My Interesting is Your Deranged

Here's a motorway in North Korea! It's the P'yŏngyang-kaesŏngkosoktoro! It connects* P'yŏngyang and Seoul! (connection only exists in someone's delusions and on paper. Do not attempt driving this motorway in real life, as it may be very hazardous to your ability to remain alive for obvious reasons).

Here's a highway in Viet Nam! It's the QL1! It connects Kampuchea and China through Viet Nam!

Here's an expressway in Japan! It's the Tōmei Expressway! It connects South Korea and Dongjing (Tokyo, because I read every Chinese character like it's Mandarin, sosumi).

Here's a highway in South Korea! It's the South Korean version of the North Korean one!

Here's a freeway in Iran! It's Number Two!
 

 

 

 

 

 

Am I delusional? Probably. Why did I post five pictures of the same road? Before you say anything, yes it's the same road. My readers in Asia will know, with the exception of North Korea (this isn't propaganda glorifying a crazy little man with an ego the size of his nukes). This is the AH-1 Highway, and I'm doing some research on it because it's going to play a bit of a role in a story that I'm working on… have been working on for years. I've had the plot in my head for what feels like literal eons now, but I've never been able to write it… real pain!

Anyway, like most of what I do involving modern alternate history pertaining to the Cold War, there's gonna be some changes made, in this case, mostly so a witch and a human can drive a Plymouth Voyager from Saigon to either P'yŏngyang or Tokyo… I'm not sure yet, but I've been playing around with some different routes they could take and the two I like the most differ at how they use North Korea… the first uses P'yŏngyang as a red-herring before the duo shoots back towards Mongolia and drives through the USSR to (eventually) Berlin. The second one just uses P'yŏngyang as a regular stop before going the rest of the way through North and South Korea and eventually to Tokyo for their drop point (instead of Berlin). Anyway, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey, and the journey is what you come to remember in life. Yes, I wanna start in Istanbul at the exact spot where the E-80 turns into the AH1 and drive from there to where it ends in Tokyo. I don't know if I'd need a Yugo, Geo Metro, minivan, small motorcycle, what, in order to make the trip… a guy can dream though, right? Although, that's also to say that the closest that fantasy may ever come to a reality is if I can ever get the story written, so we just never know.

One big reason this resonates with me the way it does, a nomadic-style of life, is because I've never felt like I belong in any one place. It's more like one day, I'll feel like I'm a city recluse, living on my family's campground at basically a house on one of the waterfront lots (that's how Penelope's setting came to be). Another, I'll feel like my true place in life isn't with modern society at all, rather, that I should be free on horseback, traversing the Mongol Steppes. Yet, the next day, I'll probably belong in the middle of the Alaskan Tundra in an off-grid cabin. Still later, I might envision myself as one of the many Asian people that I find beyond interesting in an infinite amount… talk about an alliteration. My point stands, the way I see myself is, through-and-through, nomadic. My reality isn't tied to just me being me at where and when I am, no.

This is also why I made the joke about my being delusional before.

If I want to, I can close my eyes and force myself into the mindset that is the 1990s, and I used to do that a lot, I can fill in details mentally when I'm reading a book, I can be sitting down to my piano, blindfolded, and let the feeling of what I'm playing take me to what it is. Put simply, I don't just blindly accept reality as reality, and I'm also aware of it (I consider that to be the main argument in backing up that I'm in control of myself mentally) to the point where I can flip a mental switch and get in the mindset that I need (or want) to be in. You can accept reality as reality (there's definitive proof on so many levels that I'm laying in bed with my laptop, typing this post right now), but you don't have to accept external reality as reality… even though it's extremely healthy to do so. See, one thing I've always liked about the human mind when I realized that I could control the reality I was dealing with (external "real" reality or internal realities) was that when you take a moment to think about how powerful the human brain is, the notion of it alone is astonishing.

I don't consider myself to be mentally sick, just an odd form of perceptive.

What I mean by the above is if you take the notion of a creator (as a Christian, I believe in God), mankind (us), and artificial intelligence. We can create AI, but we were created by God. In a way, it all stacks together like Russian Nesting Dolls: the biggest (God) is bound by nothing, the middle (us) is bound by the largest (God), and the smallest (AI) is bound by the middle (us) is bound by the largest (God). Thinking of it, the analogy falls apart pretty quickly in my own head, partially due to my tenancy to break things down to their fundamental values and not organize them, but I'm sure someone can follow my train of thought.

Anyway, I do hope my thoughts and ramblings here led to some thought-provoking moments! Until next week.