Peregrinations
The unofficial travelogue of a vagabond
Exploring The World To Discover Where I Started From
By Dominic Arizona
Bonuccelli
Alice came to a fork in the road.
"Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire
cat.
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then,” said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
-Alice
in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
 Some physicists postulate every moment
is a crossroads of unlimited profundity. Any instant in time can
go any direction, have any outcome, and not only that but that
any moment DOES indeed have EVERY possible outcome in an alternative
universe. Although we humans can only register one time, one sequence
of historical events within our current consciousness, in reality
a limitless number of events and consequences radiates out from
each fulcrum of time like swirling twirling temporal DNA in every
possible vector.
Whether this is true or not I have no damn clue :)
Dateline: SEATTLE 2001. A professional photographer, shooting
editorial, commercial, corporate, I was. Decently-connected and
successful enough in the milieu in which I labored, resident
of the Emerald City for 7 years, give or take. Outwardly stable.
Inwardly needing change, hard. So I tangented, I grabbed onto
one of those caddywompus pick-up-sticks that radiated out from
the center of my then-now at a skew angle. Partly to pursue a
relationship I very much wanted to make work, partly to subvert
everything I thought I knew, partly to mix it up and keep life
fresh. I put everything I owned into storage (except my camera,
of course, let's not be ridiculous) and flew to Australia. No
plan, no agenda, no expectations. No return ticket.
Subsequent sensory snippets:
Purchasing a campervan
and motoring across the Australian outback, Mad-Max style. Being
hugged by a small kangaroo and locked in a bathroom stall with
a nervous wombat. Winging to Bali two days before September 11th,
2001 - a surreal experience, as the peace-loving Hindu Balinese
are predisposed to convey news with a smile or laugh, even if it's
a tragedy of massive proportions. Singapore. Thailand. Why were
there more Starbucks in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, than all of Australia
combined? Cambodia's Angkor Wat truly seemed one of the seven wonders
of the ancient world still in existence, and they let people climb
on it?! I was happy to see tourism and peace very slowly returning
to a land ravaged so long by civil war. I was very not happy to
learn that that same civil war was partly brought into existence
by covert US military operations and bombing inside the eastern
Cambodian border, while Nixon told the oblivious American public
that no military operations were being conducted inside Cambodia,
period. Funny, I never got that  news-flash back in the homeland!
Perhaps my schoolbooks and evening news weren’t as unbiased
as I had always accepted. Vietnam. Driving a car through downtown
Tokyo at midnight on a Friday is like living inside a Monaco GrandPrix
videogame (but still not as scary as driving in Andorra). Blasting
merengue and no personal space in the Dominican Republic. Beautifully-rendered
communist propaganda and sinewy salsa dancers in downtown Havana.
Gynormous panamax vessels squeaking by with mere inches through
the Panama Canal. Circum-ambulating sacred temples with septuagenarian
Buddhist nuns in Tibet. Making friends, attracting too much attention,
and getting yelled at in Haiti. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder
of Orion. C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhaüser
gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Apologies, I've slipped into a Blade Runner soliloquy. But like
rogue replicant Roy, I've had a wild ride of 4 year duration.
I appreciate every moment, except the dose of giardia in Phnom
Penh; I could have lived my entire life and not needed to savor
that unique perspective.
 Instead of anachronistic laws like the ones that maintain
virtual blockades around Cuba, I hope someday in America there
will be laws that every citizen over 18 years of age should be
required to spend at least one entire year abroad. Preferably before
college but certainly before the age of 30. I stroll around main
street towns here in the belly of the most powerful country in
the world and hear people proselytize about the how the rest of
the world should operate. People who've never left their own time
zone, wouldn’t know a foreign culture if they drove their
yellow-ribboned Hummer over it, never negotiated a roundabout on
the British side of the road, or thought from an angle outside
their own, deigning to lecture the world on how to live. It’s
an irony as tasty and delicious as any Starbucks blueberry muffin
I’ve enjoyed (ok granted I DID live in Seattle too long).
When the English landed in Australia, they declared it “Terra
Nullius” – "Land Belonging to No One" – meaning
it was officially proclaimed to be devoid of previous inhabitants
and therefore legal to be appropriated by Her Majesty. Forget
the fact that aborigines had
lived there since long long before England was even a twinkle
in any Anglo-Saxon’s eye; the queen needed somewhere to
send her prisoners! The needs of modern society had trumped the
heritage of an indigenous people. Picture young America and how
it handled the Native Americans, but with less than half the
time gone by to heal. Australia has only been a country on the
books for barely 100 years now, so many wounds are still fresh.
Obviously whitey’s “civilizing” of “savage” Australia
has had its myriad effects (both negative AND positive), but
whatever the result it's difficult to change a culture with a
70,000+ year legacy in the blink of a century. Cathy Freeman’s
gold medal in the Sydney Olympics was such an emotional experience
for young Australia, for probably just that reason. The aboriginal
Freeman (what a surname) commanded herself in her country’s
name with excellence, honor and dignity, did her victory lap
with the Australian flag AND the aboriginal flag (an olympics
no-no) and thereby helped to heal the wounds of a young nation.
 Two months ago I was in Tibet having a parallel encounter.
A doctor who had served with the US military was informing me that
change of the sort that happened in Tibet (and Australia) is inevitable
everywhere because the new generation always wants new technology.
They want to be in the mainstream, to have what others have, to
be current, viable. In whatever culture, in whatever form, he argued,
you can't halt the march of modernity. Therefore the change wrought
upon Native Americans, the change wrought upon Tibet, the change
wrought upon tribes in the Amazon is a natural process and you
can’t fault the technology-bearers, the incoming force, whitey.
They're just givin' the less “evolved” people what
they want.
I tried really hard to imagine a land where teenagers would be
allowed to choose the cultural and ideological direction of a
nation. Full of passion, they love trying new things and new
technology and the perks that the modern world can offer, and
why shouldn't they? But perhaps the young don't yet possess a
full appreciation of what time-honored traditions have to offer.
Nor can everyone divine all the negative sides of modern trappings.
The Devil’s Playground, a documentary film about the Amish
tradition of Rumspringa, in which every teenager is allowed to
leave the church and go experience the secular world, shows the
kind of burnout that follows such a desperate grasping for what’s “out
there” and “available” as opposed to what is
worth preserving. Likewise, the whitewash of destroying native
cultures in exchange for the dominant society seems to be just
as misguided a method. Isn't that why usually a culture’s "leaders" are
a bit more seasoned, a tad more able to provide perspective on
the pro and con consequences of things? Homo sapiens have rushed
to the use of fossil fuels to run our lives, our economy, but
now are we seeing that perhaps the burn of this "modernity" on
the environment might eventually outweigh the positives? Might
we gain some perspective with time and change tack?
 I'm sure aboriginal Australians appreciate not dying from
polio or cholera, value the wonders of modern medicine. But did
tribes have to be decimated by war and disease first, did children
have to be separated from their families and orphaned in the process?
Downtown Lhasa, the historical seat of the Dalai Lama, now looks
like a Super Mario Brothers digitized set; it's all nicely paved
streets and neon karaoke bar kaleidoscopic madness. Cool for photos
but I suspect the Dalai Lama might have a coronary if he is ever
allowed to return home and see it for himself. I'm sure the Tibetans
appreciate a nice vehicular infrastructure thanks to the Chinese
aggressor, but must it come at the expense of their own personal
freedom, religious and political? A trio of Buddhist monks near
the Jokhung, after topping off my 6th cup of yak butter tea, told
me in broken English, after scanning the temple for eavesdroppers,
that if ever they had the chance to oust the Chinese, they’d
be the first to take up guns and fight. This from a group of overweight
middle-aged men who have devoted themselves to non-violent monasticism.
Imagine what young men in the Middle East think, and feel. I'm
sure Iraqi women appreciate being able to vote, but at the expense
of having their neighbor’s children's legs blown off by American
military strikes that miss their targets? Of course the answer
is that it doesn't really matter what they think, they don't have
a choice. The victor alone writes the history and makes the decisions.
And gets the spoils. The strongest shall choose for all.
“You
become a monster so the monster will not break you.” -Peace
on Earth, U2
In Cuba a few years ago, I recall driving in a small caravan,
wending our way up a craggy hill to a deserted restaurant viewpoint
overlooking a scintillating bay. Smack dab in the center of the
luxuriant landscape was an incongruous entity, a fortress, a
foreign city unwanted within a sovereign land. And surrounding
America's Guantanamo military base was the western hemisphere's
largest field of landmines, placed there by the American military
to keep the Cubans off their own land. I thought Americans hate
WMDs? Not as long as they’re used against non-Americans,
I suppose. Inside Gitmo are kept imprisoned over 500 people for
more than 3 years without any charges being brought, without
any status afforded by the Geneva Convention.
 On another day on another continent, clad in white linen
shirts and pants, sashed with red scarves, my best friend Dennis
and I were a pair of coxcombs awaiting the rocket blast. At the
first volley you were warned the bulls were being released and
would reach you at the City Hall within 30 seconds. Pamplona was
jammed with people last summer, the majority being drunk Australians
who invent things to do more dangerous than the actual bull run
to prove their machismo. Like swan-diving off of 20-foot statues
over the cobblestoned-plaza below and hoping the 6 burly guys with
crossed-arms will catch ‘em before they slam face-first into
oblivion. This is usually how a few people die at Pamplona every
year. For remember, the burlies have been drinking since 6AM, and
the 2000 people in the plaza are pelting the jumper with slippery
raw eggs. But back at City Hall the bulls thunder by Dennis and
I in a blur and slip and pinball their way through a 90-degree
turn towards the bullfighting arena. That night, 6 of those same
bulls are put to test by 3 strutting matadors in front of a salivating
crowd.
 "Quite an experience to live in fear isn't it?
That's what it is to be a slave.” The
Blade Runner percolates up again, curious. Interesting too that
powerful men play fear like a harp from hell, and people happily
buy it (our enemies are behind every corner don’t you know,
terrorists behind every shrubbery), thereby turning the masses
into virtual slaves, a Roman mob desperate for gladiatorial blood.
And we were part of that mob, admittedly, I willingly paid my bullfight
ticket to support the institution of public execution as entertainment.
An embedded reporter, I was, on the frontlines for CNN witnessing
the obliterating of a “less evolved” life.
Not that I Pollyannaishly believe terrorists don’t exist,
or that the dominant is always bad, or that there aren’t
undesirables out there conspiring to hurt others. Life is almost
always grey, not black or white. England learned the hard way
that the resentment it caused in Northern Ireland could manifest
violently back in its own capital. With the unfortunate recent
events, Londoners may be again forced to grasp, as did Spaniards,
that failing to open one’s mind enough to learn why people
on the opposite side of the world hate you seems, ultimately,
self-defeating.
 Of course it's not a fair fight. Granted, the bulls weigh much
more and have machetes for horns, yes. But the matador maintains
a military of horseback picadors with spears, associate matador
strike-teams to disorient, a cape for subterfuge and covert ops,
superior technology and intelligence, and exit doors to run behind
when the disadvantaged gets the best of him. The bull has no
escape, no help save himself. The matador might say he fights
for honor, pride, tradition, pageantry (and of course a paycheck).
The bull only fights because he has to, to survive, because he
has been born in the wrong body. So I must admit there was euphoria
in our section of the arena (Australians included) when all 3
matadors were gored in short order and carried out of the stadium.
The aggressor was delivered the bill of his karmic debt. To be
charged with a rather high interest rate on the credit card of
his ass. ¡Que bravos son los toros! Even on a microcosmic
scale, it felt liberating to see. But in the great scheme of
things, it changed nothing. The bullfights will go on, the clash
of religions and cultures and countries and peoples will continue,
the cosmic sine-wave of dominance and submission will oscillate
endlessly above and below the X axis.
For me, the past four years have been an incredible journey soaking
in the sights, sounds, colors, and beliefs of a planet abound
in wondrous variety and texture. Naively I expected before leaving
I might change my views about the rest of the planet upon meeting
it in person. The great curiosity is that my views about what’s “out
there” have remained consistent, while the views of myself
and my country have changed the most. I have to admit I’ve
suffered apathy in the past about politics, history; they were
trivialities to be learned and recited for tests or manipulated
for clever coffee banter. Aft er having seen a quarter of the
world (and there's plenty more to go, I’m workin’ on
it!) I understand now I have a responsibility to learn what it
is MY country does around the world, how MY existence affects
the rest of the planet. It's easy to live in a bubble and say
that events are out of my control. Changing the world the right
way begins HERE, not on some warship steaming to Yemen, not on
some air force jet screaming to Bahrain. I refuse to discard
my own responsibility for how my life, opportunities, choices,
and taxes affect others, even if they’re not white and
even if I never get a chance to meet them. It's a far more powerful
thing to acknowledge the power of my actions, words, and to choose
a life with integrity according to the values I've come to respect
over the years. Values not gelled because I’ve been dictated
them by a church, or an organization, or a president, or a military,
or a university, or even a significant other, but formed because
I’ve gone out to meet the world around me, and then taken
time to think.
Now of course maybe tomorrow I might grab another one of those
tangential strands and ride off on a 35 degree yaw into a future
and reality that I never considered. Hmmm that does sound fun.
-Dominic Arizona Bonuccelli
Tucson, AZ / July 2005
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