How Long the Lonely Road

No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. —Charles Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities" My backpack is strung with talismans . There’s a Shiva bead in an orange thong hanging from one of the side straps, a small disco ball from a Tel Aviv bar in one of the pockets, and on one of the zippers a key chain that used to dangle a Taj Mahal snow globe, though now it looks like a half-finished game of Hangman—one more guess. There’s a Bedouin braid hung off the middle that’s red, white, and black, the...

He says, 'I'm only stopping here to get some gasoline. I guess I'm going thataway just as long as it's paved, I guess you'd say I'm on my way to Burma shave.' —Tom Waits The morning sun shot off like a firework over the hills. Ron and I took our backpacks to Sam’s trekking office, where from a painted portrait, three feet across, the old gopher-toothed Burman explorer looked out from under his rice paddy hat to the narrow room and the street beyond. Naing Naing, Sam’s nephew and our guide on the trails to Inle, was there waiting. He tagged our bags and sent them to Nyaung Shwe, on the northern bank of the lake, where we would proceed, in a meandering way of hills and vales, over the next three days. Naing Naing kissed his little daughter goodbye and shouldered his knapsack, and we followed suit, with only the bare necessities. We walked south out of the Kalaw valley, on winding ways cut into the hills, past groups of novices in burgundy tunics, with metal d...

This is how the world will be, Everywhere I go it rains on me. —Tom Waits The monsoon works like this . During the wet season, which follows the hot, humid season and occurs at a different time of year depending on where you are, but generally in the summer, and in Burma between May and September—during that wet season, it is perpetually cloudy, and for about fifteen minutes every day there is a biblical deluge that floods the fields and roads, raises the rivers and sewers, and washes up everything in the world. Then the rains soften to a sprinkle, and then they cease entirely, and the world is a muddy wreck, though the air is much cooler. In the heart of the monsoon, in August, it rains perpetually, but I was there during the time of the daily deluge, which caught me nearly every day in a place of some fascination. It is worth surveying the montage of them, with some necessary digressions, and so I will proceed. I am in the home of Mysande when the rain starts coming down. She is...

Rise up and take the power back, it’s time the Fat cats had a heart attack, you know that Their time is coming to an end, we have to Unify and watch our flag ascend. —Muse A trash fire burned outside Lumpini Park . It was a desolate scene, with a line of soldiers visible in the smoky and seething distance, and the boom of gunfire seemed to come from every direction. A man rode up on a motorcycle, his face masked like a highwayman, and in one hand he carried a huge Thai flag that nearly touched the ground. Expertly he steered his motorcycle around and around the trash fire, and the flag waved quietly in the smoke. Plumes of it—a fog of war—rose into the air all around Rajprasong, from piles of tires set afire to keep back the soldiers, on that first day of the siege. Security forces moved to tighten their cordon. They built walls of sandbags and razor wire and pointed their rifles out from the rubble. Weighted in battle armor, they thudded across the highway overpass that runs along the...