My Time as a Human

As I creep my way out of the cold, fog-filled stone streets of Amsterdam and into the hotel, they eye me with suspicion. “They’re on to me,” I think, and then realize that I have a giant poster of an obscure homeless musician duct taped to the front of my body. It’s either that, or the towels. Every day we open the door but a crack and leave the “do not disturb” sign on the handle. They’ve responded by leaving bundles of towels and soap outside each day. Each day a giant bundle of towels goes in… but nothing ever comes out. We’ve also been obsessively calling the front desk, demanding that they give us our package from Germany. Each time, they’ve refused, claiming it’s never arrived.

On the desk is some kind of survival spork and I carry metal chopsticks at all times. A long line of parachute cord is stretched tight across the length of the room from the door to a gas line. It’s continuously dripping with socks and long underwear. In a wild attempt to overcome wasteful weight in travel, Kevin and I have stripped our wardrobes to the barest essentials. We arrived with nothing but a book bag of clothes that we wash with hotel soap in the sink each night. Anything else we need to keep warm or look good can be produced with duct tape and towels.

The posters have been a master tool for meeting people. Everyone loves asking me about the guy on my chest and I have a pocket of postcards with the dates of our screenings at gunslinger height. I have it down to a smooth snap and the cards are in their hands. If I talk enough about our insane twelve years of working on this film their eyes glow and their grip on the cards shifts like they are more likely to survive the trip home.

Our second screening of, “Blaze Foley: Duct Tape Messiah” went pretty well. Kevin wasn’t able to get an HD tape made in part because that Tsunami you heard about destroyed the factory that makes tape. He decided that the Beta copy of the film didn’t look nearly good enough and so he got them a digital copy of the film by using the sd card in his pocket camera and a laptop. A good sized crowed stuck around past the QA to hear Gurf Morlix perform and while the funny but crude, “Wouldn’t That Be Nice” got a few on the run they all loved the beautiful songs like, “Ooh Love” and most made a point to meet us afterwards. The legend of Blaze is definitely continuing to spread.

As a random bonus I ran into Andrew Berends at one of the schmoozfests. I still insist that it was my blog post that finally tipped the scales and had Hillary Clinton calling for his release. He doesn’t disagree. Fortunately Kevin hasn’t thought up a scheme to get us arrested in Amsterdam for the same kind of publicity. Yet.

Above: Kevin Triplett sporting a custom duct tape tuxedo made by a fan of Blaze and Kai Mantsch with the poster. We’ve been telling people that it’s a playfully told, fun and uplifting movie about a homeless musician who gets killed.

The nice thing about fires, hurricanes, mudslides and terrorist attacks is that, if you survive, you have fellow survivors. Without them, there is no one to validate the experience or share the outcome. Here in Amsterdam, even more so than in Fuzhou, people continue to confound and even irritate me by going about their lives as normal. “Here, have one of these delicious beers.” Don’t they see that little more than a week ago I could hardly speak or walk because my brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen? Don’t they know what it means to watch, consciously, as the ability to interact with the world goes away and hands become trembling, useless flags on the ends of slow moving sticks?

And yet, the worlds continue. People stand cold and shaking, smoking behind barroom exits, too lazy to end the addictions that continuously pull them away from time with friends. Meaningless relationships continue, neither person willing to make the first step to improve or end them. Everyone’s universe exists when their eyes are open, and ends when they drift off to sleep. My own sleep has no effect on them.

But this is not true either. Some of the earth’s humans were very aware of my potential sleep and cared that I existed, that I continue to exist for a bit longer. The outpouring of concern and affection was truly wonderful and my response to it was, sadly, an old pattern of mine played out yet again.

It took a long time to go public with my plunging health. For some reason I have always been obsessed with putting my own needs behind the needs of others and I refuse to become a burden or worry to anyone, to the point of absolute absurdity. The more I need help, the more fervently I refuse, captured most vividly in a moment years ago when I was homeless.

I was emotionally upset because of a breakup and without anywhere to go was living in a car, as one often does. (Well, OK, this one.) I managed to get internet access by going to the public library with a tiny parade of homeless people each morning and washed my face in restaurant sinks. At some point I stopped by my friend Eric Peterson’s house. As we were talking, he noticed that I hadn’t eaten much and pulled out a bowl of grapes and put them on the table. They were fresh and cool and I love the feel and sweet taste of grapes. When I didn’t take any, he began offering them to me. I refused. The more he insisted, the more angrily I resisted. I couldn’t possibly accept the grapes or anything else.

It was Angela Lee who used her shrewd powers of human understanding to trick me. She explained that she needed help. Her lawn needed mowing and she needed someone to watch her dogs while she was away. If only someone would live in her spare bedroom for a while and take care of the place… I couldn’t possibly refuse to help a friend. I moved in and suddenly had a roof over my head and a kitchen to cook in. I had dogs to care for and a way to earn my keep.

Posting publicly from China to let people know the severity of my situation was extremely difficult. It was an acceptance that something really was horribly wrong. It put the burden of worry onto my friends and family. It implied a need for help.

By the time I had to get to a hospital or buy a ticket out of Fuzhou, I had no choice but to accept help. I couldn’t even type well enough to buy a ticket and I was too confused to find my way around a hospital. At the same time, people from around the world began flooding me with concern and offers to fly in or fly me out. I was overwhelmed by both the outpouring of concern, the sense that my situation mattered to other people, and a tremendous sense of guilt. I was forever trying to find ways to keep people updated, and assure them that things would be fine, at the same time I was working towards an acceptance that there was every chance I might not recover. (Carbon monoxide poisoning has an extremely variable recovery rate. Many times the damage is permanent, while just as many times people recover over years.)

Once in Taipei I made two big counterintuitive decisions. The idea of struggling through a 23 hour flight to the US and fighting lawyers and doctors through cold heartless hallways to an almost certain debt for life made the decision to not fly home easy. The oddest decision, for me, was around who might have flown to my aid. Following the same pattern as above, allowing my parents to come meant accepting that something was terribly wrong. It meant bringing people I cared about into a situation where they didn’t know the language or culture and wouldn’t have anything to do but worry about me. I would, effectively, be a burden. Allowing my friend Ori to come, a guy who has sworn to travel to Asia for a year and never left, a guy who can delight in sleeping on a train station floor, was a way to help him get into motion and do what he’s wanted to do for so long. There was no guilt in that, in helping a friend, although in the end I decided against having anyone fly in.

I still have some recovering to do. I’m here in Amsterdam because I couldn’t possibly miss the opportunity to help show a film that I’ve been a part of for twelve years. In classic form, now that I’m stronger and more able I’m now exhilarated by the idea of having my parents in Taipei. But following this I am going to do my best to slow down and give myself a break for a while. I’ll give myself a few grapes that, perhaps, I’ve earned. One day maybe I’ll learn to accept the grapes when I have nothing to offer in return.

photo links to photographer’s site

Being back in Fuzhou, this grungy, comfortable, familiar little town I’ve grown attached to, is very strange. I feel like I have just barely returned from near death, watching my brain slip quickly away from me, and I have a lot to think about from that glimpse of the end of my life. At the same time, some people here didn’t even know why I was gone and, given the so completely familiar surroundings of the dorm hallways and my old room, there is the strange sense when I see those people that… maybe nothing happened. How could it have been that bad? Here I am, talking and walking normally. They seem so unconcerned, how can I be? Yet there are others who run to hug me, thankful to see me again, and this feels more in tune with what happened. I think I want that support, that reminder that I really did go through something as intense as it feels to me, that I wasn’t just skipping school.

Ironically, I have a different way to experience this place now. My knee is improving and I can walk freely and climb stairs. I can see a place and walk to it fearlessly. The constant stress of school is also suddenly gone. I can enjoy a moment for what it is, without the terror that I’m hurtling ever further behind in every moment that I’m not staring at a book. Together, these two things open this place in a whole new way that wasn’t available before. All of this helped make last night such a surprising delight.

I wanted to see the park. I wanted to be around all of those Fuzhou people enjoying the evening. In the bustle of travel I had somehow lost the tiny sim card for my phone and suddenly had no way to contact anyone. Apparently they had been calling me and gave up and went out to eat without me, leaving me alone to wander. I found one friend, Angela 张萌, who was free and insisted that she go with me to 五一广山 (wu yi square), the park at the heart of Fuzhou. As we waited for the bus she told me about 11/11/11, that day, a day with so many single 1s that the Chinese people call it, “singles day”. Single people are supposed to pair up and have a date that night. I immediately picked up her arm, dropped it into mine, and declared it a date.

I tried to make it as Chinese as possible. First we went to the massive, Burning Man scale statue of Mao Zedong and saluted. The banyan tree is the official tree of Fuzhou, so we found a wise old banyan dripping with beards and asked it, in Chinese, to make tonight perfect. He said sure, and to drink plenty of water. Thus blessed, we walked around the park and the city (after buying some water) just talking and playing and seeking out little places to buy sweets. We danced under the trees and over the steps. We watched drunk groups of Chinese people singing lonely songs to one another in the street. We ended in perfect style in a tower on top of a roof, at 5:00 am, looking out over the city and sipping walnut milk.

The whole night… the simple walking and talking in the light rain, the spontaneous smiles, the people we bumped into… all of it something that only a few days ago I thought would never be possible again. It made everything tingle with an electricity that sang, “just one more.” Just one more magic moment before I go. Just one more silly joke before I go. Just one more dance before I go. Just one more look at a fountain before I go. Just one more smile from a pretty girl before I go. Everything I see, taste, hear or feel now is a bonus, an extra, a treasure. Life has always been this way, so full of treasure. Life will always be this way. It’s so good to notice, feel, and remember this again.

photo links to photographer’s site

if you feel confused too, follow me to the beginning of this story

The report is in. Both my friend Dr. John Edwards and Dr. Ling here at NTU Hospital thought the MRI of my twisted noodle looked pretty much like the twisted noodles of most people who don’t claim brain failures. IE: Normal. So, that’s good. Dr. Ling was actually a Parkinson’s specialist and she doesn’t even currently see residuals of the Parkinsons symptoms we saw earlier. She prescribed:

1) Some medication to stimulate blood flow in the brain for 1 week
2) Drinking water like it’s Burning Man
3) Two short (10 min) exercise sessions a day
4) More of this confounded rest

So I’m on this routine for the next week and then we’ll see. On the plus side, there is a Taipei film festival coming up and that should provide me with motivation to sit still for extended periods. My brain also gets tired quickly, so that’s helping slow me down too.

And now, to be good and get some of the sleep I’m supposed to be so excited about. Sigh.