Back in the Saddle Again

Well, here is how all the Materialist's travels end: with a whimper. That's right: the Materialist is back in this hellhole called NY, awaiting grimly the approach of summer, her least favorite season.

One would think, wouldn't one, that returning home after three and a half weeks would feel refreshing, full of tiny revelations and unexpected surprises. But in fact, the Materialist is surprised at how easy it is to fall back into the slipstream of one's daily, workaday life, and how quickly it washes away all the benefits of an extended period away. Any surprises--should they in fact exist--have also eluded the Materialist, who was dully disappointed to return to an existence identical to the one she left. Coworkers: still crazy. Friends: still beset with tedious neuroses. Wardrobe: still tired. Apartment: still dusty, small. Debt: still not magically repaid by mysterious and benevolent forces.

All of this is the Materialist's way of apologizing for the radio silence of the past two weeks--boy, no longer is the Materialist able to pretend that each transpacific flight doesn't age her another year or two. But before she returned to her Bartleby-like existence, the Materialist got to cap off her SE Asia trip with a few days in Tokyo, which, as loyal readers are by now aware, is her favorite city.

Copycats

A take on John Currin's "The Pink Tree"

One of the things the Materialist never found a chance to do in SE Asia was pay a visit to one of the many "copy houses" that can be found in every large Vietnamese city.

The Materialist first heard about these copy houses from her friend Quang, whose family is from Hanoi. Every year, thousands of art school students graduate college and are left looking for work. Unlike in the States, however, where the guarantee of an apparently endless parental drip and sporadic work as a web designer are enough to keep one in Starbucks and a loft in Greenpoint, Vietnamese art graduates have to be more resourceful. The result are strips of copy shops, each staffed with a half-dozen or so former art students, who will copy literally any painting, photograph, or drawing--from Johannes Vermeer to Inka Essenhigh and back again. All you have to do is bring them a copy of the piece (you can also choose something from one of the art books they have in-shop), and they'll paint it on canvas for you: a 1' x 1' painting is $15, a 4' x 4' is $60, and a 6' x 6' is $120. The copies are startlingly good, and unsettlingly accurate.

The eunuch's delight

At Tha Om restaurant.

What day is it, and where is the Materialist? Interpret these questions however you want--metaphysically; literally--either way, the Materialist no longer knows.

Actually, the Materialist is writing this from Saigon in her room at the creamy Park Hyatt, although as you read this today, on the 14th, the Materialist is actually in Tokyo, at the new Ritz-Carlton, having her face pumiced with a stone, getting ready to return to crappy old New York. But before the Ritz, she will be in the bare-bones hotel she stays at in Tokyo when she can't stomach the suburban splendor of Bitter's apartment but which, despite its prime location, has very limited internet access. So consider this a missive from the past addressed to you people of the future--a little free time travel courtesy of your old pal the Materialist.

More revelations with the Materialist

The contents of Bitter's dop kit for a 5-day trip

Shortly before she left for her SE Asian blitz, the Materialist was made aware that Sandy, travel specialist to the stars (well, to the Materialist and all her CNT colleagues, at least) had somehow gotten the impression that she and her friend Bitter Makoto, who was joining her for the middle part of the trip, were a couple; or, more accurately, that the Materialist was trying to seduce Bitter and entrap him in her web of womanity.

The Materialist first became wise to this when Sandy happened to mention that he'd some "special surprises" planned for her and Bitter. Her suspicions were confirmed when Sandy called her up in Bangkok.

"I was confirming your rooms in Hanoi," said the Sandman, "and you know you're in twin beds, right?"

"Yes, that's right," said the Materialist.

"Oh," said Sandy. There was a pause. "And that's...OK?"

"Yup!" said the Materialist, still remarkably clueless.

"Okey-doke!" said Sandy, who had, a few weeks earlier, shared with the Materialist his motto, which is: The customer is always right, even when she's not. This was clearly one of those cases, and far be it from Sandy to try and interfere with the Materialist's apparently backasswards seduction plan.

Identity politics with the Materialist

Today you're all in for a big, big treat, because the Materialist is going to go all CBS Afterschool Special (or, if you prefer, David Mamet c. "Oleanna") on your asses!

In her years of traveling to the same places over and over again, the Materialist has often debated with herself whether it's easier or harder to be Asian while traveling through Asia. After this SE Asia trip however, she can say conclusively: it's harder.

For some reasons, the SE Asians (like many white and black Americans, for that matter) seem incapable of accepting the possibility that one can be an American of Asian descent. In the past three weeks, the Materialist has had the following conversation (almost verbatim) at least three times a day:

SE Asian (shopkeeper, waiter, hotel clerk, taxi driver, tour guide): You Chinese or Japanese?
The Materialist: I'm from New York.
SE Asian: But where you born?
TM: America.
SE Asian: Where your father born?
TM: America.
SE Asian: Your grandfather?
TM: America.
SE Asian: Your great-grandfather?
TM: America.
[silence]
SE Asian: So, you Chinese or Japanese?

An open letter to Seth

The waterfall above Luang Prabang

Two days before she left for her SE Asia extravaganza, the Materialist's friend Seth called. Seth calls the Materialist for three reasons:

1) Boredom;
2) Loneliness; and
3) Attention.

In this, he is not unlike the Materialist's parents' cat, Emma, albeit with better teeth and less of an odor.

Long ago, at one of the many failed magazines at which the Materialist has done hard time, Seth and the Materialist shared an office. Seth was a writer for the magazine, and the Materialist was his editor. Their office--which they shared with a kind man named Roger whose patience with and tolerance of them amazes and shames the Materialist today--was the largest on the floor, but also the farthest from the pit, where sat the assistants and fact-checkers and staff writers and editors, and where all the action (work-related and otherwise) took place.

Landscape with Water Buffalo

The Materialist's private plunge pool

Before traveling for work, the Materialist has taken to seeking the opinion of her colleague Priscilla "Pud" Eakeley, who is not only the WASPiest person the Materialist has ever met--the Materialist always thinks that Pud is what Annie Hall would be when she grew up--but a voracious traveler and a woman of discernment and curiosity and humor. Like many of her coworkers, the Materialist thinks of Pud as the embodiment of the magazine's reader, given how closely she fits the demographic profile, and how admirably frequent and ambitious her trips. Several years ago, Pud undertook an extended version of the SE Asia tour the Materialist is on now, using the same travel specialist, the fabulous Sandy Ferguson, a great favorite of the magazine's staff. 

One Night in Bangkok

A crocodile bag found in Bangkok's La Sourire

OK, give the Materialist a break. She's always wanted to use that hed, and besides which, she's feeling a bit cooked.

Don't get the Materialist wrong--Southeast Asia is fabulous! Great food, great infrastructure, genuinely great service, great orchids (a great profusion of all tropical flora in fact, that is making the Materialist long for Honolulu, where she WOULD be renting a house this summer were her friend Rupert not such a tightwad).