Kingdoms in the Air

by Bob Shacochis

  Wandervogel is good for starters, tramping around as the accepted right-of-passage stuff for postadolescents who will wire home for return passage when their boots wear out. Travel per se isn’t so bad—­sampling, moving on; sampling, moving on—lovers, cities, pilsners; achieving a sort of existential velocity through which everywhere is nowhere (as Seneca warned aimless wanderers millennia ago). Learn a lot, forget a lot—the road as another type of consumerist school.

  But let the road end; stop at a crossroads where the light is surreal, nothing is familiar, the air smells like a nameless spice, and the vibes are mesmerizing or just plain alien and stay, long enough to truly be there. At least once in your life, you have to do that, and why you should is finally pretty simple. If you want to know a man, the old proverb goes, travel with him. And if you want to know yourself, travel alone. If you want to know your own home, your own country, and your own place in your own country, go make another home in another country (and I don’t mean Canada or England or most of Western Europe). Become an expatriate, a self-inflicted exile for a year or two. Stutter through a second language. Sink into an otherness that reflects a reverse image of yourself, wherein lies your identity, or woeful lack of one. Teach English in Japan, aquaculture in the South Pacific, hygiene in Bangladesh, accounting in Brazil. Join the Peace Corps, volunteer for Save the Children, work in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, set up a fish camp on the beach in Uruguay, join the diplomatic corps, become a foreign correspondent, study Islamic architecture in Istanbul, sell cigarettes in China.

  And here’s the point, despite the fun, the challenge, the risk, the discomfort, the seduction and sex in a fog of communication, the tax-free money, the servants and thieves, the disease, the great food, the shitty food, your new friends and your new enemies, the grand dance between romance and disillusionment. You found out a few true things you really needed to know, that you thought you knew but really didn’t until you lived it.

  You’ve learned to engage the world, not fear it, or not be paralyzed by your fear of it. You found out, to your everlasting surprise, how American you are—Guess what, it’s 100 percent, you can never be anything but—and that is worth knowing. You discovered that going native is self-deluding, a type of perversion. If you’re black and you went to Africa, you found out you weren’t a black guy in Africa, you were an American in Africa. If you were a white woman in Pakistan, you found that the only thing that provided you with an illusion of security was the troubling fact that you were an American. Whatever gender or race you were, you found out how much you are eternally hated and conditionally loved and thoroughly envied, based on the evidence of your passport. You learned that life is despairingly cheap, justice uncommonly rare, and people more beautiful than you ever imagined.

  You found out what you needed to know to be an honest citizen of your own country, patriotic or not, partisan or nonpartisan, active or passive. And you understood in your survivor’s heart not to worry too much about making the world better. Worry about making it worse.

  For once in your life, you have some hefty context to work with.

  And it’s true: When you come back home, it’s never quite all the way, and only your dog will recognize you.

  (2002)

  Author’s Note for Kingdoms in the Air

  Thomas Laird is by instinct a preservationist and curator of the old, a documentarian and archiver of the birth of the new and all its complications. He continues to devote his intellect and his energies to the art and religion of Central Asia. There are many like him out in the world, some more practiced and some less deft with gracious manners and diplomatic acumen and the appropriate sensitivities. Handbooks don’t help. You are either guided by your heart or you are driven by your heartlessness. Ultimately the Lairds wandering the planet are an antidote against ­culture-destroying monsters like the Taliban or the imperial lusts of corporations and the corporate state. In a world rapidly spending its inventory of blessings, Laird, and the people like him, are a persistent blessing, and they deserve our everlasting respect and gratitude.

  Please read:

  Into Tibet: The CIA’s First Atomic Spy and His Secret Expedition to Lhasa, by Thomas Laird

  East of Lo Monthang, by Peter Matthiessen; photographs by Thomas Laird

  The Dalai Lama’s Secret Temple, by Ian Baker; photographs by Thomas Laird

  The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama, by Thomas Laird

  The Murals of Tibet, photographs and forward by Thomas Laird; text by Robert Thurman

  Horses Like Lightning: A Passage Through the Himalayas, by Sienna Craig

  Acknowledgments

  Ah, editors. What to say about editors?

  When I am otherwise occupied in my life, I don’t much miss editors, except for the very few great ones who aren’t insulated morons or breathtakingly negligent and careless, who aren’t shameless lying bastards, who aren’t visionless mandarins of the status quo, air-headed cheerleaders for fatuous trends, or tyrants of self-aggrandizing little fiefdoms. The truly good ones, though, are like second, better selves—precious and indispensable, a writer’s grace and blessing. To these guardian angels, I offer my endless gratitude.

  Mark Bryant, Elizabeth Hightower, Colin Harrison.

  Kathy Rich, Dan Coyle, Lisa Chase, Catherine Parnell, Josh McCall, Ryan Krogh, Abe Streep, Jonah Ogles, Will Blythe, Katie Raissian, Gail Hochman, Jeff Hilliard, Lee Jackson, Kevin Fedarko.

  And, as always, my first, best reader, Barbara Petersen.