Just Took My Breath Away
11.30.08
Khuk Khak, Thailand – The sky is different here than there.
Sometimes it’s difficult to walk with a light heart (my dictum, from God) after the human suffering you’ve witnessed, some of which is your own. Your friend/counselor/shrink may say with sympathetic resignation, “It just takes time.”
We all know that. But how much time? A day or two? A decade or so? A lifetime? You tell me. Thank the monkey tree for the DNA. Light years measures distance, you know, not time.
Time to sink in. Time to get it together. Time to process, like the coalescing of the heavens. Time to sort it out, wade through it, re-combobulate, re-assimilate, re-capitulate. A road trip might be a good idea. I’d need a bigger bike, something like a 450cc.
Rather than create karma, is it possible to just walk straight, allowing the stars to fall where they may? Could there possibly be no such thing as coincidence, but for a glaze preventing apprehension of obscure conditions or remote associations in a celestial arc of apparent exponential acceleration and instant retribution? Theoretically, we’re still expanding.
Or not. Just a theory, right? Ain’t no law. So we could also be sucked into a black hole, any day now, where gravity is so strong, having sucked up the mass of everything in the neighborhood, like, galaxies, that even your prayer can’t escape. Just found out about them the other day, relatively speaking. Black holes, not your prayers.
I think most of the guys, and most of them are, are backing the idea of saying we’re still expanding, and you or your grandchildren needn’t worry about the black hole right out there. They worked out the odds with a whole shitload of math and everybody cheerfully gave the earth a thumbs up.
The guy who stayed up all night working out the equations, Heddinstin or whatever, gleefully and with great relief told his colleagues upon their arrival in the lab the next morning, “It’s too fucking far out there, you guys! It’s too fucking far!”
Won himself a Nobel Prize. Everyone breathed easier.
In scientific history, it’s frequently been the egghead, ass-of-the-class who in the face of unanimous community opposition, was right all along. Same same smart bomb hitting the Chinese embassy.
“Well, EVerybody knows......the earth is the center of the universe.”
Sometimes when the heat is insufferable, making sleep impossible, tossing and turning, kicking at the sheet, wide awake, a midnight trip aboard a Honda Wave could be a sedative, heading north on the Isthmus of Kra under the stars of the southern hemisphere.
Throttle wide open, overrunning the headlight, faster than the speed of light. What if something big and black should appear on the road before you? Who knows what could come out of the jungle. Jupiter a sentinel above Venus in the heavens. What could that mean?
Although it looks close from here and on your planetary chart, Jupiter is waaaaaaay out there, man, far beyond Venus, right? Like, how far? It’s gotta be more than one hand, from here. Is there an effect, way way down here on earth? Ever check your horoscope? Do the Grecian gods bother themselves with the daily affairs of Earthlings? Does your god? Does the Guardian Angel only work the day shift?
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“You don’t need a new bike,” said Manat, my friend at the Honda shop. “Just take your time. There’s a lot to see,” he said, encouraging the road trip.
Suvarnabhumi International airport is shut down with protestors trying to oust the government. Manat, who went to Bangkok to marry off his daughter to her Japanese husband, said that many of the Japanese guests were stranded, requiring diverted traffic re-routes through Singapore and Kuala Lumpur to get home.
Things are a mess up north, and getting in, out, or through Bangkok these days is madness squared. That’s why he suggested taking the bike instead of flying out of Phuket. “A road tour,” he called it. “Why not?” he asked.
Jesus ain’t working the streets over here. It’s all Buddha’s turf. The monks keep it straight, themselves all in a line, a procession up the street every morning after daybreak. I thought to put down the watering hose, hop on my bike, race to the corner for rice, and ‘feed the monks’ this morning, just for the bennies. Couldn’t hurt, y’know, but thought, ‘Naw, I’ll just go ahead and take my chances on a shitty day. Let the stars fall where they may.’
-end
