Hong Kong—Jan 19, 2015

Dear Inurnet ..

DPS to HKG .. annoying rich Amerikan cupple in front of us .. the kind that fly kids + Guatemalan nanny w/ them to Bali (bizness class) .. nanny takes care of screaming kids while they bicker + bitch .. vampire ppl sucking up all the energy of the plane .... neglected ugly kid throws a tantrum as the plane about lands + father hits him from across the aisle making things worse of course .... kid screaming + won't sit in seat + put seatbelt on unless w/ mommy .... who + why exist these ppl? ..

.. arrived Hong Kong too late to do much of anything cept go to hotel sorta near airport + crash .... strange place .. our 1^st time here .. at least getting off plane .. über modern + clean as u'd xpect .. all high-rise + malls .. + they like to escort u everywhere .. walk u to where u catch the bus .. walk u up to your room, etc. ..

harbor traffic

.. woke up ate wanton soup + at 1^st tried to go to sum quaint fishing village called Tai-O but was confusing + got on wrong bus + seemed might be problematic given we only had about 4 hours .. instead got on metro + went downtown .... kinda boring as u'd xpect so hopped star ferry to Kowloon (have us not any idea where we going) .... wandered our way round Tsim Sha Tru area up to Temple street .. hawker food street but not much open cept sum noodle shlop (chowed pork + potherb mustard greens) .. up toward Tung Choi street .. goldfish market .. + the flower market .... then took metro back down + hopped the ferry back to Central + caught the metro to the airport ..

hazy panorama from Kowloon

central

on the star ferry

empty sign

signage

butts hanging from bamboo scaffold

more signage

.. reckon if we knew what the signs said (advertising whatever) wouldn't be so intresting ..

view from where we chowed down

back alley

dumpling stand

goldfish

heading back

.. back to the airport .. long haul back to the big apple over the north pole .... started to read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (for 2^nd or 3^rd time) on the plane .. plenty enuf out there to speak smartly about it we reckon .. but since them never made us learn it in school we woodn't know typical ways to think smartly about it .... 1^st we read it 'uz in Indonesia in 1990 .. ironickly on a ship travelling the archipelago so that reading of it more relevant (w/ regard to place) .. but a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong over da north po perhaps not so fitting a place for the Twain to meet .. sumthing Huck cd never have fathomed no how probly then ..

sumwhere over Alaska .. just before we passed over Great Bear Lake near where we surveyed in 1996

.. can relate to Huck Finn in so many ways .. reckon many a merican can .... the idea uv striking out in such free-floating independance .. leaving a broken home .. not that we had such an abusive paps .. but drunkard yes + neither parent supporting us to educate ourself but in stead greenly resentful we might 1 up on dem .. + mustering to take credit for what we'd done by our own recognizance .... + tho we never lived w/ no anal widow our stepmom aint too far off the mark .. trying to instill proper manners + «sivilize» us + whatnot ..

.. intresting also in light of our recent dwelling on animism + all things primitive + individualistic .. how superstitious Huck + Jim act + how come .. blaming them misfortunes on account of touching snakeskin or killing spiders or spilling salt + other backwoods folklore .... + scarce mention uv religion .. xcept what the widow tried to force on Huck—

«After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn't care no more about him, because I don’t take no stock in dead people.»

.. amen .... dem complex superstitchuns form from a deep understanding of the natural living world .... Huck ever the skeptic .. after society + justice systems fail him over + over he develops own sense of logic + justice (derived in part from surrogate father Jim) .. he gits the hypocrisy of «sivilized» society + wont buy into it .. always questioning authority + accepted conventions that otherwise strike him as silly .... in fact u cd say Huck Finn = 1^st to embody punk ..

.. sure we'll have more to say about our hero Huck in the near future as we pilfer it to rig our own Raft Manifest .. suffice to say we'd have to concur w/ Hemingway in saying American lit begins + ends w/ Huck Finn .. everything else (including our Raft Manifest) merely derivative .. where derivative = derived from the river ..

Huck Finn back home over the Hudson