The Tour Guide

 "The only thing

that can ruin

a good day 

is people."

- Hemmingway

A little way down the beach you'll encounter something between a fold in time and a public exhibition of why things might go wrong. Like most things, the more crucial patterns of human behaviour are not to be found in freak incidents and news headlines. We don't need to bare witness to young men with machetes or remorseless rape gangs to see which way the slope is facing, although it is unlikely to be completely unrelated. What you need to be, is on the lookout for the small everywhere things.

In the last five years of my life I've lived in Phu Quoc, Vietnam. A place where I have witnessed the gap between music and futuristic construction noise grow smaller, but louder, and wider spread. So don't be surprised as you head a little way down the beach if you start hearing such a noise. These events are called 'team building exercises,' and they are put on by larger organisations to inject some fun into their staff teams. They share the same colour scheme with the popular Pat Sharp's Funhouse despite  being nearing on 40 years later. Yes, this is the future that we are living in. These are times we were told would showcase the far reaching capabilities of the human race. 

So, they'll be a man, usually one of the higher-up-the-food-chain managers with a microphone connected to a big rented PA system, and there'll also be a DJ connected to that too. Fish have the advantage of being able to live beneath the water, I do not. The kind of organisations that are subject to this kind of entertainment are the big hotels, and various widespread tourism companies. The staff are usually young. Mid-twenties tops. There are companies that organise all of this. They have games to play. Games that can be compered. Not compared to other games, but compered. The job of the man with the microphone. He was eager to put his name forward so he could be remembered as the life and soul. It's like a big sports day, but perhaps more inclusive. They usually last a few hours. Photos are taken. Staff are encouraged to share their experience with the social network to illustrate what a great place it is they work. Despite a six day working week and a wage that in no way reflects the profit margins of the organisation, life sure is perfect. 

It has been mentioned on a few occassions that I'm something of a cynic, but I don't buy it. I don't see many people's hearts beating for the dayglo event t-shirt and the opportunity to play volleyball with their colleagues. Perhaps fun is dead to me. For sure. But, I still don't think that's it. From what I see, as I walk a little down the beach, people don't really know who people are. But instead of being clueless, people assume they know. And at the most dangerous level of this little game, is people who don't know who they really are so they assume that the people who assume know who they should be, and they roll with that. Quite a mouthful, I know, but better read a few times than lived once.

If I'm completely honest with you, I didn't really have anything to say in particular. I just stopped by to type. It's quite meditative. A quick moan about more noise and then I'm off again. But, now I'm here, I get to check in on myself. Make sure I'm still working while one of the dogs tries to swat a fly on the window. Neither dog has caught a single fly while I have been watching. Their food bowls have been left defiantly full, and I have been smoking too many cigarettes over the last few months. Habitually, not necessarily. I'm just concerned that if you're going to get shoehorned into a box, then it's important to make sure the box-maker has at least some of your best interests at heart. And all I can see is the promotion of forgetting the self.

The self is marketed as a burden to be placed on the ground and walked away from. Those conversations you have with yourself. The lyrics that make you stop and think. Those quiet activties that you can lose yourself in. A little way down the beach, you won't see any of that. You will see, once you get passed the team building exercises, a world being shaped to allow people to operate on autopilot. To not think. Why would you want to go on holiday and think? Why? When we can bring you everything you are used to, and the only thing that changes is the temperature, but we have AC for that. Soon, will the only remaining places that still possess any culture all be located in the third world? I see a lot of people doing a lot of what is of no real benefit to them. Massage parlours boast loud outdoor speakers because the business is slow and someone saw it outside a restaurant that was doing pretty well so they figured they'd give it a go, and stubborness will persist until it works. Or doesn't. They seem unlikely to notice either way. 

This is one of those 'select all' and 'delete' things. It is bland. Mundane. Unmoving. Once again, negatively leaning. Lifeless. It is all of those things, and that is why I will leave it here. To remind you to urge things toward your life that keep you otherwise. To hold on to them. To allow yourself to feel like an alien in a world that claps itself to death. Keep pushing. Talk to animals if you need to. Search out those moments. And don't do so materialistically. Don't go hunting hot spots or looking for the perfect angle. Just open your eyes and watch how many come. Beware of straight lines, and finding yourself considered acceptable. Be looked at like you're a freak. Make the room uncomfortable. But again, don't do so with deliberate intentions. Let it all come, because that 'it' is you, and you might not know it yet, but you miss them.