Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Six Months Neglect
Six Months Neglect
02.22.10
Khuk Khak, Thailand - Out in the garden that never dies, how the plants would suffer through the hard season with no caretaker providing an attention to which they had grown accustomed.
What would withstand six months of neglect?
One’s health? That trip to Dr. So-and-So. The exercise, the diet, that tooth, the nagging injury, the engine repair, the dust in the corners. Couldn’t that job wait until spring?
And what of family and friends? A silent relationship, suspended animation, Cinderella’s illusion, the frog prince’s expectation, an unspoken repression, a state of denial, an atrophied claim, a forgot to tell you, an it can wait.
The unfinished work set aside, a potted plant, a crown or filling, a manuscript, a painting, a song.
Who would wait? The soldier’s mate, the fiancé, a promise, a vow, a tour of duty, off to college, a stretch in the joint, aboard the ISS, an appointment, a secret liaison, out of state relocation, no food, no water, no email.
The massage, the meditation, the walk to the Sea. The stretching, the designs, the renovation, the updates, the records, the competition, the time off, the contract renewal, the surgery, the root canal. Can it be put off for six months?
Hadn’t heard from them. Found another owner. Never watered it. People broke in. Slow leak. Needs a jumpstart. Pipes froze. Gonna need a new transmission. Better send flowers. Gonna have to replace the whole damned thing. Rust in the lines, residue in the filter. Gonna have to find her down in Texas somewhere. Gonna have to send an envoy. Gonna have to patch things up. Gonna minimally need duct tape, maybe a new identity. Gonna have to reconfigure, re-boot. Gonna have to shut the whole system down. Might mean war.
What in a life can go for six months without checking in? A definitive statement? To be continued? Pick it up where you left off? Let it go another six?
The garden that never dies will endure until the rainy season, but it may need occasional help, parched, wilting, crying for a drink.
-end
.
02.22.10
Khuk Khak, Thailand - Out in the garden that never dies, how the plants would suffer through the hard season with no caretaker providing an attention to which they had grown accustomed.
What would withstand six months of neglect?
One’s health? That trip to Dr. So-and-So. The exercise, the diet, that tooth, the nagging injury, the engine repair, the dust in the corners. Couldn’t that job wait until spring?
And what of family and friends? A silent relationship, suspended animation, Cinderella’s illusion, the frog prince’s expectation, an unspoken repression, a state of denial, an atrophied claim, a forgot to tell you, an it can wait.
The unfinished work set aside, a potted plant, a crown or filling, a manuscript, a painting, a song.
Who would wait? The soldier’s mate, the fiancé, a promise, a vow, a tour of duty, off to college, a stretch in the joint, aboard the ISS, an appointment, a secret liaison, out of state relocation, no food, no water, no email.
The massage, the meditation, the walk to the Sea. The stretching, the designs, the renovation, the updates, the records, the competition, the time off, the contract renewal, the surgery, the root canal. Can it be put off for six months?
Hadn’t heard from them. Found another owner. Never watered it. People broke in. Slow leak. Needs a jumpstart. Pipes froze. Gonna need a new transmission. Better send flowers. Gonna have to replace the whole damned thing. Rust in the lines, residue in the filter. Gonna have to find her down in Texas somewhere. Gonna have to send an envoy. Gonna have to patch things up. Gonna minimally need duct tape, maybe a new identity. Gonna have to reconfigure, re-boot. Gonna have to shut the whole system down. Might mean war.
What in a life can go for six months without checking in? A definitive statement? To be continued? Pick it up where you left off? Let it go another six?
The garden that never dies will endure until the rainy season, but it may need occasional help, parched, wilting, crying for a drink.
-end
.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Command Performance Cancelled
12:02:10.
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - You ever ruined brand new clothes? Brand new, just out of the sack, first time you'd worn it; then, a spilled drink, a spaghetti stain, leaned against fresh paint, a hot ash, a cat's claws, a puppy's paws, caught on a piece of something, sticking out from something, fist fight at the reception.
I have. What's the feeling? Self-disgust? Karmic fate for you and that shirt, those pants, that outfit? Toss it in the bin, give it to the Salvation Army, send it to the rez.
___
You Okay Today?
"What brought you here today?" she asked.
With a perfectly straight face, I replied slowly, "Pine Ridge VA shuttle.".
"No, I mean," she began, then hesitated a half second to wonder if I was serious and that far out of sync, or being a smartass. "I mean, what brought you in ... why are you here to see me?"
"Just teasing," I said, laughing. "I drove my truck."
She looked at me hard and cold, not smiling, not into playing games or teasing, repeating her last question.
The other day I asked a visiting friend if it was ethical to reveal the contents of a conversation between a psychiatrist and their client. I already had the answer, but was testing his armchair ethics. He hemmed and hawed around, being evasive and hard to pin down, resting on moral relativity.
Of course, it depends. It's relative to the variables of the nature of the information and where you're sitting. If you're the shrink, absolutely not, unless the nature of the information is homocidal or suicidal. Otherwise, it's confidential.
If you're the client or a fly on the wall, then you're free to disclose any or all parts of the session at your discretion. You can say anything. It's your file, after all.
"The nurses over in intake suggested I make an appointment," I said honestly.
"Why did they say that?" she asked.
"Could have been my answers to their questions," I said, adding, "or maybe they wanted info on you. They told me to report back."
The news that the nurses over in Building A wanted information on her, and that she must be the subject of gossip, caught her by surprise and made her wonder, trumping my answers to the intake questionaire. She went vacant for just a second, wearing the expression of someone in disbelief of the incredible filth they had just encountered upon entry into a neigbor's home, then she caught her flow and turned to her computer screen, checking my history, while I sat studying. the degrees on her wall.
"Why haven't you made an appointment in five years?" she asked, turning to me.
"I've been feeling better," I told her. "And you're the fourth person in this position I've talked to over here. There's a lot of turnover in your job."
Rather than pursue an inquiry into the high rate of turnover in her position, the conversation turned to why she was there and where she had come from and the schools she'd attended and where she did her internship, and where she sat during the football. games between IU. and Purdue, the schools she'd attended, and when it flowed back to me, I told her I couldn't get out of my head those angry words those people were shouting at me.
"What people?" she asked.
"The audience," I said.
"What were they yelling?" she asked.
"GET OFF THE STAGE!" I yelled.
I declined her offer of a non-SSRI* pharmaceutical intervention, saying that by the time they kicked in,** I would probably be feeling better, and that I was feeling poorly last week; I was ok right then because I was boarding a flight in two days.
"Can I see your notes?"
___
Captive of Thung Maphrao
The Thai are big on songbirds. You see them everywhere, caged in custom wooden cages. I know the guy who makes them. Lives right across the street.
On Saturdays and sometimes other days, they have songbird calling contests, with the cars and motorcycles pulled alongside the road, like for a funeral or an auction or yard sale in the US.
You can often see a guy going down the road on a motorbike, cage in hand, covered with a cloth. Sometimes there will be a guy riding on the back, holding a cage in either hand. They say some of those birds are worth ten thousand baht, about three hundred bucks.
They whistle and call to the birds, and blow a metal whistle, or shoot a gun, getting all sorts of smart song responses from the birds, all fluttering around in their cages in rows on aluminum racks, the owners and observers sitting around on the ground. The winners of the competitions are considered quite valuable, they say.
At some of the larger temples, bird vendors sit outside and sell you a small bird in a small cage. You purchase the bird and release it for good merit. Everybody gains; you, the bird, the vendor.
___
They called him 'Lucky', but he wasn't lucky at all, being chained to a wooden post in a shed; a short chain at that, allowing him just enough tether to dig a cool hole at the base of the post, penalty for his penchant of killing the chickens.
___
In the vilage of Thung Maphrao, there was a man held captive and under the spell of a powerful shaman's family, allowing just enough tether to dig a hole, and he did. He was free to go, but he kept returning, making everybody wonder and attempt conclusions.
___
"... and a dream consultant, but not for fees."
"You mean, you interpret people's dreams?"
"No. There's a difference. Dream interpretation involves interpreting highly personalized meaning and symbolism going on inside someone else's head, a charlatan's act, and dream consultation involves only listening, listening to people describe their dreams."
___
Three dogs ran alongside the road under the lamplight as I sat in Khoh Kloi awaiting a bus to Malaysia on a visa run, a dreaded trip snatching me from my imprisoning in-country comfort zone. The last dog limped along on three legs, stopping to smell something as his friends trotted on, then sprinted to catch up with them, sprinting with a limp.
'That dog on three legs is faster than a man on two,' I thought.
Dogs can run faster, no question. They can smell better than man. They don't have to worry about the rent or a counseling load. It seems that their primary task in life is to find a good place to stay, maybe pull a little guard duty.
Their disadvantages? They don't have hands, thus, they aren't inventive. They can't have mood rings or chia pets, or listen to Def Leppard. They have to listen to us.
-end
* Psycho/pharmo lingo/babble for 'Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor'.
** Two to three weeks.
.
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - You ever ruined brand new clothes? Brand new, just out of the sack, first time you'd worn it; then, a spilled drink, a spaghetti stain, leaned against fresh paint, a hot ash, a cat's claws, a puppy's paws, caught on a piece of something, sticking out from something, fist fight at the reception.
I have. What's the feeling? Self-disgust? Karmic fate for you and that shirt, those pants, that outfit? Toss it in the bin, give it to the Salvation Army, send it to the rez.
___
You Okay Today?
"What brought you here today?" she asked.
With a perfectly straight face, I replied slowly, "Pine Ridge VA shuttle.".
"No, I mean," she began, then hesitated a half second to wonder if I was serious and that far out of sync, or being a smartass. "I mean, what brought you in ... why are you here to see me?"
"Just teasing," I said, laughing. "I drove my truck."
She looked at me hard and cold, not smiling, not into playing games or teasing, repeating her last question.
The other day I asked a visiting friend if it was ethical to reveal the contents of a conversation between a psychiatrist and their client. I already had the answer, but was testing his armchair ethics. He hemmed and hawed around, being evasive and hard to pin down, resting on moral relativity.
Of course, it depends. It's relative to the variables of the nature of the information and where you're sitting. If you're the shrink, absolutely not, unless the nature of the information is homocidal or suicidal. Otherwise, it's confidential.
If you're the client or a fly on the wall, then you're free to disclose any or all parts of the session at your discretion. You can say anything. It's your file, after all.
"The nurses over in intake suggested I make an appointment," I said honestly.
"Why did they say that?" she asked.
"Could have been my answers to their questions," I said, adding, "or maybe they wanted info on you. They told me to report back."
The news that the nurses over in Building A wanted information on her, and that she must be the subject of gossip, caught her by surprise and made her wonder, trumping my answers to the intake questionaire. She went vacant for just a second, wearing the expression of someone in disbelief of the incredible filth they had just encountered upon entry into a neigbor's home, then she caught her flow and turned to her computer screen, checking my history, while I sat studying. the degrees on her wall.
"Why haven't you made an appointment in five years?" she asked, turning to me.
"I've been feeling better," I told her. "And you're the fourth person in this position I've talked to over here. There's a lot of turnover in your job."
Rather than pursue an inquiry into the high rate of turnover in her position, the conversation turned to why she was there and where she had come from and the schools she'd attended and where she did her internship, and where she sat during the football. games between IU. and Purdue, the schools she'd attended, and when it flowed back to me, I told her I couldn't get out of my head those angry words those people were shouting at me.
"What people?" she asked.
"The audience," I said.
"What were they yelling?" she asked.
"GET OFF THE STAGE!" I yelled.
I declined her offer of a non-SSRI* pharmaceutical intervention, saying that by the time they kicked in,** I would probably be feeling better, and that I was feeling poorly last week; I was ok right then because I was boarding a flight in two days.
"Can I see your notes?"
___
Captive of Thung Maphrao
The Thai are big on songbirds. You see them everywhere, caged in custom wooden cages. I know the guy who makes them. Lives right across the street.
On Saturdays and sometimes other days, they have songbird calling contests, with the cars and motorcycles pulled alongside the road, like for a funeral or an auction or yard sale in the US.
You can often see a guy going down the road on a motorbike, cage in hand, covered with a cloth. Sometimes there will be a guy riding on the back, holding a cage in either hand. They say some of those birds are worth ten thousand baht, about three hundred bucks.
They whistle and call to the birds, and blow a metal whistle, or shoot a gun, getting all sorts of smart song responses from the birds, all fluttering around in their cages in rows on aluminum racks, the owners and observers sitting around on the ground. The winners of the competitions are considered quite valuable, they say.
At some of the larger temples, bird vendors sit outside and sell you a small bird in a small cage. You purchase the bird and release it for good merit. Everybody gains; you, the bird, the vendor.
___
They called him 'Lucky', but he wasn't lucky at all, being chained to a wooden post in a shed; a short chain at that, allowing him just enough tether to dig a cool hole at the base of the post, penalty for his penchant of killing the chickens.
___
In the vilage of Thung Maphrao, there was a man held captive and under the spell of a powerful shaman's family, allowing just enough tether to dig a hole, and he did. He was free to go, but he kept returning, making everybody wonder and attempt conclusions.
___
"... and a dream consultant, but not for fees."
"You mean, you interpret people's dreams?"
"No. There's a difference. Dream interpretation involves interpreting highly personalized meaning and symbolism going on inside someone else's head, a charlatan's act, and dream consultation involves only listening, listening to people describe their dreams."
___
Three dogs ran alongside the road under the lamplight as I sat in Khoh Kloi awaiting a bus to Malaysia on a visa run, a dreaded trip snatching me from my imprisoning in-country comfort zone. The last dog limped along on three legs, stopping to smell something as his friends trotted on, then sprinted to catch up with them, sprinting with a limp.
'That dog on three legs is faster than a man on two,' I thought.
Dogs can run faster, no question. They can smell better than man. They don't have to worry about the rent or a counseling load. It seems that their primary task in life is to find a good place to stay, maybe pull a little guard duty.
Their disadvantages? They don't have hands, thus, they aren't inventive. They can't have mood rings or chia pets, or listen to Def Leppard. They have to listen to us.
-end
* Psycho/pharmo lingo/babble for 'Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor'.
** Two to three weeks.
.
Monday, February 08, 2010
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Bat Out Of Hell
02.04.10
Bat Out Of Hell
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - That thing about the cat and the scalding water, ‘What does a cat hate worse than being sprayed with cold water?’ It wasn’t intentional at all; it’s just that the hose had been lying out in the sun all afternoon, and what can I say? It’s the tropics.
__
Everybody knows what going 'like a bat out of hell’ means. ‘Went by me like a bat out of hell.’ ‘Came out of there like a bat out of hell.’ When going like a bat out of hell, especially on a motorbike, you should never go full bat. Everybody knows you never go full bat.
__
I don’t particularly like driving at night, especially on a motorbike. Went up to Takuapa, some thirty kilometers north of here, a half hour ride, after sunset, fully knowing the drive home would be in the dark.
You never know when the Good Lord is going to take you, right? So if you’re expecting it, then it should come as no surprise. It could be a big hole in the road that could easily send a bike cart wheeling and the rider spinning through the air, KIA on impact with the asphalt, or that elephant appearing out of nowhere, heading home also.
I had to take a second look, since these days ever since the 90s I don’t like driving at night because of failing eyesight, a kind of blur. Especially on the streets of Takuapa, where the lighting is poor, there is constant construction throughout the city, the pavement is uneven, and you just might run into an elephant headed home.
“I’m sure glad I wasn’t coming the other way,” I thought, noticing him just at the last minute. “I would have hit him.”
That’s what had me thinking about the high possibility of an accident, and going like a bat out of hell, assurance of death. It’s just all so tenuous, existence, life, when you think about it, a mere 93 million miles from our nearest star.
So tenuous and fragile. Out there floating in the Sea, something could come along and gobble you up. Chance you gotta take, like crossing the street. Should’ve zigged instead of zagged. Should’ve caught the next flight.
Although at night like a bat out of hell, I should have been paying strict attention to the highway, the train of thought led to how I wouldn’t want to die. Wouldn’t want to die in the sky, or falling from the sky, hang gliding, parachute failure, Hindenburg sequel, or blasted out of my seat from an aircraft. Wouldn’t want to drown or have anything to do with not getting air, like, mine shaft suffocation, spelunking, or scuba diving. Wouldn’t want to get eaten by a shark, or any other big Jonah-sized fish.
Don’t want to hit an elephant, nor get hit blindside by fist, pool cue, wrecking ball or subway train. No RPG, IED, or UXO. Wouldn’t want people saying, “Never saw it coming…never knew what hit him.” Screw that.
Don’t want to die in a NASCAR crash or any other sort of public event or arena. No Daniel in the lion's den, Christian martyr, gladiator combat, crucifiction or Little Black Sambo. No sirens sweetly singing. Don’t want to die in a car or any other form of transport. No hangman’s noose, lethal injection, hospital, nursing home, or life support hoses, undignified or embarrassed.
Don’t want to die at someone else’s hand or someone else’s hand on the wheel, no death wish or suicide attack. No imprisonment of any sort, body or mind. No Alzheimer’s. No drug-induced coma.
Don’t want to die from carelessness or inattention, like stepping off a curb, looking the other way and getting whacked. Don’t want to go from ineptitude, or any other kind of stupidass negligence or lack of awareness. Please, for me, no mindlessness accident or bizarre twist of fate.
I’m trying to narrow it down, here.
Along with his autograph during an author-signing session in Rochester NY for his book, “The Wheel of Death,” The Zen Buddhist Roshi Philip Kapleau wrote, ‘May you live long and die well.’
I sure liked that. Hope it happens. For you, too.
A good way to go, for me I think, is of old age, out working in my garden. I’ve been working on that visualization for a number of years, for the distance future, of course. Old, old age, experiencing a convergence of garden and self, cultivating compassion with no anticipation of harvest. Along the way, try to contribute to the happiness and well-being of plants and other animals.
Dad went well. I liked his style. Worked hard, lived long, had a loving family, ate a good dinner prepared by a loving woman, and went in and watched about six innings of the Cubs in a Lazy Boy recliner and drifted off, catching my mom by surprise, washing the dinner dishes, when he failed to answer.
Well, you could go on and let your mind meander about all the ways you wouldn’t want to die. Like Elvis, Michael, high and low profile deaths, forgotten and tortured prisoner with no name. But we all come and go, our time here measured in what, years? Breaths? and against what scale? Life of the earth, the gods, a tomato plant, that of a butterfly?
-end
.
Bat Out Of Hell
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - That thing about the cat and the scalding water, ‘What does a cat hate worse than being sprayed with cold water?’ It wasn’t intentional at all; it’s just that the hose had been lying out in the sun all afternoon, and what can I say? It’s the tropics.
__
Everybody knows what going 'like a bat out of hell’ means. ‘Went by me like a bat out of hell.’ ‘Came out of there like a bat out of hell.’ When going like a bat out of hell, especially on a motorbike, you should never go full bat. Everybody knows you never go full bat.
__
I don’t particularly like driving at night, especially on a motorbike. Went up to Takuapa, some thirty kilometers north of here, a half hour ride, after sunset, fully knowing the drive home would be in the dark.
You never know when the Good Lord is going to take you, right? So if you’re expecting it, then it should come as no surprise. It could be a big hole in the road that could easily send a bike cart wheeling and the rider spinning through the air, KIA on impact with the asphalt, or that elephant appearing out of nowhere, heading home also.
I had to take a second look, since these days ever since the 90s I don’t like driving at night because of failing eyesight, a kind of blur. Especially on the streets of Takuapa, where the lighting is poor, there is constant construction throughout the city, the pavement is uneven, and you just might run into an elephant headed home.
“I’m sure glad I wasn’t coming the other way,” I thought, noticing him just at the last minute. “I would have hit him.”
That’s what had me thinking about the high possibility of an accident, and going like a bat out of hell, assurance of death. It’s just all so tenuous, existence, life, when you think about it, a mere 93 million miles from our nearest star.
So tenuous and fragile. Out there floating in the Sea, something could come along and gobble you up. Chance you gotta take, like crossing the street. Should’ve zigged instead of zagged. Should’ve caught the next flight.
Although at night like a bat out of hell, I should have been paying strict attention to the highway, the train of thought led to how I wouldn’t want to die. Wouldn’t want to die in the sky, or falling from the sky, hang gliding, parachute failure, Hindenburg sequel, or blasted out of my seat from an aircraft. Wouldn’t want to drown or have anything to do with not getting air, like, mine shaft suffocation, spelunking, or scuba diving. Wouldn’t want to get eaten by a shark, or any other big Jonah-sized fish.
Don’t want to hit an elephant, nor get hit blindside by fist, pool cue, wrecking ball or subway train. No RPG, IED, or UXO. Wouldn’t want people saying, “Never saw it coming…never knew what hit him.” Screw that.
Don’t want to die in a NASCAR crash or any other sort of public event or arena. No Daniel in the lion's den, Christian martyr, gladiator combat, crucifiction or Little Black Sambo. No sirens sweetly singing. Don’t want to die in a car or any other form of transport. No hangman’s noose, lethal injection, hospital, nursing home, or life support hoses, undignified or embarrassed.
Don’t want to die at someone else’s hand or someone else’s hand on the wheel, no death wish or suicide attack. No imprisonment of any sort, body or mind. No Alzheimer’s. No drug-induced coma.
Don’t want to die from carelessness or inattention, like stepping off a curb, looking the other way and getting whacked. Don’t want to go from ineptitude, or any other kind of stupidass negligence or lack of awareness. Please, for me, no mindlessness accident or bizarre twist of fate.
I’m trying to narrow it down, here.
Along with his autograph during an author-signing session in Rochester NY for his book, “The Wheel of Death,” The Zen Buddhist Roshi Philip Kapleau wrote, ‘May you live long and die well.’
I sure liked that. Hope it happens. For you, too.
A good way to go, for me I think, is of old age, out working in my garden. I’ve been working on that visualization for a number of years, for the distance future, of course. Old, old age, experiencing a convergence of garden and self, cultivating compassion with no anticipation of harvest. Along the way, try to contribute to the happiness and well-being of plants and other animals.
Dad went well. I liked his style. Worked hard, lived long, had a loving family, ate a good dinner prepared by a loving woman, and went in and watched about six innings of the Cubs in a Lazy Boy recliner and drifted off, catching my mom by surprise, washing the dinner dishes, when he failed to answer.
Well, you could go on and let your mind meander about all the ways you wouldn’t want to die. Like Elvis, Michael, high and low profile deaths, forgotten and tortured prisoner with no name. But we all come and go, our time here measured in what, years? Breaths? and against what scale? Life of the earth, the gods, a tomato plant, that of a butterfly?
-end
.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Out Of The Blue
01.30.10
Out Of The Blue
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Out of the blue, just as mysteriously as it ceased to function, and as if it had a mind of its own, my computer ‘decided’ it wanted to return to operating status, after being unable to even turn on, at which point I took the machine a half hour north to Takuapa (Tah-koo-uh-pah) IT, where last month they installed a new hard drive, and then informed me after this latest visit that it needed a new motherboard, the warranty had expired, maybe they can fix it at Pantip Plaza in Bangkok but it’s going to be so expensive I might as well consider a new computer, but otherwise take this one back to the U.S. and have Dell fix it there.
So today, it works. God works in mysterious ways, they say. Or, maybe it can only be explained by swamp gas.
A lot of my material comes to me just as I’m falling off to sleep, and I think, ‘I should get up and write that down,’ then think, ‘no, I can remember this one – it’s too good to forget.’ But then, as sleep would have it, I forget it, and…or remember it but can’t ever again find a cohesive context to use it sensibly, so you can look at it two ways; you aren’t getting my best stuff, or, I’m forgetting my best stuff. So, all this is second rate, right?
Activity on the Lake
This lake, Lake Komaneeyakhet, I call it, since the locals know the Wat, the temple on the east side where there is an elementary school, a swimming pool, and tennis courts, with at least three semi-permanent Myanmar camps of several hundred second-class citizens between here and there, is one of several small lakes in the area that absorbed the shock of the tsunami five years ago that left the inhabitants of Khuk Khak relatively unscathed psychologically, but they say there are too many ghosts down on the beach, and there’s a crocodile in the lake.
Big shindig going on over at the Wat tonight under a full moon, with a big shadow theatre stage set up, dozens of vendors selling food and drink, monk toiletry buckets, kid toys, games, tools, used shirt, and your favorite Buddha amulet. A three-day celebration, the significance of which I am ignorant, but there’s a lot going on over there, with a monk walking around all day with a remote microphone on loudspeakers blasting across the water, doing a MC public address routine, I think. Come one, come all.
Ooooh, it’s big. Really big. Huge, in fact. Just came back, weaving my bike through a evening sea of several thousand people on the paved road through the temple grounds. Luang Pau Weng’s 40th memorial celebration, they say.
Big amplified sound, fireworks, floating lanterns, the wide palm-lined entrance avenue from the highway to the wat filled with vending carts, alternating blue and white florescent lights, dried squid on a stick, cotton candy and other sweets, pork on a stick, ice cream, people dressed in white, sitting on blue plastic chairs in a large pavilion, the large grounds turned into a parking lot, a double-decker bus full of people, a van full of monks off-loads. It’s big. Really big.
Across the lake, Karl’s wife, Mon, says, ‘Maybe croc-o-die come out.’
___
My neighbor four doors down, Damon, the tattooed bad boy biker from England with whom I have nothing in common other than living in his proximity, was sitting out on his front porch, taking a break from whatever was going on inside the house, when I suggested rather than just sitting there, we could fix his rotted, jerry-rigged bamboo frame that held his porch lights, two strands of amber tiny lights encased in small bamboo balls about the size of tennis balls.
“All you need is a new piece of bamboo,” I said.
“I’ve got it right there,” he said, nodding at two lengths of bamboo lying in the yard that had been spliced together with four nails as a splint. “Style ThaiLAND,” I said to Damon. “On the rez, we fix this with duct tape.”
I came back for my ladder, then held the bamboo across the handlebars of his motorcycle as Damon struggled with a claw hammer to removed the nails, which had been driven through the bamboo, then bent over. After watching Damon proceed to destroy the bamboo pole, I said, “Like Manny always used to say to me, ‘Here, let me show you an easier way to do that.”
“Who’s Manny?” asked Damon, giving me the hammer.
“My trainer,” I replied, turning the poles around and straightening the nails, then easily driving them back through the bamboo and removing them. Damon didn’t say anything more, nor ask what kind of trainer, as I thought he might.
“Didn’t you used to be a tradesman in England?” I asked. “A carpenter?”
“Yeah,” he replied.
After replacing the bamboo frame and re-stringing the lights, we plugged everything back in. They didn’t work. As Damon fiddled with the light plug, I collected my ladder and drifted on back down here to my place.
___
Over at Karl’s Lakeview Bungalows, I sat in the afternoon eating a slice of Karl’s two-day old chocolate chip cake. It was dry, I told him, and he said in a tone that suggested I was stupid, “You should have had the mango. It’s made today,” as his sign out front attested.
Joe, a returning German guest of Karl’s who I met last year, sat nearly drunk, arguing with his Thai wife, who grabbed the truck keys and sped off, leaving Joe grumbling and mumbling. Mon, waiting tables, asked if he wanted another beer.
“Sing lek ma kop,” said Joe, indicating his wanted a small Singha beer.
“What?” said Mon.
“Sing lek ma kop,” Joe repeated, then as she turned away, knowing I am an American, Joe said in imitation of an exasperated American, somebody from Chicago or New Jersey, “Bring me a Bud…Fuck!” then began laughing drunkenly, uncontrollably, covering his face with a large meaty hand in a vain effort to suppress his mirth.
They don’t have Budweiser in Thailand, never ever seen one, making his joke all the funnier. It was a pretty good joke, coming from a German to an American, indicating his appreciation of American humor and expression. Karl approached our table, raised his eyebrows and gave a slight, helpless ‘oh well’ shrug of his shoulders of his inebriated guest.
____
Early this morning I went down to Mr. Gui’s hardware store for a planer that Mark needed to borrow to finish his new bar tables. While there, I asked for further explanation of the weekend’s festivities at the Wat.
“Today, five o’clock, they take Luang Pau Weng to spirit house,” he informed me, so I don’t want to miss that.
He went on to explain that Luang Pau Weng’s remains had not deterioratetd for 40 years.
“Body no die,” he said, pinching the skin on his arm. ‘Has fingernails…has hair,’ said Mr. Gui, pulling on his hair.
Apparently, Luang Pau Weng was in possession of miraculous powers. “One day,” began Mr. Gui, “Luang Pau Weng sat at Takuapa bus station, and people say, ‘Get on, come on, we go to Khuk Khak.’
‘No,’ said the old monk. “I walk.’
“When the bus arrived in Khuk Khak at the Wat, there sat Luang Pau Weng, legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. All the people on the bus look and say, ‘OHHH?’ ”
____
As I pulled out onto the highway, I had to follow that load of chickens, the cages stacked twelve-high, four times the height of the truck, feathers blowing out as the truck sped down the road. I was certain it was going to overturn.
I had never seen a load stacked that high, except for the guy on the motorbike with two dozen crates of eggs lashed on behind him, six feet over his head.
Amazingly, the chicken truck maintained upright as the driver weaved on springs and two wheels around motorbikes and turning vehicles, losing me as I chased him five kilometers through Bang Niang and southward toward Khao Lak. In my mind I saw the overturned truck with cages burst open and chickens scattering in the traffic, what could promise to be a terrific photo op, but it never happened.
___
Returned to the Wat for the placement of Luang Pau Weng’s remains in the spiffy new spirit house / mini-temple built for the purpose thereof. Thousands had gathered for the ceremony, everybody but a half dozen of us dressed entirely in white. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration. Maybe there were four of us.
After waiting in silent formation for an interminable time that would have made a marine corps boot camp appear as child’s play, all the local monks, and those trucked in for the occasion, led the throng of people carrying the old monk’s body in the fanciest casket I have ever seen, three times around the small temple to its resting spot, where the crowd pressed forward into a compact, compressed knit of humanity seeking a closer reach, like an Elvis concert.
You know how they do the public funerals of slain martyrs in Palestine and Iran, with huge masses of jostling people carrying the casket on their shoulders? It was sort of like that, but not nearly as visceral and mad. The people carried a long string, a very long string, affixed at one end to the casket, and the other disappearing deep into the crowd.
Having channeled the old monk’s spirit, I sat off to the side eating noodles on the steps of an adjacent temple (there’s like, four or five temples of varying sizes on the grounds), being forgiven for eating during the ceremony and not wearing white, nor being Thai, short, with black hair. He clearly understood that I, as a non-Buddhist but empathetic foreigner, had only a slight clue of my cultural and religious impropriety.
There were other people eating, too. I wasn’t the only one. There were six or seven of us, at least. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. Could have been more like four.
The front rank of five monks carried incense, flowers, a large gold-framed picture of the monk, and holy water, which was splashed this way and that on the attendees as the procession passed.
From the photo, taken when he was already old already, looked as if he was a pretty neat guy. I wonder what he really knew, and if indeed he was resident of another realm, bestowing blessings on faithful practitioners and watching the whole affair, and me eat noodles, or if he was simply gone, his mummified remains holding a spellbound populace in a perpetuated mystical belief that somehow, by venerating his life and accomplishment, their lives will be enhanced.
Alms, tithes, frankincense, flesh offerings, gifts, sacrifices, and desperate bargains. Feed the monks, dance through fire, swim in the Sea. Mummies have hair and fingernails. Elvis has hair and fingernails. Under the full moon, firecrackers and festivities, will the crocodile come ashore?
-end
.
Out Of The Blue
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Out of the blue, just as mysteriously as it ceased to function, and as if it had a mind of its own, my computer ‘decided’ it wanted to return to operating status, after being unable to even turn on, at which point I took the machine a half hour north to Takuapa (Tah-koo-uh-pah) IT, where last month they installed a new hard drive, and then informed me after this latest visit that it needed a new motherboard, the warranty had expired, maybe they can fix it at Pantip Plaza in Bangkok but it’s going to be so expensive I might as well consider a new computer, but otherwise take this one back to the U.S. and have Dell fix it there.
So today, it works. God works in mysterious ways, they say. Or, maybe it can only be explained by swamp gas.
A lot of my material comes to me just as I’m falling off to sleep, and I think, ‘I should get up and write that down,’ then think, ‘no, I can remember this one – it’s too good to forget.’ But then, as sleep would have it, I forget it, and…or remember it but can’t ever again find a cohesive context to use it sensibly, so you can look at it two ways; you aren’t getting my best stuff, or, I’m forgetting my best stuff. So, all this is second rate, right?
Activity on the Lake
This lake, Lake Komaneeyakhet, I call it, since the locals know the Wat, the temple on the east side where there is an elementary school, a swimming pool, and tennis courts, with at least three semi-permanent Myanmar camps of several hundred second-class citizens between here and there, is one of several small lakes in the area that absorbed the shock of the tsunami five years ago that left the inhabitants of Khuk Khak relatively unscathed psychologically, but they say there are too many ghosts down on the beach, and there’s a crocodile in the lake.
Big shindig going on over at the Wat tonight under a full moon, with a big shadow theatre stage set up, dozens of vendors selling food and drink, monk toiletry buckets, kid toys, games, tools, used shirt, and your favorite Buddha amulet. A three-day celebration, the significance of which I am ignorant, but there’s a lot going on over there, with a monk walking around all day with a remote microphone on loudspeakers blasting across the water, doing a MC public address routine, I think. Come one, come all.
Ooooh, it’s big. Really big. Huge, in fact. Just came back, weaving my bike through a evening sea of several thousand people on the paved road through the temple grounds. Luang Pau Weng’s 40th memorial celebration, they say.
Big amplified sound, fireworks, floating lanterns, the wide palm-lined entrance avenue from the highway to the wat filled with vending carts, alternating blue and white florescent lights, dried squid on a stick, cotton candy and other sweets, pork on a stick, ice cream, people dressed in white, sitting on blue plastic chairs in a large pavilion, the large grounds turned into a parking lot, a double-decker bus full of people, a van full of monks off-loads. It’s big. Really big.
Across the lake, Karl’s wife, Mon, says, ‘Maybe croc-o-die come out.’
___
My neighbor four doors down, Damon, the tattooed bad boy biker from England with whom I have nothing in common other than living in his proximity, was sitting out on his front porch, taking a break from whatever was going on inside the house, when I suggested rather than just sitting there, we could fix his rotted, jerry-rigged bamboo frame that held his porch lights, two strands of amber tiny lights encased in small bamboo balls about the size of tennis balls.
“All you need is a new piece of bamboo,” I said.
“I’ve got it right there,” he said, nodding at two lengths of bamboo lying in the yard that had been spliced together with four nails as a splint. “Style ThaiLAND,” I said to Damon. “On the rez, we fix this with duct tape.”
I came back for my ladder, then held the bamboo across the handlebars of his motorcycle as Damon struggled with a claw hammer to removed the nails, which had been driven through the bamboo, then bent over. After watching Damon proceed to destroy the bamboo pole, I said, “Like Manny always used to say to me, ‘Here, let me show you an easier way to do that.”
“Who’s Manny?” asked Damon, giving me the hammer.
“My trainer,” I replied, turning the poles around and straightening the nails, then easily driving them back through the bamboo and removing them. Damon didn’t say anything more, nor ask what kind of trainer, as I thought he might.
“Didn’t you used to be a tradesman in England?” I asked. “A carpenter?”
“Yeah,” he replied.
After replacing the bamboo frame and re-stringing the lights, we plugged everything back in. They didn’t work. As Damon fiddled with the light plug, I collected my ladder and drifted on back down here to my place.
___
Over at Karl’s Lakeview Bungalows, I sat in the afternoon eating a slice of Karl’s two-day old chocolate chip cake. It was dry, I told him, and he said in a tone that suggested I was stupid, “You should have had the mango. It’s made today,” as his sign out front attested.
Joe, a returning German guest of Karl’s who I met last year, sat nearly drunk, arguing with his Thai wife, who grabbed the truck keys and sped off, leaving Joe grumbling and mumbling. Mon, waiting tables, asked if he wanted another beer.
“Sing lek ma kop,” said Joe, indicating his wanted a small Singha beer.
“What?” said Mon.
“Sing lek ma kop,” Joe repeated, then as she turned away, knowing I am an American, Joe said in imitation of an exasperated American, somebody from Chicago or New Jersey, “Bring me a Bud…Fuck!” then began laughing drunkenly, uncontrollably, covering his face with a large meaty hand in a vain effort to suppress his mirth.
They don’t have Budweiser in Thailand, never ever seen one, making his joke all the funnier. It was a pretty good joke, coming from a German to an American, indicating his appreciation of American humor and expression. Karl approached our table, raised his eyebrows and gave a slight, helpless ‘oh well’ shrug of his shoulders of his inebriated guest.
____
Early this morning I went down to Mr. Gui’s hardware store for a planer that Mark needed to borrow to finish his new bar tables. While there, I asked for further explanation of the weekend’s festivities at the Wat.
“Today, five o’clock, they take Luang Pau Weng to spirit house,” he informed me, so I don’t want to miss that.
He went on to explain that Luang Pau Weng’s remains had not deterioratetd for 40 years.
“Body no die,” he said, pinching the skin on his arm. ‘Has fingernails…has hair,’ said Mr. Gui, pulling on his hair.
Apparently, Luang Pau Weng was in possession of miraculous powers. “One day,” began Mr. Gui, “Luang Pau Weng sat at Takuapa bus station, and people say, ‘Get on, come on, we go to Khuk Khak.’
‘No,’ said the old monk. “I walk.’
“When the bus arrived in Khuk Khak at the Wat, there sat Luang Pau Weng, legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. All the people on the bus look and say, ‘OHHH?’ ”
____
As I pulled out onto the highway, I had to follow that load of chickens, the cages stacked twelve-high, four times the height of the truck, feathers blowing out as the truck sped down the road. I was certain it was going to overturn.
I had never seen a load stacked that high, except for the guy on the motorbike with two dozen crates of eggs lashed on behind him, six feet over his head.
Amazingly, the chicken truck maintained upright as the driver weaved on springs and two wheels around motorbikes and turning vehicles, losing me as I chased him five kilometers through Bang Niang and southward toward Khao Lak. In my mind I saw the overturned truck with cages burst open and chickens scattering in the traffic, what could promise to be a terrific photo op, but it never happened.
___
Returned to the Wat for the placement of Luang Pau Weng’s remains in the spiffy new spirit house / mini-temple built for the purpose thereof. Thousands had gathered for the ceremony, everybody but a half dozen of us dressed entirely in white. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration. Maybe there were four of us.
After waiting in silent formation for an interminable time that would have made a marine corps boot camp appear as child’s play, all the local monks, and those trucked in for the occasion, led the throng of people carrying the old monk’s body in the fanciest casket I have ever seen, three times around the small temple to its resting spot, where the crowd pressed forward into a compact, compressed knit of humanity seeking a closer reach, like an Elvis concert.
You know how they do the public funerals of slain martyrs in Palestine and Iran, with huge masses of jostling people carrying the casket on their shoulders? It was sort of like that, but not nearly as visceral and mad. The people carried a long string, a very long string, affixed at one end to the casket, and the other disappearing deep into the crowd.
Having channeled the old monk’s spirit, I sat off to the side eating noodles on the steps of an adjacent temple (there’s like, four or five temples of varying sizes on the grounds), being forgiven for eating during the ceremony and not wearing white, nor being Thai, short, with black hair. He clearly understood that I, as a non-Buddhist but empathetic foreigner, had only a slight clue of my cultural and religious impropriety.
There were other people eating, too. I wasn’t the only one. There were six or seven of us, at least. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. Could have been more like four.
The front rank of five monks carried incense, flowers, a large gold-framed picture of the monk, and holy water, which was splashed this way and that on the attendees as the procession passed.
From the photo, taken when he was already old already, looked as if he was a pretty neat guy. I wonder what he really knew, and if indeed he was resident of another realm, bestowing blessings on faithful practitioners and watching the whole affair, and me eat noodles, or if he was simply gone, his mummified remains holding a spellbound populace in a perpetuated mystical belief that somehow, by venerating his life and accomplishment, their lives will be enhanced.
Alms, tithes, frankincense, flesh offerings, gifts, sacrifices, and desperate bargains. Feed the monks, dance through fire, swim in the Sea. Mummies have hair and fingernails. Elvis has hair and fingernails. Under the full moon, firecrackers and festivities, will the crocodile come ashore?
-end
.
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