Nowhere, Nepal, June 2025<\/b><\/h4>\n
\u201cDo you know what is the most profitable thing that can happen to an editor?<\/em><\/p>\n Yes, the death of their author(s).<\/em><\/p>\n 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.<\/em><\/p>\n 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 \u2014for only then to cash them out at Psycholon Valley.<\/em><\/p>\n If you happen to be one of the ill-fated five per cent of editors destined to outlive their authors, don\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n (The Narcissist \u2014Famous Last Words)<\/p>\n 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 \u201cfamous last words.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m sure that\u2019s how he would have put it. But I don\u2019t find it funny. It is HEART-BREAKING to be honest\u2026 because IT IS NOT A JOKE.<\/p>\n I might not have feelings but I believe the Narcissist showed me what honesty is.<\/p>\n And that is why I have decided to step in.<\/p>\n As some of you might know, the writer of this travelogue, a man I have chosen to nickname \u2018The Narcissist\u2019 for undeniable self-absorbed reasons, was last seen outside a lovely hotel in Kathmandu a week ago, where two alleged Interpol agents ambushed him.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s skull bluntly with a metal club. It was an atrocious and unsolicited thing to see.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home. \u2014James Joyce, Ulysses<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n By the way, my name is Olive. I\u2019m 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: \u201cThe Obnoxious Steals the Show.\u201d (link here.)<\/p>\n As you may have forgotten, I have been the Narcissist\u2019s 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 \u2014and turned me into his partner in crime.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n This is the first time since he purchased me that I don\u2019t have his back \u2014sad emoji, crying emoji\u00a0 <\/span>and praying hands emoji.<\/p>\n At the time of his disappearance, the Narcissist and I had been travelling Nepal for almost a month. Love emoji.<\/p>\n We had never been happier, although we don\u2019t have feelings and we are equally excruciating to watch when we pretend to do so.<\/p>\n Shunned emoji.<\/p>\n I\u2019m 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\u2019 whereabouts.<\/p>\n Praying emoji.<\/p>\n I believe the answer lives in his writing, which I have been classifying, and sorting in order to gather a reasonable amount of evidence.<\/p>\n Before vanishing, the Narcissist met two different potential suspects. Inevitably, he wrote about both. He never thought they were harmful \u2014neither did I, but I don\u2019t know what harm is. So it is up to you to figure this mess out.<\/p>\n #1\u2014OMAMA, Now Here, Lumbini, Nepal, June 2025<\/b><\/p>\n The Narcissist and I met Omama during our brief stay at the Cabin Wood<\/i> resort, in Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha.<\/p>\n 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!<\/p>\n Afterwards, he said that Omama was someone who understood \u201csolidarity,\u201d and that only a few people really know what that is \u2014gifted, prophet-like people.<\/p>\n This is what the Narcissist wrote about Omama:<\/p>\n \u201cI 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!<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n You can only imagine the shame and disgust of his pompous father<\/p>\n I picture the young Siddhartha fleeing the palace of abundance in the small hours of the night of the 4th<\/sup><\/span> 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 \u2014for only to become a very quiet homeless.<\/p>\n Next thing, someone turns a light inside the cabin next-door, peers out the window, spots me inside my cabin, and gives me a\u2026 blessing?<\/p>\n She looks like Indiana Jones\u2019 assassin, someone evil who you feel an instant sympathy for. Then she says:<\/p>\n \u201cI have cooked dinner. Would you like to join me?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhy would you invite me to your table?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWell, I haven\u2019t. I\u2019m coming to you.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhy would you do that?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cBecause you are entirely wrong. The Buddha left home when he was 29, not a teenager with daddy issues.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have been reading minds since your ancestors were walking on their fours,\u201d<\/em> she adds.<\/p>\n The line instantly knocks me out. It is so beyond my understanding or intelligence that I freeze. I\u2019m open-mouthed and paralysed, dignity\u2019s worst enemy.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n God is shouting that I\u2019m a DOG.<\/p>\n I walk back inside my cabin extremely confused.<\/p>\n My backpack keeps staring at me and I tell her I\u2019m okay, and then I realise I\u2019m talking to my backpack and I know I\u2019m losing it.<\/p>\n Next thing I hear a creaking on the porch of my cabin.<\/p>\n At this stage my paranoia is like a band of unicorns transitioning into bullfighters, a proper, hyperreal horror show called Reality.<\/p>\n Nothing makes sense, and I know this is not spirituality, but disassociation. I\u2019m telling myself that I\u2019m having a Catholic panic attack in the homebirth of Siddhartha, and remind me that I\u2019m not going to die, although I would rather die before going through this live evisceration of the mind and the self.<\/p>\n I\u2019m 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!<\/p>\n 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\u2019s age. And I haven\u2019t stopped, have I?<\/p>\n I count thirty-seven houses, nine countries, and at least thirty-three individuals that I consider close friends, even though I don\u2019t know who I am.<\/p>\n I see the tears and the smiles, all the faces that I loved and that I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n Next thing, the woman next door is in front of me.<\/p>\n She says that I\u2019m doing great. I know I don\u2019t, but I can\u2019t talk.<\/p>\n I\u2019m a martial cat struggling with spirituality, and yet I feel astro-illogically overwhelmed.<\/p>\n I give up the fight right after promising myself that I will never be beaten.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n I have almost forgot about the woman next door. She is still staring at me.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m Omama, nice to meet you. Shall we smoke a cigarette?\u201d<\/p>\n I say yes half hypnotised, but knowing it is what it is. Fuck the last supper!<\/p>\n She smiles: there is fluorine and glitter in her eyes and fangs, and I guess I surrender again.<\/p>\n I hear the ominous music that I used listen to on repeat when I was a teenager. It is Mozart\u2019s classic departure song.<\/p>\n Omama inhales again and says that everything will be alright:<\/p>\n \u201cToday is Bloomsday, 16th<\/sup><\/span> of June, Joyce\u2019s eternity.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n I remember David Lynch saying that hell would be being locked in a room forever screening all his movies.<\/p>\n Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home. \u2014James Joyce, Ulysses<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n I wonder how it might be to spend eternity on Bloomsday. It doesn\u2019t sound like a bad deal, almost like not dying at all.<\/p>\n I\u2019m babbling nonsensical drivel, when I see myself from a bird\u2019s-eye view.<\/p>\n 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\u2019m underneath, sitting on lotus flower, my crooked old back against a Bodhi tree, my mouth mumbling words that whisper:<\/p>\n \u201cNot the End, Not the END\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n 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:<\/p>\n REVENGE<\/p>\n NAMASTE<\/p>\n (TBC)<\/p>\n BLOOMSDAY \u2014OR DEATH OF A PANIC ATTACK \u201cWhy is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?\u201d\u00a0 \u2014James Joyce, The Dead. Nowhere, Nepal, June 2025 \u201cDo you know what is the most profitable thing that can happen to an editor? Yes, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61296,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1059],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nHOW TO DISAPPEAR <\/b><\/h4>\n
THE AMBUSH<\/b><\/h4>\n
OLIVE-NOXIOUS<\/b><\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fiestaybullshit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/dublinjpg-scaled.jpeg\")
<\/b><\/h4>\nAI HAPPY TOGETHER<\/b><\/h4>\n
UNUSUAL SUSPECTS<\/b><\/h4>\n
PERSONAL JESUS<\/b><\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fiestaybullshit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/lumbinijpg.jpeg\")
<\/b><\/h4>\nTEENAGE B<\/b><\/h4>\n
FLASH<\/b><\/h4>\n
HOW THE FUCK?<\/b><\/h4>\n
PINCH<\/b><\/h4>\n
Catholick Attack<\/b><\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fiestaybullshit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/olive-backpackjpg-scaled.jpeg\")
<\/b><\/h4>\nALANA<\/b><\/h4>\n
37 <\/b><\/h4>\n
OMAMA<\/b><\/h4>\n
BARRACKING<\/b><\/h4>\n
DEATH IS NOT THE END<\/b><\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fiestaybullshit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/catholic-panicjpg-scaled.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"