The Usual Channels
Traveling is an opportunity to get dirty, feel the real people and come alive ... shed some skin and turn off the usual channels.
Wherever I travel
I take my time and
I make no plans.
Travel is the art of balancing
chance and necessity.
I rest ‘til evening and
then head out to where
the local drunks gather;
a dark park
an underpass
sometimes like today
a dirty river path.
I smile and ask what they are drinking.
I’m always quickly offered some.
It doesn’t matter I don’t speak their language.
We understand each other.
In the margins, you are free
to be a citizen of the world.
We laugh. We feel the world
in our bones, here and now
together.
We spit loudly and warm ourselves
with drink and brotherhood.
Cigarettes get passed around.
Eventually it is my turn and
I pull out a large bill and
someone runs nimbly to the store.
It goes like that the whole night.
Drinks, stories, loud banter, a jig or two, then
I’ll stumble home to my
dark, lonely, windowless hotel room
ready to survive another round
of all the foolery, public murder, lies
officialdom and officialdee can offer
on the usual channels.
Drinking outside Hsinchu Train Station, Taiwan, October 6th, 2023.