Saturday, April 30, 2011

Blast! I've been Done! Blasted Thou O Thai Beast, Rear Thy Stegosauratic Tail Of Base, Filthy Filchery!

Sadly, a young fellow in Bangkok, Thailand seems to have pickpocketed my bag of $900.00 at a net cafe and right under my nose. I was later going to wire and deposit the amount, but stopped to update this very blog ere getting to that.

This is a clip of me unicycling in Burma (What's Myanmar?) where photography and filming is strictly forbidden for foreigners. So, I had to do this surreptitiously and swiftly to avoid having my camera confiscated or being imprisoned as a state security threat---well, at least that way, I would get to stay in Burma for longer than the one-day visa curently oh so generously and openly allows. Foreigners are not permitted to stray beyond 5 KM out of the border town Kaw Thaung across the Kraburi River from Ranong, Thailand. There are said to be special permits available, but they costly and are frequently rejected, even after they have been already "approved". What is Burma hiding? The fact there is still a vibrant, living, mythos'd, mourning Burma hiding in the interior of the impoverished, rotting, crusty, oppressive shell that is Myanmar? May HaShem soon shower freedom on the Burmese and liberate them from the Mitzrayim* of "Myanmar".

AMO''Sh Out.

*"Egypt" in Hebrew

This is a clip of AMO''Sh in the home of Muslim Burmese fellow who invited me in off a steep dirt alley on the side of a hill to watch "Bruce Almighty" and drink a cool glass of water. April's End 2011.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011


My (U)nicycle "Mirkevet HaMetutelet HaHofkit", lonely against Angkor Wat,
Outside Siam Reap from whence I unicycled,
Cambodia, April 2011

Filling Up The Tank at the Gas Station
Kampuchea-style,
April 2011
Rural Cambodia

That blasted, dreadful tourist trap Khaosan Road, Bangkok, Thailand
During Songkran (Thai New Year),2011;
Which is famous to the outside world as "Water Festival"---for it is the accepted custom to fall heart-first into anatomogasmic throes of flesh-colored massy throng of a drunken orgiastic loss par excellence of the self as it is in Mardi Gras in mine ol' Nawlins and in Carnival in Rio De Janeiro, that mad southern mountain of drab slabs and verdant mounts where I sat for 25 hours straight writing in about December 2003---and smear passersby's clothes and rosy cheeks with this viscous, arch-messy off-white paste and drench innocents with bucketfulls of ice-cold water from all directions---drunkos from the backs of trance-blasting suped-up pick-ups and lipsticked ladyboys in the arms of drunken tourist frattos from balconies---where, when I was heading to Shabbat services at the local Beit ChaBa''D---which I do for to be with my fellow Yehudim in Dibbuq Khaverim, not in accordance with the extra-Judaic accounts of ChaBa''D 'theology', during this festival, even being all clearly dressed up and in "cultural" garb, I was nevertheless splashed, no, Targeted for a thorough moistening.
Getting in to daven Minchah and get into Qaballat Shabbat, I looked like some kind of white paste-anointed, wet-fleshed zombie from a 1950s cult horror flick. What a Golem to then daven.
Oy vey, HaKavvanah HaTovah Beyoter in Drerd! But we do the best we can. & hopefully don't stop there.

AMO''Sh
Bangkok
April 2011
Post-Pesach

AMO''Sh with Unicycle
Some backstreet soi, Bangkok, Thailand,
April 28, 2011,
a few days after
Pesach 5771

Monday, April 11, 2011


AMO''Sh riding his unicycle at Angkor Wat,
near Siam Reap, Cambodia, April 2011

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Please see the newest video clips of me unicycling in Cambodia: The Kampuchean Passage II http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGeW_dAJsl8&NR=1 & Jewish Unicycling at Angkor Wat http://www.youtube.com/user/TheRebbesUkulele#p/a/u/0/nBERyJ5spZ0

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat, Apr. 2011

AMO''Sh at Angkor Wat, Apr. 2011

Children innocently at play at the local playground; about 9 KM East of Banteay Dek (which I renamed "Ben-Tzedeq"), Cambodia, Apr. 2011

This queer statue near the Mekong in Neak Leuong, Cambodia reveals much about the "Cambodia Year Zero"Revolution, where traditional Khmer Buddhism was said to be the reason for Cambodia's pathetic weakness by the Khmer Rouge and this attitude resulted in the deaths and force labor of many bonzes and members of clergy. The sole way to serve the "Angkar" or the "Organization" (which is one of the truest instantiations of "Big Brother" in history) was, according to the insane Khmer Rouge, was Work in the forests and on the Rice Paddies. This echoes the sign at the gate of Auschwitz which mocks all sense and desecrates all meaning "Arbeit Macht Frei"---(Work sets [you] free.]

AMO''Sh having just crossed the Mekong River at Neak Leuong, Cambodia, April 2011

Beware...the ink is the color or Soylent Green...

Cambodian Roadside

My Unicycle (Mirkevet HaMetutelet HaHofkit---"Chariot of the Inverted Pendulum) and Ukulele (Ben Ruakh Khutim---"Wind of Strings II") in the morning light in rural Cambodia off Route 1 the day after the angry villager kicked me off his property
presumably because of his pretty daughter and spent the night with orange robed monks in their countryside Wat. April 2011.
After a particularly pensive, but sentimental Shabbat here in Siam Reap, the drunken yells of almost professionally ditzy backpacker co-eds from Merry Ol' England and her Lost Colonies nearly disturbing my davenings and meditations, I had a chilled, scared feeling of creeping Horror. Recently have I become even more educated on the abject terrors of Cambodia Year Zero, the Khmer Rouge, and the psychopathic regime brainwashings of the Peasants starting from Early to Mid-1970s of this our Common Era. Hosts, myriads, millions of innocents have died horrible deaths in heinous , killing knocks of life-breath out of their shivering, starving bodies by the Khmer Rouge in service of the mysterious ideopolitical g-dhead "Angkar", or the "Organization"---which according to propandic party rhetoric means "The People [of Kampuchea]" ; neurotoxins pumping pell-mell through their bloodstreams in that one last terrifying moment before their fallow cheeks hit the damp silt of Mekong or the jungle floor. I am unqualified to give an authoritative denunciation of this unspeakable Crime Against Humanity---for I am but late of birth and too much "an intellectual" to properly 'understand why the Khmer Rouge took to the tactics they did in order to take back Kampuchea from the evil Imperialists, America and France'---'for it is not the intellectuals who will launch the offensive against the Imperialists in the Revolution'---and indeed the great majority of "intellectuals" were "vanished" or shot in the head in plain sight---and one criterion for "intellectual" according the Khmer Rouge "acting on behalf of the anonymous 'Angkar'" was wearing glasses. Thus, anyone with the slightest ascendency of brains met with the wet ditches of the forest never to rise from the thicket---and alas, even the most ignorant of the ignorant (the purest of the pure for Angkar-"Education") were frequently murdered for the most arbitrary of reasons (as if one NEEDS a reason to murder, right?). It has been estimated that between 800,000 to well over 2 million Khmer (the main ethnic group of Cambodia) lost their lives in the great purge after Phnom Penh, the capital, was seized by the Khmer Rouge and later emptied of all ethnic Cambodians, an uncanny feat in a modernizing capital city. It did not help that in Khmer culture there exists a trend to act in downheaded deference to those who wield the Power---and this may be related to the pre-Buddhist influence of Hinduism on ancient Khmer society---which regarded Power-holding as a reflection the acquistion of Merits in past existences. I doubt it would have been so "easy" and relatively "protestless" to empty modern-day Cairo. Still, historically, the Khmer were allegedly renowned as nigh unbeatable warriors in hand-to-hand combat in Old Indochina. Unofortunately, this allegedness did not prevent Kamopuchea from being annexed and conquered over and over again, by the likes of Vietnam and the Thai, ancestral enemies of the Khmer, and later, by the dreaded "Imperialists" of The West. Here, I have come to this place to weep for Kampuchea---for the Khmer Rouge carried out a calculated genocide against its own people. Even the refugees who escaped over the Thai border were only "repatriated" to their homeland to have their throats summarily cut, dying the Mekong red, to be shot in the back of the head in front of their spouse and children, only for these witnesses to later lay beside them, totally still, their anatomy draining on the forest floor under the choral chirp of insects for a final eulogic dirge.

This is AMO''Sh, writing with deep sadness and anger, Siam Reap, Cambodia, post-Havdalah, April 2o11

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

After another several days, walking and unicycling from Svay Rieng along Route 1, I made it to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia/kampuchea, stopping every few miles to drink water at dilapidated hutsides in the wild uncivilized bush, writing Haikishus and "philosophical" medidations on scraps of paper amongst the flies of the palm tree`d swamp. I can not believe I have made it. There were so many insufferable moments of hurting exhaustion when I didn't think I could go on, strange huge insects chirping beneath me in the ferned gulches to a deafening crickety roar, and the looming Cambodian killer Sun bent on destroying me, revolution of wheel for revolution of wheel. Out there, I scrunched my brow, bit my lip, angled my shoulders defiantly forward, balanced my unicycled remounted on wounded foot, and screamed, "I will unicycle thee yet, Kampuchea!"

Friday, April 1, 2011

This is PROOF of the Jew unicycling through rural Eastern Cambodia---please watch this video clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkkmTuJr-BI

Amosh Out.
A short run-up of the Wall To Wall (U)nicycle Hosomichi---Thus far, I have taken a bus from Shenyang to Dandong, China, a ferry boat from Dandong, China to Incheon, Korea, a city bus and the Metro to Seoul, a bus from Seoul to Busan, Korea, a ferry boat from Busan, Korea to Fukuoka-Hakata, Japan, the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) from Fukuoka-Hakata, Japan to Tokyo, Japan (passing through Hiroshima and Shin-Osaka on the way), a bus from Tokyo (where I stayed in a Capsule Hotel and visited the tiny Basho Museum---both great dreams now fulfilled) back to Fukuoka-Hakata, a ferry boat back to Busan, Korea, a bus back to Seoul, Korea, the Metro, city bus, and taxi back to Incheon, Korea, a ferry boat back to Dandong, China, and some Chinese dude's car back to Shenyang, China (where I had lived for a year, teaching English, and ending up specializing in Early Childhood Development such that I was recruited by my posh school to make an instructional video in that field to educate future teachers---something of a triumph for me, seeing as how my previous boss in provincial Maznhouli had treated me so underappreciatively, so to speak...).

This toe of the tour was undertaken without my unicycle, which I left back in Shenyang. I did this mainly as a writing expedition---as a Travel Meditation in writing "Haikishus"---which had so been inspired by Haiku in my Summery, Maddened youth when I was wild with "Cartop Riots" when I would leap atop my car ("Li'l Hegel") and read poetry to passersby across Northern Virginia & I would sneak to New Orleans in some storm of gear shiftings to that humid holy land.

From Shenyang, China, I took a train to Beijing, China (where I departfully visited with my friends Dereau and Sam MiDrA''P). Then I took a train to Kunming, China, a sleeper bus to Vientiane, Laos, a bus from Vientiane, Laos to Hanoi, Vietnam (I unicycled from Vientiane several tens of kilometers towards the Vietnam border---but realized I would run out of time if I did not take a bus---my visa was almost up), a bus from Hanoi, Vietnam, to Saigon, Vietnam.

As per plan, Saigon is where I started really unicycling---as back in Manzhouli when I first conceived this tour, I was fretting about the most appropriate place to begin the one-wheeled frenzy---and my old genius of a friend Tyler Bass suggested Vietnam, it being, as we all know, the seat of the War of the same name...& after all, this tour would at least be partly about cutting through destinations of extreme Human Rights Abuses and Crimes Against Humanity.

I have walked and unicycled (mostly unicycled---Ouch! My perineum!) from the outskirts of Saigon, Vietnam (why should I call it Ho Chi Minh City?) to the Vietnamese-Cambodian border at Moc Bai/Bavitt, and from Bavitt, Cambodia to Svay Rieng, Cambodia (where I am writing from right now).

Since beginning "really unicycling", I have unicycled through some of the remotest regions I have ever seen (save for some in South America) and tried my tongue at Vietnamese and Khmer, two languages that I have surely NOT mastered and flopped at horrifically. Unfortunately, hand gestures and body language are not one of the great expertises of many Sino-IndoChinese cultures---partly due to their being "High Context Cultures" (which means "things" are just understood 'indigenously' rather than specifically explained, as in a Low Context Culture like America), I have stayed the night with a mother and son family at their outdoor canteen in Cu Chi, Vietnam (I was bedfellows with the 21 year old son---in his corrugated metal sheet-walled chamber, which his mother locked from the outside at night---& I really had to go "Mount The Yellow Steed" (relieve myself)), been allowed by a very rural Cambodian beauty to bathe in her outdoor washing pit, where I had to politely wave the raggedy children away who were staring at me (I had to put a towel across the portal for modesty---& all the villagers thought I had some clinical illness for being so 'self-conscious---later, the beauty's father told me to get off his property in Khmer (after his beauty of a daughter said I could put my hammock up for the night---I assume this was one of those classic "Farmer's Daughter" Situations. I was pretty upset---because for religious reasons, I intended nothing with the Khmer man's gorgeous ---::gurgle:: (like Homer Simpson)---daughter!), been taken in less than a Kilometer down the nowhereville road by orange-robes monks whose Shrine I slept in for the night (strictly speaking, I am not sure it was so Mitzvaic for me to do so, but nonetheless, when they asked me to prostrate myself before a pastel-painted statue of the Buddha, I had to politely decline and "instead" excused myself to Daven Ma'ariv (the Jewish Evening Prayer), and stopped at dozens of alarmingly rustic roadside canteens with ogling toothless old women and naked babies sitting in dirt, veritable huts with little more than thatched roofs and a chair for my water breaks), been cheered at by Vietnamese road crews (also decked out in orange---but their state religion is more Communist than Cambodia's---even considering what Pol Pot, Yemakh Shmo, tried to do to his own People in the insanity of his wildly misdirected ideology), and whizzed past pretty girls on motorscooters waving and smiling---well, ok, so they whizzed past me...but, you know, what I mean.

I have to stop here in Svay Rieng, Cambodia for Shabbat.

AMO'Sh out.
Phnom Penh Municipality 165 KM

About 10 KM east of Moc Bai Border Crossing between Vietnam and Cambodia.

Chanson-ded-Dzhess & AMO'Sh, 2005ish, Short Pump, VA

Chanson-de-Dzhess (a pun on the literary genre Çhanson de Geste---of which La Chanson de Roland is perhaps the most widely known example---a form I was obsessed with at the time, 2005)---Asher Ahavti LeGa'Gu'ei Lemor "Vidui"