I saw Hunter S. Thompson's Indian doppelganger at a rave last night. Actually, if you could breed Hunter Thompson with John's uncle in Kennewick, you'd have whatever it was that I saw last night. It took an hour of finding the trailhead, and then another full hour of hiking up the steep climb in the dark with an LED light before I finally got to the party at midnight. The party just got groovin' at about 3, and it was freezing out (one of the "should have been obvious" pitfalls of having a party in the Himalayas). All of a sudden, this shaved-head fat guy wearing shorts, a hawaiian shirt and carrying a walking stick marches into the middle front of the dance floor as if he just got to the party. He stands there, feet apart, hands on his hips, surveying the crowd like he was a five-star general looking over his troops... except he looked like the mad genetic scientist from Southpark. He yelled "HEY," just to let everybody know he was there, and then marched directly into the middle of the dancefloor. Nobody knew what to do, so we just pretended not to notice him. Then the music moved into one of those Trance buildups that somehow never fail to get people "WOOOOO!!!"ing, and the strange man stood there resulutely, and raised his walking stick, slowly, into the air as if he were summoning some kind magical incarnation. As the rest of the crowd got all excited about the perfectly predictable buildup, this man stood in the middle of the dance floor pointing his cane at the stars. Then the climax came and he started shaking his knees as if possessed, yet all the time maintaining the perfectly straight face as he looked up at the stars. That was the way he danced, with his cane up in the air like that. Later, he'd walk around as if inspecting the place. Perfect Hunter Thompson if I'd ever seen one. And he was Indian.

In the last post, I described the scene when I'd found out how much this mechanic had gone out of his way to help me. What got to me about it wasn't just this mechanic, it was the sudden realization that I'd fallen into the trap of generalizing Indians. All I've heard, from travelers and even Indians, was how malicious Indians can be. They'll take your bag if you're not watching, and they have no morals when business is involved. So, I started to see all Indians this way, and wondered why I wasn't making as many local friends as in other countries. But the Indians changed as soon as I crossed into the borders of Utternachal and then Himalchal Pradesh, and I didn't. Until the mechanic.

Also last night, I had heard of this party through some Israeli sources. It was supposed to be a past-dawn psytrance party out in the woods so, naturally, I assumed it was an Israeli party. It was all Indian. It was fully put on and attended by Indians. The Israelis showed up after 3, and I ran into several groups of them on the trail down when I left at 4, so maybe they had yet to overrun the place. But it was an Indian party.

OK, now I'm gonna talk a little metaphysics, since I've been kinda in withdrawl since Rishikesh (all the hippies out here have been replaced by Israeli ravers). I've been reading Lila, Robert Persig's continuation of Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance and a further discourse on the Metaphysics of Quality (which seems to be his thesis in life). The idea is that reality is composed of Qualities, not of substance, and that there are two different forms of Quality: dynamic and static. Static quality is everything we know, from the static qualities of a chair to static ideas of the cultures we live in. Dynamic quality is the force of change against these static forms, the driving force behind Evolution (challenging static biological forms) and the source of chaos in the 20th century (challenging static social forms). If this doesn't make any sense, there are two full books written about the subject that there's no way I'd be able to fully summarize here. Go read them.

The reason I've gone traveling, using this form of thought, is to get as close as I can to this Dynamic force, to change my situation every few days, change my ideas, encounter new ways of thinking, etc. That's what was so special about that mechanic, he broke through my generalizations and brought me back to Dynamic quality. This is Life. This is Adventure. This is Constant Change.

But it would be easeir to chase my own shadow. Dynamic quality exists at the "leading edge" of consciousness (sorry, Barber lab), that point just before future becomes present. Impossible to catch. Instead, my reality has become this constant race for change and, in so doing, has become static. I'm constantly changing, my ideas are constantly changing, and so consistantly that it's become static. Driving through the countryside, never seeing the same mountain twice, has gotten boring. It's this static quality that I've been trying to get away from, and if I can't do that by travelling any more, maybe it's time to go home.

I was right in the middle of these thoughts when Hunter Thompson walked into the middle of the dancefloor and I found myself, once again, happy to be travelling. It was just so far out of my realm of comprehension to see an image I'd thought only existed within the strange subculture of America, encorporated by an Indian at an Indian rave I'd also thought was solely Western.

So I've figured it out: given my current Rate of Change has gotten stale, I can either go home and return the static world, or find a way to make things massively wierder. My mission for the past few days has been to figure out which road to take, and whether or not to go home just yet. That's why the mechanic and Hunter Thompson were so much fun, they brought me another taste of Dyanamic Quality. On the other hand, these mountains are beautiful, but they look like Nepal and Switzerland. Having to walk my motorcycle through a herd of cows is annoying, not exciting. Going to a rave in the wilderness: "It's been done before." Yesterday I walked past a motorcycle gang called the "Shiva Riders," a group of old punk rockers from England whose ringleader had built an honest Throne with the Shiva trident on his motorcycle seat. I walked by, thought "huh." and kept walking. Unless I find something REALLY out there soon, maybe it is time to go home...