Powerless - In My Craw

Powerless, powerless, powerless. SuperK is engaging me with an early morning reading of The Daily Reflections. As this is January, the first month, the one that comes at the start of the year, before all of the other ones, the topic is Step One, The Powerless Step, I'm getting powerlessness stuffed down my throat where it is firmly sticking in my craw, normally a piece of anatomy only found in birds.

I have not felt as out of control as I have felt recently in a good long time. This is due to the fact that I am really, really out of control. I am in control of almost nothing. I don't even have control of drinking water and that's pretty out of control. The traveling here doesn't help, either. I can't imagine that it would be much different if you gave a lot of adolescents a lot of LSD and told them to drive sports cars around as fast as they could. It is the ultimate game of Death Chicken here. I mean: Blink and you die. Blink and all is lost. People in vehicles do whatever they want on rutted, narrow streets clogged with bicycles, pedestrians, CNG powered three wheel scooters, all manner of motorcycles, and everything moving at a high rate of speed. There are no sidewalks. There are traffic signals but they are mostly switched off, and they're ignored when they're not. I tried to cross a street last night and it was a surreal experience. It was like trying to walk across the river that feeds Niagara Falls right before it goes over the edge with missiles being shot at you. I literally could not believe it.

I am alternately terrified that I'm going to eat something that causes me to have diarrhea and then I'm worried that I'm never going to poop again. It's pretty amazing that as one gets older one becomes more obsessed with one's toilet habits. Money? Eh. Food? Who cares? Sex? Well, sex's still important. I don't know how to tip and I don't know about airport security and what the hell is the rupee to dollar exchange rate? The agony and ecstasy of traveling.

They do it different here, I'll say that much. Not better, not worse, just different.