sleeping or something

From Hong Kong (September2011):

It feels really strange being alone in a big flat in HK when it's crowded outside. Also I haven't stayed alone much since I came to Asia. I didn't have my own room once in S. Korea.

From Freud's On Transience:

"The capacity to love anything attractive, however fragile or ephemeral, is a hallmark of psychological health."

I have been thinking on this theory recently. it can apply to a lot of things, including a place of residence or a space to sleep. Rather than depending on hope for the future, I'm focusing on enjoying what is in front of me. There's something about traveling and having no permanent residence that forces me to think this way. Because I was sometimes unaware of where I would be sleeping that night, I had a lot of difficulty to plan ahead more than one day. I began to rely on this unstable way of living and being 'inconveniently vulnerable.' dependent on other people to help me. after at least two nights in a row in the same place I would start to feel comfortable and know where the grocery stores are. now I feel awkward being alone and making choices of my own. The American independence has been almost stripped away from me. I still feel I have goals and desires, but everyday things like choosing what to eat and how to spend my time have become difficult without

the work schedule and built in social group provided for me.

Right before going vagabonding in Asia, I took a summer course in Architecture. At that time I was reading Alain deBotton's book about architecture, and really liked this quote, that "it's in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value." I thought it was maybe talking about post-war architecture and the desire for modernism, but this could also be applied to human relationships or other things.

The first time I came to HK, I unintentionally took a series of photos of Asian men sleeping in public places (see them here). I just thought it was funny because it's uncommon to see people sleeping in public in America. Now I'm thinking about it in more of a social awareness - physiological needs sort of way. Also from deBotton: as there are many versions of beauty, "...this breadth of choice leaves us free to determine that particular works of architecture are more or less adequate responses to our genuine psychological needs..."

The hierarchy of needs includes shelter, so it's related to homelessness, but none of these photos were of homeless people. It was more about the cultural difference of sleeping in a public place being acceptable. I thought about the problem of space in East Asian cities requiring more acceptance for resting areas in a public place. It occasionally happens in America, but is less expected or acceptable. We don't have internet or comic cafes where you can rent a cubicle by the hour or even spend the night. We don't have public bath houses where you can pay a bit extra to sleep in a big communal sleeping room. It's not generally considered safe to share a room with total strangers. This may be because of the variety of backgrounds and cultures represented in the US; some underlying lack of trust in our fellow countrymen. There are many small cultural differences that allow sleeping in public places to be more accepted in Asia.

After this, the following blogs will be a list of each place I slept (and sometimes napped) in my travels...