on being there
I always had the impression that there was some line on a map, and this side was Europe, and that side was Asia. Like maybe there was a big mountain range or a river or a giant dotted line drawn on the ground, and you could stand in the middle and see castles on one side and pagodas on the other, or something.
It wasn't like that, of course. It was a long, slow slide, sneaking into Asia the back way.
And now, Mongolia is defnitely asian - there are things in the stores like aloe juice (blech - it tastes like lawn clippings) - I keep thinking I'm in a specialty Japanese grocery store, and then I remember that no, this is just a grocery store (mmm, horse meat). There are Japanese fashions here, like the floofy loose sock things (a pair of which I bought because my jeans are so muddy as to be unwearable, and I'm cold, so I look like a big dork. A dork with nice warm calves, though). The people look Korean to me, but I've never been very good at sorting out ethnicity.
So we're here, which is nice. I mean - we made it. 8000 miles, driving across two continents and eleven countries. The car is in the lot, waiting to be auctioned off. It's kind of a hard thing to get my head around. Here. Success. Home soon.
It wasn't like that, of course. It was a long, slow slide, sneaking into Asia the back way.
- First there were mosques, looking like green Disneyland castles, with tall fluted spires and crenellated walls.
- Then the music shifted. In Ufa, some of the pop music is in eastern modes, phyrgian that always sounds a bit brassy and slithery, and the echoey, haunting dorian. The chords are wierd, and people dance a bit sinuously, lots of hip movement, like belly-dancers, even the men.
- In Kazan, the people begin, just a little, to look asian, almond eyes and smoky black hair. The Tatars who live there were once a Mongol people, sacking things before the Rus pacified them.
- But the thing that really brings it home to me is the fireflies. In Kazakhstan at dusk, there are dozens of fireflies, all blinking on and off at once. It's really neat. I have never read an explanation for why this happens, or why it happens only in Asia and in Tennesee (?!), but it's really fascinating. How does this work? Do they all synchronize themselves to the sun or something? Or do they just look at eachother and get in rhythm that way? I keep wanting to put some in a box with fake daylight, or make fake fireflies from LEDs and see if I can get the ones in my box out of sync wit hthe others. If they're just looking at the others to get synchronized, could I make my fake LED fireflies blink along to a jazz bassline, or "Shave and a haircut" or the batman theme (blinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblink blinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblink BLINK BLINK)? If I got them all synchronized to that, could I release them back into the wild and "infect" the main flock with the batman theme? SCIENCE MUST KNOW!
- Er, ahem. Anyway, yeah, watching a flock of fireflies go on and off at once and when they're all on it's like greenish moonlight is pretty cool. I wish there'd been more.
- About twenty miles from the mongolian border, we see a stupa. It's a buddhist shrine thing that looks like a soft-serve ice cream pile coated in gold. There's lots of buddhism after that; prayer scarves, more stupas, statues of various buddhas, elaborate gates, monks in their saffron and magenta robes.
And now, Mongolia is defnitely asian - there are things in the stores like aloe juice (blech - it tastes like lawn clippings) - I keep thinking I'm in a specialty Japanese grocery store, and then I remember that no, this is just a grocery store (mmm, horse meat). There are Japanese fashions here, like the floofy loose sock things (a pair of which I bought because my jeans are so muddy as to be unwearable, and I'm cold, so I look like a big dork. A dork with nice warm calves, though). The people look Korean to me, but I've never been very good at sorting out ethnicity.
So we're here, which is nice. I mean - we made it. 8000 miles, driving across two continents and eleven countries. The car is in the lot, waiting to be auctioned off. It's kind of a hard thing to get my head around. Here. Success. Home soon.