Graeme Wend-Walker 2003 (2)

From: Graeme Wend-Walker
To: The Kraken
Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2003 3:01 PM
Subject: [the-kraken] The International Fork You Ate

Greetings to awl!

I haven't posted to the Kraken for about two months. But I did, during that time, meet a few of you, as I wended my way around the world. Special greetings to those of you I was able to meet. You know who you are (at least as well as anyone does).

As an adjunct or appendix or (forward-lookingly) aperitif to our annual event, I remembered the fork you ate, and cast yellow paper into several corners of the world. Follows my belated report:

Whatever my original plans, once en route I found myself disinclined to leave yellow paper in public places. Partly because they were not "my" public places any more, partly because I was travelling in a time of war and unease. Partly because I felt, as a traveller, more than usually between things, and that's where I wanted to leave yellow paper; not thrust into the world, but left quietly in places which, as a university student, I am required by law to refer to as interstices. And partly because the quotes I had taken with me began to seem to be of a piece, and seemed to me to want to address themselves to other travellers, rather than to locals. So I left them in the hotels I stayed in, in drawers and wardrobes, to be found I hope by other unusually in-between people. And perhaps then to make their way even further afield.

Here are the quotes I used:

The world vibrates like a crystal in the mind; there is a frequency at which terror and ecstasy are the same and any road might be taken.

- The Medusa Frequency

I tell you what I have paid years to learn: everything that is found is always lost again, and nothing that is found is ever lost again. Can you understand that?

- The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

More and more I find that life is a series of disappearances followed usually but not always by reappearances; you disappear from your morning self and reappear as your afternoon self; you disappear from feeling good and reappear feeling bad. And people, even face to face and clasped in each other's arms, disappear from each other.

- Fremder

And here are the places where yellow paper was left, some places where people and things might be lost, found and dis/appeared, and from where any road might be taken:

Quails Inn Hotel, San Marcos, California, USA

USA Hostel, San Diego, USA

Chelsea Centre Hostel, not in Chelsea at all but in the East Village, New York City, USA

Hughes-Parry Hall, Bloomsbury, London, England

Ngoc Mai Hotel, Ha Noi, Viet Nam

Princes Hotel, Cat Ba, Ha Long Bay, Viet Nam

Old Darling Café, Ha Noi, Viet Nam

Kind of nice to be back. Hope everyone is well.

World being,

Graeme