"A crazy dream//you done me wrong//you left me long//I couldn’t stand a chance without you//You said that love was dead//and in my head//I just couldn’t believe it." -Daniel Johnston

I had a dream I was hosting a party and I fell asleep early. Someone did some nefarious shit, so I kicked everybody out. Wandering around trying to find the stragglers, the house appeared to me as a maze containing every place I've ever lived. It was Astor, Castro, Covert, Page and Morning Dew. The kitten from the eco-lodge was there. As were my brothers and my sister and my whole family and others I recognized. But they all had to go.

A girl approached me and took me by surprise. She told me her name was Fifteen and she appeared to me as a conglomeration - unsubtle haunts of every girl I've ever known. I told her she could stay.

We were estranged so we caught up. She was dark and sharp and funny. We kissed and made love and then she left too.

I recall the curve and warmth of skin under my fingers, I recall the leaving, I recall the enticing white of understanding smiles.

Vang Vieng is the Laotian center of narco-tourism and river tubing, but otherwise a pretty sleepy place. A treacherous combination. Several tourists die every year when they are swept away in the river while trying to tube down it. Usually it is very late at night. Usually they are quite drunk. The river rushes through the town at a humbling speed, particularly this time of year at the end of monsoon season. It's a rich muddy brown from the collection of mountain soil.






Across the river from the main tourist drag, late night bars offer regular drink menus, but when flipped they reveal a "happy" or "funny" menu. The place we went had a "happy and funny for you" menu. Mushy shakes, ganja garlic bread, and mister "o" tea. That would be psilocybin mushroom smoothies, marijuana garlic bread, and poppy-pod tea, if you're not privy. Pretty much government sanctioned, or so it seems. An odd place.

The drive down here from Luang Prabang offered some of the most ego-shattering views I've ever seen. It reminded me of a conversation I had with an Israeli architecture student while observing the immense church in Hanoi, St. Joseph's Cathedral, opened at the onset of French colonial control of Vietnam. She observed that religious structures are built to make you feel minuscule in relation to the presence of god, communist structures to make you feel minuscule in relation to the state, and wealthy folk's houses to make you feel minuscule in relation to their wealth. The natural wonders of the world aren't constructed at all, but in relation to them, our human works are trite and insignificant - as are we.



























But how we try, how we try.

We're heading out from here in a few days. South and south and south to Cambodia. I've said this before and been proven wrong, but I anticipate a vacuum of connectivity. If I'm not posting, I'm still writing and I'm still shooting. I hope you miss me.

With love,
-isaac

Location:Vang Vieng, PDR Laos