DRAGON SMOKE
June 11th, 2010
I smoked opium once. I saw God.
They say God has many faces. In this instance, she took the form of an elderly Asian woman dressed head to toe in black. She hovered above me – a face creased with age, framed with straight gray hair and punctuated with a toothy, betel nut-stained smile. Who knew how many tourists she’d led down that laneway in the old Red Light district off Jalan Alor. How many adventure seekers had lain where I now laid – on a day bed in a back room of her bustling restaurant in the wee hours of a Tuesday morning?
The room was stifling and the air was a heady mixture of candle wax, opium smoke and French cigarettes. There was a hint of Jasmine tea – it was the one smell that seemed out of place, even in a part of town that was known more for its intoxicating food than its illicit drugs.
I’d smoked only a small bowl – five hits, maybe six, I have no idea. Within minutes I had seven fingers on each hand! It didn’t matter. The extra grip on the bed didn’t stop the room from moving away from me, alternating between lightspeed and molasses.
“Close eye,” the old woman said, her whisper barely audible above the din caused by the propane-fired wok in the next room. Shit – I couldn’t keep them open if I tried. But it wasn’t sleep that took me.
She replaced the wash cloth on my forehead with a fresh cool one. I learned later it was soaked in a mixture of rosewater and mint. I managed to crack open one eye just in time to see the room become a Dali painting. I giggled, loudly I think. The old woman continued to smile. I tried to smile back, and maybe I did, but my brain was preoccupied with the movie, my body with the feelings.
A few hours later I found myself wandering, floating almost, back through the streets of Kuala Lumpur looking for my hotel, basking in the afterglow buzz. I discovered the city anew that night. And I ate like a pig.
When I finally negotiated my way home, I resolved to do three things. One, return to Malaysia and Southeast Asia and spend more time travelling the world – life is too short. Two, to never again be a tourist, but always a traveller – life is too short. And three, remember as much of the opium experience as possible and never repeat it – life is too short.
I mention this life-altering event for one reason. Addiction.
I knew once I’d straightened out that it wouldn’t take much for me to make a return trip to see the old woman. Many trips perhaps – the experience was that amazing. I loved it and wanted more – had to have more.
Travel affects me the same way, and luckily it’s the only vice I have. Not alcohol, not drugs – travel. The desire, the need to experience what’s around the corner, around the country, around the world is the only habitual inclination I possess. I simply must travel.
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.
That quote is from a man who wrote eloquently about both drugs (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) and travel (Treasure Island). Like many other authors who became famous for their literature, but were first and foremost travel writers — Mark Twain and Evelyn Waugh among them — Robert Louis Stevenson’s writing was a happy consequence of his travels.
And so it is for me. Although my vocation is that of a writer, producer and director of television, my avocation is that of a traveler. It is when, on the all-too-infrequent occasions the two intersect, that I know I have arrived, and the monkey returns once again to my back. I live for those moments.
As for my resolutions, I’ve managed to keep them all. So far.
[REW]
Thoughts, feelings, indictments…? Comments below.
