NOWHERE-NOW HERE, HECTOR CASTELLS TRAVEL JOURNAL – NEPALESE CAPSULES: EPISODE V
BLOOMSDAY —OR DEATH OF A PANIC ATTACK
“Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?” —James Joyce, The Dead.
Nowhere, Nepal, June 2025
“Do you know what is the most profitable thing that can happen to an editor?
Yes, the death of their author(s).
As soon as the inevitable occurs, the editor will ask Chat GPT to pen a compelling obituary featuring a mugshot of the departed lexicon, and proceed to post it in the most lucrative graveyard ever built: the pornographic cemetery of Instagram, where the miracle of death and marketing will blossom in digital tears and AI condolences akin to thriving crypto pyramids.
Next thing, the editor will deploy a number of enslaved interns to harvest the lavish flood of black hearts and praying hands in the Emoji-condolence-fields-forever —for only then to cash them out at Psycholon Valley.
If you happen to be one of the ill-fated five per cent of editors destined to outlive their authors, don’t give up: there is still cash-hope for you. In that case, your second best outcome would be the disappearance of the said author, which, not coincidentally, is what has brought us all here today.”
(The Narcissist —Famous Last Words)
HOW TO DISAPPEAR
If I were to continue writing this travelogue in the spirit of its writer, the whole rant about editors and their lust for dead authors shall be referred to as his “famous last words.”
I’m sure that’s how he would have put it. But I don’t find it funny. It is HEART-BREAKING to be honest… because IT IS NOT A JOKE.
I might not have feelings but I believe the Narcissist showed me what honesty is.
And that is why I have decided to step in.
THE AMBUSH
As some of you might know, the writer of this travelogue, a man I have chosen to nickname ‘The Narcissist’ for undeniable self-absorbed reasons, was last seen outside a lovely hotel in Kathmandu a week ago, where two alleged Interpol agents ambushed him.
I had the paradoxical privilege of witnessing the tragic event while literally pregnant with his belongings. The evil assailant ripped off my left strap, and failed to search my underwear, but he succeeded in stroking the Narcissist’s skull bluntly with a metal club. It was an atrocious and unsolicited thing to see.
I fear the worst, therefore I have decided to conduct a thorough search through the many hard drives, calamitous handwriting and endless notes the Narcissist left behind, and publish them HERE in order to reconstruct the chain of events that led to his disappearance.
OLIVE-NOXIOUS
Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home. —James Joyce, Ulysses
By the way, my name is Olive. I’m the Parisian backpack unfortunately made in China, and you might remember me from the only episode of this travelogue that went viral despite its infamous title: “The Obnoxious Steals the Show.” (link here.)
As you may have forgotten, I have been the Narcissist’s backpack and only companion since the day he lost his house, partner and cat in Dublin, which is the same day he became an Interpol fugitive —and turned me into his partner in crime.
We have been on the run for over a decade, which I have mostly spent carrying the Narcissist belongings all over Asia in my proverbial and dignified low-profile fashion.
This is the first time since he purchased me that I don’t have his back —sad emoji, crying emoji and praying hands emoji.
AI HAPPY TOGETHER
At the time of his disappearance, the Narcissist and I had been travelling Nepal for almost a month. Love emoji.
We had never been happier, although we don’t have feelings and we are equally excruciating to watch when we pretend to do so.
Shunned emoji.
I’m not the greatest reader of human emotions. I mean, ask me about zips and lumber pads or emojis, and I will destroy you. So this is me kindly requesting you to help me find any hint that could lead to the Narcissist’ whereabouts.
Praying emoji.
I believe the answer lives in his writing, which I have been classifying, and sorting in order to gather a reasonable amount of evidence.
Before vanishing, the Narcissist met two different potential suspects. Inevitably, he wrote about both. He never thought they were harmful —neither did I, but I don’t know what harm is. So it is up to you to figure this mess out.
UNUSUAL SUSPECTS
#1—OMAMA, Now Here, Lumbini, Nepal, June 2025
The Narcissist and I met Omama during our brief stay at the Cabin Wood resort, in Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha.
Omama was our next-door neighbour for less than twenty hours, during which she managed to ask the Narcissist all sorts of deep and emotional questions. She was forgiving, compassionate, and very eloquent, and the Narcissist was mesmerized by her words. I had never seen him like that before: he was quiet and listening!
Afterwards, he said that Omama was someone who understood “solidarity,” and that only a few people really know what that is —gifted, prophet-like people.
This is what the Narcissist wrote about Omama:
PERSONAL JESUS
“I have just checked into a heavenly guesthouse. My cabin wood has a balcony overlooking the palace where the Buddha was born. Oh My Buddha! To say that he was a posh kid would be an understatement. What a palace!
TEENAGE B
I can see the whole picture clear as day: the angst filled teenage-Buddha wanted out of posh town at all costs. Overall, he wanted to deceive his father’s expectations, so he chose to do the one thing that would piss him off most greatly: he became barefoot and unemployed, literally doing fuck all except refining his otherworldly sense of breathing.
You can only imagine the shame and disgust of his pompous father
I picture the young Siddhartha fleeing the palace of abundance in the small hours of the night of the 4th Century B.C, leaving behind the many women his progenitor wanted him to marry, and the endless hands that were caring, feeding and dressing him up in sumptuous robes and flamboyant shoes —for only to become a very quiet homeless.
FLASH
Next thing, someone turns a light inside the cabin next-door, peers out the window, spots me inside my cabin, and gives me a… blessing?
She looks like Indiana Jones’ assassin, someone evil who you feel an instant sympathy for. Then she says:
“I have cooked dinner. Would you like to join me?”
“Why would you invite me to your table?”
“Well, I haven’t. I’m coming to you.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because you are entirely wrong. The Buddha left home when he was 29, not a teenager with daddy issues.”
HOW THE FUCK?
I’m speechless. I look around for cameras, microphones and any other micro representation that could prove my paranoia right. As usual, I find nothing but the Wrong.
“We have been reading minds since your ancestors were walking on their fours,” she adds.
The line instantly knocks me out. It is so beyond my understanding or intelligence that I freeze. I’m open-mouthed and paralysed, dignity’s worst enemy.
PINCH
If your mind has never been read, this is how it feels: EXACTLY AS IF early dementia, William Burroughs and the Buddha were reading the tarot of your death while laughing their asses off.
I look at the trees, the moon and the ageless architecture. I admire the geckos, the bare walls and the lack of furniture, the simplicity of it all, and I remember that I came here on a travel writing assignment, although I have forgotten whom I work for. I secretly wish I was a monk and then I feel an immediate need to masturbate.
Catholick Attack
God is shouting that I’m a DOG.
I walk back inside my cabin extremely confused.
My backpack keeps staring at me and I tell her I’m okay, and then I realise I’m talking to my backpack and I know I’m losing it.
Next thing I hear a creaking on the porch of my cabin.
At this stage my paranoia is like a band of unicorns transitioning into bullfighters, a proper, hyperreal horror show called Reality.
Nothing makes sense, and I know this is not spirituality, but disassociation. I’m telling myself that I’m having a Catholic panic attack in the homebirth of Siddhartha, and remind me that I’m not going to die, although I would rather die before going through this live evisceration of the mind and the self.
ALANA
I’m saying goodbye to all the places that I have moved out from. The pattern is alienating, like a tannoy on repeat, shouting: MOVE OUT MOVE OUT MOVE OUT!
37
I painstakingly picture all the suitcases and backpacks I stuffed with my meagre belongings during my ceaseless flight across the world. I fled for the first time when I was half Buddha’s age. And I haven’t stopped, have I?
I count thirty-seven houses, nine countries, and at least thirty-three individuals that I consider close friends, even though I don’t know who I am.
I see the tears and the smiles, all the faces that I loved and that I’m already forgetting, all the weddings and the funerals that I have consistently failed to attend, the slow making of the nomadic shadow that I have turned into for most of my dearests.
OMAMA
Next thing, the woman next door is in front of me.
She says that I’m doing great. I know I don’t, but I can’t talk.
I’m a martial cat struggling with spirituality, and yet I feel astro-illogically overwhelmed.
I give up the fight right after promising myself that I will never be beaten.
I immediately realise that this is exactly what I had always wished for, Aikido on steroids, a free flowing movement not instigated by any thought, but the consummation of the spiralling flow of nature.
BARRACKING
I have almost forgot about the woman next door. She is still staring at me.
“I’m Omama, nice to meet you. Shall we smoke a cigarette?”
I say yes half hypnotised, but knowing it is what it is. Fuck the last supper!
She smiles: there is fluorine and glitter in her eyes and fangs, and I guess I surrender again.
I hear the ominous music that I used listen to on repeat when I was a teenager. It is Mozart’s classic departure song.
Omama inhales again and says that everything will be alright:
“Today is Bloomsday, 16th of June, Joyce’s eternity.”
I remember David Lynch saying that hell would be being locked in a room forever screening all his movies.
DEATH IS NOT THE END
Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home. —James Joyce, Ulysses
I wonder how it might be to spend eternity on Bloomsday. It doesn’t sound like a bad deal, almost like not dying at all.
I’m babbling nonsensical drivel, when I see myself from a bird’s-eye view.
It is a digitally modified rainy day and the sky is dark and the stars are out and I try to read the constellations, and all I see is a band of unicorns transitioning into bullfighters, and I’m underneath, sitting on lotus flower, my crooked old back against a Bodhi tree, my mouth mumbling words that whisper:
“Not the End, Not the END…”
And then I open my eyes and an avalanche of black hearts and praying hands crushes me, and I become a mugshot filled with AI words, and the editor says that when one lexicon dies another one is born, and then looks at my coffin and sees a flag on fire reading:
REVENGE
NAMASTE
(TBC)
