What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

“I’ve got something going on with my arm.” 

“Let me see…”  Rebecca sets down her book and kind of leans her head back to see under her glasses, frowning ever so slightly. Experience tells me it’s just what she does, but still I tense.

“Kind of starts just past my elbow and runs down my forearm.” 

We had just come back from dinner, and it was my first chance to take a breath.  To take stock, as it were.  The day was filled with packing, walking, figuring out the train situation, dealing with a late train, bartering with a taxi driver, and finally getting checked into our new digs.  Over a lovely dinner of Dal, rice, chili chicken and beer I was bothered by an emerging series of lumps down the back of my arm which itched to beat the band. At first I thought it was probably mosquitoes, but clearly this was something else.

“Hmmm.  You sure don’t want cellulitis.  Is it anywhere else?”

“No.  Just there.  What’s cellulitis?”

“Inflammation of the skin.  It’s an infection.  Just don’t scratch it, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”  She turned to continue with her book, and I found myself gently passing my fingers over this new development.  Feeling its contours.

“What happens if it is cellulitis?  I mean…is it serious?”

“Well, yeah.  You’d need IV antibiotics.  Which you’re not going to find here.”

“And so…what happens if I don’t get treatment?” 

“Ultimately, you’d go septic, I guess.  It’d go into a systemic infection, which, finally, could cause shock and death.”  She sets her book down to look at it one more time.  (Again, the slight turning of her mouth.)  “Just don’t scratch it.  I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

Right.  As long as we remain in the domain of the rational.  Which works just fine if, for example, the discussion centers on someone else.  Preferably someone far away and unrelated.  Something really should be done about the aids epidemic in Africa.  Terrible.  But place the moth just a tad closer to the proverbial flame, and this thing called imaginative creation kicks in.  We start to spin a web of all the dark, yawning possibilities.  I suppose, were necrotizing fasciitis to eat away the flesh of my arms due to this cellulitis I could type with my nose… All, of course, made worse by the circumstance of strange and changing environs.

Routine breeds contentment.  Any sailor will wax eloquent on the beauty of digging deep into a primal store of resilience in the face of an angry sea, but only once securely anchored at harbor (and, preferably, after a couple of shots of rum.)  To set sail once again into places unknown-- places of change, if you will--takes a certain foolishness.  Because, let’s face it: shit happens.  But here’s the thing:  it mostly happens in our minds before the onset of any given adventure.

Still, it’s what makes it so hard to break free.

 As a rule, I’ve enjoyed a certain freedom from care due in large part to a woeful lack of imagination coupled with a correspondingly low IQ.  I simply place one Neanderthal foot in front of the next, and hope that when I fall, it’s into a barrel of red wine.  But even my brain gets bored at times and finds itself spinning webs of possibility.  Dark places with jagged edges.

Our current situation makes Adam and Eve’s thing look like the truck stop just north of Toledo, Ohio.  It’s cushy.   We worry about things like the power going out for more than five minutes, which would cause our supply of beer to get just a little less than achingly cold.  We fight over the yoga mat, and wonder if the boy who lights our incense will be here before sunset.  One can’t help but see how the old hippies who wander the beach managed to somehow never leave.  (Did you say this is February?  2013 or 14?)

For this blog I was thinking about creating a fiction.  Something to keep the blade sharp, as it were, given our current state of ease.  (Probably some of you are clucking your tongues and musing on how I haven’t written a true word in my life, which, as Bill Clinton would tell you, gets into the issue of semantics more than anything.)  Instead, I’ll share what I think is probably a common concern—for lack of a better word—shared by many a traveler.  Especially us girls.

Let’s talk about poop.  When one is in the swing of a regular routine, there’s typically a time and a place.  Which, right from the get-go is thrown out of whack when one steps on a plane and into a different time zone.  To further complicate matters, there’s the issue of never knowing just where your next facility will be.  And what kind of emergency situation will crop up due to having ingested something strange the night before.  It’s all—pardon the term—a crap shoot.  Which makes for a potentially amusing story once when is safely back at harbor, but can give pause when sailing into uncharted waters.

My favorite place to poop so far is on a train.  There are a medley of circumstances which make this so, starting with the jarring motion of said train as it ratchets along at sixty-odd miles per hour.  Couple with this the circumstance of a squatter (which I favor, though it should be noted there are Western toilets available) in which one hunkers down on a stainless steel platform, kind of leaning against the wall, gripping the steel handle mounted on the opposite wall.  From this position there is something of a breeze shooting up from the target zone, which is, in fact, an open chute leading out to the tracks below.  (Note-it is entirely bad form to let one fly while at a train station!)   All of this creates what might best be termed a challenge, in which this once-placid (even desirous) morning routine becomes something of a funhouse-on-LSD experience.  I’m sure anyone who has had the pleasure of incarceration can relate.  Which, finally, brings me to the reason for all of this bother. It’s in this precise situation—or just before this situation, actually, that imagination kicks in.  I could easily fall into that unspeakable pan of filth mere inches from my soft, white underside.  What if my wallet bounces from my pocket and tumbles down the hole?  I could hit my pants with my shit. There are, of course, layers of possibility, in which one fear kind of piggy-backs onto another, rendering both that much more heinous.  While squatting over this hole in the floor, the train could de-rail and the whole train car becomes a turning, wrenching, Swiss army knife of jagged possibilities.  And I’m naked!   It’s all enough to make one lock the door. 

Let’s face it: one could very well piss in the same pot from birth till death and have a most satisfactory time of it.  But I think this burden, of sorts; this mistake of a brain evolution has dealt us, is really just expressing its need to push the limits.  Of both self and of possibility (read: create a better world) in a larger sense.  Travel is one of a hundred ways to push said limits and seek a modicum of mastery over the demons that take away from the fun. (A really selfish way, as it turns out, in that it can only obliquely be seen as anything other than thrill-seeking. But still.)

As I’ve typed away, there is a river of ants making its way along the bench which frames our porch.  Day after day, twenty-four/seven, these bad boys make up a veritable two-way ant highway—on their way, no doubt, to a ruptured sugar packet.   But on this morning I notice something new: every now and then a lone ant kind of loses the path.  Wanders off onto the bench seat and meanders about.  An errant ant.   I wonder if it’s part of the tightly-scripted plan.  If, say, there is some larger value in breaking rank which neither the ant nor his cohorts can ever know.  Hmmm.

Well, there it is!  At the end of this week we push on to points north and then east. My “cellulitis” is on the mend--for now, I shall keep my arm.  In fact, all told, I’ve probably enjoyed a more healthful existence than were I home at hearth.  It is true that after one month of seeing this corner of the world I’m still rather dull-witted and slow.  But you never know.  Even old Neanderthal dogs—it’s said—are capable of new tricks.  I’m looking forward to once again laying eyes on Delhi—the city of Djinns!  And seeing what form of ghost rears its haunting head.