I find it fascinating how we are tempted to believe what we say, or what we think. I am fascinated over our ability to choose what we decide to consider as truth and what we dismiss as nonsense, how we decide to consider some people and disregard others.

It is temptingly easy to say it's all connected with upbringing and the values that have been pushed onto us since childhood. For me, it seems like an easy escape. Using that line of reasoning, we could be excused for pretty much anything. It feels trying to step out of the responsibility that goes with one's own choices and decisions.

Similarly, it fascinates me how we decide to consider each other and how we attach emotions and various other psychological baggage onto one another.

And then, we still manage to gather into cities like Tokyo and not go on killing rampages.

Are we all just eager to hop from one person to the next according to how they flatter our egos and what experiences we are seeking right at that moment? Are there, or could there ever be more altruistic reasons behind any of it?


Travelling alone is a blissful state to be in. For me.
If travelling can be regarded as a state to be in, that is.

During the past few days, a friend of mine has joined me in Tokyo and we have met some of his old acquaintances here as well as roamed around the city some bit. While it's all fine and dandy, I realise that my knee-jerk reaction in such a situation is to be more than accommodating to the other person. I go out of my way to do things in ways in which I wouldn't if I was alone.

I sit in the bathroom and type on my little powerbook, instead of on the table, for example, as I suffer from Tokyo-induced insomnia. He is happily sleeping away while I am somehow trying to not make too much noise while still doing what I wish to do. Keeping things good on both sides is not an easy balance to keep up.

I am not good travel company.
I am excellent travel company to the other person, but not to myself when there is someone else around. I'm a bit sad about the way this journey has turned out, but then again, it is my choice and wish to do as I am doing right now, otherwise I wouldn't be at it, now would I?

I am sincerely happy about heading down South with Sarju, but I still have my doubts about whether it is what I should really be doing. After all, the only real goal I had during this journey was to find myself on the shore of the Baikal Lake.

Why such a silent obsession about that lake?
Perhaps because it is as lonely as it can get.

How crazy to sit in the largest conglomeration of humans on this planet and fantasise about being alone in the middle of nowhere. Talk about hypocrisy, or bad faith! Seems to me like I am a dirty old man talking about sex when he hasn't had any for years. Except that he's fantasising about meeting a young girl who'd be willing to put up with his years of self-neglect while I'm fantasising about places I am effectively turning away from by going in the absolute opposite direction.
Same thing, different setting.


One of the things my friend reproaches me is my apparent inability to effectively cipher the best of things out of the mass of all that exists. He complains about whom I trust for tips about where to go or whom I listen to for feedback about who I am.

If you had a thousand years in Japan, or a thousand years alive, you could live as you do. But you don't have that much time. You have to learn to get your sources right.

I can't help but feel like I am being judged.
I guess it's because the comment is directed towards the choices I make when it comes to my friends or my beliefs. Perhaps a natural reaction. I don't know. And a part of it has to do with the angry tone used when those words were uttered.

I can't help but want to say but to this claim.
But how do you know what I seek in this lifetime? How can you decide what is the best path to take? How can anyone decide about anyone else's worth? ... and from there, how is it possible to live together?
How is it in any way possible that we manage to keep ourselves together in such large cities? How do we not fight incessantly? How do we not clash, bang and explode into one another's faces?

We accommodate. We leave space. We understand. We are social.
We judge but keep it to ourselves and take it out on those groups of people who live out of the city, those who do not belong to the same group.

I become depressive in big cities.
I am fascinated yet overwhelmed.
I accept yet don't understand.
And it gets worse when my travel companion can't find joy in discovering what there is, but rather seems intent on finding only what he wished to find.

And between all of this, my dreams take on allures of nightmarish Bladerunner scenes mixed with the Matrix and a futuristic sight of Tokyo. At night, as I close my eyes, I feel as if all the electric cables of Japan have been twisted and tangled into and through my body, to link me up with some unfriendly power busy building yet another three concrete towers per night.

At Peace, but not quite all the time.
Restless and unable to find a pause.
In Love, yet without a heart.

In a few hours we're heading away from the city. Hopefully the mountains will help me help myself and I'll find the me whose gone on holiday to the other side of the galaxy. Until then, goodnight and good luck.