Wild Nights in Lan Kwai Fong, Hong Kong : The Beads Part

click here to read the Hong Kong the T-shirt part (part 2)

                                "Hong Kong: A city of the future stuck in a world of the past"

I could tell you all about high tea at the Peninsula:

The tradition, the scones, the sandwiches, the English and inflated prices and violins and neoclassical decadence and Gucci and Prada and tourists blah blah blah.

Blah blah.

But I’m not.

Although I highly recommend the Hong Kong Peninsula for tea and urge you to check it out, you don’t really want to hear all that.

And you don’t want to hear about what I had for dinner so;

Fast Forward to post dinner drinks:

I was in with the expats and it just seemed kind of

Mcdonalds-y and to be all honest

I really wasn’t feeling it.

I was in the Lan Kwai Fong area of Hong Kong Island and there was trouble in these parts.

So I sat at an outdoor bar, drinking exceedingly over priced double bourbons neat,

And watched.

There was a stench of trite obscenity and assumed arrogance in the white air.

It reminded me of home.

The yellow air was more cautious, introspective but brazen all the same.

I smelled a fight.

I drank and read where the energy was flowing to better understand this tension I wanted no part of.

It was coming and I was realizing

And remembering:

when I was 17 and visiting relatives in London- the day was July 1, 1997-  A very hot summer day in London, and there was a lot of sadness in England.  It was the day that the grand old British Empire ceded control of Hong Kong to the Chinese.  I remember the fanfare and the tears in  mother England. 

And now many of the English and the representatives of all their former empire who live in or visit Hong Kong still act like its 1913. But its 2013 and the Chinese now own the place and have caught up in finance and can play the same game and have the ability to mock and harass the pale faces they call Gweilos  (or pale ghost white faces) with the same venom their ancestors were sometimes on the receiving end of.

 The young Chinese especially don’t like their former emperor’s representatives in HK, No.

 There are wounds there that still run deep, and there was anger for them and pride of them.

The fight was for dominance, and it was ever apparent to me now in this space.

Ahhh.

Hong Kong: A City of the future stuck in a world of the past.

I stepped out and sighed and lit a cigarette.

Ugh.

This place. It wasn’t my style, at least, it sure wasn’t my style for tonight, I wanted to find

some fucking

                             MUSIC.

                                                   (real music, like music music. Not the radio)

I inhaled and let it go. Ill finish my drink and walk somewhere, I trust ill end up in the best place.

I always do.

But there was a palpable disdain between the un-naturals and the naturals. And although I was just beginning to know the why of it all, I was immediately aware of its presence.  

But this wasn’t my fight, and I didn’t care to join.

I felt sorry for the lot of them.

Wake up Hong Kong. 

                                     "Lost in LKF Street Art"

I stood and smoked and pondered this, getting lost lost lost from my surroundings when I felt something jarring and unexpected……………………………….

……………………………………………….A hug.

A strong tight embrace, I open my physical eyes to see a Buddhist monk with his head buried in my breastbone.

Squeezing me.

Before I could even begin to hug him back he steps back and smacks my 3^rd Eye

   -------------------(forehead for the non believers)----------------

with a two finger snap and then kisses me on each cheek.

This crazy beautiful wide smile.

He had eyeglasses on, and I couldn’t get into his eyes, I couldn’t get a read, so I fumbled for some money to give him, as my brain wasn’t working.

(Brain no work, reach pocket)  -  (modern day consumerism at its morbidly sloppy finest)

I gave him some money and marveled at this man’s smile and reveled in his warm wise energy.

I laughed.

So did he.

He then took off all the beads he was wearing, Blessed each piece and gave them to me.

It was as if Lan Kwai Fong, the nexus of drunken debauchery, had gone silent.

And like that he was gone.

I laughed to myself and smiled wide.

If things like this didn’t happen to me every so often, I WOULD BE BORED.

I wanted to drop them at my hotel as I was headed to some clubs and did not want to sully these new treasures with a baptism in this godforsaken little corner of the universe…..

………………….Well………..

That and I was drinking.

                                 And didn’t want to   l   o   s     e    them.

As I walked back to my hotel to drop them off I became curious about the smile. I remembered the embrace and it was electricity.  But what was that ear to ear telling me? What his eyes and smile said, I didn’t yet know, but felt blessed nonetheless to have felt his honor and his grace in his embrace.

I pulled my earphones on and jaunted to the hotel. Tonight was a club night, and I would soon forget the whole matter.

But I would see this monk again.

A couple weeks Later.

On the beach in Palomino, Colombia.

He had the same smile but his glasses off and I immediately knew why he was smiling when I saw his eyes.  It was one of knowing and happiness, it was one of blessed safety and respect. He was right. He knew where I was going, and what I was

on. And he blessed me and blessed sacred items for my journey.  

This time, in Colombia, I didn’t need to fumble for money when he I saw him. I was eloquent and concise and was now speaking his language.

Hot damn that crazy man was right.

I hope I see that beautiful monk again.

And in truth, I already have- And every time I do I just laugh and laugh and laugh like an uncontrollable innocent child- my own knowing ear to ear smile plastered across my face.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

*There is immense traffic that flows through our brains, and I try to catch all of it, but there are times, even when we are paying attention that we miss something.

I didn’t realize this until now, months later as I write about it, but :

Earlier that day was the day that I:

Woke up late

was lost

trusted my feet

and

ended up at Wong Tai Sin Temple.

Interesting. 


More interesting: I told the story to a Greek brother of mine. His only remark was why i would take what i consider a sacred item back to the hotel (the mala beads), as to not sully them in a club, yet I would then go get sullied in a club myself. 

Brothers and sisters, that's  more than interesting...that is a good one. 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

read how i got here ---> http://conqueringsavage.blogspot.com/2013/03/strange-days-at-wong-tai-sin-temple.html

Strange Days at Wong Tai Sin Temple

                                     "Wisdom in the Tenement Yard"     

I woke up later than I wanted and surveyed the situation. I had arrived in Hong Kong from Taipei the day before and it was 1130 and I was still tired.

My father always told me that the heroic moment in every person’s day was waking up.

                                                 Just waking up.

No matter when you woke up; just getting up and getting going and making the day well.

My father is a pretty wise man.

Shake myself awake and contemplate:

As everyday is, today was a blank canvass, and I had an array of things that I planned to splash all over this canvass, but it was already 1130.

Looks like I need to trim a few things on my schedule.

I quickly reviewed what I had ambitiously planned:

Post breakfast jaunt to Victoria Peak Park, then Wong Tai Sin Temple, lunch, shopping, high tea at the Peninsula, shower, change, Tram to up to the Peak restaurant for dinner, then out.

I knew this was a stretch for me in planning it, and figured I could hit some of them in the following days. But I didn’t expect to wake up at 1130!  The night before had not been rambunctious.

Shit.

Despite my best attempts at rousing myself, I was clouded in a personal funk, travel weary and cloudy headed.

Lets go eat, the decision will just come.

Fantastic waygu beef burger bowl with chevre and mushrooms from some place I don’t remember while listening to Kasabian’s  “Velociraptor!” album on Spotify and I still couldn’t really decide.

Forget it.

Trust your feet, family.

I would go where I would go, wherever that may be, lets just find the underground first.

I found a station and figured out which lines ran from it.

Nothing direct to any of the places I wanted to go.

No big deal.

Wong Tai Sin Temple it is and after a *few transfers and many stops

I emerged from the underground and looked around. (*Island Blue line to Kong Kow Pink line to Kwun Tong Green Line Wong Tai Sin stop).  I was far far away from the English stamped high fashion, high rise, high living I had left on Hong Kong Island when I first went underground.

And I didn’t see any temple.

I lit a cigarette and surveyed my surroundings to find I was surrounded.

Not trapped, but encompassed by massive Chinese tenement buildings, some a couple of city blocks high and some a couple of city blocks wide.

Bauhaus and monstrous and terrifying but intriguing blocks, so simple, so boring, SO LARGE and devoid of outside ornamentation and individuality that it was almost sickening to the eye.

But I knew better than to just dismiss the building.

So I walked head pointed into the sunny smoggy sky getting dizzy staring at the faces of these behemoths; and imagining the billions of stories and secrets and truths and life that they contained.

                                                    "Chinese get Lifted in a Tenement Yard"

But this was not today’s mission.

I was to find the Wong Tai Sin Temple, an epic shrine to the Taoist tradition, and one of the most beautiful and powerful temples in Hong Kong, and my mission was to find inner peace.

In doing research *after I visited the temple (*because I do everything backwards) I found that the temple’s motto was “What you request is what you get”.  I found how the temple was founded, in honor of Wong Tai Sin, a chinese deity with the power of healing.

Delving further, when the Qing Dynasty fell in 1912, the Chinese people lost their god because they worshipped the emperors as deities and needed a religion to replace the old one of emperor worship. It was 1915 Hong Kong and a man named Lueng Renyan had a shrine to Wong Tai Sin in his herbal medicine shop. Legend has it that people would pray at the altar, and then receive a medicine from Leung. Much healing took place and people began to flock to it.

A fire burnt through his shop and Wong Tai Sin told him to build a shrine, on a spot 3000 paces north from Kowloon City Pier.  In 1921, He did this.  It’s spot in the former Chuck Yuen Village where it stands today in the shadows of a concrete metropolis.

They built it and here I am, not randomly- nothing is ever random- Looking for inner peace and healing at the Temple of healing.

Ahhhh……..Always trust your feet.

The temple was more than a temple to Taoism, It was extensive grounds with Buddhist and Confucianism statues and shrines and holiness and love and peace.

Smack dab in the middle of projects no city in America could compete with in sheer size.

GO figure.

I walked past the shops ensconced with all things red, hawking incense and other holy bric a brac and found what seemed to be the entrance and walked in, kissing my fingers and touching the foot of a beautiful dragon that guarded the entrance.

                                         

It was crowded but there was a quiet civility about the crowds- A reverence as it were so- and I felt it too.

I poked around at various shrines and other things that I didn’t have a tour guide for and didn’t know exactly what they were but it didn’t matter. They were beautiful and strong and sacred, and I tuned into what each was doing for this sea of chinese people and attempted to understand.

You don’t need guidebooks to know. You don’t always need research.

All you have to do is ask yourself a question and then observe to assimilate. To watch the traffic, and then feel which way the energy flows, looking all ways before climbing on that energetic highway.

As I sat in quiet veneration, I began to understand.

I met a tall warrior regaled in honor and strength, cutting the head off an evil demon and I felt bonded. There was a ferocious quiet dignity about it all, and it made me think.

                                                          "Conquering Warrior"

We all have demons. If you don’t think you have any, you are just coping or deluded or ignorant or newborn or GOD.  For the chosen that face all that is dark within them, there was a lesson in this statue;

And I didn’t need a guidebook to tell me:

Only in quiet dignity and honor of oneself does true strength and fierceness surface within, allowing the conquering of individual weakness.

I moved on to a side shrine to Confucious and sat in his presence, feeling his wisdom and divinity.

Was this working?

Did I have inner peace?

Do we ever?

In early March of 2012, I seemed to have developed a medical problem. I literally lived with an enormous granite rock in my stomach. It was way too large to pass through my intestines, so there it sat.

And it hurt.

At first I just attempted to cope. To drown the pain this rock was causing in external pleasure and distraction but this just made the granite in my stomach seem to grow larger and deep down I knew it was not the remedy.

After dealing with the pain for a couple months I realized the only way I could make it disappear was for me to use all my strength and nurture and that it would be a pain staking process as it progressively withered and passed.

 The more I walked, the more I searched, the more I turned everything inward, the more I felt the divine on earth and in me, the more the rock dissipated.

It was now late January of 2013, and the granite rock, despite still holding its presence in my bowels, was a mere fraction of its original size. So small, that on days when the sun was shining and the energy was right and the wind blew just so, I could forget it was still there. But I knew it was still present and it was keeping me out of balance and destroying my inner peace, and I wanted it gone.

I was the only white face among the masses, and I stuck out like a sore thumb with my Hollywood Jack sunglasses and large frame so I cautiously and reverently walked amid the incense and silence and bowed heads and kneed knees and approached the majestic red pillar and yellow laticeworked temple and watched and contemplated:

                                                 "Prayers, Dreams, Desires and Smoke Wafting"

I felt the collective reverence for the space, and I respected it and flowed with it and understood.

This was A sacred space bursting with human energy, the collective wishes, prayers, dreams, wants, and needs all spiraling and circling around like wafts of the smoke from the multitude of large incense sticks, which I seemed to be the only person without.

I wanted the incense, but I didn’t need it to understand.

Leung Renyan was right about this small little space in earth. The energy flowed strong here and I felt it, strong and true on this smoggy sunshine-y day.

So in a sea of Chinese people, I stood there for awhile

 and joined in.

I asked for guidance and healing.

I asked for happiness and wisdom.

I asked for peace and brotherhood.

I asked for forgiveness and strength, because we always need a little more of that.

It felt good to ask for these things.

We all should ask for such things a little more often.

Then I moved. I meandered and gandered at a few other shrines and the journey went on and then I left, disappearing into the underground again, the sun lower now and peaking through the cracks of the multitude of vast structures.

Did I have inner peace?

Had it worked?

I would say:

Yes, on this day it did a bit, but I was unaware at the time. More importantly- the search is an everyday challenge; and that inner peace is within us, and not just within some beautiful temple in Hong Kong.

That's the gist of it:

I am the temple.

You are the temple.

We are the temple.

But I paid this no mind as I submerged back into the underground. I was headed to the next stop: traditional high tea at the Peninsula,

and my only thoughts were:

how to get there underground.

                                                                 "Getting her ask on"

                                                    "Red Holy Bric a Brac, Incense and such"

                                                                        "Deities"

                                                            "Ask and You shall Recieve"

Strong Vibrations in helL.A. Part 1: Who the Hell is Chron Burgundy?

Read PART 2 of the story: Chron Burgundy Fights a Pissed Off Jesus by clicking HERE


-->

I want to preface this story by again stressing that there are no coincidences in life. All people, events, experiences are there to serve a purpose to you. It is up to you whether you choose to understand them, forget them or simply dismiss them. I choose to understand, but pay me no mind, unless of course, you want to understand.

                                -----------------------------------------------------------------------

I was back in helLA and the sun was turned on and shining bright and matched my sunny disposition on this beautiful day in space.

I got picked up by my rainbow dreaded favorite LA painter- an old soul- her energy Soft and wise and outer space and color laden and beautiful. It felt good to bask in this wise and young creative spirit.

We talk creation and inspiration and everything seems so lovely despite barely trudging along in one of helLA’s fantastically depressing jams of traffic.

We head up atop a mountain and there is more divine talk and my mind wanders to the previous evening, comfortable and freezing on an Eastside Milwaukee porch, smoking and regaling and sometimes preaching to a younger cousin and his younger friends.

I recalled as I said goodbye, that one his friends parted with this

“Enjoy your sweet life bro”.

He said it without condescent and it was wistful and honest but

I was offended and hurt and not hurt because I was offended but hurt because there lived pain in his statement.

He didn’t believe that he could make the experiences that I have had.

And that’s just not true.

I am beautiful, but I am not special or singular in this.

You can have what you desire.

You just have to believe.

And then try.

I ran back up the steps to tell him this:

“YOU CREATE YOUR WORLD. YOU CAN CREATE WHAT YOU WANT. YOU HAVE THAT POWER”.

He nodded like he understood and although the words were processed words are just words words words words and mean nothing at all and are pointless and empty unless they activate an inner knowing or remembrance. 

I drove home and I hurt. I hurt for all of you hurting. I hurt for your programming, your lack of belief, your anxiety, your coping and your depression. I hurt because you are weary and confused and battered; but mostly I hurt because you hurt.

I went to sleep that night in the snow and awoke in LA and now here I am on a mountaintop with my rainbow headed creatively energetic sister and last night was 5000 lights years ago. 

LA.

LA.

HelLA.

Fantastic Savage vampirical beast of a town. Magical and alluring and sexy and intriguing but dead dead dead, 

Dead all the same.

A dead city alive, disingenuous and dirty that thrives feasting on its own and I was back in it.

But it didn’t bother me.

Not Today.

Not anymore.

helLA just seemed kind of small today.

The sun was shining and in my soul.

I went to see one of my brothers, a dreadlocked clothing designer chief in these parts, his house a natty dread-loved oasis in the middle of Koreatown. We embraced and sat. He found a bracelet I had brought back from Colombia. A bracelet woven by the hands of a sister shaman and created with meditation and beautiful intentions and prayer and love. I had lost it upon arriving from Colombia in helLA, but he had found it, however it was a gift for him all along, so I tied it on his wrist.

We left to see another chief  and his chiefess in the film parts- A Black-Irish hockey playing east coast chief known to be tough as Nails as it were.

And in today's case, a brother and sister having a rough day.

We drove down sunset and sat on the sunset and were again stuck in this awful 8^th level of Dante’s hell jams of traffic.

We simmered on Sunset and I saw post surgery nosed bandages, ratty pubescent transvestite hookers, and men dressed as signs to sell films I would never see.

 We barely trudged along.  

In front of a West Hollywood library I witnessed 3 ten-year-old Mexicans get guns drawn on them by police, no doubt swooping in and saving the day. 

                                             Photo: Police Gwan Fight

We finally get to the spot of rest for this brother and sister and there was trouble and confusion and anger and hurt in their air. It saddened me. It hurt me. The pain of a brother and sister is too much, too much, but I can take it.

I am here.

I embrace both and silently wish them well: love, honor, truth and infinite blessings on your journeys.

We eat at some over priced sunset eatery and watch me lose money in college basketball and discuss the night, when It occurs to me that it has been about 1 year since I last saw my brother Chron Burgundy, and as I was in helLA, I should give him a call and see what he is doing.

Who the fuck is Chron Burgundy you ask?

 To be honest, I don’t really know.

I could say he is very short and Jewish and a record producer from Hollywood, but that isn’t him at all. No, that is not who he really is, none-at-all.

He is a kind and sensitive soul but a peculiar frenzied madman one too.  He wanders this space called earth and I have passed and sat with him on my wandering journey once every year or two for many many years now.

And tonight I feel is the time again.

Almost every time I have been with Chron Burgundy, there has been mayhem and chaos and chaos and mayhem.

He is the Greek Goddess Eris or Discordia, and perhaps we share a bit of that energy, because every time we have crossed paths, savagery abounded. But I had evolved from mere chaos in the past year. I still loved the action, but I now sought and fought for synchronicity in strong energy. 

Over 2 years ago we were in Breckenridge, and with my beautiful Breck-Bunny sisters, we watched Chron Burgundy speak in tongues after his soul got inhabited by an evil Burton ghoul at the Breck-bunnies haunted Burton snow-flop house, but that was only after we kidnapped a Korean Gene and forced him to drink and smoke and be merry and get elevated in this high elevation.

Then,

About 8 months ago, Chron Burgundy showed up at the hipster dive bar Dr. Teeth in the Mission District of  Savage Francisco for my Korean brother’s birthday and a race riot ensued between the natural inhabitants of the neighborhood and us un-naturals, who had only come from SOMA and Pac Heights to wax off and revel in a chief in these parts day of birth. 

But there was discord in the energy of this place, and it really wasn’t our fault. As the police came and hauled the Mexicanos off, there were some of us un-naturals who felt like we won, but no one in that situation really did.

Today I didn’t remember these things as I got ahold of the enigmatic Chron Burgundy; today, the sun was shining and my light burning bright.

He is having dinner with his family but we can meet him at his house around 10 or so.

I forget about him and we drink and laugh and tell stories and put smoke in the air and give advice.

We end up at the Standard and play ping-pong and I lose to the hockey chief twice and am done.

We sit outside and put some more smoke in the air. 

                                  Photo: Anything but Standard at the Standard Hotel, Rudy

I talk to a girl next to me and tell her I appreciate the cadence in her speech. She is Ukrainian and young and cute and her cadence was deliberate and appropriately accented and soothing.

She says she is meeting her boss here and we taunt her with good-hearted sarcasm about meeting her boss on a saturday night at a hotel in Hollywood.

She sits with us and shares the peace smoke and is about everyone’s speed and thus has jokes and jokes for days.

Chron Burgundy buzzes with the address to his parent’s house.

We wait for another chief in these parts, an acclaimed Hollywood Puerto Rican chef from back east and leave.

It was I, the chief chef, chief natty and chief nails with a good-natured  and ready young skateboard artist couple and we were headed for the hills in the comfort of our chauffeured black SUV.

We laughed and played music and talked over each other as we ascended further and further from the lights.

The night was young and everyone loves riding high and higher. Anticipation and spirits were high, totally oblivious to the chaos that lurked in these hills. 


Read the Conclusion to the story: Strong Vibrations in helL.A. : Chron Burgundy Pisses Off Jesus by CLICKING HERE 

faceCrack addendum

click here for original faceCrack

I really don’t like you faceCrack, no, I don’t.

I quit you.

You know that.

I told you we were done.

Willingly and painstakingly I came back.  

I know your usefulness when I am a vagabond, whether I am traveling in the future or in the past; and you work….in so many ways you work.

But you are evil right now faceCrack, you are.

 Perhaps you are just the truest reflection of modern society that exists-

More than any census, more than any statistic, more than votes or television shows or art or government, it is you.

YOU!

You are the mirror in which we see what is in the blank listless life of profile -

And

it is ugly in there.

Although I love you for all the good things you can do, you are corrupted and pumped up and vacuous and sterile and sick.

I mean,

FacecrAck…….

…..can I ask you a question?

?

?

?

????

What would you think of yourself, if you were a faceCrack profile and you existed only In the great vast expanse of social media with all your FRIENDS?

Would you want to live that?

Fuck, neither would I.

But there is good in you- I can feel it -there is. There is a place where we can take you, this earth I call home, and if you get there you will get well for it is a place where there is no living

on the line

there is just:

LIVING

                   -    -    -  not dying    -    -    -     

                                                                             or simply e x I s t i n g.






- faceCrack addendum to original http://conqueringsavage.blogspot.com/2012/11/facecrack.html