the Christchurch shooter obviously had a shitty childhood: you know, divorced parents, 4Chan, mom's boyfriend was his abuser, that kind of thing. he worked as a personal trainer for a couple of years immediately after high school, which he stopped doing after an injury. in the middle of all that, his dad committed suicide and left him with nearly half a million in cash. so, he did what anyone in his position would do: burn it all on a solo trip across Eurasia and company. he started in central Europe, where he met up with a bunch of Nazis and gave money to them, specifically in Vienna, which got the attention of the cops. he then went to Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Turkey - which he hit up because he was a dumb fucking nerd who was into the Crusades and shit. the cops took note of him there given his transactions. he eventually made his way to Ethiopia, where he claimed he got mugged. apparently, that was a big incident for him and sent him spiraling a bit more than he already was, at least according to his mom, who started to get worried about him at this time. the solo trip ended or paused when he detoured to North Korea because no one in their right mind is going there without a guide, not even a future spree killer. i just find the story of his travels really interesting. it's like a fucked up version of the NAWT. here's this already really battered dude who was probably at least a little directionless after his gig as a personal trainer went up in smoke, only to have nearly $500, 000 drops into his lap after his dad - who was probably long out of the picture - decided to exit stage left, which in itself would be a whole mess of things to work out. dude probably had long harbored his plans for a Eurasian World Tour, spending high school on the computer and all. again, he was a dumb fucking nerd, so he probably pissed his adolescence away on stories about Europe and the shape of it to come made backwards, drenched in shitty attitudes about everything. i imagine the trip across Eurasia to be kind of silent, just him alone on planes and/or trains and cars, saying nothing to himself as his thoughts did all the talking he needed to listen to. i imagine the way he traveled being kind of routine and rigid: go to the hostel or wherever, leaving it, ask for directions, get to the site or the person(s) he wanted to see, go back, all while acting totally un-eccentric. he would pack light, dress light, be demure, speak only when he has something to say, and walk like how everyone else in the street is: totally unassuming, perhaps. i don't mean to say that as to paint him as this stone cold obsessive-compulsive, nor do i mean to humanize him to the point where i suggest he was or is redeemable, i don't mean to sound like I'm saying either. but i guess i am saying that i see myself in him on that trip, even if the reasons he went on it, and what he would later do, are absolutely disgusting. i never want to speak for him, but i think i want what he wanted, which was to go out and see what the world is.
in the prologue of Travis Jeppesen's See You Again In Pyongyang (if you remember "the NAWT reading list", then you'll remember his other book, The Suiciders) he explains why he lives as an expat: "Whenever I'm asked what brought me to live in these capitals [Berlin and Prague] of some of the past century's darkest and most significant moments, I fail to offer a pithy reply. Something along that stretch of adolescence and early adulthood derailed me from the standard life trajectory that my southern suburban upbringing implied. A growing fascination with other ways of life led me first to New York City to study art, literature, and philosophy at a left-leaning university where nearly all subjects were viewed through the lens of a Marxist interpretation of history. I became fascinated with cultic systems of belief and their twistings of ideology, with the notion of escape, with revising my limited means of perception. The best way to do this, I discovered, was through constant movement-never staying in the same place for long. Shirking any scene that might come too close to resembling the dreaded 'comfort zone.' As my friends in Berlin, where I have been lately based, will tell you, I spend a lot of my time escaping that city for others, the notion of a static, stable place called home being increasingly nebulous. In short, I became a writer. My model the Baudelairean flâneur, Robert Walser's destinationless Spaziergänger, the wanderer whose ultimate allegiance is to no nation, no collective, and no ideology but to the City in the broadest sense-the chaotic and confused metropolis, the crazed church of constant motion where poetic creation is born. Unlike Baudelaire, who had to stick with Paris-the possibilities of travel being what they were in the nineteenth century-I am fortunate to live in an era when travel is easier and cheaper than ever before. The cities of the world, in all their rich plurality, have become my extended stomping ground. Since my addiction to motion is what feeds my writing, the main purpose of travel for me is to get lost. Losing myself in the strangeness of new environs, marveling at the process each time as what is strange transforms into something familiar. I will go to great lengths, travel far distances, for the sole purpose of getting lost-of losing myself."
