i sat on my red-eye flight between phoenix and newark. i watched america go by underneath me. i spied the lighted sillhouettes of towns, cities, and their parts, flowing out of view, and i imagined.

i thought what those shapes might be in the old north-midwest. illinois, ohio, pennsylvania. roads, rails, souls sleeping quietly in old houses, machines resting idle in old factories, gates, and roads, chain-link fences, lives intertwined with the monotony of professional fate, because things just happened that way.

i think that i see an old world beneath me. where things are heavy and move slowly, and never change.

then i think that i don't live there. i live in the matrix. where gravity is gone and data flies, and everything always changes, every moment. i imagine and create, reality takes shape. i destroy and re-imagine. feedback touches me, synchronized. i am a mind. i fly.

i was aware that some people had sat down, a certain matter at hand. one of them was shining, decorated, distinguished, and each of those seated aligned their perceptive energies, as satellites, in his direction. feeling tiny in his presence, the members of the audience sat, waiting for him to ‘tell it straight.’

my head, in particular, was inclined.

just then the weight became heavy. i recoiled.

it was my dream.

as he aged, he understood that life was like digging oneself out of an infinitely deep hole.

those incapable of learning would exist at the pit’s bottom, waiting to die. those fit for basic comprehension would use their fingernails to scrape at the dirt walls around them, creating, oh so slowly, ever new foundations for the minimum in self elevation. those possessed of intuition, and privileged with opportunity, would fashion stone scrapers out of the rocks ensconced in dirt around them, and rise evenly and steadily.

but it was all the same. for even in the eye of the anomaly, the light above could only grow, reaching never real size.

canabalt

dear psp,

it is lamentable that we will be parting ways so soon. for those six tens of millions who have plundered their pockets in pursuit of your euphoria, there has been much happiness. oh my what a precocious young device you were during the halcyon days of two thousand and five. you were the most powerful game in town, and displayed your prowess brilliantly what with the mind-bogglingly expansive four and three-tenths digital window laid into your countenance. i accompanied my younger sibling that early morning, during the hours and minutes prior to your momentous materialization in the land of the best buy. those parts of the brain not assigned to vital bodily function had, generally speaking, been reassigned to the tasks of slavering and envisioning how the hands and eyes and available brain cells might feel having submitted physically and entirely to the immersion you promised them. and it was not a hollow promise; you delivered.

but you also demanded. demanded forty for a game, and thirty for a movie. you were premier, elite, sophisticated, cutting edge, and avant-garde; we could only presume that this was, plain and simple, the price of admission for the person desiring superior entertainment. so we gave in; we would buy your games, but not your movies. you extracted from us maximally. and while in future iterations you slimmed and shaped your vessel, the new outward appearances which you flaunted under the names two and three thousand belied the changing nature of your enterprise. you had become fat, and felt justified by your own dominance. the ambition which gave birth to you was neglected, and finally forgotten.

and now it is too late. you are ancient, antiquated, mechanical, and antediluvian. your fate is not entirely dissimilar from that of the typewriter. your single function you perform magnificently; still better than even the newest kids on the block. nevertheless, this is inadequate, and you have been hopelessly outmoded. for you see, playstation portable, your raison d’etre was that last third of the name you chose, which was only important because it meant something else: ease.

and it is plain for all to see that, in the category of ease, you have been woefully outclassed. even in your most sliding, and slippery form, you are by comparison, grotesque in your largeness. you are importunate and arrogant as you continue to insist that both your carriage and your content are worthy of immoderate outlays, the latter frequently demanding ten times the copper required for its rough modern equivalent. your catalog is by new standards microscopic, and may only lay claim to the single merit of being ‘quality.’ but it is inaccessible and inconvenient. your interface is inflexible, extravagant, and unfriendly. you may not lay claim to even one hundredth the functionality of your replacement. but above all, you have forgotten what one foolish leader of men asserted during an uncharacteristically sage moment of bestial insanity: developers, developers, developers, developers. you made it impossible for the little man to get a piece of your action, and so he took his dreams, his hopes, and his code to the only platform which offered them a chance. EA, id, activision, konami, capcom, and square enix are now following the little man out the door as he gravitates toward greater opportunity. this is the root of your failure.

it was nice, if expensive and impractical.

on a barnacle encrusted boulder at the water’s edge. a hong kong river opens out to sea. it is 630pm, the day becomes dusk; water nags and folds on all the boulders. closer to the edge, a rounded fish pecks at barnacular protrusions; juvenile puffer. a pair of slender translucent fish seem to wait, each with a tiny white brain set behind its eyes. hundreds of half-inch guppies hover synchronized, bodies like tiny squirts of motor oil.

a hunting crab’s ocular stalks spot movement. or perhaps he felt the sound of foot on rock. scatters down and away.

it is getting darker. rhythmic lapping interrupted by an occasional larger fish breaking tension and thrusting body into the air. soon the attacks come frequently. from that spot radiate a thousand more jumps. smaller fish reacting to the gaping maw which startled them. the jumps beget more of the same, and a circle spreads out in all directions. two seconds after the fleshy white doom has submerged, the tiny fish are still jumping. following, reacting, running from a threat which no longer exists.

vast spans the gap. we stood in the gravel yard between the horse shelter and the pig sty; me and a couple classmates. a frigid energy pulsed in the atmosphere; the clouds were indecisive. the bus driver enlightened us regarding his financial affairs.

driver: “daughter went abroad to study, makes this amount of money over seas.”

american: “does she plan to return to china?”

driver: “china has some problems. look around, this poor countryside, unacceptable. she couldn’t make the same money over here.”

american: “but this countryside is so beautiful. it’s really nice.”

driver: (hesitates) … “i only make this amount of money every year.”

having climbed to the top of the mountain, we continue to scan for what we thought would be here. don’t worry china, you’ll make it up too. but find you won’t what you seek.

i swam laps at the harbin flying fish pool. washed, got dressed and stepped into the cold city air, rain spitting down all around. it’s ok to leave your plastic water bottles on the street; there are people who come and pick them up. through the nighttime darkness and across the pock-marked asphalt, rain and mud and oil fill up the pits and make them puddles. plod around them, save your shoes. a different shortcut now, this time the first alleyway, cutting through the tall dilapidated apartments. a more treacherous path, a taxi pushes its way through; its lights fade and my eyes adjust again. on the other end, city lights break through, and all the plastic bags have been blown against the wall to the right (nobody collects the bags). bus 109, bus 108 rocket by. waiting for 107; i’m hungry, catch it later.

enter the 4 table establishment and sit down, tomatoes and eggs over rice. In come 3 chaps, saw them at the pool too. an unusually handsome bunch, i think to myself. not students, they say they are models. 24 yrs, 23 yrs, and 20 yrs of age. benefits: lots of pretty girls. salary: so-so. requirements: exercise and don’t get fat. negative: once you get old, you can’t do it anymore. the talkative one bought me a bottle of pepsi (glass, but don’t take it away, the restaurant gets to recycle). they are taking the train to beijing this weekend, soft sleeper, company pays— some show to get to.

Q. how did you all decide to become models?

A. we didn’t study well.

i walked the streets of harbin city from 1125pm until 1215am. the first 35 minutes of my walk were the last 35 minutes of china’s new year festival, which began on february 7th, and ended on february 21st. this last day is known as the lantern festival. while every day during the two week spring festival is interrupted by fireworks, lantern day’s fireworks are the most numerous. from the time i woke up at 8am through midnight, the cracks and echos bumped in and lined up next to each other, no time for silence. the shot and singe; bursts of light, bouncing off the stoic gray high rises, each one coated with years of fossil fuel dust. pyrotechnic shrieks rallied down the alley ways. a war was being waged. sulfur filled the air. the gutters were clogged with red paper, obliterated exoskeletons, firecracker shells.

as i clambered up the concrete-slopes and over the floes of frozen-marbled garbage, i looked back down at the train tracks for the train that i kept hearing, but that never came.

doubling back and mounting the avenue sidewalk, the electromagnetic catcalls commenced. red steel vultures, taxis slowed to wait, to honk, to encourage. most of the vehicles on the road that night were taxis, almost all of them empty. drivers hoping to snag a walker, perhaps one last passenger for the night. some had pulled over and resigned themselves to lying in wait— fuel to consider.

further down the avenue, to my right the kentucky fried chicken. had finally closed its doors for the night, only a few scattered flourescent lights remained on to flicker. a woman, expressionless, mops the floor, i see her through the window, a kentucky colonel is etched, smiling into the glass. she walks away.

nearing the front gates of harbin institute of technology, several identical circular lamp post advertisements swoop overhead: ‘painless abortion’, ‘painless abortion’, ‘painless abortion’.

my roommate remembers the day china won the rights to the 2008 olympics. fireworks went off that day. the people were proud, to tell the truth, so was he.

apologies for the longest gap.

tiny stray dogs run amok through the streets of suburban beijing. the scene is peculiar. miniature would be a better word to describe these animals. no purebreeds on these mean streets, but there are plenty of mutts in america too. 3:8 scale models here is what i think we are looking at. malnutrition is the culprit, i suspect. proportional, like regular dogs, only shrunk down— a strange sensation.

and today we will be discussing the prices of things, in china:

prices will be in US dollars, because that is what we understand; 1$=7.5yuan

for an american who came packing the green standard, food is incredibly cheap. the chinese equivalent of a burrito will run you approximately 40¢, and a street vendor’s breakfast mcmuffin (better than mcdonald’s) about 15¢. purple soft serve ice cream of an undetermined but savory flavor will be 13¢. and to eat a four dish meal at one of HIT’s numerous cafeterias would be in the neighborhood of $1.50. a feast-fest/banquet at a fancy restaurant might demand a princely sum: $5. during each 24 hour period of my life here in harbin, i expect to spend about $4 on food.

however, my fiscal prudence is in danger. while scouring the aisles of the on campus super-market for some frozen pleasure, yours truly happened upon that fateful blue ice chest, the nestles freezer. having been disappointed by a fruitless foray into the world of strange-tasting ice cream bars with unrecognizable packaging, i was keen to see whether that good ole’ western branding could deliver the goods— and oh sweet yes, it could.

but it’s costing me. 54¢, my god. that’s more than the burrito i ate for lunch. and a medium sized kit-kat dark chocolate bar, 47¢. these western goods are pricey. when you are an average chinese citizen, raking in $2600 per year (or if you live in the countryside $1000), it would seem unwise to blow 50¢ on a candy bar. but the shelves stay stocked, and there must be buyers; snickers and oreos and dove chocolates wait for you in the checkout aisle.

ok, so even the average chinese citizen could afford to splurge once in a while and roll high on a snickers. but what about the big ticket items like computers? contrary to what one might expect, things like computers, digital cameras, and digital audio players are actually more expensive in china. despite the fact that most of these electronics are manufactured here in the middle kingdom, the taxes levied on them by the PRC mean that a 4gb ipod nano coming out of sichuan province will cost $209 in china, and $149 once it has been shipped across the pacific. strange.

the cheapest laptops in china are $500. while the computer has become a commodity product in america, it is well and truly out of reach for the average chinese consumer. as prices continue to drop, and chinese citizens become wealthier, this will change. for now though, personal computers are for china’s rich. my roommate has a white 2gb ipod nano, and an ibm t30 laptop, which he explains is on loan from his father. right now he is using it to play EA sports NBA live 2003.

and finally, a note about a character i met because I occasionally buy lunch from him. he told me that he is from inner mongolia, which is one of china’s largest but least densely populated provinces, and home to the mongolian language, which has no relation to mandarin. he said that he moved to harbin when he was 11, and that he has mostly forgotten mongolian, for lack of use. when i asked him which provinces bordered inner mongolia, he could not tell me. but what use is geography if you are not going anywhere? he sells a semi-scrambled egg wrapped inside a thick and flaky flat cake. both of these get cooked on a buttered griddle in front of you, and the finishing touch is a gentle basting of hot sauce before he rolls it up. as an option, you can add three small slices of beef. the base price of the egg wrap is 67¢, with the beef edition a rather expensive $1.07. i do not think it is a very good value, but for some reason i keep coming back; it tastes good.

today i asked him how much money he makes. he told me that he earns about $50 daily, with half of that being profit. he runs the stall himself, and it is all cash, so whatever profit he makes is his. assuming he that he has 250 work days in a year, that makes for an incredible $6250 annual take.

the next time i buy an egg wrap, i will ask him what he does with his money.

chinese cooking is fast. place an order, and before you hand the menu back to your waitress, the cook in back is already frying up whichever oily delight you selected.

it is important to specify beforehand whether you will require any bowls or cups beyond the standard issue saucer. i suspect that, in keeping with tradition, chinese restaurants do not like to waste resources unnecessarily, and so do not voluntarily provide their guests with any potentially extraneous accoutrements.

if you request six cups and it turns out you needed seven, this is actually a semi-major faux paus. not only will your seventh guest be forced to wait an unpleasantly long time as miniscule fish-bones lacerate the inner-layer of his esophagus, but the waitress whom you have troubled will now have to delegate the washing of a single cup. obviously, this is an unfortunate situation for all involved.

as your dishes arrive (they arrive one by one), you will, at some restaurants, be greeted with the utterance of a polite but unenthusiastic ‘nǐ hǎo’ upon the delivery of each and every single dish. this practice must somehow make sense in chinese culture.

in america, however, i would assume that the waiter and i had already gotten beyond the ‘hi, hello’ stage, and could move on to more intimate and profound tidbits like, ‘enjoy’ or ‘let me know if i can get you anything else.’

a whole teeming mass of them at the windows, unfortunately reversed, their fortunes that is, having once found mecca and then being sated, moving on to something vaguely bigger and better in their own ganglia but not physically, yet anyway.

for now, each one was basically free to move about as it wished within the confines of the once mecca, but was unable to transcend that level of pleasure. in fact, the once, 'destinacion del placer' had lost its draw for them. fly one having suctioned the remaining succulent tendrils from a mostly eaten nectarine, and fly two being actually one huge mother who had eaten an entire slice of not unhearty bread, and was soon to become the biggest common housefly that resident one had ever personally seen, and then killed. fly three was buzzing hopelessly against the large arched front window, seeming to become actually progressively more insistent that as time went on, that somehow the window would turn out to be a permeable membrane after all.

fly four having wedged itself in the just big enough wire window screen's misleading puncture, and then having got stuck, and made out of itself a miniature live-on-the-stick skewer as it spun round and round, lubricating the tiny jutting wire with a runny combination of eggplant and olive-color essential fluids. and thusly nearing expiration.

resident one, despite his general distate for things that landed on him during the night, was moved to an almost state of pity for the buggers, victims of their own basic drive to feast, but then lacking the means to reverse course and sail safely free at the precious moment of an opening door or window.