I regret nothing, not even the food poisoning. I'm ready for the next place.
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