Just to reiterate: this 2003-era journal is old and dead, mummified even, and you won't learn much about me by reading it unless you are my personal historian researching me after I die famous, which would be cool. Be kind to my memory, dear biographer; just say I had an unorthodox youth and leave it at that ( Read more... )

I don't actually use this LiveJournal account anymore for anything but commenting on other people's journals. Don't bother reading any further; instead, head to http://www.eastasiacenter.net/paulcox/ and find me there on my current blog, Experiential Commonplace.

Academically and organisationally, this place just about meets the extremely low standards we have come to expect from Friends World, but there's a good time to be had. The students are a good, easygoing bunch, if a bit on the spiritual side, and Bangalore is a hopping town. Last weekend we went to a dusk-to-dawn outdoor traditional music festival ( Read more... )

Just off the plane. The only students I recognize from London are Ian (who I once described as 'a cool frood') and Alma, the last remaining hanger-on from the Great P&R Exodus of 2003. I ran into Alma while boarding the flight from Amsterdam--she was sitting next to me on the flight! My jaw just about hit the floor, which is not very sanitary in an ( Read more... )

My passport returned from its trip to our nation's capitol FOUR HOURS after I was supposed to leave for the airport on Thursday, so I'm going tomorrow instead. If any Dutch people want to visit me, I'll be in Amsterdam Schiphol from 7:30-10:30 AM on Monday.

My next post will (inshallah) be direct from the Mysterious Orient.

my flight to India is the day after tomorrow, and my passport hasn't come back from the DC embassy yet. I hope I don't have to change my ticket. It's not easy traveling as an American these days--the US creates more and more rules to make things difficult for would-be visitors from other countries, so the other countries retaliate by making things ( Read more... )

There's an adult male bald eagle that hangs out above this trailer park. It really does cut quite an imposing and noble figure worthy of a National icon. Having nothing better to do, I've been observing it. It perches in the tops of the highest trees, watching for ospreys flying in from the shore with their catches. Then it savagely attacks them ( Read more... )

My life has become an indistinct blur of mangrove swamps, Elvises, fried gator tail, Republicans and yard sales. South Florida is warping my sense of reality. I think I want a golf cart ( Read more... )

last cigarette: Never! Evil ( Read more... )

Well, circumstances have me trapped in a trailer park in Naples, Florida for an indefinite time span. Don't you just hate that? It's not that bad, really, lots of elderly Republicans and creative lawn ornaments. Just how Florida should be. I've mainly been sitting around on the porch reading Borges and editing a book on the Houbara Bustard written ( Read more... )