I'm a ghost and I'm in the most visited city in the world, here where the amount of recorded reality exceeds by far the physical reality. The area with more number of clothing stores and mobile-phone shops per square meter. No dark corners around here. All the spaces are taken. Everything is business. Even the surveillance cameras, are a kind of business. The entrances to some bigger buildings in the back of the shops are barricaded with security codes, there are no escaping streets, all kind of alleys are surrounded with railings and in the main street, the construction works, are covered with huge placards, hiding the excavations, like the this ones on the back of the Totenham Court subway station. I’m already peeking through the breaches, I want to see some real reality, some chaos, mud and scrap metal. Little mans with helmets and green waistcoats, the striking of pneumatic hammers, the thrusts of underground backhoe loaders and the welding machines, dropping their sparks over all this wreckage, construction and deconstruction. I wish I could be there, improving their methods of work, but no, I have to return to a more ordinary reality. I notice that in this area, one of the ways for the traffic is cut off, follow only one direction, and the red double-decker buses passing slowly, one after other, almost touching, the people inside watching the tourists, and the tourists watching them. And this monochromatic red of the buses, also present in public works or telephone booths, it’s depressing to me. But let’s forget that. Let’s get away from here. Getting through the masses. Oxford street. I try to differentiate the bodies, observe their movement, their apparently standardized actions. Now passing in front of the blue “CarPhone Warehouse”. The front of the store advertising “a year of free home broadband'. Here, a dude in a Jamaica-colored hoodie, speaks on his cell phone in front of the shop window, ignoring the people around, forced to bump against him in order to pass. Many Asian tourists, European tourists, African tourists. Everybody can be a tourist. Wanna-be tourists. Pseudo businessmen of all nationalities, bluish suits; girls in cleavage and knee out; T-shirt boys with letterings like “Just do it now”; “Good girls go to heaven Bad girls go to the moon”; “Sometimes pretending to be normal”; “I'm not rude I'm just saying what everybody is thinking”; “Not perfect, just limited edition”; “Warning! explicit contention”; “Stop following me!”; “Pizza princess”; “Blink if you want me”; “Obey”; “Too much self control”; “etc.” and so on. Some of them with colorful haircuts, sharp hair, curly hair, no hair at all. All kind of accessories attached to the clothes. People looking inside shops. Others waiting in corners. Munching. Chatting. Yawning. No one caring about my presence. The only thing they care is their phones. Some of them pushing suitcases. Suitcases pushing them. Polished jeans carrying legs with gait that reflect the personality of the user, sometimes manly, sometimes nervous, calm, confused, relaxed, curious, late, pre-mature, disintegrated, attentive, sleepwalking, tired, greedy, sly, self-centered, bizarre, normal-looking individuals…

***

Heavy afternoon, I sit on burning stairs of Syntagma square, Athens, the Hellenic parliament on my back, a pink building that I have nothing to talk about. Not so much people crossing the square at this time. It’s really hot, and quiet, you can feel the boredom hovering, like in many other squares of Athens, at this time of the day. This heavy stones should melt, but no, a failed promise from the sun. There is a metro exit on my side, I face the people getting out, not many, but their faces are not that bored actually, they express some equilibrium, and they dress casual, not pretenders, you can’t judge them by the looks. So, from where is this feeling of boredom coming? I’m not sure, perhaps from the openness of the place itself, or the lack of enthusiasm showed by the people moving on the surroundings gardens… and the heaviness of the wall containing the square, may help… more this sun, full of empty promises… thus, I have no problems about sprawling my loneliness here, like a viscous, pouring from this imposing staircase, and spreading through the veins this stony floor, blazing veins debouching around the neoclassic fountain, installed on the middle of the square, yellowish water being projected, from time to time, randomly. By the side of this fountain, an old bearded man hangs around, sometimes a murmur, a kind of speech, or a cry, coming out from his camouflaged lips. A weak speech. He carries a stick with him, a stick with some plastic bottles and other sort of plastic packages attached to it. Sometimes holding the stick over his shoulders, other times waving it around, a kind of flag hanging from it too, you could read the word “cancer” on it, coz that is written with big letters, and other shorter letters from the Greek alphabet. Some tourists approach the fountain from time to time, seldom, but when they see the man, they stand back and leave the place. But the locals, passing by his side, are not shocked at all, they just pass by him, informally, some even smile to the man, but no one stops by his side. As I said the square have two gardens, or green areas, one on my left side, where is the metro exit and the man with the stick, and other on my right side, with bigger trees and benches under it, some people seated on, mainly alone, one per bench, some looking inside themselves, some looking around, some dozing while eating that kind of circular sesame bread you can buy on any corner here. I approach some youngsters settled on the scarce grass, they offered me beers; we talk, informally, like we are happy about everything, nothing matters. Then I move to the garden on the other side of the fountain, the one almost without grass and withered trees. The man with the stick is close by, but no one pays any attention to him. The ones wandering through this part of the garden have darker skin, and some of them are carrying baggage, like me. There is a silence in between. Everyone is alone here. I can say, Georgian, Armenian, Albanian migrants, and others, you may not understand the color of the blood. But the Pakistani, or are they from Bangladesh? always find a mote of conversation, even if they are just whispering, it’s easy to them to find a point, they don’t care about desolation, bad humor, crisis, to them, all opportunities of meeting are good opportunities to be now, on the moment, an affirmation of brotherhood that is not just that. They give me strength, so I come back to the metro exit, by the big staircase, and begin unpack my stuff, my percussion stuff, buckets, pots and pans, cymbals, singing bowls, a xylophone, a few contact mics, an effects box, some speakers. It takes me time to unpack and set everything, and I do it slowly and at ease. People don’t care about what am I building there. No questions, almost no looks. After doing some body exercises, I seat properly over a bucket (once there was olives inside, so still greasy), and I look around. Despite the headache, I’m ready to start my performance, and I go through it, kinda awkwardly in the beginning, coz it’s too hard sound for such a desolated square, anyway, I don’t care about expectations, I do my job. It takes me no more than five minutes to start sweating, and after a while I’m already changing my clothes, right there, in the middle of the square, without any problem. People bring me coins, people bring liquids, many tired faces, but also some smiles, help me keep going. As the sun goes down I get more enthusiastic, even more melodic, less banging, more people coming out of the underground, I’m not making big money, but I keep going because now I’m totally inside it, I reached that trance that make it automatic, I’m the thing now, just need to express it. Some people sit on my side, absorbing it, making questions that I answer with other questions. I’m all on this place now, totally landed. This is my dwelling now. Night came but I didn’t notice, I see nothing of what is happening around, I keep exercising, going through mountains of oomph, cleaning the sides. But the climate of the square changes. There are people protesting on the other side of the fountain. I don’t understand what they are vindicating. They have flags with slogans, and carry traffic signs with them, it looks, the people coming out of the metro move in their direction. No money at all are coming now, but I don’t stop playing, not just because I’m totally inside it but also because I don’t have a better place to go. Some youngsters give their support, making enthusiastic gestures like “keep going, keep going – harder harder”. The police arrive, they come through the big stairs on my back, passing on my side, not caring about me, they come in groups, not rushing, and all protected with sticks, helmets and armors. They reach the protesters and try to avoid them of disturbing the traffic passing on the avenue in front of the square. Ok. I keep playing, rarely raising my head to see what is happening. More people are coming out of the metro. The protesters move around the square, they form different groups, some have covered faces. And I keep going, banging on. No one cares. I don’t care about them too. This is my ship, and I’m already on the bottom of the sea, they can’t sink me. But there are bomb explosions, now. I keep going. Spray and gas. Wonderful smells. All I wanted is to get more dizzy. Choirs. Some screaming. Until that, one girl dressed with leggings and skirt over comes by running and sits in front of me, touching her curly short hair from time to time; she is also not worrying about the clashes. But she is not really smiling. And after a while watching me she decides to steal part of my instrument and joins me in this musical allegory. And yeah, she knows what she is doing, she is able to catch my rhythmic patterns and impose her own way of playing. We are jamming now. Some protesters left the manifestations and came to us, they are into dancing now. But bombs are getting closer and closer, well, damn it, it’s enough boys and girls. We start packing. She helps me. We staff everything inside two big bags as fast as we can and run away from there, laughing, going through the stairs of the parliament, crossing that rich area with all the embassies, giving fast kisses in front of this or that republic. But this is not a very inspiring area of the city, we should turn to the other side, she remembered a friend was giving a party in the other side of the city, and so we should come back to the place we just left, not far from the demonstrations, we bought some more beer, the clashes were still going, mainly on Ermou street, now, the street with all the multinational cloth stores, broken showcases here and there, people being arrested, cyborgs on the watch, hip hop slogans, screams from upper windows, claims against capitalism, horse shit here and there, and we, trying to get away from all that mess, but as we reached the surroundings of the university of arts, again the same thing, she presented me to some friends, that understood nothing from her demands, and there we went again, running along panepistimiou street, pissing against the national library building. Echarchia was on fire too, but we avoided the central area of the neighborhood, we went through the back streets, full of graffiti, even on residential buildings, we got lost, but she never gave up, and always helping me carrying the stuff. After several attempts of going through the insides of some building, knocking on doors of people she said she knew, but it turned out they didn’t open doors or they showed not any sign of recognizing my friend as a relative of them. Like that we went from building to building, stealing decoration stuff from the entrance halls of these buildings, etc. For me all this was a game, and I was content to do it according to her rules...

***

In China I got totally lost and ended up Vietnam, by mistake. I lived in an inland in Hanoi, an inland in the red river, under the Long Bien bridge. There were some wood houses there, some strangers lived there, their job was to built scarecrows and sell it in the market. I helped them in the business. Also I learned to play the đàn bầu. After about one two months I moved to Laos, I crossed the border hitchhiking with people from the village around, riding motorcycles, sleeping in muddy forests. Already in Laos, there was Japanese propaganda on the roads, advising locals to not kill, sell or eat little animals like snakes, rats, frogs, beetles, grasshoppers etc. I took a night bus to Vientiane without money. Vientiane concept of time is something totally unique. A curiosity: Laos politicians refused during ages to build any bridge between their country and Thailand, but the Chinese insisted and insisted, they wanted a kind of motorway leading China to Singapore, and they wanted it to cross Laos, not Cambodia, but in the end the bridge was officered by the Australians and the Chinese motorway never came. One year after the bridge finished, the locals had a new name for the bridge. AIDS bridge. I crossed this bridge walking. That’s how I got to know that. Once in Bangkok I hit the Kao San area. An area full of Farangs (western tourists). In Kao San the local merchants would pull your arm on the street to impose their products to you. Say, street food like Pad thai, hippy clothing and travelling packs to places like Pattaya, Puhket and Chiang Mai. Many westerns walking hand with hand with Thai girls around Kao San street. All night the clubs in this street blasting hip hop beats, trying to be as cool and pro occidental as they could, people being forced to party, a lot of insinuations, sex tourism, of course, “be happy for nothing” tourism. Smile or die. Anyway, it wasn’t that bad, I liked the mysterious aura of the city. Mainly in the surrounding area of Khao San. Many locals would be outside all night. People lived liked spirits, outside of themselves, that was my impression from the beginning. You could do anything, they would not judge you. Or almost never. I found a very cheap hostel, in some back streets, two minutes walking distance from Khao San, it was close to the river, I would do my walks around the canals during the night, visit the big lizards. After some weeks in the Hostel, I started to understand who were the visitors and who were the ones that were staying, we share observations, from time to time, nothing deep, not talking much, we had learn from the locals, contemplate more talk less, and when you talk, talk like contemplating. There was an old French man living there, mainly into reading and drinking beer. He would speak only when not many people around. His drinking pal was a tanned Russian, the Bolshevik talked louder, but always waited for the French to bring up the theme. I could only see the Russian during the night, never during the day, while the frenchie I would see him all the time in the front lobby, downstairs. There was a huge tree with reddish flowers between the hostel and the front street, well it was not a front street, it was an alley that connected to a back street, and another alley would lead you to the main street. This to say that the hostel was protected by this tree. I understood the kind of life the frenchie was living there. He was living under this tree, under this bless, that was enough for him. For sure Antonin Artaud brought him there, or something like that, an Antonin Artaud in the feminine, or without genre. He and the Russian had rooms downstairs, sometimes another younger guy, also staying in a room downstairs, would drink with the oldies. This guy, I didn’t know him well, but I heard him exposing his story to other newbies, saying that came to Thailand by Moto, from India or something like that, he had a lot of problems with the police, not just because of the Moto, but also because of the use of cannabis in open space, he had been to jail and had fines to pay, the police kept his passport, he couldn’t leave. This hostel had only ground floor and first floor. I stayed upstairs. The access to the first floor was made through some stairs made of old wood, weak clapboards that would do different kind noises, sometimes hissings, sometimes moaning, it was interesting, a kind of sound that would pair well with the singing of that bird, the Koeli, the Koeli is a kind of cuckoo, mainly singing mainly during the night, actually I never saw it, he was hidden on that tree, for sure. The entrance to my room was located in an inner balcony, also made of old wood, people that was staying in the rooms around would hang clothes in the handrail of this balcony. Every morning, as I opened the door, and saw the sort of clothes hanging there I could understand, somehow, which kind of neighbors I was having. About the room, it was minuscule, just a bed and a fan on the corner. Some scribbling on the walls, in many languages. By the ceiling there was a small square hole, a kind of window without window, actually two holes, one northern, making the connection with the exterior, and the other southern, let’s say, making the connection with the room in the back of mine, so, all the sound would pass from one room to others, but it’s not like we were being noisy in this hostel, quite the opposite, the thing is, we could listen conversations, moanings, gaspings, going from room to room. And the fan spinning night and day, nonstop, this was my best friend. So, in the first days of my staying, the person staying on the room opposed to mine was some Japanese young guy, he would talk on the phone in the middle of the night. His mother was very worried with him, he told me later, before leaving. Days after he is gone, a German girl came to live in this same cell. She would sing, more like a murmur, sometimes played some reggae music, from her phone or laptop, I’m not sure, but not loud, in the morning, I would wake up with her songs, it was cool, we had similar music taste. One of this mornings, she was playing that album “super ape” from the “The Upsetters”, an album that I loved and love much, and while the album was playing we shared some stupid jokes about nothing, it was fun to speak with someone like that, through a hole. We made like an agreement, she would play a song and after it would be my turn and after her turn again and so on. So, after the “Upsetters” I injected “panic in Babylon” from Lee Scrach Perry, she loved it too, and when her time came her choice was “mr Sun” from Don Carlos. Appreciated also. It followed with things like: “black roses” from Barrington Levy; “chase the devil” from Max Romeu; “no no no yes I know” from Dawn Penn; “perfidia” fom Phyllis Dillon; “java” from Augustus Pablo; and other songs from maestros like King Tubby, Scientist, Mad professor etc. Well, I remember it finished with something totally different, “lanquidity” from Sun Ra. And after this music marathon she explained the purpose of her staying in Bangkok, she has finished with her boyfriend, her job, her family, back in German, and came to get lost, to refresh her mind, she was doing the so called “southeast asia” tour. She came from Cambodia, and would follow until Indonesia. That was her plan. Perhaps Bali. I advised her to skip Bali, Bali was very commercial. I recommended her to go more east, to Sulawesi, to Maluku, etc. After she wanted to know about me. I said, my family lived in China, I knew nothing about the west, I grew up in Hong Kong. “But you don’t look Chinese!”; “How you know? You can´t see me!” Some day after she was gone. I kept her mail. She sent me photos from Malaka. To her place came some couple from Taiwan, they were very shy, and afraid of me, I don’t know why. After the room stayed empty during sometime, until that a Thai girl came to live there. We spoke through the wall. She had just come from the States, she said. She went there with a guy, a guy that supposedly loved her, but once she got there, she understood that this guy was married, had children and everything, classical story, so, she got despised by the guy, her situation became a chaos and she decided to return, but to pay the returning ticket it hasn’t been easy. It wasn’t really easy. Now she was even in a worse situation, she confessed. Without a job. Without money. Without friends. She was not from Bangkok actually; she was from the Isan province, in the north. But her whimper was intriguing; it looked too smart to be taken seriously. One night she drank too much and start telling stuff like poetry, she spoke good English, it went on like this “Sometimes I feel like a turtle that is being grilled over hot charcoal. I am slowly dying. No matter what I do, no matter how much I try to escape, I cannot. I am powerless to change my destiny. I wonder was I born to be unfortunate; is this life my destiny? I pray to Buddha that this not be the case. My life seems to be that of a country girl who has spent her days escaping from a tiger, only to be eaten by a crocodile. You can buy me for 2,000 baht, or less. I’m yours.” Well, I didn’t like this offer, to be frank. Days after I ran away from Bangkok”.

***

When I landed in Tijuana, a city with one of the bigger homicide rate in the word, I decided to walk from the airport to the city center; the fence with the United States was just in my back. Two fences actually, around ten meters high, one on the Mexico side and other in the gringo’s side. A big space in the middle, with cameras, and jeeps patrolling. Not so much cars in this national road, some pickups, some dusty vans passing by, and from times to times a very old but robust blue bus would pass, it looked like a school bus, people with hats inside, dozing against the windows. And as I walked by the fence, a patrol car, on the other side, is already following me, because I have touched the fence, before, testing it, but after some minutes they stop and got out of the car, they don’t want to call my attention, and why they should bother, if they could keep tracking me through the cameras, for sure. But I wasn’t the only one walking by the fence, from ten to ten minutes I would cross with another mate with a dirty backpack, walking fast, not looking to the sides, but on the exact moment we crossed he would stand his head and do a salute, even a smile. Me the same. Further I got to a relatively big roundabout, if I keep in front I would go to some industrial area, and to go to the city I should do left. Here started the suburb. I saw the first shops, small supermarkets, refresquerias and pulquerias, in between the many improvised car garages. As I passed no one bothered me. There was people, but they didn’t stop so much in this street, they would quickly move into the smaller ones, inside the maze. So I came to the hill, on my right all the ups and downs of the suburban area, people with many chains and collars around the neck, on my left the dry river / sewage and the city, colorful buildings, not tall, all very dusty. When I asked the direction to the center someone answered me with all the details and more all the other possible ways of getting there and more the buses, etc. I followed the motorway by the sewage. Under a bridge, here was a particular graffiti that called my attention, the graffiti showed a group of people pulling shopping trolleys full of trash, and around the graffiti some real shopping trolleys were parked, the plastic reality and the real reality, so closed, side by side, it looked the same thing. Later I arrived in the city center “avenida de la revolucion” and also not so much people, all kind of taquerias, well arranged, handcraft shops with colouful skulls, hamburguerias decorated with the imaginary of the gringos, a funky bait, but strangely I haven’t seen one American in all that main street, all the ones sited inside the public houses were Mexicans, I could tell. I got curious, so I decided asked someone about the gringos, he pointed me the direction of a club and said “ai se meten todos, por las muchachas”. Yes, the fuckers, the only place you could see them was inside the whorehouse, typical. The city has been the stage of many riots, between the drug cartels, he said, so they are not coming anymore, “they are afraid of Tijuana now.” This man talking was from Sonora desert, he is here on business, arranging a contract to export meat from his providers in Sonora to the small restaurants in downtown Tijuana. “Here they like more the meat from the desert he”; they preferred it instead of the local one. Then this man, understanding that I was a foreigner, offered me to come inside and have a pulque with him. I accepted. This was my first pulque, I had never heard about that, “nevermind the Tequila” he said, “this is way better”, and was, creamy and not directly tasting ethyl alcohol, like some tequila. Inside I sit on a table with other men and one woman. They all have been on the other side; I mean the “Alta California” side. “That is our land, they stole it from us, but our relatives still live there, they will never leave it” one said. “I worked there in a fucking pineapple plantation for almost two years but after got tired of that shit and came back” one said. Other has been throwing chicken into hot water, same story. The younger, had just come from San Francisco; was recently deported by the new migration laws, after spending one year in jail. The woman also confided that have worked half of her life there, in a Motel, as a waiter, cooker and receptionist, she has done a bit of everything. Now she was on holydays, this side, but her husband was an American, he was on the other side, they made jokes about it. “Do you love him?” I asked her. “I love my children” she said. Then they made me a lot of questions about my identity, what was I doing here, from where I came, and I lied as I could, I was half Chinese half Spanish, half I don’t know what, I came to visit my cousins and I had a secret mission. They wanted to know more, but I had to leave them, I wanted to go to the beach, there was a mission to be carried out, and I couldn’t drink more pulque. The beach was more than ten kilometers distance and it was already night. I left, half drunk. Again, I took the road by the fence, by the border, this time by mistake. No one walked along this road, there was no sidewalks, on both sides mounds of churned earth, almost no vegetations, some caves on this mounds would guard the illuminated statues of Santa Morte, Virgen Guadalupe and San judas Tadeu. There was an inhospitable valley, some fig trees, I ate some figs, a lot of rubbish, and up the valley, the motorway leading to the border crossing, full of vehicles, both sides, that was another world. I kept going down. In the middle of nothing a man came walking slowly, he looked big, but after I understood, it was not all a man, he was carrying a tray on his head and buckets on his hands, he passed on my side, made a sound like “ohue” and followed into the mound, through a narrow serpentine path, sided with some tall weeds, I understood, he was a peddler, coming home from his work. At least he had a home, I thought. I still could see, his head and the tray, all the same now, drifting through the top of the weeds, just a showdown. More half an hour and there was light again; I was arriving to the beach neighborhood. I surpass now some villas, some placed almost in the middle of the border, on the hill, excavations all around. It was as if this houses were floating, there was no fortifications. Caterpillars were parked all around and the border fence crossed the pit, also floating. It would be easy to pass under it. I haven’t seen any patrolling in this area. I took a picture. Finally a perfect picture. After the gas station the first hotels with big terraces on the back, but the front walls are high and some have broken glass stuck against the top. At the roundabout I turned right, got out of the main street, into the coastal neighborhood, I passed some bars, not many people inside, but they were noisy, noisier than in the city center. I went down this street, in five minutes I was on the beach. Now on my front a small amphitheater, sound of trumpets playing, a big set of percussion, like the one you find in circus, but you couldn’t hear the guitars, although the guitarists were the more well dressed, with lines of decorative bottoms over their jackets. A guy was singing traditional songs, and he would pass the microphone to the passersby’s, anyone would sing too, with no shame. Some middle-aged couples were dancing, down, half in the amphitheater half in the sand; they would jump into the concrete and fall into the sand again as the music went on, it was funny, how they were doing it without falling, and the trumpets were really loud. I ordered a hamburger from a street seller with a big mustachio and went down. As I pass on the side of the band I hit the exposed cymbals, and the percussionist promptly invite me to play on the big set, but I pass it. He couldn’t imagine what I had in my bags, a much bigger set, much more complicated. I went in the direction of the ocean; there was something I wanted to throw into the water, and I did it. Here and there, people gathering around small fires. I go in the direction of one of these gatherings, first one, after other, a bit insecure. Finally I stop, but still moving, they look to me through the flames, and asked me nothing, but I understood, the wood was paid, a guy was bringing it with a special car, I gave some coins too, then he left. For some reason someone asked me if I could throw a piece of hair into the fire. “Why not.” I do it. And as I did it they said that now I have the right to ask a wish. In silence, I ask the wish. “What it is?” they want to know. “I wish, I wish, I wish this fire turns into stars and the stairs point us the way.” Another wishes followed, as different people came to the fire. A lot of hair was burnt. It was a good night. Next morning, I departed to the desert.