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Go Away (in progress)

Go Away, far
Far Away.

Chu!I reach my heel back, swift kick to the rockhard gut Chu! Then airborne, squinting through approaching twilight, searching for marmot holes in the impossibly mottled grass. I will never ride as the Mongols do. There is something about being raised on horseback, coming from the greatest horse-people in the world, gyroscopic blood. Raised Wooden saddles, floating inches above the horseback; short stirrups, tied together beneath the belly, that would make our knees lock and scream. They fly in frozen standing stance, slouched to one side, pole-lasso in hand, poised in galloped rhythm — familiar as their own pulse.

“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate”. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again” to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.”
Pico Iyer, Why We Travel: A Love Affair With the World

“What a fucking ridiculous place”
—KJC

Vietnam, home of rice paddies and shards of American shrapnel embedded in jungle soil.

Mongolia is nowhere, nothing. Marco Polo and Chinggis Khaan. He is still Genghis to you.

Mongolia gives new weight to the phrase “Golden Years”. Nostalgia on a new plane.

But now’s your chance to see Vietnam. Before it develops they say.

Realize there is something morbidly fascinating about (post)-communism.

Choose Mongolia because you get to spend two weeks herding sheep and goats, and living in a _ger_in the countryside.

To lands returned
To realms uncharted.

Develop some stock answers to the question, Why Mongolia?

You become a minor celebrity in certain circles. Your mom’s email list. Your sister’s friends. Relatives. No-one at your school cares, or they hide it well. It is likely they resent you for out-exoticizing-internationalizing them. This makes you happy.

Go away–far, far away. You are tired of living comfortable. Which is ironic, since for a rich white male, you’ve had it less than easy. Then again, that’s not saying much. You long for culture shock. To be hung by your feet and shaken until everything falls from your pockets.

You want to make sure your Mongolian language skills reach a decent level. Find one of the five Mongolians in Boston and organize private language lessons for th etwo weeks before you leave.

Buy “Colloquial Mongolian” by Alan J. K. Saunders and Jansangiin Batereedüi.

Six months later, the most played track in your iTunes® will still be “Lesson 1, Dialogue 2–Fast”.

Have a sinking feeling halfway thorugh track 2 on the cd. Sample words: Sandal, Kharandaa, Tom, Jijig, Gobi. Goiv? Gobi. Figure it must be a mistake or typo. How can Gobi become.. well the G is swallowed, and calls up from the bottom of your throat, leading to a slippery o that somehow terminates in a soft V. Realize you won’t be learning this language from a book. You need corroboration for these crimes against reason. Wish you hadn’t dropped Chinese.

Enjoy thinking about how you must appear, Mongolian phrases emanating from your throat as you practice to the recordings on your daily commute on the wonderful MBTA.

Be glad you dropped Chinese.

Try not to think about how knowing this language will help you later in life. Fill your head with lots of liberal-arts learn for its own sake bullshit.

Mongolia is fucking awesome, that’s why.

Mongolia—vast in her emptiness, tragic in her exile from sea and arable land, breathtaking in her humble beauty.

But don’t go for the food

Ode to Pepto
O Pepto, how gracious thou art
Calming the stomach’s sea
Thy fair complexion glows as a rose in Spring
Thy taste, as sweet as the finest chalk.

All romance is dashed,
Upon that first encounter with the infamous phantom
That is Montezuma’s Revenge.

Or the sting of your hands,
As they freeze one morning
In October.


In Mongolia, vegetable soup consists of:
mutton
salt
potatoes
onions (optional)
salt
cabbage (optional)

In Mongolia, the girls walk home to their slums wearing fake designer jeans and faux-fur-trimmed coats.

In Mongolia, Dogs are not man’s best friend.

In Mongolia, Chinggis Khaan is the God of Gods.

In Mongolia, marmots steal frisbees and other bright white, fast-moving objects.

In Mongolia, your cab fare is computed using a simple formula:
(distancekm*300) / (mongolian language ability) / (number of mongolians with you) + 500 \* (number of gringos) + random \* 100

Big Brother is watching, don’t say the
Wrong thing, look the
Wrong way.

Traditional systems dis-
Integrate. Morals, ethics, freedoms and structures of life on the steppe.Such as traditional land use practices, and the freedom to migrate where one wants.
Yet what happens when Big Brother falls?

Stone Flagbearer
Soviet Memorial

The veil is lifted, euphoria blossoms;
The image of the Tiger mesmerizes,
Nurtured by romancing Western winds.Reference to the assurances from Western advisors that their policies would lead Mongolia to become the next ‘Asian Tiger’.

I gingerly held on to my seat as we bounced through marmot holes and over patches of grass, feet perched solidly on the footrests of my host father’s motorcycle as we sped through the night. The cool air soothed my skin, each molecule a reminder of the authenticity of the moment, and my very mortality. The motorcycle’s lone headlight danced its way across the steppe; I leaned back, resting my hands on my knees, and gazed up at the endless starry dark. My stomach full of боодог (boodog, Mongolian roasted goat), сүүтэй цай (suutei tsai, milky tea), айраг (airag, fermented mare’s milk) and архи (arhi, vodka), I smiled at the uniqueness and beauty of this experience, and drank in the Mongolian night.

Yet change proves illusory, as do the goods
That once lined the oppressive shelves of state-owned stores.
A dissatisfied electorate speaks with their vote;
Old are replaced by new: the heroic Democrats

Stumble forward.
With the suavity of a toddler’s first step, they apply the shock;
Sparks fly, illuminating their fresh faces frozen in naïveté and terror.
With the ferocity of a dead fish the Mongolian economy coughs,
Collapsing into torpor.

I took what must have been my 100th lap around the ger–I had struck a rhythm; long underwear snapping against the canvas roof to the beat of my stilted step. My right foot always hitting harder as it centripetally held me in an orbit–clockwise of course, even when committing flyicide.

31 August, Afternoon

Flies are everywhere. On my arm.
…
Fuck these godforsaken fucking flies. Wow, I sound angry, no?

31 August, 5:30pm

FLIES AHHHHHHHH
Now Lkhakvasuren is running around the ger rambo-style with a towel in one hand, and my pillow in the other, windmilling her arms.

4 September, 3:55pm

Midday is definitely the worst time of day. It’s hot, and there’s nothing to do. My [host] father usually naps or watches TV, or both, while I make flashcards or do homework. Meanwhile, the flies go beserk. There’s no point in even trying to wave them away.

Right now the only sound is of flies swarming above and around me. A chorus that ebbs and flows to its own chaotic pulse. Usually, I get up every ten minutes or so to clear my side of the ger, if only to lessen the number in my immediate vicinity, for a few moments of relative peace.

It sorta works. At least I don’t feel helpless. My [host] father is going to tend to the sheep now…

8 September, 3:47pm

When this baby screams, it’s like the sun is shattering, screeching-swerving through space. Except less cosmic, graceful, grandiose, or poetic. The shit is just LOUD and SHRILL.

It’s also the witching hour. Or hours. WHen the flies all take their afternoon dose of speed and then go Bat-Shit-Insane all over the ger. Todo: Become zen so I don’t care

9 September, 3:00pm

…they joked that I should give them burzag blah blah, that I was a poor host –pause to kill some flies–

9 September, 3:55pm

Phew. There were 100’s, now there are, like, 20. The war is un-winnable, but I figure I can win a few battles to make their level at least tolerable. And strike some fear into their grimy hearts.

The Herd
One mass, assembled
A stream of fleece
Flowing, bound by ground
Horse and voice

Ger
An architecture whose elegance
Could only emerge from Time’s
Eternal forge, casting
Function, form, philosophy.

Swarms of flies, driven mad by midday sun
Melt silence into winged static.

Timelessness embodied in wooden chests,
The malchins’ mournful voice serenades his herd;
A wood-framed home in a woodless land.

Learn that everything extracted from, or grown in Mongolia goes to China; that everything that can be bought is made in China, perhaps from Mongolian materials. Which you hadn’t dropped Chinese.
…

Fights

We are walking down the main drag, heading to or from a bar. A man is standing by the roadside. he is a dark shape revealed only in the passing slices of headlights, wearing a shirt that was once white, but is now streaked with red. Presumably blood. His face, also revealed by the headlights is similarly painted — and wears a timid grimace.

He is trying to get home; with one hand struggling to pathetically hail a passing car, as he hunches over into himself.

Food

Don’t go to Mongolia for the food. Unless you like three things: Mutton, Salt and Fat. Then you should rather enjoy the cuisine.

The American doctor at the local Korean Christian hospital thinks Mongolians have high rates of kidney disease from not drinking any water. In the countryside, they drink suutei tsai (literally, tea with milk). Perhaps a more apt name would be davstai tsai (tea with salt). It is the beverage of choice when you’re not drinking airag (fermented mare’s milk, or koumiss), and can be conveniently used as broth for any soup or noodles.
Main Dishes

You have the infamous buuz. Buuz are like Tibetan momos — little mutton-filled boiled dumplings. Except momos are smaller, and have spices and vegetables. Buuz have four ingredients: Mutton, Mutton Fat, Salt, and Onions. For cultures from the colder regions, the highest of culinary achievement is glorious lard.

Put the onions, mutton and fat in a dumpling wrapper. Make into dumpling. Boil. Eat with suutei tsai. Your first bite may be dangerous, you bite into the familiar dumpling shell only to receive an onslaught of flooding ”juice“. Your mouth fills with mutton grease and the uniquely pungent taste of mutton itself.

Mutton is a uniquely fatty red meat, so bad for you that the Mongolian government runs a health campaign, promoting BEEF as the heart-healthy ”other red meat“!

Up next, khuushuur. These are like hot pockets (maybe the calzones), but filled with one thing: mutton — and then fried to oblivion.

Tsuivan. This was my staple dish when eating at the only restaurants that exist outside the city (the capitol). Zoogiin Gazar, Buuz-eria, ”Mongolian National Fast Food“. they serve several dishes, most which are randomly sold out at any particular moment.

I always order Tsuivan. it’s a simple dish — a safe choice mostly, though a few times I was served it with ketchup. Which threw me off a bit. Essentially it’s Mongolian lo mein. take flat wheat noodles, fry lightly with a generous amount of oil, slivers of mutton, and maybe a few veggies. even the noodles will take on the pungence of mutton, absorbed into the oils.

I arrived in Mongolia approximately August 23rd.

On August 29th, I recorded in my journal that ”maybe I just don’t like mutton“.

I had just finished my first week.

First of fourteen.
Cheese

One would think, given the number of livestock (35 million) and their centrality to Mongolian culture and lifestyle, and that all the main livestock varieties produce milk fit for the purpose (sheep, goats and cows) that Mongolia would have developed a robust cheese-making tradition. But no. There are two types of Mongolian cheese: aaruul and ”Mongolian Cheese“. Aaruul is the traditional cheese made in the countryside and dried for weeks in the sun on the roof of the ger. It is hard. As a soft stone. Sure, you could bite it, but you’d be risking a ticket to both the dentist and world of pain. one of my buddies’ host mothers made this mistake. She must’ve been lving in the city so long she lost touch with the culture and forgot how to eat aaruul. Though city dwellers don’t drink as much cuutei tsai so maybe she was calcium deficient (thus the broken tooth).

So aaruul is a hard and very strong-tasting cheese. very salty.

Cheese #2/2 is textured pleasantly, between mozzarella and cheddar. It’s a bit rubbery. looks delicious until you take a bite. And realize it has no taste. Who knew it possible to make cheese with utterly no taste? i always figured cheese got most of its flavor from the cheesiness. y’know, milk (ie. goat vs. sheep vs. cow… all the cheese taste different) and the cultures…

But here was proof of the futility of my self-delusions. Stark in its blandness. My host family laughed when i bought some, and referred to it as davsgui byslag — cheese with no salt. So the one place I would gladly have welcomed a bit of salty tang, of course it is utterly absent.

The one thing that is wrong with all Mongolian Pizza is the cheese — and understandably so. When mozzarella is $15/lb, and you earn $400/month if you’re rich, then Pizza just ain’t gonna be the same.

Not that they don’t try… (Pizza King… )

I stared at the metal bowl placed unceremoniously before us. It was a matte-gray metal pot — like a wash bin – the standard vessel for all cooking outside the ”apartmented gentry“.

I only got sick once in Mongolia. No, twice. Neither were especially severe – as in, long lasting – but rendered me physically weak, emotionally drained, and gastrointestinally anarchic.

Sickness, such as this reminds you of how connected and unified your GI tract really is. We tend to separate at the stomach. The top is for eating, the bottom for pooping. Yet once food passes the halfway mark, it falls under the realm of the nearest escape route. So on that fateful day when I drank a glass of Mongolian Coca-Cola with breakfast (my host father later told me my illness must have been due to that) the contents of my GI tract decided to riot and collectively exited my body.

Luckily (or unluckily, depends who you ask) I never experienced a majestic GI phenomenon known as the Wind Tunnel. When both sides of one’s GI tract decide to exit simultaneously, one is left in an interesting logistical quagmire. Then, a state of vacuum is created in the center of the body as you spew digested and undigested food simultaneously into the nearest drainally-able vessel.

It took me two weeks to learn how to get to school. Every school day we went the same way. From our rooms at the top of the student hostel, we descended to the increasingly frigid streets of UB. A short walk and a wait later, we were aboard a Korean trolley bus, creaking our way down Peace Ave. I still don’t past the east crossroads is a long stretch of empty road, only one stop or its 2.5 km. Then the trolley arrived at the end of the line, the war memorial. That’s what we called it.

—

Mongolia, land of the clear blue sky, transforms at night; her blue skies fade to reveal the blackness of empty space, overwhelmed by a silent swarm of stars, frozen in a distant dance. The moon, if she is out, burns with epic brightness, casting a cool glow across the shuffling herd, who peer at me with amazingly complete incomprehension.

(I stood outside the doorway to our ger, toothbrush hanging from my mouth. Gazing at the chaotic swarm of stars blanketing the night’s black. Mongolia, land of the clear blue sky, transforms at night; her blue skies fade to reveal the blackness of empty space, punctuated by the glow of distant stars.)

Bring lots of energy bars. Lots.

If, at any point, you manage to perform an act of explosive and/or otherwise notable bowel movement–be sure to proudly proclaim so to your travelling companions. If they fail to recognize you for your achievements (i.e. survival), realize they don’t get it (yet) and have faith that their time will come. Or find new travelling companions.

Develop some form of superstitious logic to explain how best to preserve your gastrointestinal health–if only to maintain some semblance of composure (sanity). The mind does not take well to dreading diarrhea after every meal, arbitrarily.

Halfway home, the bus breathes its last breath. It’s really more of a wheeze. Watch the driver frantically fan at the flames peeking out of a hole in the bus’ side panel as you walk away.

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Draft of a Goat Manifesto

>If you’re short of trouble, take a goat.
_–Finnish saying_

The goat saunters by like a pimp in a cadillac: regal and cool as can be — until one look from a cop (me) and they’re frozen in terror — then back to bizness as uzual.

Several events over the course of human/goat-history have shaped our Goat consciousness, at least in the Judeo-Christian world.(empire?)

First, deomestication: 10,000 years ago.

Goats are not people.Q: Why do we anthropomorphize?
For the same reason dogs dogropomorphize; it is all we know. THough seeing a dog owner crawling around the floor — rope-toy in earnest mouth growling wholeheartedly, neck-snapping tug-of-war juices flowing. One begins to wonder. nor are they bricks or pieces of lead pipe. No, but are we really wrong to ascribe to them our own abstracted behavioral metaphors? If the model works, then what’s the harm? Now we can’t be kidding or deluding ourselves, creating expression where it isn’t; but neither should we needlessly ignore evidence of emotional complexity beyond that of a brick. Goats are not people, true;(or robots)

But this is dangerous territory. We have already gone this way with our dogs — and those who see their dogs as pals recoil in utter disgust at the thought of eating one of their beloveds. But do we lift the goat and sheep and cow and pig to such a place? Never. To protect our selves from self-condemnation. _You_ try watching ___Babe___ then sitting down for a nice meal of porkchops.

The life of the goat is driven by a raw spontaneity that has little human equivalent outside of childhood, senility or mental illness — and perhaps those hippie free-spirits who dance around in fields all day or drop lots of acid.

The kinetic momentum of a stampede, in the middle of the night, out on the empty step. Not a real stampede, like the kind that killed Simba’s mother. More like a shuffle-pede. One goat gets startled by a thought or a shadow or a gust of wind, and runs, headlong into another goat, who then runs in another direction. Rustling builds, then fades out as the energy dissipates. A self-reorganizing system — to the tune of their own internal “il-logic”.

The herd is ever-moving–a mile, two miles, three miles, each day. Out, then back. Again until grass turns to snow and howling other-worldy winds. Were it not for the endless blue sky resting behind, waiting to thaw the hearts of its people and the soil of its earth –the shoots of grass reawaken and the air is again filled with ambling calls.

The kids lag at the back, always, their short legs iterating walk walk ruuun MAAAA… walk walk walk ruuun MAAAA tongues slightly hanging, human-like in their maaaaah for mother.

Then, the pagan traditions which are eventually immortalized in the Bible (Sheep go to heaven, Goats go bring the plague to thy neighbor so you can return to village bizniss).

Third, medieval expounding on Biblical ideas, and the Knights Templar trials.
>The diuell..dooth most properlie and commonlie transforme himselfe into a gote.
_–R. Scott. ‘Discov. Witchr.’ v.i.89. (1584)_

Goats have had their share of rough treatment over the years. It started as far as we can know, about 10,000 years ago in the Zagros Mountains of Persia.

The goat and the sheep, two animals locked in perpetual binary harmony. Like some star system, they graze together, but in realms beyond their comprehension take paths impossibly dissimilar.

In the Bible, it was decided that Sheep and Goats were Different and goats Bad.

>Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,
And the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light.
–J. R. Lowell, The Present Crisis. St. 5.“Sheep go to heaven, Goats go to hell.”

Must’ve been those pesky pagans. Who worships sheep, anyways?

>They must no longer offer any of their sacrifices to the goat idols [a] to whom they prostitute themselves. This is to be a lasting ordinance for them and for the generations to come.
–Leviticus 17:7 (NIV) [a.] or demons

Herd or flock? A herd is a leisurely grazing through lush Biblical hills and valleys. Always following dumbly, sleeping soundly, until snatched in wolf-jaws.

The sheep blankly staring, flatulent falls, curled hair spiked with barbs for spinning and itching. Some have horns, and all follow. Their tails hang down. Some cultures dock the tails of their sheep. Others savor this, the finest piece of the sheep for eating–even if the herders must spend hours plucking maggots from oozing open slow-bite holes. Festering, crusted in shit. All fat.

Goats were given the humble and thankless duty of carrying the sinsread: bubonic plague-ridden clothes of a village into the woods.
>The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place; and the man shall release it in the desert.
–Leviticus 16:22 (NIV)

You can eat goats.“Go out to the flock and bring me two choice young goats, so I can prepare some tasty food for your father, just the way he likes it.” (Genesis 27:9, NIV) Goat meat is called _chevre_. Goat cheese is called _ooh la la_.Why does ice cream taste better in the morning? Are we really so biblically cliché? Perhaps it reminds us of the sweet sucklings at our mother’s (or father’s) teat.

I have an idiosyncratic taste for food. I call it simple, others call it picky, or naïve, or even just boring. I say it’s simple; nay, elegant. But I have done my share of experimentalizing: boiled sheep heart, lungs, liver, blood sausage, spinal chord, fish, sushi, raw beef filet, mussels, fine goat cheese and wine on fig almond cake; whatever. Just give me a slice of sharp cheddar, or pizza; a nice chocolate chip cookie, and I am content. It’s not that I don’t enjoy food – I just need less exoticism to satisfy my culinary appetite, as it were.

Goat cheese–it all tastes the same (except for aaruul, more on that later) like it smells. Pasty, thick, herbal and congealed; like cream cheese gone horribly, horribly wrong. Sour, sickly sweet tart turned sideways, always a bit past not quite there. (It’s not really that bad…)

Now chevre is another matter. Cut up some fresh slabs, throw in a bowl layered with hot rocks; ladle in some water, then cover and let simmer until ready. To seal the seam between the top and bottom bowl, lay wet rags along the crack to keep in the steam.

Pass the time by drinking airag, vodka and singing joyfully. If you are not Mongolian, try to ignore the food-poisoning paranoia-gremlin that turns every gurgle into a prophecy of impending gastrointestinal doom. And drink lots of vodka.

Cashmere is the hair of the goat. Of this fine hair, the holy tabernacle found its curtains.

“I will KILL YOU, fucking GOAT!” I calmly explain, “Then EAT YOUUU!” I kick the flank of my horse gently, and we trot over to the goats that just don’t seem to get the idea of following the herd.

>The damned goates he doth despise; Poynts out his lambs, whose sinfull dyes hee purgde with bloody streame
_–Sir W. Mure. ‘Spiritual Hymme.’ 326. (1628)_

They fan out in directions, wider than my sphere of influence, and are lost in smashing skulls or chewing grass, or staring into space, pondering their own existence.

All it took was a few days herding and now the light I see. The bible is wiser than I ever knew.As it pertains to goats.

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How to decide to go to Mongolia

I see it all unfold from about, without. A meta-travel. We goto this land for many reasons that are all the same. We run from broken homes, repentant lovers, dead pets.

Flip through the study-abroad brochures advertising semesters in Prague, Vienna, Amsterdam. Flip to the next page.

Now you are in the Exotic section. Beijing, Hangzhou, Dakar, Yaoundé. Wish you hadn’t dropped Chinese. It couldn’t have been _that_ bad.

The Dark Continent and the Exotic East, like two stepchildren. Appreciated intellectually, but when it comes down to the wire, people’s loyalties reveal themselves, and align conveniently with the flows of capital and genealogy.

You have narrowed your selection to two choices: Vietnam or Mongolia. Or Nepal. But you eliminate that because you’ve been, if only briefly. Feel bad for not wanting more to go to Africa. You must be an Orientalist asshole, or something. Make a note to work on that.

Vietnam, home of rice paddies and shards of American shrapnel embedded in jungle soil.

Mongolia is nowhere, nothing. Marco Polo and Genghis Khan. He is still Genghis to you.

Mongolia gives new weight to the phrase “Golden Years”. Nostalgia on a new plane.

But _now’s your chance_ to see Vietnam. _Before it develops_ they say.

Realize there is something morbidly fascinating about (post)-communism.

Choose Mongolia because you get to spend two weeks herding sheep and goats, and living in a yurt in the countryside. This appeals to you, but seems to be lost on others.

Develop some stock answers to the question, _Why Mongolia?_ Your favorites are: _Why not?_ or even better, _Because it’s fucking awesome, that’s why._ Deliver these with an air of definite confidence, as if the subject should require no further exploration.

you become a minor celebrity in certain circles. Your mom’s email list. Your sister’s friends. Relatives. No-one at your school cares, or they hide it well. It is likely they resent you for out-exoticizing-internationalizing them. This makes you happy.

Go away–far, far away. You are tired of living comfortable. Which is ironic, since for a rich white male, you’ve had it less than _easy_. Then again, that’s not saying much. you long for culture shock. To be hung by your feet and shaken until everything falls from your pockets.

_You are going to Mongolia_. Repeat 3 times. The words fail to become any less surreal. Two months later, you will echo this experience in downtown Ulaanbaatar, _You are in Mongolia_. Repeat 3 times.

Wonder if there’s something wrong with you because you don’t seem to be _falling in love_ with this place. _What does that even mean?_

And the food is bad enough to prevent any long-term relationship from developing [past the early stages].

Learn that everything extracted from, or grown in Mongolia goes to China; that everything that can be bought is made in China, perhaps from Mongolian materials. Which you hadn’t dropped Chinese.

You want to make sure your Mongolian language skills reach a decent level. Find one of the five Mongolians in Boston and organize private language lessons for th etwo weeks before you leave.

Buy “Colloquial Mongolian” by Alan J. K. Saunders and Jansangiin Batereedüi.

Six months later, the _most played track_ in your iTunes® will still be “Lesson 1, Dialogue 2–Fast”.

Have a sinking feeling halfway thorugh track 2 on the cd. Sample words: Sandal, Kharandaa, Tom, Jijig, Gobi. _Goiv_? Gobi. Figure it must be a mistake or typo. How can Gobi become.. well the G is swallowed, and calls up from the bottom of your throat, leading to a slippery o that somehow terminates in a soft V. Realize you won’t be learning this language from a book. You need corroboration for these crimes against reason. Wish you hadn’t dropped Chinese.

Enjoy thinking about how you must appear, Mongolian phrases emanating from your throat as you practice to the recordings on your daily commute on the wonderful MBTA.

Be glad you dropped Chinese.

Try not to think about how knowing this language will help you later in life. Fill your head with lots of liberal-arts _learn for its own sake_ bullshit.

_Mongolia is fucking awesome_, that’s why.

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General Advice on Mongolia Travel

Bring lots of energy bars. _Lots_.

If, at any point, you manage to perform an act of explosive and/or otherwise notable bowel movement–be sure to proudly proclaim so to your travelling companions. If they fail to recognize you for your achievements (i.e. survival), realize they _don’t get it (yet)_ and have faith that _their time will come_. Or find new travelling companions.

Develop some form of superstitious logic to explain how best to preserve your gastrointestinal health–if only to maintain some semblance of composure (sanity). The mind does not take well to dreading diarrhea after every meal, arbitrarily.

Halfway home, the bus breathes its last breath. It’s really more of a wheeze. Watch the driver frantically fan at the flames peeking out of a hole in the bus’ side panel as you walk away.

I see it all unfold from about, without. A meta-travel. We goto this land for many reasons that are all the same. We run from broken homes, repentant lovers, dead pets.

Flip through the study-abroad brochures advertising semesters in Prague, Vienna, Amsterdam. Flip to the next page.

Now you are in the Exotic section. Beijing, Hangzhou, Dakar, Yaoundé. Wish you hadn’t dropped Chinese. It couldn’t have been _that_ bad.

The Dark Continent and the Exotic East, like two stepchildren. Appreciated intellectually, but when it comes down to the wire, people’s loyalties reveal themselves, and align conveniently with the flows of capital and genealogy.

You have narrowed your selection to two choices: Vietnam or Mongolia. Or Nepal. But you eliminate that because you’ve been, if only briefly. Feel bad for not wanting more to go to Africa. You must be an Orientalist asshole, or something. Make a note to work on that.

Vietnam, home of rice paddies and shards of American shrapnel embedded in jungle soil.

Mongolia is nowhere, nothing. Marco Polo and Genghis Khan. He is still Genghis to you.

Mongolia gives new weight to the phrase “Golden Years”. Nostalgia on a new plane.

But _now’s your chance_ to see Vietnam. _Before it develops_ they say.

Realize there is something morbidly fascinating about (post)-communism.

Choose Mongolia because you get to spend two weeks herding sheep and goats, and living in a yurt in the countryside. This appeals to you, but seems to be lost on others.

Develop some stock answers to the question, _Why Mongolia?_ Your favorites are: _Why not?_ or even better, _Because it’s fucking awesome, that’s why._ Deliver these with an air of definite confidence, as if the subject should require no further exploration.

you become a minor celebrity in certain circles. Your mom’s email list. Your sister’s friends. Relatives. No-one at your school cares, or they hide it well. It is likely they resent you for out-exoticizing-internationalizing them. This makes you happy.

Go away–far, far away. You are tired of living comfortable. Which is ironic, since for a rich white male, you’ve had it less than _easy_. Then again, that’s not saying much. you long for culture shock. To be hung by your feet and shaken until everything falls from your pockets.

_You are going to Mongolia_. Repeat 3 times. The words fail to become any less surreal. Two months later, you will echo this experience in downtown Ulaanbaatar, _You are in Mongolia_. Repeat 3 times.

Wonder if there’s something wrong with you because you don’t seem to be _falling in love_ with this place. _What does that even mean?_

And the food is bad enough to prevent any long-term relationship from developing [past the early stages].

Learn that everything extracted from, or grown in Mongolia goes to China; that everything that can be bought is made in China, perhaps from Mongolian materials. Which you hadn’t dropped Chinese.

You want to make sure your Mongolian language skills reach a decent level. Find one of the five Mongolians in Boston and organize private language lessons for th etwo weeks before you leave.

Buy “Colloquial Mongolian” by Alan J. K. Saunders and Jansangiin Batereedüi.

Six months later, the _most played track_ in your iTunes® will still be “Lesson 1, Dialogue 2–Fast”.

Have a sinking feeling halfway thorugh track 2 on the cd. Sample words: Sandal, Kharandaa, Tom, Jijig, Gobi. _Goiv_? Gobi. Figure it must be a mistake or typo. How can Gobi become.. well the G is swallowed, and calls up from the bottom of your throat, leading to a slippery o that somehow terminates in a soft V. Realize you won’t be learning this language from a book. You need corroboration for these crimes against reason. Wish you hadn’t dropped Chinese.

Enjoy thinking about how you must appear, Mongolian phrases emanating from your throat as you practice to the recordings on your daily commute on the wonderful MBTA.

Be glad you dropped Chinese.

Try not to think about how knowing this language will help you later in life. Fill your head with lots of liberal-arts _learn for its own sake_ bullshit.

_Mongolia is fucking awesome_, that’s why.

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How to Hire a Translator in Mongolia — 3 Times (incomplete)

[disclaimer: since this post has already become the top google hit for “how to find a translator in Mongolia” I wanted to add a quick note to those actually looking for advice in this matter. Do some networking; hook up with the expat community, or local institutions (hit some of the cafés, make some friends). Find out who other people have already worked with. Meet and chat with the prospects. Then, if/when you decide (this is the most important point): GET EVERYTHING IN WRITING. and make sure you work out all the details in advance. Especially if your work involves travel to the countryside–should your translator decide they don’t quite like the terms, and want to renegotiate, you won’t have much ground to stand on if you’re halfway to nowheresville, broken down on the side of some (non)-road; if you know what I mean. Not that that’s likely to happen. Mongolians are pretty friendly people. But better safe than sorry. Now, the following is a piece of creative nonfiction regarding a particularly colorful experience I had with translators during my research there.]

First, ask your host institution–they will have a list compiled by the language teachers (who are university grads in their twenties with decent English). A few names will be starred, one of whom is from the town where you plan to do your research. You lay claim to her services.

You meet the prospective translator outside the Wrestling Palace, not far from your student hostel.

Find somewhere to chat. Preferably a grimy _buuz_ emporium Realize she has flawless English, with a British accent! Talk for ages about your research ideas, and get lots of helpful suggestions. Hire her on the spot, and setup a preliminary itinerary and departure date.

Spend a couple days travelling around the factory district where you’ll get a random _in_ at a small skin processing factory named after Chicago, Illinois.

Change your trip destination to somewhere more accessible. Set an itinerary and date of departure.

Meet with your academic director, who will ask you casually about your translator arrangements. Mention her name, and feel uneasy when the AD does a double take, then laughs fiendishly as she hints at some past drama (she worked for the program last semester as a language teacher, and “wasn’t asked to come back”). The pit in your gut gains mass and shape. She assures you that maybe things will be different–since things went smoothly when she was hired by a student for his research…

Decide to take the risk given what you’ve seen of her character so far. Or rather, that you’re leaving in two days and have no other options. You push from your mind the ever-surfacing thought that her english is just a little too good to be working for some college student for $20 a day, let alone working as a Mongolian language teacher at SIT. She could land a real translation job, without having to travel around the countryside.

Breach the subject casually, and receive a surprised and innocent response. _She doesn’t know how she could think so highly of your AD, yet still be the target of such animosity… *sigh*_

Leave the subject to rest.

The next day, meet as usual, by the Wrestling Palace–and hail a car (in Mongolia, every car is a taxi). You are headed to the skin markets outside the city to find a ride to the countryside, and gather more info. You are leaving in two days and are nervous. As a car pulls over, your translator asks you to _Guess what?_ You guess, _What?_ She anticlimactically informs you that _she’s leaving for Beijing in the morning._

Laugh, and interrogate her face for signs of a joke. Feel numb, and laugh, cause _what else can you do?_

She mentions her venture into the _party business_. She organizes New Years parties in the city. Her husband is in China getting supplies.

_Remember the supplies her husband was bringing back?_ Well, turns out they’re stuck at the border, mired in red tape, and she has family strings to pull that might help.

Stare at her dumbly, and continue to hope this is all a sick joke. _You really had me there, for a second!_ You will say.

She reassures you that _Everything will be fine_ since she talked to a friend and past co-worker who is willing to take over. She reassures you that the friend’s English is good, _Better than her own!_

Nod gravely, your eyes are now glazed with cynical skepticism. You have no choice _Can she meet soon? As in, tonight? As in, after you get back from the market?_

Meet at a _Khaan Buuz_ (_Mongolian National Fast Food_), and talk about your research and plans for travel. Feel the pit grow larger as you realize the new translator’s English is far from better, or even comparable. And any rapport you had with the first translator is now replaced with awkward distance.

Decide to leave a day later. You have two days to find a ride. Head to the market, and spend the day mostly chatting with the new translator about life and politics. Realize that maybe your good-natured teasing is lost on her; reminisce about your two days with the version 1.

Head to the market again the next day, with the new translator. At some point she mentions that her schedule has changed. _She totally forgot when she agreed at first_ but she has a wedding to go to. A wedding that falls directly in the middle of your research trip, as you transition from countryside town to countryside city. Laugh some more.

Decide to just roll with things, since… well, you have no choice. Figure you can find a translator in the city.

On your way back to the city on the second day, she will try to re-negotiate her terms, asking for more money. Fight the anger that wells up, and try to explain calmly why you feel this is ridiculous, for her to re-negotiate one days before leaving on a two week research trip. And she’s going to a wedding.

After your week in the countryside–during which you simultaneously try to conduct interviews through confused translation, and try to win over your stand-offish translator, say that _you hope she had some fun, that you enjoyed working with her_. She misses no beat and replies that _No, she didn’t._ Apparently you complained too much. Have a flashback to your first day at the markets in the capital when she manages to completely miss any and all undertones to your teasing. Think again of your first translator, and your language teachers, all of whom manage to catch the signals so lost on her. In shock, and offended, tell her that _you have nothing to apologize for._ And that you did everything you could to make her time pleasant.

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Mongolia Piece 2 in Pieces

Metal in Mongolia

The first time I heard heavy metal–_the kind I listen to, from Scandinavia_– in Mongolia was also the first time I heard this music broadcast on mainstream TV, while staying with a herding family in East-Central Mongolia.

I was seated outside on a carpet with my language teacher, we moved throughout the morning as the patch of shade shifted with the sun. The dog who didn’t die–yet remains nameless, at least in memory–lay napping by my side. I tried not to sound frustrated as I generated yet one more lifeless sentence of grammar crap.

—

Flies – Ger – Annihilation (5mins)

I took what must have been my 100th lap around the ger–I had struck a rhythm; long underwear snapping against the canvas roof to the beat of my stilted step. My right foot always hitting harder as it centripetally held me in an orbit–clockwise of course, even when committing flyicide.

—

From my field journal…

31 August, Afternoon
>Flies are everywhere. On my arm.
>…
>Fuck these godforsaken fucking flies. Wow, I sound angry, no?

31 August, 5:30pm
>FLIES AHHHHHHHH
>Now Lkhakvasuren is running around the ger rambo-style with a towel in one hand, and my pillow in the other, windmilling her arms.

4 September, 3:55pm
>Midday is definitely the worst time of day. It’s hot, and there’s nothing to do. My [host] father usually naps or watches TV, or both, while I make flashcards or do homework. Meanwhile, the flies go beserk. There’s no point in even trying to wave them away.

>Right now the only sound is of flies swarming above and around me. A chorus that ebbs and flows to its own chaotic pulse. Usually, I get up every ten minutes or so to clear my side of the ger, if only to lessen the number in my immediate vicinity, for a few moments of relative peace.

>It sorta works. At least I don’t feel helpless. My [host] father is going to tend to the sheep now…

8 September, 3:47pm
>When this baby screams, it’s like the sun is shattering, screeching-swerving through space. Except less cosmic, graceful, grandiose, or poetic. The shit is just LOUD and SHRILL.

>It’s also the witching hour. Or hours. WHen the flies all take their afternoon dose of speed and then go Bat-Shit-Insane all over the ger. _Todo: Become zen so I don’t care_

9 September, 3:00pm
>…they joked that I should give them burzag blah blah, that I was a poor host –pause to kill some flies–

9 September, 3:55pm
>Phew. There were 100’s, now there are, like, 20. The war is un-winnable, but I figure I can win a few battles to make their level at least tolerable. And strike some fear into their grimy hearts.
Anyways, so these guys show up…

—

In Mongolia

In Mongolia, vegetable soup consists of:
mutton
salt
potatoes
onions (_optional_)
salt
cabbage (_optional_)

In Mongolia, the girls walk home to their slums wearing fake designer jeans and faux-fur-trimmed coats.

In Mongolia, Dogs are not man’s best friend.

In Mongolia, Chinggis Khaan is the God of Gods.

In Mongolia, marmots steal frisbees and other bright white, fast-moving objects.

In Mongolia, your cab fare is computed using a simple formula:
(distancekm*300) / (mongolian language ability) / (number of mongolians with you) + 500 \* (number of gringos) + random \* 100

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Exercises/Ideas

Green Bananas

People who eat green bananas are weird. The fruit is not quite ripe, I submit — the toughness of the skin is telling! _Wait, I’m not ready yet. I want to live up to my full potential!_ But the eater is hungry and impatient. the skin is bent-cracked split pulled. Upside-down. Assuming that monkeys know bananas better than us, we are going about the act __all wrong__!

But that’s not even the worst of it.

The pale residue — it’s hard, firm, you could say, and you really have to bite and chew. the taste is pleasant enough at first, if underwhelming. Banana. Only slightly tart, with a hint of bitter mouthfeel (if such a thing is possible?). Swallow.

The phantom residue clings to your mouth dry-hairy coarseness that no amount of water or milk can disperse. As if the fruit hadn’t been fully separated from its skin, and took bits of skin-adhesive with it, leaving traces for the eater to ponder.

If they even notice.

—

Pico Iyer on Traveling, from “Why We Travel: A Love Affair With the World”
>We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate…. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again–to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.”

—

Titles for pieces to write sometime:
Notes on Watching TV in a Ger in East-Central Mongolia
The Sheep Trap Plot
Fly-icide (in progess)
On Urbanization and the Eating Habits of Town-Center Dwellers in Delgerkhaan, Hentii, Mongolia
from my field notes: “To write: POEM: _I want to kill you, goat_” it came to me when I heard myself yelling this at a particularly stubborn goat (I was herding).
__Maxcax__: _v._ To desire meat

—

It lurked in the shadows, behind every counter, beneath every menu waiting for the opportunity to take hold of our GI tracts and wring them for all we’re worth. I made it for 1.5 months without getting really sick. The others weren’t so lucky.

But come, my day, it did…

—

Quote (title of finished piece?):
>What a fucking ridiculous place
–KJC

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Notes towards a second essay

Fights

We are walking down the main drag, heading to or from a bar. A man is standing by the roadside. he is a dark shape revealed only in the passing slices of headlights, wearing a shirt that was once white, but is now streaked with red. Presumably blood. His face, also revealed by the headlights is similarly painted — and wears a timid grimace.

He is trying to get home; with one hand struggling to pathetically hail a passing car, as he hunches over into himself.

—

Food

Don’t go to Mongolia for the food. Unless you like three things: Mutton, Salt and Fat. Then you should rather enjoy the cuisine.

The American doctor at the local Korean Christian hospital thinks Mongolians have high rates of kidney disease from not drinking any water. In the countryside, they drink _suutei tsai_ (literally, tea with milk). Perhaps a more apt name would be _davstai tsai_ (tea with salt). It is the beverage of choice when you’re not drinking _airag_ (fermented mare’s milk, or _koumiss_), and can be conveniently used as broth for any soup or noodles.

Main Dishes

You have the infamous _buuz_. Buuz are like Tibetan _momos_ — little mutton-filled boiled dumplings. Except _momos_ are smaller, and have spices and vegetables. _Buuz_ have four ingredients: Mutton, Mutton Fat, Salt, and Onions. For cultures from the colder regions, the highest of culinary achievement is glorious lard.

Put the onions, mutton and fat in a dumpling wrapper. Make into dumpling. Boil. Eat with _suutei tsai_. Your first bite may be dangerous, you bite into the familiar dumpling shell only to receive an onslaught of flooding “juice”. Your mouth fills with mutton grease and the uniquely pungent taste of mutton itself.

Mutton is a uniquely fatty red meat, so bad for you that the Mongolian government runs a health campaign, promoting BEEF as the heart-healthy “other red meat”!

Up next, _khuushuur_. These are like _hot pockets_ (maybe the calzones), but filled with one thing: mutton — and then fried to oblivion.

_Tsuivan_. This was my staple dish when eating at the only restaurants that exist outside the city (the capitol). Zoogiin Gazar, Buuz-eria, “Mongolian National Fast Food”. they serve several dishes, most which are randomly sold out at any particular moment.

I always order Tsuivan. it’s a simple dish — a safe choice mostly, though a few times I was served it with ketchup. Which threw me off a bit. Essentially it’s Mongolian lo mein. take flat wheat noodles, fry lightly with a generous amount of oil, slivers of mutton, and maybe a few veggies. even the noodles will take on the pungence of mutton, absorbed into the oils.

I arrived in Mongolia approximately August 23rd.

On August 29th, I recorded in my journal that “maybe I just don’t like mutton”.

I had just finished my first week.

First of fourteen.

Cheese

One would think, given the number of livestock (35 million) and their centrality to Mongolian culture and lifestyle, and that all the main livestock varieties produce milk fit for the purpose (sheep, goats and cows) that Mongolia would have developed a robust cheese-making tradition. But no. There are two types of Mongolian cheese: _aaruul_ and “Mongolian Cheese”. _Aaruul_ is the traditional cheese made in the countryside and dried for weeks in the sun on the roof of the _ger_. It is hard. As a soft stone. Sure, you _could_ bite it, but you’d be risking a ticket to both the dentist and world of pain. one of my buddies’ host mothers made this mistake. She must’ve been lving in the city so long she lost touch with the culture and forgot how to eat _aaruul_. Though city dwellers don’t drink as much _cuutei tsai_ so maybe she was calcium deficient (thus the broken tooth).

So _aaruul_ is a hard and very strong-tasting cheese. very salty.

Cheese #2/2 is textured pleasantly, between mozzarella and cheddar. It’s a bit rubbery. looks delicious until you take a bite. And realize it has no taste. Who knew it possible to make cheese with utterly no taste? i always figured cheese got most of its flavor from the cheesiness. y’know, milk (ie. goat vs. sheep vs. cow… all the cheese taste different) and the cultures…

But here was proof of the futility of my self-delusions. Stark in its blandness. My host family laughed when i bought some, and referred to it as _davsgui byslag_ — cheese with no salt. So the one place I would gladly have welcomed a bit of salty tang, of course it is utterly absent.

The one thing that is wrong with _all_ Mongolian Pizza is the cheese — and understandably so. When mozzarella is $15/lb, and you earn $400/month if you’re rich, then Pizza just ain’t gonna be the same.

Not that they don’t try… (Pizza King… )

I stared at the metal bowl placed unceremoniously before us. It was a matte-gray metal pot — like a wash bin – the standard vessel for all cooking outside the “apartmented gentry”.

I only got sick once in Mongolia. No, twice. Neither were especially severe – as in, long lasting – but rendered me physically weak, emotionally drained, and gastrointestinally anarchic.

Sickness, such as this reminds you of how connected and unified your GI tract really is. We tend to separate at the stomach. The top is for eating, the bottom for pooping. Yet once food passes the halfway mark, it falls under the realm of the nearest escape route. So on that fateful day when I drank a glass of Mongolian Coca-Cola with breakfast (my host father later told me my illness must have been due to that) the contents of my GI tract decided to riot and collectively exited my body.

Luckily (or unluckily, depends who you ask) I never experienced a majestic GI phenomenon known as the _Wind Tunnel_. When both sides of one’s GI tract decide to exit simultaneously, one is left in an interesting logistical quagmire. Then, a state of vacuum is created in the center of the body as you spew digested and undigested food simultaneously into the nearest drainally-able vessel.

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Crap

Words: Mimic, Underground, Temple
Self-mimicry, with rehearsal. All I had to do was retrace my steps. I’d gone this way a dozen times. Half by jeep, half on foot. Most in daylight. Granted, it had taken our drivers an hour to find it in the dark, with the family on the phone giving directions. I squinted into the cool ebony air. Nara had left the day before, and I was alone. I wanted to just burrow underground and sleep. What kind of sick joke was this? I could write a 40-page research paper on the livestock trade in Mongolia, but not find my way home? To what temple had I failed to pray? By what God(esse)s had I been forsaken? I continued to wander through the night.

Lost, a state I am always one foot into or out of. Yet this time by utter choice. Searching for a place to knock out whatever foundation was left. I headed to Los Angeles, then Beijing, and onwards to Ulaanbaatar with its slums, diskos, and Lenin-guarded red-light district.

A friend once asked me why I was geography major if I have no sense of direction. I told him, who better to make maps than someone whose life depends on them. He said that’d be like becoming a musician because you can’t read music. But I think it’s more like becoming a music typesetter because you’re tone deaf but love music nonetheless…

Johnson is a giant chunk of 70’s cement, with floors and corners and stairs going every-which-way. Once I had a class there. I could never find the bathroom. I would go from the classroom, across the open center atrium to the stairs, down to the 2nd floor. But then which corner was the bathroom in? Only by trial and error did I find it. Then I went to the bathroom and returned to class.

Now, has the fresh ink restored the instrument’s relevance? Doubtful. More likely, it has bought a few minutes — a few breath strokes of life before descending into the matter underworld.

—

Sense of Direction

Every animal has a sense of direction, mostly. There are a few exceptions. I am one of them.

I enter a door, go up a flight of stairs to the landing, turn, then up another flight or two to emerge on the next floor. Which way am I facing?

The concept of NSEW has relevance only on a map, or a mapped reality.

Which way does my bedroom face — at home? Well, the sun comes up through one window… and situated on a primitive mental map…

So it must face north. I know this only from my re-understanding, re-deriving. It will not be saved in some spatial buffer to be called upon by other faculties. For those faculties, too, are absent. Perhaps leaving this sense to atrophy like the quadriceps of so many an astronaut.

I open the door to our family van, climb into the passenger seat. I am intently intentioned, committed fully to committing our route to memory, at least for the now. We turn onto Beacon St., head E or W, turn, then turn, then turn, then turn

Where am I? I scan the roadsides street signs for familiars. I am in space only insofar as I can locate myself. Which way did we turn? How many times? Black.

I could blame this on an attention to other — dependence reliance on the f of my traveling companions. Yet even driving alone, a route taken many times becomes alien without a look to refresh from directions. After only a month

Wow do I ever need a GPS

Travel log records only departures arrival and points of extraordinary interest. Places may be recorded, but without spatial loci, perhaps located in time. Perhaps scattered, associated by other characteristics.

A place separated without a place in space contextless space.

To live in the moment; many declare it among the ultimate of virtues. If not virtues, then at least enviable ways of being, such that one lives more peacefully. Yet to truly live in the moment is to be dead without context in space or time—to have no history. On what scale does history unfold? Events in time are abstracted, separated by snippets and glimpses of the intermediate.

Contextual space serves, acts, the same. I pass between home and school; first, daily, then weekly, then for the past 7 years, 2-3 times per year.

Floating in space-time
In utter, perpetual awe of the world
Map in hand to catch
Upon return to cruel context
Merciless lacking of orientation

Sense of direction is another name for sense of place — present and past. Not the typical sense of place, whereby we concentrate on the universal experience at a particular set of related locations. This is the set of spatial experience belonging to one person, or group. Where I am, wherefore, whence I came. Such a sense is constituted by many disparate perceptions.

Culture shock vs. ”Platial Shock“

It took me two weeks to learn how to get to school. Every school day we went the same way. From our rooms at the top of the student hostel, we descended to the increasingly frigid streets of UB. A short walk and a wait later, we were aboard a Korean trolley bus, creaking our way down Peace Ave. I still don’t past the east crossroads is a long stretch of empty road, only one stop or its 2.5 km. Then the trolley arrived at the end of the line, the war memorial. That’s what we called it.

It was my girlfriend’s 21st birthday; I dreamed up a romantic weekend in the little town we used to visit in my summers as a kid —— to a bed and breakfast on the water, a massage, dinner whatever

I got directions, and we were on our way. I drove. We fought.

—
Memory contradicts —— It works, then doesn’t. It prioritizes omits on its own. Names, place. Perhaps most important to evolutionary fitness—certainly compared to grasping social theory or multi-variable calculus.

Where am I?
I am here
Where is here
The question has answers on infinite scales. Some would relate to the compass and stars, the buildings and landscape; others to political units of varying scale from town to country state.

Direction
Where am I facing?

>According to Kozlowski and Bryant, sense of direction is “an awareness of location or orientation which specifies where the participant is when he or she moves around the environment.”[^katokozlowski]
[^katokozlowski]: Kato and Takeuchi, ”Individual differences in wayfinding strategies.“

I stared into the black night – – utterly devoid of light. So blind I feared I might strike a fence with my face.

I walked towards home — that is, out of town. There were several streets – leading off the main road. Then the main road split. Which street was it? I didn’t know. So I kept walking. Aimless

Eventually, I went into a store. A woman there joked with me, someone had ”Purev the changer’s“ phone and gave him a call. I corrected them when they told him a tourist was here asking for him

A middle-aged man approached me, and I asked directions. He pointed but them suggested I just go home the next morning. I could stay at his house for the night. I politely declined and walked away as quickly as possible.

Finally I saw Purev’s jeep pull up outside and I ran out to meet him. He met me with his jolly grin and we went home. His wife Nara Made fun of me about something, and I tried to explain that I’d gotten lost. We all laughed. Then I retreated to my room to type up my notes.

Why? Everyone asks, why?

When they learn that I spent 3.6 months living in Mongolia

Why did I choose to go there of all places

Part of the reason was the desire to lose myself. I longed for disjointedness not through geography per se; I could get that in 20 minutes in the woods. I longed for what geographic distance brought with it. I was going to a land of alien culture, custom, cuisine, climate color

For years I’ve justified my ignorance of Boston with the fact I went to boarding school for 4 years

Being lost in a place you should know is mortifying especially if people find out

When weekend guests know from which way you came on the street after shopping at a store. Guests who never been to the city before.

It took me 2 months to orient myself in Ulaanbaatar xot.

>”While sometimes thought of as a formal and conventional enterprise, the mapping of the layout and identity of environmental features is essentially symbolic and selective, a process embedded in culture, communication, and human purpose.” [^sensewayfinding]
[^sensewayfinding]: Cornell, Sorenson, and Mio, ”Human Sense of Direction and Wayfinding.“

The brain has many faculties with which to orient itself in space, find a destination, return to an origin, etc…

>Kato and Takeuchi reject Kozlowski and Bryant’s 1977 definition in favor of one that is more nuanced: “as comprising three components: basic cognitive abilities, strategies for the use of internal and external representation resources, and knowledge which people require to guide themselves in the course of their interaction with an evnironmental space… the three components constitute a hierarchy within an internal process of navigation”[^katodef]
[^katodef]:Kato and Takeuchi, ”Individual differences in wayfinding strategies.“

They have evolved over millennia to aid us in our survival

There are gender differences.

Wayfinding can be accomplished through many strategies.

Lost.

Lost and Found. Lost is not state. There is no pure essence of lost — though it may after feel as though — at least until death. But then we are found, by the US that retreats into our chest cavity

Bibliography

Cornell, Edward H., Autumn Sorenson, and Teresa Mio. ”Human Sense of Direction and Wayfinding.“ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 93, no. 2 (June 2003): 399-425.

Kato, Yoshinobu, and Yoshiaki Takeuchi. ”Individual differences in wayfinding strategies.“ Journal of Environmental Psychology 23, no. 2 (June 2003): 171-188.

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100 Words: Gyroscope

_Chu!_ I reach my heel back, swift kick to the rockhard gut _Chu!_ Then airborne, squinting through approaching twilight, searching for marmot holes in the impossibly mottled grass. I will never ride as the Mongols do. There is something about being raised on horseback, coming from the greatest horse-people in the world, [gyroscopic](http://jtermwriting.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/100-words-for-friday/) blood. Raised Wooden saddles, floating inches above the horseback; short stirrups, tied together beneath the belly, that would make our knees lock and scream. They fly in frozen standing stance, slouched to one side, pole-lasso in hand, poised in galloped rhythm — familiar as their own pulse.