Hmm, well I didn't know patchouli was in the mint family. . .

Christ on a crabcake. My hands smell like patchouli. My good friend Chad used to call it mossman smell, cause apparently the Mossman action figure (remember He-Man? Remember Mossman?) http://www.mwctoys.com/images/MOSSMAN.jpg there he is if you forgot. Yeah apparently they laced him with patchouli. I can't confirm this personally, but Yank used to call the same smell 'He-Man heads' cause he thought as a child that He-Man's head smelled like that. So I'm a firm believer that the action figures were associated in some way with patchouli. I never smell it on the action figures since I don't own any, nor do I remember ever having owned them, so these days when I want my fix of the trustafarian tramp serum (thanks Urban Dictionary) I have to go to the crafts store downtown. It's a Harmony Crafts, so they think that they can recreate the entire asian continent in one store. Fake recycled parchment scrolls with Japanese characters that probably say "Roundeye pay big Yen for stupid proverb.", Scented candles that smell like soap, which hippies don't coincidenctally use, but do burn. Buddhas carved out of maple and poplar and other north american woods, and don't forget djembes (yeah Africa's in there too) made of synthetic goat skin and various woods, none of which grow in Africa. There's also silk imported from china but with Indian patterns on it, and various geological samples which have probably been imported from Bancroft, Ontario or Squamish, BC at the furthest - polished in tumblers and tagged with little paper lies about cleansing blood, calming your soul, aligning your chakras, focusing your chi, or giving you that perfect bowel movement of which you have been in pursuit since your adolescence. To me they look like Malachite, Hematite, Turqoise, Sodalite, etc, but to some people they're maaaagiiic. Why was I in there? I have a magic pendant I had made by a little magic Vietnamese man in a magical city called Ha Noi, and the cotton string it hangs on was frazzled, so I needed to replace it. The more down to earth place around the corner on Carden St moved a long time ago, which I guess is the way of the world, since they probably picked up some bad karma somewhere admitting to themselves that they were a bead store and that's exactly what they were. See in Harmony Crafts when you walk in there's a sign that says "Don't dwell on reality, it will only keep you from greatness." This must be the secret to why they're still standing. I wanted to interrupt the little conversation on auras the sales clerk/shaman medicine woman was having with the other customer and ask her if she's ever heard of irony, or inherently flawed logic, but I thought better of it. She sounded too enlightened for me. Probably she ignored me the whole time in the store cause she could see my black aura. So that philosophy sums up why the store's still standing, but what summed up the store itself was a t shirt at the back among the overpriced organic saris fed to elephants with coffee beans and spinach and washed in camel piss. It was a black t-shirt that said only "Bangkok City" And I thought 'there's your problem right there.' I spent an afternoon in Bangkok once. It was nice. Really affluent near the airport, roadsigns and pavement that look just like ours, except with Khmer next to the roman script. Khaosan Road had delicious food, lots of smiles, didn't really get a sense of the hookers and blow that the city is famous for. . . Now though it was a rich experience, however short, I felt no need to come home with a t shirt. I think I might bring home a t shirt for every 2 months I spend in a place. What would possess some asshole to buy one at Harmony Crafts? Why would the place even sell this? One simple answer. It's a retail store that capitalises entirely on appearances, which, ironically, is the thing they're trying to teach you matters least. Forget about reality, just meditate. Don't focus on the real, it will keep you from being great. Here, pat this buddha on the head, light these incense sticks, snort this line of patchouli, buy a t shirt that bears the name of a far east capital city that if you'd been to, you might have brought your own t shirt back from for a fraction of the price, or maybe even just let it dwell in your memory, after all talking about it or advertising it on a t shirt might bring it into the realm of the physical, which would prevent it from greatness.

Why am I so angry? I'm asking you as well as myself. . . Honestly it's the conversation I was listening to while I was in there. I have been in that store 100 times since high school. Sometimes they have stuff I want, and I don't mind the relaxed alternative vibe usually. It was the cleavage touting hippy that was talking to a lady in there. I overheard her say "Sometimes you get a real aura of a helping nurturing person from someone and I get that from you." She also said "yeah this stone is used for treating addiction." Want more?

"I took a course over the holidays and yeah, I treated a bunch of people and by the end I was totally exahusted, like I took away all their negative energy and just held onto it myself."

And by this time I was standing at the check out with my little roll of $7.00 cotton string looking through my bills trying to get exact change so I could slam it on the glass counter, and leave the store under the cloak of my black aura, but alas, I only had a $10. Finally she came over with the customer, who was bitching about work while sipping a tim horton's coffee "Oh it's an hour and a half drive to kitchener where I work, an an hour and a half back, and I'm surrounded by so much negativity, and last week some guy stabbed me in the eye cause my voice was so annoying so I planted explosives in his car, but he's my neighbor so it ended up killing my cat when she was over there taking a shit on his lawn and that made my aura even darker, bla bla bla." And finally as the clerk/eastern herbal holistic health mystic is closing the transaction, she says in the most detached insincere teenage high school girl voice that her thirty year old cleavage can muster "yeahhhhh. . .I know. Well all I can say is that all my positive energy is with you." And then to seal that lie completely with a little taste of the real and tangible, money exchanged hands and the coffee sipping lady walked out, no doubt feeling healed.

Now skeptic as I am, I can't help but realise the two of them felt a lot better after all that, so maybe those rocks work after all. I on the other hand, was full of negative energy from SOMEWHERE, and I just didn't know what to do with it. . .

until now. So there you go, pass it on to someone else, cause I feel a whole lot better. Or maybe if you've mastered the art of channeling it you can fire it into space for some poor soul in limbo to pick up so it can get reincarnated with it as the next great leader of an anti-human revolution. . . or a snake or something.

Either way, I need to go wash this patchouli off my hands, it's making me crazy.

***

The first shot is from New Delhi, India, I thought this was a golden moment to demonstrate reality versus stereotype. Yeah it's a Buddhist monk with camcorder. The second shot is the terrifying dirt bikes the police ride around Bangkok. Reality, it tends to get in the way of greatness, let me say it one more time. Is there a greater way to subconsciously reveal a latent dissatisfaction with your life?