this way up.

the view outside my window looks cold and wet as heavy clumps of snowflakes near the ground and immediately melt into a light rain. icy snow clings to the edges of my oval port-hole framing an airplane wing powdered white with a light dusting of winter as i sit in the drowning hiss of piped-in air and the on-and-off chatter between the two women behind me, who seem to find endless inspiration to banter on about dry skin, lotions, and soaps. as we wait for the plane to get de-iced, i can only close my eyes and mindlessly drift off into nothingness. i went to the doctor and he said "your skin's so dry... you should use dove." with an awkward popping crunch all along the roof of the plane, coupled with the utter steamy-smokiness that floods the view outside, it was clear the defrosters had arrived. ...but i've been using dove for years! as a man in a cherry picker hosed down the plane with a warm foamy concoction, it became hard to ignore the strange odor that began to pervade the cabin, no doubt coming from the defrost-cocktail and seeping in with the undying hiss above. the smell, a mix of pharmaceutical detergent and alcohol it seemed, was fresh, yet incredibly irritating, in the same way an all-too-clean restroom can smell incredibly irritating at times - stabbing at my nose and brain.

as the cherry picker outside pulled away and the plane skirted along desolate runways and snow-dusted lawns, we prepared for take-off. charging against the snow and against gravity, we climb skyward to the ratchet sound of propeller blades emanating from the very non-propeller turbine outside. blanketed in white-out conditions, looking as if a sheet had been pulled over my window, we seemingly navigate blindly through the color-purgatory, where even i have difficulty telling up from down. half expecting to see heaven itself silhouetted in the abysmal void, i imagine this is what that white light really looks like. breaking through the upper layers of cloud cover however, we emerge into the golden glow of sunshine, leaving the clouds below us, now just a thick vast sea of cottony dunes rolling into the distant horizon, looking even more heavenly than ever before.

somewhere over the midwest.

smiles un-ruined.

stepping off the plane and onto foreign tarmac, a strange feeling envelops me, clinging to my mind and soul, while the thick and heavy humidity clutches my skin as i don my cap to stave off the blazing sun. in this quiet little town, closed off on all sides by dense jungle, something strange is in the air. before me, behind white waving angkor wats against red blue fields, the main and only terminal of siem reap international airport is little more than a long squat two-story building flanking the deserted airstrip. turning around to take a look at the little putt-putt twin-propeller plane that brought me here, only then do i notice the green, flat, mountain-less landscape which surrounds me, looking ever-ready to sweep in and crush my little plane and this little airport if given the chance.

in cambodia, drivers’ seats are on the left and drivers drive on the right. in certain cases where cars are [most likely stolen] from neighboring thailand however, driver seats are on the right, but in either case little details like these seem moot when the roads, hardly more than steam-rolled clay, aren’t marked with lane lines and turn to a sticky muck after every downpour, becoming riddled with muddy potholes as if to remind me that yes, this area used to be rampant with deadly minefields, an uneasy suspicion tells me some areas still are. as the soles of my shoes are dyed a rust-red each time i step out of the car or out of the hotel, i get the feeling that even the earth itself has been stained by the blood of years long past and people long forgotten. despite the fall of the khmer rouge in the nineties, with other supporters still in hiding, the legacy of those four years of torture and extermination is now blatantly evident in the crippled country itself.

as i walk towards many of the ruined monuments of an ancient jungle empire, string and percussion music reverberate through the air, conjuring up ghostly images of a bygone era, with its lavish ceremonies and dancing nymph-like asparas. under the dappled shade from nearby trees, a few temple visitors have gathered to listen to a small band draw and hammer out traditional khmer music, dropping a few bills into their donation urn between songs. the bands, which can be frequently found along the small dirt walking paths to many temples, consist of landmine survivors, and most often, it is their missing arms and legs that attest to the fact.

in the outskirts of siem reap town, along one of the heavily potholed dirt roads and past the siem reap zoo, i visit the aki ra landmine museum. as i enter the gate of the small almost residential property, a young girl greets me in what appears to be military or scout regalia and cradling a baby monkey in her arms. passing the wall of the first wood-shack building in front of me, with the word "museum" spelled out in tiny green-plastic landmines, i come upon two men on a bench, whittling down one end of wooden rods into a point for mine probing.

in the main wooden building of the museum, different types of defused mines are stacked waist-high beneath little counters with pertinent information on the specific type of mine beneath. as i take a seat on a small stool, the legs of which have been fashioned out of defused mortar shells, i flip through a few small photo albums, each taking me on a snapshot journey through mine hunts and controlled detonations. around the museum a few kids play or lounge about, each a landmine accident survivor, and one wall here is specifically dedicated to telling the stories of many of them, all of whom came to aki ra to seek help after their accidents.

in such a sobering place, i find it hard to be cheerful, despite the smiles and laughs, which beam off the children’s faces. thanks to mr. aki ra the man and donations from humanitarians and visitors, it seems the museum has been doing a good job of sending children to school and teaching both young and old alike how to play traditional instruments, giving the thousands of carved asparas a tune to dance to and temple visitors something to enjoy.

life and development in siem reap moves at a creeping pace, except for perhaps hotel construction projects. in a town so dependant on tourism, they hardly use the country’s own currency, old stone temples and palaces from a thousand years ago are now rivaled by grand inns and sprawling resorts popping up like peddler-kids along airport boulevard – still however, as law requires, in charming khmer style. while foreigners own and run hotels, restaurants, and bars, real cambodians work as tour guides, taxi drivers, market stall owners, or peddlers, parroting the same exact few phrases everywhere to tourists in an uncanny eeire likeness. as if all of them learned it together, sir, you want to buy? they all shout. you want cold drink? only one dollar, you want to buy sir? when you come back, you buy only from me, ok? i remember you, you remember me?

as our driver drove us through rural siem reap and past vast acres of waterlogged rice paddies, i strain my eyes to look across the country itself - the horizon as clear as a black line between green and gray. on our way to visit a floating village by tonle sap lake and phnom khrom hill, seemingly the only natural mountain-hill in all of siem reap, our driver points out his house by the side of the road. while foreigners live in mansions (which are hardly mansions by american standards), real cambodians live in wood or bamboo shack-houses, either set on stilts or latched to bamboo bundles to avoid the ever-present threat of flooding. local cooking here entails building a coal fire and cooking the daily bought or caught ration of fish or meat – in some cases even dog, rat, squirrel, or frog meat – while in town, restaurants provide a choice of dinner options for tourists ranging from indian to korean to british pub.

compared to neighboring thailand, laos, and vietnam, cambodia is a fairly expensive country by dollar bill standards, while its people are incredibly poor. without foreign aid and without foreign visitors however, it seems much of the country’s people would cease to exist, slowly fading into the trees and into ruin. despite the tourism dependency, it is amazing that cambodia only recently received its first international automated teller banking machines, and then again only in the capitol of phnom penh. in the quiet jungle of town of siem reap, as tourists ignore the you-want-to-buy cries from swarming kids and the cups of landmine-crippled beggars, families trek for miles by motorbike to line up early at jayavarman vii hospital, founded by swiss man dr. beat richner, which provides free treatment to sick children.

sitting at dinner on the top floor of the soup dragon, i puff a cigarette and watch smoky ghosts alight from my table, off the balcony, and into the dark forests beyond. there is something strange about this place, i say to my friends. i can’t put my finger on it, but it just feels strange here. with such a history of rise and fall, of death and destruction, i begin to think that red dirt isn’t the only thing that follows me wherever i go. somewhat sorry that the ruined state of cambodia today is a product of the khmer rouge and its programs to eliminate intellectuals in order to create equality, i think back to the real ruins i came here to see – monuments to an era when it was these people who controlled most of what is now their neighboring countries. i simply have to look in the faces of smiling kids to see the resiliency of the people to years of war and listen to people speak to feel their honesty and commitment to never war again. always friendly and eager to please, the people i have met have been most gracious with help and hospitality.

after asking a little peddler-girl to play out a song for me on the flute she was trying to sell, i like many others, also finally succumb to the smiles and hand over my dollar, this time for the art and not for the flute, thoroughly convinced that the spirits who roam these lands are just as gentle and curious as the kids. able only to hope for the best, i know that any type of positive change for cambodia itself and its people, however slow, is ultimately a good thing. they might not remember me, but i will remember them.

siem reap, cambodia.

TG 775

it is midnight, pacific standard time, of july the thirtieth, and i have been practically airborne for about sixteen hours thus far. outside the little freezing porthole window of this plane, the sky is bright, clear, and sunny, and in the distance, the almost unimaginable scales of blue lie stacked in horizontal planes along the horizon, from the deep blue expanse of space above, to the green-blue wash of the sea below. i take a moment to pause, take off my glasses and rub my eyes, which are now dry and sore with the feeling that i had stayed up all night writing a paper and staring endlessly into a computer screen. i try taking a few deep breaths through my nose, but all i get is utterly congested sniffles that crackle everytime i have to inhale to keep my nose from running. this always happens to me on planes it seems - maybe it has something to do with how the air conditioning is always blowing, causing me to feel cold on skin and warm in body. then again, it might just be my allergies to the massive amounts of dust, mold, and human dander i imagine to be blowing around in this recycled artificial atmosphere.

at kansai international airport in osaka, where i am scheduled to land and layover another hour, the time is about four thirty in the afternoon. i know this because the continuous video projection on the screen before me gives me moment-to-moment updates on flight distances, temperatures, times, and current locations in japanese, thai, and english. as my body and mind ache, trying to figure out [and actually agree on] what time it really is, i can only sit back and stare braindead at my little cartoon plane trace out a white line over the pacific. while i sit in my chair under a lone spotlight lamp overhead, the airplane cabin is awash with indirect ambient lighting from depending on their new-ness, dull-lavender or dull-golden flourescent tubes along the wall. in this strange, muted, purgatory of time, no one seems to know what is going on except for the flight attendants, who bustle up and down the aisle, opening and closing little cabinets and getting their i-don't-know-whats. around me, most people are either sleeping or watching the strange in-flight entertainment which has just switched on, putting an end to the excruciatingly exciting distance, temperature, time, and location updates. now, from what i can gather, as i am without headphones and not particularily interested, cameron jones, whoever he is, appears to be talking about smooth jazz music. ugh, smooth jazz, i think to myself. my neighbor, who earlier, rambled on about his texan homeland and this trip to visit his thai fiancée, who he met in a massage-parlor-burlesque-house, is dead asleep, having passed on most of his meals like a coke mule.

all the porthole shades have been pulled, and the eeire almost noiseless environment creeps me out. aside from the clicks and small muffled slams from staff-cabinets and lavatory doors, i am overcome by the loud, enveloping sound of whitenoise, either caused by the aforementioned continuous ac, or the sound of the wind outside trying to tear this little plane apart. either way, it sounds as if i am completely surrounded by giant waterfalls, but i prefer real waterfalls so much more. seven more hours to bangkok.

somewhere over the pacific ocean.

access denied V.

we proceed to head to south campus and find the route to the steam plant.

heading to campus a little before two at night, we walk along desolate streets lit orange by campus street lamps. every so often, a car drives by while we stroll, chat, and make big gestures with our hands to appear as if we are actually carrying on a significant conversation. first stop was franz hall and deciding against entering the alley between franz and young through a loading bay, we walk through the inverted fountain plaza instead, surveying the scene and ignoring the handful of college students talking and hanging out around the fountain. walking into the science quadrangle and rounding franz’s corner, we go down the plant-filled alley, looking in bushes for the floor grate which would let us into the depths of campus. finding the entrance locked, we head for murphey instead.

the area around murphey hall unfortunately has a small scattering of campus maintenance and facilities personnel, who from what we can guess, get off work at two. surveying the area while looking as if we were just taking a late-night final-exams study-break to walk around campus and get some air, we poke around murphey only to abandon the exploration momentarily, after finding out we were in clear view of some personnel walking down the opposite side of the street. perhaps moore would be open and kinsey under construction was looking more and more feasible.

crossing over the “bridge” between the dickson and schoenberg plazas, we take a seat on the steps of the music building to break and rethink our plan of action – we would check out moore, loop back to investigate kinsey in the more inconspicuous alley beside powell, and give murphey another go.

moore, whose doors lock at night offer us no entrance, and despite several open windows, all are too high up and out of reach. the door at the end of the loading alley across from the math sciences building is also unfortunately locked and we move on. to our surprise, kinsey is well-sealed by covered construction fences, and neither of us expected construction companies would do such a good job of it. have you ever had lecture in that hall? i casually ask a friend as a maintenance worker passed. i think people even have physics in it. time to return to murphey.

as we approach the building, two facilities workers are waiting by the curb, most likely for a ride home. few if any people are out now, and seldom do we see a random car drive by. reaching the end of murphey, looking all the while as if we were just heading to the bus stop or the sororities, we jump a low wall into some bushes. duck-walking along the side of the building, and trying not to step on too many crunching leaves, we pass by office windows and over metal grates. finding an unlocked one and noticing a small rung ladder leading down into darkness, we lift the cover and shine in our flashlights. a dead end. looking more like a dungeon or oubliette, nothing but two small windows to basement offices and a drain lie at the bottom. we slide the grate back into place and continue over to the main door of the building, around where an entrance grate should be located, according to our map.

tucked into a set of bushes, we find the grate. though unlocked, the grill is far too large and heavy to lift and secure easily. shining our flashlight down, we follow the metal-rung ladder to a puddle on the floor. it seems the wooden ladder which bridged the metal ladder with dry ground a short distance away had disappeared since my trip three years ago. we agree that we would use this entrance only as a last resort. it was time to check out haines, which had let us in numerous times, and royce, an original entrance from my first explorations.

passing haines, we take a look around the secret window, which always seemed like a good bet. this time, however, it was locked from the inside – both of them. it looked like ucla was getting smart, probably [and hopefully] at the expense of students getting dumb [and caught]. with no way in, we move to royce, hoping my old pathways were still open. royce is unfortunately locked. after a careful survey of the surrounding area and a closer investigation of the lock however, we were in with a click. quickly moving around a corner and out of sight, we pause momentarily to listen for stray noises. feeling safe, we press the elevator call and duck out of the way to insure us from any surprises when the doors slid open. coast clear, we take the lift to the basement level after noticing we could only go lower if we had an access key. emerging into the room with the shelf of blueprints and now, numerous boxes of envelopes, running on my memory we head for an unmarked door ahead of us leading to a well-lit metal stairwell. double checking the door and remembering it locked from the outside, i prop it open with a piece of cardboard. we walk down the metal staircase, which vibrated to a tremendous roar each time we moved, forcing us to pause frequently and listen for security. reaching the sub-basement and discovering the door out is locked, we are forced to head back up and abandon the attempt here. very luckily, the door i propped earlier was still open; if it wasn’t, we could have very well been stuck in the stairwell until daylight.

exiting royce, we head to dickson hall, recalling the building was also under construction, and being tucked into a corner of campus, might offer a less-secured way into the depths below. reaching dickson, we find one gate slightly ajar. moving into the shadows, we writhe through the gate and explore the construction site. the place is deserted. plastic tarps strewn about the skeletal frame of a building that once was and will be again, wave like forgotten ghosts in the abandoned wasteland. locating the stairwell to the basement, and moving about the familiar landscape – the only place that has remained familiar over the past three years, we find the concrete hole in the wall and enter ucla’s underbelly.

moving carefully through the sometimes pitch-black tunnel, i pull my arms in to keep from touching the heated pipes and electrical cords on one side and duck every so often to keep form smashing my head into the fluorescent light bulbs above. reaching the storage bay underneath yrl, we cautiously climb down the rickety metal ladder and take cover behind a large piece of machinery. maneuvering ourselves around and over some pipes, we look down the large warehouse, which is still filled with boxes of books. conveniently, there is no sign of life, and we hop over a file cabinet to reach the door into the blue hub room. unlocked, it opens with a gentle pull. moving about the giant blue pipes and immersed in the sound of the steady hum of pumping water, we find the dark entrance to the tunnel towards royce. reaching the end, we exit the door marked “service tunnel” and into a small machine room filled with steaming cracks in the floor and boxes of air filters. checking the maintenance bay under royce and finding it clear, we snake through to the other door down the hall, which luckily also opened right up. apparently, it seems most doors remain unlocked when an entire area is restricted. entering the unmarked door and going up the short flight of stairs, we were headed towards powell library.

under powell, wires and graffiti fill the tiny room connecting several tunnels. an old wooden door, looking very much like the one we could not get through on one of my first explorations, lies dusty and walked over upon the ground. on the wall another more modern and secure door seems to have replaced it. crawling over an incredibly large and treacherous bundle of wires and squeezing by some heated pipes, we were off to moore.

as we entered the earth-bottomed and broken-cement-strewn dump yard under moore hall, we notice a pair of people on the other end of the large underground room. also noticing us at the same moment, we all freeze, until a more careful scrutinizing of them leads me to wave them over. followed by a friend of hers, the girl comes skipping over, obviously relieved that we were not authorized personnel of some sort. fairly new to the underground scene, this was the girl’s third time down and the other guy’s second. i tell them that in all my subterranean trips, i had never come across other student explorers. it was truly a strange coincidence.

passing moore, we veer from the route towards the life sciences building to investigate the inverted fountain and see if there were any significant areas underneath. heading east, we notice a line of graffiti. new york, it read, followed by an arrow. under the supposed area beneath the inverted fountain, we don't find anything, and the areas under schoenberg are quite an equal let down, aside from the large graffiti covered machinery at the schoenberg-perloff junction. backtracking to the spot where we originally veered from our path, we were again heading down the life sciences route.

rectangular instead of round and incredibly hot, the tunnel lay on a straight downward slope. pausing to catch a breath and take a break from the eighty-plus degree heat, we stop at the intersection under the science quad before continuing south. below life sciences, a well-lit machine room churns out strange noises while one green piece of pump-machinery churns out water, which drips down the sides and splashes on the floor. we don’t think it is supposed to do that. continuing on, we begin the route towards the steam plant and into the belly of the smoking beast.

pitch black, the cramped tunnel snakes its way off campus and into westwood. somewhere around halfway, one connecting tunnel extends south. only graffiti would let us know it headed towards the medical plaza. skipping the detour, we keep going ahead, down deeper into the earth. with the beam from my flashlight too weak to alight the end of the tunnel, i can only point it to the ground, keeping us from walking onto anything. at the end of the tunnel, the farthest i had ever come and the farthest we would come today, lay a concrete hole that extended some ten to fifteen feet down. a propped-up wooden ladder was the only sign that someone had passed this way before. shining our flashlights down, we saw that a few feet from the bottom, lay another hole that extended even farther down – and by down i mean into the ground and not off to the side. it seemed to us that apparently one really could reach hell if they wanted to. for us however, it was time to turn back. nothing but the dim glow of a pinprick of light at the other end of the tunnel pierced the darkness when we turned off our flashlights. we were on the return to the life sciences building, the safest exit to the surface among our other medical plaza and steam plant options. back at the lit half-way junction, we pause to leave a date under a digital pressure meter on one of the ducts – one last scrawl to commemorate our college years.

under the life sciences building and passing the machinery and overflowing pump, we ascend a small flight of stairs and cautiously push open a door into the middle of a hallway. checking both sides to make sure the coast was clear like a child crossing a street, we exit the underworld and back into life. taking the stairs by the elevator, we go up to the lobby of the building and exit the main doors. inhaling a breath of fresh air and breathing out a sigh of relief, we take a moment to look at the new buildings which had sprung up around the ls building within the past three to four years. this area was no longer familiar to us; the small lecture hall on the side of the building had been demolished to make way for a new science building – i don’t even know its name. i am struck by the realization of how much time had actually pass. all that was recognizable during my first year in college as a science major had disappeared – the only thing that remained constant was the tunnel. just like dickson hall, our entrance tonight, where a large lecture hall had since been remodeled to become two building floors, the familiar had become the foreign. the only thing that remained constant was the in-between, underground.

since the construction of the campus, it is these tunnels that have remained constant and the abundance of graffiti that can attest to that fact. made up entirely of history, partly by legend, moderately by rumor, and always by adventure, the veins and arteries of ucla will always remain frozen in time and fond memory. goodbye ucla, thank you for all you have had to offer and allowed me to discover.

ucla, underground.

urban wonderland.

welcome to los angeles, the city of angels. not beautiful when it's rainy, not beautiful when it's sunny, but indisputably perfect when it's perfect. as i stand on the ledge outside my front door, smoking a cigarette and contemplating the random things that venture into my thoughts, i inhale and survey the city around me. i've generally hated los angeles... the way people are always in an angry hurry to get to their destinations, treating their cars as tanks when they drive and gold-plated museum pieces when they park... the way the thick brown sky chokes the city, asphyxiating glass-metal monoliths and blanketing my view of the snowy mountains in the distance. through the seldom blue, planes slice the sky to pieces, leaving white chemtrails across the heavens like an enormous web for some horrendous spider in hiding. a jumble of concrete veins and arteries, often clogged, transport what seem to be an endless supply of polluting blood to and from the city, and as i listen hard for the chirp of birds, all i hear is drowned out by the steady hum of the freeway beside me, just an arm's reach away. occasionally, a horn honks, a big-rig rattles, and a police or ambulance siren pierces the dull whitenoise, but all the birds.. have fled.

as the parasitic city continues to grow, it stretches its gnarled fingers to the north and clutchs the brown hills once domniated by lone oaks and green grasses. the land has been conquered and turned into a suburban hell; a labyrinth of identical streets, houses, and of course, cul-de-sacs. where residents themselves can hardly differentiate their homes from their neighbor's, it seems amazing that they can still differentiate between themselves; blinded by everything except for class and race. welcome to los angeles, the city of angeles, where the brightest stars in the night sky are planes, the tallest trees are telephone poles, and the greenest leaves are found in our purses and wallets.

how often i forget that this is los angeles and nevertheless perfect, when it's perfect. brown is the sky but beautiful are the sunsets. sitting on the beach with some friends in the warm breeze, learning to slackline between some electrical poles, i look over at the sea, at the surf breaking gently onto the sand, regretting that i left my surfboard at home. seeing us tumble like beginners onto the sand, a group of young kids come over and join us, and as we watched, soaking in the socal sun, each kid fearlessly jumped on the line, fell off, and immediately got up to give it another go. watching them persevere i revisit in my mind what it would be like to be a kid again, unbreakable and eager to learn new things; my childhood lost to a protected life, though thankful that my grandfather took the initiative to take me to parks, museums, and zoos.

as the sun dipped lower into the reddening sky, and left us in silhouettes, warm perfection beamed through the air, tanning my skin. as i sank my toes into the coolness of shady sand beneath my feet, and listened to the soft crashes of a green-blue tide, i relish feeling of being absolutely free of school and demands. nine months from now, i may be starting another six or seven years of education, but now was not the time to think about that. instead, it was the time to just kick back and appreciate the moment for what it was. it was hard to even imagine that a week ago, a cold continuous rain beat down on this same warm beach. as the breeze kicked up a black plastic bag and sent it rolling across the tan sand before us, pointing to it, a friend and i exclaimed in unison... tumbleweed! while another ran to chase it down and place it in the trash. it was an urban tubbleweed no less, and a harsh yet artistic reminder of reality in this urban wonderland. why are we living here? a reporter rhetorically asked in a segment on the afternoon news. it's for days like today.

los angeles, california.