Solitude, Socializing, Software, Travel, Trucking, Politicking
Paramendra Bhagat
May 29, 2002.

Can it be that personalities are disposed one way or the other, that one fit for shaking hands on the campaign trail would be a misfit in the world of ideas, of loose thoughts, the inherent solitude that accompanies a life-long, full-time novelist where there is living and there is work, be there room to make leaps of imagination and attempt use of the latest in mathematics to replace the binoculars of the social sciences with telescopes - Economics has not yet a Newton, let alone an Einstein - and flounderings and happenstances, blazes of light once in a while, in the form of joy, to transform knowledge and reality itself, to look anew, to reshape, to make room for more, that what can not be explored with the mere use of words necessarily asks use of the world of the literal sixth human sense?

Or the world of constantly making new friends and keeping in touch with old ones, of relentless traveling, experiencing, of exploring a relationship with high voltage ongoing discussions on race and gender - the minority man's tendencies toward sexism and the white woman's tendencies toward racism can be one toxic combination; can it be a necessary other half to the active life of a writer out also to make social impact, perhaps through running for public office in the oldest democracy, but with the vision of a global citizen who might have vivid memories of having spent the first two decades of life in the second poorest country in the world, and proving the phrase "brain drain" irrelevant, almost racist?

Be it that the vision of an internet computer that will follow the personal computer is premature, that it is much harder for someone with not much technical insight into software itself, but only a vision and supposed people skills, to go after the vision, can there be peace in supposing that the vision will unfold when its time comes, and that perhaps there will be ways to get involved in less central ways?

Standing at 42 states and counting - Manhattan has no strict traffic lanes, the Bay Area is dreamy, happening, and tropical, lushy green, the Dakotas are like one big farm, the deserts have character, the valleys in the Rockies are much larger than those in the Himalayas, yet to make it to Florida, and Colorado, Nebraska, and Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Alaska, Hawaii: the travel bug has bit big.

Six months after graduating from college, I plunged into trucking - I could have been doing worse, pushing paper for 30K in Lexington, KY, when trucking is a reverse Peace Corps that rakes in 40-50K - and still think what better way to get a feel for a country on the move like no other than by hitting the road in a grand way, though there have been incidents: a few hours after I had passed through the area, a massive series of collisions involving about 25 semis and 100 cars unfolded near Atlanta one foggy evening, I hit a patch of ice in western New York state in April, the bridge on the Arkansas river in Oklahoma collapsed a few hours before I got there, I got shot at in May by the local police in northern Texas who thought I might be hauling drugs. Also in May I had to go pick up a load from a truck that had got into this big accident an hour west of St. Louis. Some say the driver got a flat on a steer tire and lost control, some say he fell asleep. The truck got off the road into a ditch and hit two concrete pillars of an overpass at an angle. The cab was gone. The driver's body was found attached to the trailer. It took rescue personnel three hours to get him out. He lost a leg.

A lifestyle without an apartment or a car: The work is largely physical in nature, though much watching is involved.

I like to say September 11th gave me my hometown: Portland, Oregon. It is illegal to ask international students racist questions there. What would it take to run for Congress in Oregon? And then go on to topple a few dictators for lunch. Race: legal confrontation of social segregation. Gender: coalition building with those pissed of with sexism to make headway on race relations. Globalization where human capital is the center piece of action. Perhaps after having put forth the novel I am working on - Sunrise East - plunging into a career that perhaps best fits this personality, perhaps, and then work on the next novel: Ballot Dance.