Flash from a Cyborg Classroom

Flash from a Cyborg Classroom: 1/3

There is a moment–it occurs when the shrouds and flesh have burned from the body–that the corpse sits up a bit, curled by the heat. The skull–its empty eyes trained on eternity–mouth agape, shakes the universe with its silent laughter.

Several years ago I spent a night in no-man’s land. It was the area in the Bangkok airport for those who have officially left one country, but have yet to reach another. Having just departed from Kathmandu, I was returning home from several months’ travel. Curling my body around the arms of waiting room chairs, I tried to find sleep. As difficult as it was to get comfortable, what kept me awake was the presence of television. I hadn’t seen TV for several months. The experience was nothing like finding a familiar comfort after a long absence. Rather, I experience this TV as an incessant flashing light, an emergency vehicle demanding attention. I couldn’t focus on the images, only on the flashes. I began to count the interval between flashes, the duration of scenes. One, two, flash. One, two flash. One, flash. One, two, three flash. I couldn’t seem to get past three or maybe four. With each flash, I was dumped into an entirely new setting. I had to orient myself visually and aurally to the whole scene, take in the action of that scene, connect it with the previous scenes, and do all this within the count of one two three. I couldn’t do it. I could only see flashing lights. But I couldn’t stop looking.

I had awakened the day of this one night in Bangkok, as I had for many days, to the distinctive Kathmandu morning sounds and feels. Through the cool fog came the tinkling of prayer bells and the harsh sound of people hacking and spitting, clearing their throats and lungs of the ageless dust of dung and ash–the common denominators of all living things–in the effort to enable themselves another day’s breath of life. Climbing to the rooftop, I peered through the mist to the roof next door. Sitting beneath a banner decorated with soot-dirtied grey prayer-flags–once red, white, yellow, and green–my neighbor sat cross-legged hunched over papers from which he chanted his morning prayers.

Weeks earlier flying into Kathmandu, a wave of excitement had rippled through the cabin as someone cried out "Everest." Tears rolled down my cheek as I crossed the aisle, invited by a stranger to take her seat by the window so I could see the dark triangle peak, so large yet so small below us. We all looked to each other and spoke in languages we didn’t understand to acknowledge the magnitude of this moment. For weeks I trod the ancient pathways around the great mountains always looking up, endlessly up, gathering in some hint of the majesty of the highest mountains on earth. Though sick, thin as a prison camp inmate, and chilled to the bone, I felt profoundly joyous. Each day my spirit, my sense of being alive, rose with the elevation. Trekking in a snow storm over a pass at 18,000 feet I saw my death and danced for joy, a great exhilarating body-warming dancing. I turned the prayer-wheels as I walked through every village, doing my small part for the universe. Back in Kathmandu the streets teemed with life and death, everything a part of the endless cycle; the dust of dung and funeral ash inhaled with every breath of life.

Flash from a Cyborg Classroom: 1/3

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