Brovic - Blogging since 1903
1.24.11
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Yesterday Karl, my German neighbor around the bend in the lake, asked me if I go for physical exam. I told him, "Yes. Once a year. Physical, dental, and mental."
He seemed surprised I'd want to talk with a professional mental person, a shrink. I acted surprised that he was surprised. Everybody knows everybody needs someone to talk to. Even shrinks need other shrinks. Just to get the screws tightened. A psychological lube job.
You wouldn't want to get aboard a flight not having the screws tightened, would you? Jumbo jet, wide-body, with 450 on board with a couple of screws loose. No. You'd wish to bring it to the attention of a flight attendant, at the very least.
Oh, you could see a medicine man, or a priest, or your good friend, or your neighbor, or talk to the Sea, or your dog, depending on who you believed in and who was the most reliable. Your dog? Great listener, accessible, 'there for you', but weak on advice. The Sea? Again, great listener, open schedule, can see you any time, but the feedback is almost imperceptibly subtle, like the garden.
Your good friend? Sometimes the best, especially in a pinch. But also, sometimes your really good friend can offer you really poor advice, and in all likelihood, lack the proper training and background to offer sound psychological counsel. Big on empathy, but short on skills. 'Simon says...'
'DOOR THREE!'
Priest, medicine man, shrink, gypsy fortune teller. Your call. A roll of the dice. Who you go to depends on what you want to hear. Shrink is going to give you a prescription, for sure. You bet. Pharmacological intervention. Priest is going to give you, ohhhhh...something to think about. Medicine man...? He might have you do something. Maybe, maybe not.
Go to the garden. Go talk to God. Wikipedia. Over here, folks go to the temple. They go see the abbot.
.
Arthur, the guy from Australia, who lived in the U.K. and then in Kuwait, and then Mumbai, and then na na na na, stopped by earlier in the day for ten minutes and stayed a couple of hours. Smoked half my cigarettes.
Said all we gotta do is put out our desire to the universe and then not screw it up by not being joyful in advance, or something along those lines. You know the accent...even though it's English, it's hard to understand, especially if it's a sort of rolling, under-your-breath, trailing off mumble.
Anyway, you may have heard me say it. Told him, "Create your universe and go live in it."
That's what I told him, which he seemed to grasp and agree, yeah, and went on about clarifying his earlier comment. which I got the first time. We were sort of talking about the same things, but there wasn't a full and clear connection at either end. There were nuances to frames of reference each of us held, clear in our own minds, but somehow not fully communicating to the other the ideas behind it. Know what I mean?
We were both talking about creating a dream, but the approaches were different. His was alignment of energy and the dynamics of the universe, and I was thinking more about paying attention. I don't know if that makes any sense to you, or not. But it did to me then, and it does to me now.
How many times you need to pray.
Muslims say, three times a day.
Constant communication, open channel?
Ritual thus on holiday
asking
asking
God for this
asking
asking
God for that
need we change our prayer
or lay it down
and listen
to the silence
dropping in on us.
Change up the sentence structure a bit.
___
Talking about the things we take for granted; the monkeys, arriving yesterday in a truck with a large metal frame on the back, like for stacking up firewood; four of 'em, to harvest a truckload of coconuts next door, the monkeys operating on one-syllable commands from the men on the ground, tethered at the neck by a thirty-foot nylon cord.
I stopped to watch them work. Two German tourists stopped and shot photos. The monkeys grabbed the coconuts, spun them off in a twist, and dropped them to the ground.
The men will gather the fruit and head into town with the monkeys atop a heaping load. I don't get too close to them. There's something about their eyes and the movement of their eyebrows and displaying their teeth that makes me want to take a step back. I see they keep them on a short leash. Lightening quick, could pull your eye from its socket.
Last year in the suffocating midday heat, a monkey was chattering away high up in the coconut trees, working, angrily throwing the coconuts down with unusually loud THUMPs. In her restaurant, Karl's wife, Mon, stopped, listened, raised her eyebrows and interpreted, "Monkey say it's too HAWT!"
Now, I know I've already told you that one, remember? but those monkeys reminded me of her comment, and a good one is worth telling twice.
If you don't remember, tells me you haven't been reading the material I send you, or maybe you just signed on lately, or maybe hit and miss. If you remember, then, cool.
.
Yeah, those monkeys...the line of monks and uniformed schoolkids each morning, the Myanmar women and their babies' faces painted with powdered swirls, everyday things we take for granted. Stop to think about the people in our lives, thankfulness...the air...our food...our hearts, pumping away, boom boom, boom boom, boom boom, all this time, every second, this moment, all these years, without really thinking about it.
- end
.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
How Long Has It Been
Brovic - Blogging since 1903
1.21.11
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Don't you just love these numbers? The dates. Aren't you glad to see 1.21.11? Glad to be alive? I hope your day wasn't boring.
During boring moments, I'm multi-tasking, on the toilet, smoking a cigarette, cup of coffee, and reading the history of Laos for two months now (reading the book, not sitting on the toilet), a continual succession of ping pong power struggles between the Thai, the Lao, the Khmer, the Burmese, the southern Chinese, the Ho's, and the Vietnamese.
That's right, the Ho's.*
With the movement of armies and wholesale capture and relocation of populations, cities burned to the ground, people taken away, many of the people were related both linguistically and in lineage, particularly the Thai and the Lao, and borders really never got mapped and set down until mid 1800s when the French stepped in, with colonial designs of their own, to counter the British in India and Burma.
Thus, Thailand became a buffer State, to the French Indo-Chinese States of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, with land grabs and treachery going every whichaway.
You already knew this, right? Yeah, it's not a history lesson...just to say the Thai and the Lao are related, and the Khmer, too, like asking a Hispanic in Texas if they have relatives across the border.
And this king and that prince capturing the throne and executing all his brothers and all the members of the ruling royal family...stuff like that, all up and down the line. People fleeing on foot, fighting on elephants, crossbows and lances. You could see why the French thought they were superior.
Came in, got in the mix, hung around a hundred years. They had the muscle. They had the firepower, the balls, and sufficient arrogance to subjugate an entire...send the elite kids off to school in Paris, learn to be a bureaucrat.
Ahhhh, sorry. That's what I'm reading. Most people don't give a rat's ass about Laos or it's history.
The Ho's? The Ho's come out of southern China.
You can see it, the French influence, in the architecture, and up north, in the delis, where they have Camembert and Brie in the cooler, and a selection of breads and wines at check out.
Down here, catering to the Germans and the Scandinavians, we've got choice of some of the best chocolate in the world. A mountain of it right at the check out counter.
___
I don't like getting hung up in the middle of a project, or having it sit on a shelf, 'on hold'. After about the fourth trip to the hardware store, that shit starts to get old; the first trip was just an estimate, just to get started.
'How many you need?'
"Ba ba...ten, er, fif...er, gimme a couple dozen."
The second trip was to get what was actually needed for the job. The third trip was the necessary trip made halfway through the job upon realization more materials are needed, more than what you originally thought ('...that should be enough.' It never is), and to get the things you forgot on the first two trips. The fourth trip is to get the stuff you need to finish it up.
Just gotta stay on it.
___
Like the swing, for instance. Took me three weeks to get the board, then it laid here another two weeks awaiting Damon to bring his drill up from the bar. Laid out there so long, the ants began to colonize the underside.
Ended up taking it down to the hardware store, where, in successive trips, I got the chain, the rope, and the Ubolts to secure the rope in place, and had the guys there sand, polyurethane, and drill it. Then Damon came over and helped me put it up. How long has it been since you've swung?
I've got two of them up now; a bamboo old-timers swing like you'd see on a front porch in Iowa, and this one here. We've had 'em ever since the kids were kids; dangerous, all of them, don't believe me, just ask Bob Luckett, crossing a river, a terrifying plung down out of a tree across a ravine, an exhilarating zip line across the back yard, the 'chair swing' the teenagers busted, all so frightening that level-headed adults avoided them, leaving them entirely free for the little kids and the teenagers.
People should swing more, if you ask me. Swing more, and fly kites.
This is more like a conversation, right? It's not really a case of a, of a, of a professional writer trying to sell a book or an idea or something. Nah. This is more like you and me sitting here, and you sitting there and me going on and on and on about something where you can't get a word in edgewise, and maybe your mind drifted off and came back only when I started laughing at my own joke.
It's more like something like that. More than just reading and writing, right?
___
There are so many uniquely Thai cultural characteristics that one can take for granted after being here a while, such that would cause the tourist to gawk or point. You've got houses on stilts and spirit houses grand and small. Seen one temple you've seen 'em all.
There are vendors selling evvverything on canopied three-wheeled motorcycle 'slings', or sidecarts. Fresh fruit abounds. Buddha amulets worn for protection; shorts and flip-flops on motorbikes. The great food. Great beaches. Ladyboys down at the cabaret, elephants on the road, and monks chanting each morning at the temple just around the bend in the lake. What did Dorothy say to Toto?
There are guys going down the road on motorbikes, carrying covered bird cages, driving with one hand, on their way to songbird contests, where dozens of bird owners show up each Saturday and park their trucks and bikes right off the road. Their birds, trained to bust a song at the instant of a referee's whistle, compete in lines of cages hung from a tall metal frame, surrounded by all the squatting owners, picking their teeth and studying their birds as would a coach from the stands at a Grand Slam tournament.
I've never stopped at one of those bird song competitions. But I'm going to, and if it's cool, I'll tell you about it. Thai boxing and cock fights? Never been.
I've never been to a couple of waterfalls in the area, close by, nor the Khao Sok National Park, just up the way, which they say is stupendous. Never been to Ko Kao, a cool little island just not too far from here.
After working two weeks straight in the garden, I went to the sea for the first time since. You can take things for granted, sure. Never have been out to the Similans, an hour off the coast, and one of the diving meccas of the world. People come here just for that. Never been there.
Damon offered me a free boat ride and all expenses on him if I wanted to go out there with him tomorrow. I told him, 'I'm a busy man. I'm a terribly busy man. I'm right in the middle of a project.'
- end
*It would appear incorrect plural possessive, and thus, confusing. the apostrophe is there so you'll know I'm not saying 'Hoss'. It's 'Hos' or 'Hoes', like, 'My Hos,' or, as in, 'The Second Ho Invasion.'
.
1.21.11
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Don't you just love these numbers? The dates. Aren't you glad to see 1.21.11? Glad to be alive? I hope your day wasn't boring.
During boring moments, I'm multi-tasking, on the toilet, smoking a cigarette, cup of coffee, and reading the history of Laos for two months now (reading the book, not sitting on the toilet), a continual succession of ping pong power struggles between the Thai, the Lao, the Khmer, the Burmese, the southern Chinese, the Ho's, and the Vietnamese.
That's right, the Ho's.*
With the movement of armies and wholesale capture and relocation of populations, cities burned to the ground, people taken away, many of the people were related both linguistically and in lineage, particularly the Thai and the Lao, and borders really never got mapped and set down until mid 1800s when the French stepped in, with colonial designs of their own, to counter the British in India and Burma.
Thus, Thailand became a buffer State, to the French Indo-Chinese States of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, with land grabs and treachery going every whichaway.
You already knew this, right? Yeah, it's not a history lesson...just to say the Thai and the Lao are related, and the Khmer, too, like asking a Hispanic in Texas if they have relatives across the border.
And this king and that prince capturing the throne and executing all his brothers and all the members of the ruling royal family...stuff like that, all up and down the line. People fleeing on foot, fighting on elephants, crossbows and lances. You could see why the French thought they were superior.
Came in, got in the mix, hung around a hundred years. They had the muscle. They had the firepower, the balls, and sufficient arrogance to subjugate an entire...send the elite kids off to school in Paris, learn to be a bureaucrat.
Ahhhh, sorry. That's what I'm reading. Most people don't give a rat's ass about Laos or it's history.
The Ho's? The Ho's come out of southern China.
You can see it, the French influence, in the architecture, and up north, in the delis, where they have Camembert and Brie in the cooler, and a selection of breads and wines at check out.
Down here, catering to the Germans and the Scandinavians, we've got choice of some of the best chocolate in the world. A mountain of it right at the check out counter.
___
I don't like getting hung up in the middle of a project, or having it sit on a shelf, 'on hold'. After about the fourth trip to the hardware store, that shit starts to get old; the first trip was just an estimate, just to get started.
'How many you need?'
"Ba ba...ten, er, fif...er, gimme a couple dozen."
The second trip was to get what was actually needed for the job. The third trip was the necessary trip made halfway through the job upon realization more materials are needed, more than what you originally thought ('...that should be enough.' It never is), and to get the things you forgot on the first two trips. The fourth trip is to get the stuff you need to finish it up.
Just gotta stay on it.
___
Like the swing, for instance. Took me three weeks to get the board, then it laid here another two weeks awaiting Damon to bring his drill up from the bar. Laid out there so long, the ants began to colonize the underside.
Ended up taking it down to the hardware store, where, in successive trips, I got the chain, the rope, and the Ubolts to secure the rope in place, and had the guys there sand, polyurethane, and drill it. Then Damon came over and helped me put it up. How long has it been since you've swung?
I've got two of them up now; a bamboo old-timers swing like you'd see on a front porch in Iowa, and this one here. We've had 'em ever since the kids were kids; dangerous, all of them, don't believe me, just ask Bob Luckett, crossing a river, a terrifying plung down out of a tree across a ravine, an exhilarating zip line across the back yard, the 'chair swing' the teenagers busted, all so frightening that level-headed adults avoided them, leaving them entirely free for the little kids and the teenagers.
People should swing more, if you ask me. Swing more, and fly kites.
This is more like a conversation, right? It's not really a case of a, of a, of a professional writer trying to sell a book or an idea or something. Nah. This is more like you and me sitting here, and you sitting there and me going on and on and on about something where you can't get a word in edgewise, and maybe your mind drifted off and came back only when I started laughing at my own joke.
It's more like something like that. More than just reading and writing, right?
___
There are so many uniquely Thai cultural characteristics that one can take for granted after being here a while, such that would cause the tourist to gawk or point. You've got houses on stilts and spirit houses grand and small. Seen one temple you've seen 'em all.
There are vendors selling evvverything on canopied three-wheeled motorcycle 'slings', or sidecarts. Fresh fruit abounds. Buddha amulets worn for protection; shorts and flip-flops on motorbikes. The great food. Great beaches. Ladyboys down at the cabaret, elephants on the road, and monks chanting each morning at the temple just around the bend in the lake. What did Dorothy say to Toto?
There are guys going down the road on motorbikes, carrying covered bird cages, driving with one hand, on their way to songbird contests, where dozens of bird owners show up each Saturday and park their trucks and bikes right off the road. Their birds, trained to bust a song at the instant of a referee's whistle, compete in lines of cages hung from a tall metal frame, surrounded by all the squatting owners, picking their teeth and studying their birds as would a coach from the stands at a Grand Slam tournament.
I've never stopped at one of those bird song competitions. But I'm going to, and if it's cool, I'll tell you about it. Thai boxing and cock fights? Never been.
I've never been to a couple of waterfalls in the area, close by, nor the Khao Sok National Park, just up the way, which they say is stupendous. Never been to Ko Kao, a cool little island just not too far from here.
After working two weeks straight in the garden, I went to the sea for the first time since. You can take things for granted, sure. Never have been out to the Similans, an hour off the coast, and one of the diving meccas of the world. People come here just for that. Never been there.
Damon offered me a free boat ride and all expenses on him if I wanted to go out there with him tomorrow. I told him, 'I'm a busy man. I'm a terribly busy man. I'm right in the middle of a project.'
- end
*It would appear incorrect plural possessive, and thus, confusing. the apostrophe is there so you'll know I'm not saying 'Hoss'. It's 'Hos' or 'Hoes', like, 'My Hos,' or, as in, 'The Second Ho Invasion.'
.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
The 'H' is Silent
Brovic -Blogging since 1903
1.19.11
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Damn, I had a title earlier. Can't remember what it was, but it seemed workable. Maybe it will come to me later.* You reading this stuff? I wonder, especially when someone writes, asking, 'Where are you now?'**
What is it you want? Humor? Commentary? Off-the-wall Tall Tale? Horrific war story? A brand new car. Pick up a cause, Piss you off, Fire your imagination? Where I am now? Hows the weather. Where are you? Closing the circle, circle the wagons? Family and friends. Winding it down, winding it up, not as much as you used to, too numb, too fried, too afraid, too much information, too much shock, too much too much? Yanked up by the roots.
Sat staring at this blank screen for the longest time. Out there in the garden, I was swamped with ideas.
That songbird froze me in my tracks. I was leaning over, reaching for a container for yet another of a thousand seedlings, when just overhead, right there in the palm branches, a wild songbird let loose on an extended song, all over the place in form, rhythm and structure, like Coltrane, spellbinding. I was afraid to move, frozen, reaching for the flower pot, thinking, 'this surely must be something like heaven.' Just that moment.
Then, timelessness, the green, the jungle, the damp smell of wet, rotting organic matter, lizards flicking across the ground, the black mold creeping across a faded pastel French colonial wall, a light midday tropical breeze, the sun's rays glinting through palm leaves on a gardener frozen by a songbird's expression. Could have been another lifetime.
Everybody knows you've got to thin your carrots. Was it the same with palms.
'What? Are you thinking of adopting a baby?' asked Claudia, Damon's Swiss girlfriend, sitting on her motorbike in front of Mr. Gui's hardware store after turning around when I yelled at her as she passed by. 'Why would you think of that?' she asked.
"You know, you've got time to think in a garden," I said. "I just wondered if it's in the best interest of the seedling to be pulled now, in infancy, and set in a nurturing environment, than to wait until later, say, adolescence, and yank 'em out by their roots and put 'em in a strange place and strange family...and if the same would apply to humans, as well, that's all."
There was a connection somewhere. Maybe I couldn't express it clearly enough, just then. In the garden, I was thinking, foster homes and loving parents and babies who wouldn't know the difference until much later in life, and how no matter how much pre-soaking you do before yanking them out by their roots, they nonetheless yield grudgingly.
'You have time for philosophy in your garden?' Claudia asked.
With the noise of the traffic, I wasn't entirely sure she hadn't said 'mediocrity'. Manny used to infuriate me when he'd say I'd never rise above mediocrity.
"You don't know the right people," he'd spit, "and you haven't got the natural talent or work ethic..." have I already told you this? Manny's 'mediocrity' speech? Lecture. How I could never make it to county commission, and all that? Still eats at me.
You'd think he could have been a little bit more supportive, given his role, and when I said that to him, 'you could be a little bit more supportive, you know,' being the type not to mince words, he told me I could have been a little bit more than what I was.
You ever get told you just weren't good enough to make the starting squad, or measuring up to your potential? If so, why?
'You can never be the shamp,' he'd say. Perhaps he was realistically setting the bar low, to affect such a low self-esteem that any small measure of achievement could be perceived as outstanding performance. Half the time he never even bothered to show up for tournaments, that's how....
HEY! DAMN! Hodup, now. There's a GREAT Big-ass moth that just flew in here...I mean, BIG. He's up on the ceiling...about a five, maybe six foot wing span, I'd say.
Ho-lee Sa-mokes! I've gotta do something here.
- end
*which it did, on the way back from 7/11.
**The Goldilocks Planet? Just like Earth? I mean...can we...can we...take it over?
.
1.19.11
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Damn, I had a title earlier. Can't remember what it was, but it seemed workable. Maybe it will come to me later.* You reading this stuff? I wonder, especially when someone writes, asking, 'Where are you now?'**
What is it you want? Humor? Commentary? Off-the-wall Tall Tale? Horrific war story? A brand new car. Pick up a cause, Piss you off, Fire your imagination? Where I am now? Hows the weather. Where are you? Closing the circle, circle the wagons? Family and friends. Winding it down, winding it up, not as much as you used to, too numb, too fried, too afraid, too much information, too much shock, too much too much? Yanked up by the roots.
Sat staring at this blank screen for the longest time. Out there in the garden, I was swamped with ideas.
That songbird froze me in my tracks. I was leaning over, reaching for a container for yet another of a thousand seedlings, when just overhead, right there in the palm branches, a wild songbird let loose on an extended song, all over the place in form, rhythm and structure, like Coltrane, spellbinding. I was afraid to move, frozen, reaching for the flower pot, thinking, 'this surely must be something like heaven.' Just that moment.
Then, timelessness, the green, the jungle, the damp smell of wet, rotting organic matter, lizards flicking across the ground, the black mold creeping across a faded pastel French colonial wall, a light midday tropical breeze, the sun's rays glinting through palm leaves on a gardener frozen by a songbird's expression. Could have been another lifetime.
Everybody knows you've got to thin your carrots. Was it the same with palms.
'What? Are you thinking of adopting a baby?' asked Claudia, Damon's Swiss girlfriend, sitting on her motorbike in front of Mr. Gui's hardware store after turning around when I yelled at her as she passed by. 'Why would you think of that?' she asked.
"You know, you've got time to think in a garden," I said. "I just wondered if it's in the best interest of the seedling to be pulled now, in infancy, and set in a nurturing environment, than to wait until later, say, adolescence, and yank 'em out by their roots and put 'em in a strange place and strange family...and if the same would apply to humans, as well, that's all."
There was a connection somewhere. Maybe I couldn't express it clearly enough, just then. In the garden, I was thinking, foster homes and loving parents and babies who wouldn't know the difference until much later in life, and how no matter how much pre-soaking you do before yanking them out by their roots, they nonetheless yield grudgingly.
'You have time for philosophy in your garden?' Claudia asked.
With the noise of the traffic, I wasn't entirely sure she hadn't said 'mediocrity'. Manny used to infuriate me when he'd say I'd never rise above mediocrity.
"You don't know the right people," he'd spit, "and you haven't got the natural talent or work ethic..." have I already told you this? Manny's 'mediocrity' speech? Lecture. How I could never make it to county commission, and all that? Still eats at me.
You'd think he could have been a little bit more supportive, given his role, and when I said that to him, 'you could be a little bit more supportive, you know,' being the type not to mince words, he told me I could have been a little bit more than what I was.
You ever get told you just weren't good enough to make the starting squad, or measuring up to your potential? If so, why?
'You can never be the shamp,' he'd say. Perhaps he was realistically setting the bar low, to affect such a low self-esteem that any small measure of achievement could be perceived as outstanding performance. Half the time he never even bothered to show up for tournaments, that's how....
HEY! DAMN! Hodup, now. There's a GREAT Big-ass moth that just flew in here...I mean, BIG. He's up on the ceiling...about a five, maybe six foot wing span, I'd say.
Ho-lee Sa-mokes! I've gotta do something here.
- end
*which it did, on the way back from 7/11.
**The Goldilocks Planet? Just like Earth? I mean...can we...can we...take it over?
.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Your Buddha Hab No Power
Brovic - Blogging since 1903
Your Buddha Hab No Power
1.11.11
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Everybody knows babies require a lot of attention. Constant. Same with plants. I've got about 800 + here now. Little yellow palm starts, potted in clusters of four or more, encircling the parent plants from which they were spawned.
'Same same resort,' remarked the workman who cut a giant hole in the wall for a new window, transforming a dull, cell-like room into an airy breathing space. Now, instead of looking at a wall, you can see the garden, and the lake. Karl, from across the lake, said the builder was thinking, "...'Five units.' He wasn't thinking of living here."
One, eleven, eleven, already. Don't time fly? Here it was, New Year's, just the other day. 1.11.11. Gotta put up a post on a date like that; one which falls once in a lifetime, just like all the others.
___
Just to prevent time from slipping by without trying something different, across-the-grain, counter to given sensibilities, discretions, and tendencies, I went ahead on down to Damon's bar and joined Damon and the couple dozen Hells Angels who'd gathered there last weekend.
Lots of loud noise (from the bar and bikes), black leather, patches (Australian chapter), tattoos, suspicious looks, and what else? I don't know. I can't really say I 'hung out' with the dudes; in fact, when I came in, they were all in the back, and when I went to the back, they went to the front, it seemed, and when I took a seat at the bar, they sort of dispersed, and gee...eventually left.
"I didn't mean to run off all your bros," I said to Damon, half kidding. I had taken some photos of a guy and his girl (with her camera), and another group photo of everybody at the bar, and Damon, doing his master of ceremonies best, had thrown his arm around me when I first entered and introduced me, 'Here's my neighbor, my friend, my bro,' and introduced me around, but still, I caught a couple of them eyeing me suspiciously and studying me hard.
It was okay. The vet hat with wings helped. The most impressive thing was Damon stopping traffic as all those bikes rolled out of there in a roaring, thunderous, ear-splitting swarm, and the last guy backing his bike into the bar, torquing it out with the front brake on, revving up to about three thousand rpms, and laying a tire-screeching 'burnout' patch of rubber from the bar and out onto the asphalt, in an impressive, deafening display of 'see ya later.'
Damon explained after they had gone, 'It's not you, bro. They're like that with everybody. They keep up this image, 'if you're not one of us...'
'then you're not one of the bros,' I finished for him. 'You can't be trusted.'
Given the right circumstances, any one of us could have been a biker. See yourself as a social outcast, see yourself as a non-conformist, see yourself un-loved, a rebel. See yourself in a tattoo parlor, black leather, on a hog. See yourself with a ready-made family of people you can trust.
It's a pretty loud family. And there's an element of scare in the family. I could see it in the eyes of the Thai, watching the family leave. Hells Angels, on their way back to Phuket. Everybody stopped, and took notice.
___
Given the right circumstances, instead of who you are, anyone of us could have been a marine. An instant family. People you can depend on, people you can trust. There is an element of scare within the family. You could see it in the eyes of the Afghans when the predator drone struck. Everybody stopped, and took notice.
___
Everybody stops and takes notice at an accident scene. I've had three people in the last three days; one just in front of me, the other just behind me, a truck smacking both a motorbike passing a Moken (Sea Gypsy) kid on a bike.
It seems like I'm pretty focused at those moments, because helping hands appear from nowhere, a time-compressed blur, not unlike pulling missions in Vietnam, and it's later when I can't sleep that I see those folks...the stunned Indian man, shaken but relatively unhurt, with the other two Thai guys fleeing the scene on foot, leaving their bike; the Thai man in the road with a busted knee, and that Moken kid, maybe ten years old, in shock, scary quiet, a single tear sliding from the corner of his eye as I cleaned the sand and blood from his face and addressed his wounds.
'Talk to him,' I said to the man who dragged the limp kid to the side of the road. 'Tell him everything is going to be okay.'
___
I'm going to stop telling you these accident stories. They happen every day. It's not like I'm a magnet. I hear the sirens going down toward the traffic and tourist bottlenecks of Bang Niang and Khao Lak. They happen all the time. Just last week, two Germans on a motorbike got dragged under a truck in Bang Niang. Thing is, to go out prepared.
You know? You're not writing about your work. If an emt wrote about all his runs, it would have to be nothing less than gruesome, or a doctor in the emergency room...you're not telling me about your work.
I guess I tell you this because it's relatively unusual and impacts my life in a meaningful way, beyond nonsense and storytelling. I guess I'm just thankful my uncle provided me with the training so I can continue to have deeply compassionate contact with other humans throughout life. It's a blessing, and not a curse.
__
They inform the user at Yahoo to protect your online identity and reputation by not publishing personal information or content that may jeopardize your integrity and safety.
Man, I've been saying all kinds of stuff, since...1903, I guess, so, what the hell.
Yeah, it's more than just 'family and friends'. Put it in the file. So, people think, 'I'm no threat. I've got nothing to hide.' And we quietly submit to increasing intrusion, observation, and control in our lives, and erosion of our citizen's rights. Don't believe me? Go through airport security.
So never mind concern of third-party knowledge of personal activity between you and family and friends. Everything you've ever said, on the phone, in a text, on a keyboard, downloaded, is collected, packaged, and sold.
Isn't it nice you're that important?
___
My neighbor waved me over the other day as I passed on my bike. We've only been saying hi to each other for the past two years. Turns out, his daughter and her husband and two kids run the little shop next door that caters to the Myanmar, and opened when there was a huge Myanmar population in the neighborhood, rebuilding the resorts.
I'm friends with those guys at the shop, and I didn't know that was her mom and dad next door until this year. Anyway, they've been waving hello, and the other day he had me stop in at his picnic table, where I see him huddled with other Thai men in the afternoons.
He invited me into his house, speaking only rapid Thai, which I didn't understand, and pointed to the walls, pictures of Buddhas, pictures of himself as a younger man with famous monks, citing their names, their wats, their towns.
Didn't have any pictures of his grandkids up there, or his family. Just the monks. Some big pictures, and lots of small ones. Underneath was a glass cabinet full of Buddha amulets on top of a long case with drawers full of amulet cases and necklaces for the Buddhas.
Obviously, he was a serious collector, or a collector's collector. That's what all those guys were doing each afternoon around his picnic table, examining Buddhas under the pocket magnifying glasses all serious collectors have, a pursuit you don't see in neighboring countries.
Out at the table, he looked at the Buddha I was wearing and frowned. He made a Popeye muscle-flexing pose, turned his mouth down in an expression of distaste, and shook both his hands in that bulb-screwing motion that says 'no have', or, 'I don't know', and waved his daughter over from the shop.
His nephew, who was sitting at the table and could speak hesitant English, said, "My Uncle says your Buddha hab no pow-ER."
The daughter, I don't know any of their names, came over in a rush from the shop. Her dad rattled off something in Thai, and she indicated in sign language that my Buddha wouldn't protect me from a motorbike accident, or getting cut, then she sat down, taking a Buddha that he'd given her, made a quick silent prayer, extended her arm, then placed her hand over her heart, then returned the amulet to her father. Then she stood for a moment before returning to the shop.
Her dad then proceeded to remove the amulet I'd been wearing (I won't say his name, but it wasn't Luang Po Thuat, for those of you who have been depending on him for travel safety),* removed it from the necklace, and replaced it with the new Buddha.
"Rong Paw Gao," he said. "Wat Klua Wan. Chanburi."
That's the Buddha, the temple, and the city. I had him repeat it five or six times so I could get it right, then he got a pen and paper, and I wrote it down. The nephew looked at it.
"Rong Paw Gao," he said, pointing at the paper. "Rong. Rong," he said again, pointing at the 'R' and shaking his head. He took the pen and scrawled an 'L' over the 'R'.
"Ohhh," I said. "Luang Paw Gao!"
They both nodded their heads, smiling broadly, eyes glistening in seeing I'd finally gotten it right. I put the amulet around my neck. My neighbor then again flexed his muscles and nodded his head, lips pressed together. "Hab. Hab."
The Thai are very superstitious. They believe it's unlucky to look both ways before pulling out into traffic. Just go. No helmet. No protection. Just shorts, flip-flops and a Buddha around your neck.
-end
*isn't that comforting?
.
Your Buddha Hab No Power
1.11.11
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Everybody knows babies require a lot of attention. Constant. Same with plants. I've got about 800 + here now. Little yellow palm starts, potted in clusters of four or more, encircling the parent plants from which they were spawned.
'Same same resort,' remarked the workman who cut a giant hole in the wall for a new window, transforming a dull, cell-like room into an airy breathing space. Now, instead of looking at a wall, you can see the garden, and the lake. Karl, from across the lake, said the builder was thinking, "...'Five units.' He wasn't thinking of living here."
One, eleven, eleven, already. Don't time fly? Here it was, New Year's, just the other day. 1.11.11. Gotta put up a post on a date like that; one which falls once in a lifetime, just like all the others.
___
Just to prevent time from slipping by without trying something different, across-the-grain, counter to given sensibilities, discretions, and tendencies, I went ahead on down to Damon's bar and joined Damon and the couple dozen Hells Angels who'd gathered there last weekend.
Lots of loud noise (from the bar and bikes), black leather, patches (Australian chapter), tattoos, suspicious looks, and what else? I don't know. I can't really say I 'hung out' with the dudes; in fact, when I came in, they were all in the back, and when I went to the back, they went to the front, it seemed, and when I took a seat at the bar, they sort of dispersed, and gee...eventually left.
"I didn't mean to run off all your bros," I said to Damon, half kidding. I had taken some photos of a guy and his girl (with her camera), and another group photo of everybody at the bar, and Damon, doing his master of ceremonies best, had thrown his arm around me when I first entered and introduced me, 'Here's my neighbor, my friend, my bro,' and introduced me around, but still, I caught a couple of them eyeing me suspiciously and studying me hard.
It was okay. The vet hat with wings helped. The most impressive thing was Damon stopping traffic as all those bikes rolled out of there in a roaring, thunderous, ear-splitting swarm, and the last guy backing his bike into the bar, torquing it out with the front brake on, revving up to about three thousand rpms, and laying a tire-screeching 'burnout' patch of rubber from the bar and out onto the asphalt, in an impressive, deafening display of 'see ya later.'
Damon explained after they had gone, 'It's not you, bro. They're like that with everybody. They keep up this image, 'if you're not one of us...'
'then you're not one of the bros,' I finished for him. 'You can't be trusted.'
Given the right circumstances, any one of us could have been a biker. See yourself as a social outcast, see yourself as a non-conformist, see yourself un-loved, a rebel. See yourself in a tattoo parlor, black leather, on a hog. See yourself with a ready-made family of people you can trust.
It's a pretty loud family. And there's an element of scare in the family. I could see it in the eyes of the Thai, watching the family leave. Hells Angels, on their way back to Phuket. Everybody stopped, and took notice.
___
Given the right circumstances, instead of who you are, anyone of us could have been a marine. An instant family. People you can depend on, people you can trust. There is an element of scare within the family. You could see it in the eyes of the Afghans when the predator drone struck. Everybody stopped, and took notice.
___
Everybody stops and takes notice at an accident scene. I've had three people in the last three days; one just in front of me, the other just behind me, a truck smacking both a motorbike passing a Moken (Sea Gypsy) kid on a bike.
It seems like I'm pretty focused at those moments, because helping hands appear from nowhere, a time-compressed blur, not unlike pulling missions in Vietnam, and it's later when I can't sleep that I see those folks...the stunned Indian man, shaken but relatively unhurt, with the other two Thai guys fleeing the scene on foot, leaving their bike; the Thai man in the road with a busted knee, and that Moken kid, maybe ten years old, in shock, scary quiet, a single tear sliding from the corner of his eye as I cleaned the sand and blood from his face and addressed his wounds.
'Talk to him,' I said to the man who dragged the limp kid to the side of the road. 'Tell him everything is going to be okay.'
___
I'm going to stop telling you these accident stories. They happen every day. It's not like I'm a magnet. I hear the sirens going down toward the traffic and tourist bottlenecks of Bang Niang and Khao Lak. They happen all the time. Just last week, two Germans on a motorbike got dragged under a truck in Bang Niang. Thing is, to go out prepared.
You know? You're not writing about your work. If an emt wrote about all his runs, it would have to be nothing less than gruesome, or a doctor in the emergency room...you're not telling me about your work.
I guess I tell you this because it's relatively unusual and impacts my life in a meaningful way, beyond nonsense and storytelling. I guess I'm just thankful my uncle provided me with the training so I can continue to have deeply compassionate contact with other humans throughout life. It's a blessing, and not a curse.
__
They inform the user at Yahoo to protect your online identity and reputation by not publishing personal information or content that may jeopardize your integrity and safety.
Man, I've been saying all kinds of stuff, since...1903, I guess, so, what the hell.
Yeah, it's more than just 'family and friends'. Put it in the file. So, people think, 'I'm no threat. I've got nothing to hide.' And we quietly submit to increasing intrusion, observation, and control in our lives, and erosion of our citizen's rights. Don't believe me? Go through airport security.
So never mind concern of third-party knowledge of personal activity between you and family and friends. Everything you've ever said, on the phone, in a text, on a keyboard, downloaded, is collected, packaged, and sold.
Isn't it nice you're that important?
___
My neighbor waved me over the other day as I passed on my bike. We've only been saying hi to each other for the past two years. Turns out, his daughter and her husband and two kids run the little shop next door that caters to the Myanmar, and opened when there was a huge Myanmar population in the neighborhood, rebuilding the resorts.
I'm friends with those guys at the shop, and I didn't know that was her mom and dad next door until this year. Anyway, they've been waving hello, and the other day he had me stop in at his picnic table, where I see him huddled with other Thai men in the afternoons.
He invited me into his house, speaking only rapid Thai, which I didn't understand, and pointed to the walls, pictures of Buddhas, pictures of himself as a younger man with famous monks, citing their names, their wats, their towns.
Didn't have any pictures of his grandkids up there, or his family. Just the monks. Some big pictures, and lots of small ones. Underneath was a glass cabinet full of Buddha amulets on top of a long case with drawers full of amulet cases and necklaces for the Buddhas.
Obviously, he was a serious collector, or a collector's collector. That's what all those guys were doing each afternoon around his picnic table, examining Buddhas under the pocket magnifying glasses all serious collectors have, a pursuit you don't see in neighboring countries.
Out at the table, he looked at the Buddha I was wearing and frowned. He made a Popeye muscle-flexing pose, turned his mouth down in an expression of distaste, and shook both his hands in that bulb-screwing motion that says 'no have', or, 'I don't know', and waved his daughter over from the shop.
His nephew, who was sitting at the table and could speak hesitant English, said, "My Uncle says your Buddha hab no pow-ER."
The daughter, I don't know any of their names, came over in a rush from the shop. Her dad rattled off something in Thai, and she indicated in sign language that my Buddha wouldn't protect me from a motorbike accident, or getting cut, then she sat down, taking a Buddha that he'd given her, made a quick silent prayer, extended her arm, then placed her hand over her heart, then returned the amulet to her father. Then she stood for a moment before returning to the shop.
Her dad then proceeded to remove the amulet I'd been wearing (I won't say his name, but it wasn't Luang Po Thuat, for those of you who have been depending on him for travel safety),* removed it from the necklace, and replaced it with the new Buddha.
"Rong Paw Gao," he said. "Wat Klua Wan. Chanburi."
That's the Buddha, the temple, and the city. I had him repeat it five or six times so I could get it right, then he got a pen and paper, and I wrote it down. The nephew looked at it.
"Rong Paw Gao," he said, pointing at the paper. "Rong. Rong," he said again, pointing at the 'R' and shaking his head. He took the pen and scrawled an 'L' over the 'R'.
"Ohhh," I said. "Luang Paw Gao!"
They both nodded their heads, smiling broadly, eyes glistening in seeing I'd finally gotten it right. I put the amulet around my neck. My neighbor then again flexed his muscles and nodded his head, lips pressed together. "Hab. Hab."
The Thai are very superstitious. They believe it's unlucky to look both ways before pulling out into traffic. Just go. No helmet. No protection. Just shorts, flip-flops and a Buddha around your neck.
-end
*isn't that comforting?
.
Monday, January 03, 2011
Say When To Stop
Brovic - Blogging since 1903
01.04.11
Say When To Stop
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Just realized why I'm here and not there, and there when I'm not here. It's so I can garden year-round. It came to me in a flash yesterday while working around the palms, which incidentally, have yielded a crop of about ten thousand offspring, palmlets, now about six inches high.
They're all over the place, thousands of them, after the palms flowered last year in little yellow...how would you describe it?...loose, almost grape-like clusters out-of-a-pod profusions those little tiny-ass yellow bees went after like crazy, then next came little oval smaller-than-a-pea hard green seed-like...seeds...that eventually fell to the ground, took hold, and now, VOILA!
I'm sitting on a fucking gold mine, baby! Alls I gotta do is put them in individual pots with a little potting soil and coconut barks and fibers, let 'em lay a couple years, maybe three, or five, and we're talking a substantial amount of cash, especially if you can sell your product to naive foreigners, twice above and beyond the normal, everyday Thai.
A nursery. A nursery, they'd call it in The States.
Okay, granted, it's labor-intensive. I've learned that on the first fifty. You can hire a Myanmar, factor in the cost, the plastic pots and soil mix, and you still come out ahead, unless you keep giving them away. One-year old yellow palm tree-to-be...fifty cents? A dollar? Two years, five bucks, sure. Three years, you're looking at a 7-10 dollar tree. See how it goes? Four years, five years, yeah, now we're talking...plane tickets.
'How mush you need?'
"How mush you can pay?"
___
I Give You Three Choices
Yeah, some of you people on that contact list, I haven't heard from in a LONG-ass time. What've you got, three options? You see who it's from, and delete it, straightaway to trash; you can open it, and read it, and never respond; you can open it, read it, chuckle or not, and drop me a note.
As in, drop me a note expressing how you can relate, how the story put you there, how it made you roll on the floor, tears in your eyes, how it made you wonder...either about the content, or the writer.
No feedback. You know what they say that does to a nigga, don't you? Make a nigga go bananas, momma used to say. Or, no, maybe that's an isolation chamber. Yeah, an isolation chamber make a nigga go bananas. No feedback is something else...lack of knowledge of results. And if you don't know what the results are, you can keep on making the same mistakes, over and over, the same redundant mistakes.
over and over.
___
It was Damon who came in here telling me, 'You're lucky. You know what you do. You're a writer.' And he went on to tell me he had a new drug that he thought I'd like, if I wanted to come down to the bar, something like ecstasy, 'It'll make a nun turn into a prostitute,' he said. I told him in declining that it didn't sound like something good for me. I'd have to catch him later.
Point was, he told me I'm a writer, which was a comforting affirmation from the outside 3-D world, outside my head, of who I think I am, and so after laying off for a good spell, partly because the coffee shop internet cafe on the rez isn't the best place for writing, and partly because I didn't have no good ideas, then came a flurry of entries launched at the end of the year to make it look like I'd done something in 2010, as a writer.
____
Say When
Take landscaping, for instance. Or a piece of artwork. Or a military venture. Or a lot of things I undertake; sometimes I don't know when to stop. I see it in others, as well. Head across the Gobi, up the Nile. Some people don't know when to stop; like, drinking, for instance, on the rez, or me, when I think I'm being funny and getting a good laugh from the audience, I keep on until I make my own self nauseous.
People are just being kind, I know, when I run through some of my routines, like Hitler, a speeded up mimed rendition of his speech at Brandenburg, pointing at a map, pinching a child's cheek, flashing off a salute... clutching at his chest with clenched fists...everybody has seen the same footage...you could say it's funny...it sure feels funny when I do it.
Or, say, a piece of artwork. A shield; 'Those feathers look good on there. Let's add a couple more. Balance it out. Add eight. A couple more, until the whole thing looks fucked up, and not the simple thing you set out for it to be. Know what I mean? Check out your garage, for instance.
Could you get a car in there? That's what I'm talking about. And dinner last night, for instance. Somebody should've stopped him. What the hell, two scoops. Supersize that motherfucker.
And out there in the garden, or a landscaping project, the dance floor, the lie, the never-ending story, the bullshit-without-end, the fanatical pursuit of a current project, like the nursery, where like tobacco prayer ties, you make fifty, and you can't stop right there, so you make one hundred fifty more, and it's starting to look and feel real good, so you're on a roll with a couple hundred more, and before long, you've got a thousand seedlings and a long string of ties and somebody tell him when to stop.
And then it's done. Done, to the point where you can say so, if you're not a perfectionist, over-critical of every eensy-teensy little flaw. Just say, 'Thanks,' man. Done with the shields, the amulets, the theses, the painting, the drums, the aircraft, the back flips, the kites, the saxophone...now there's one, where the kids always told me when to stop. They told me to stop when they saw me pick it up...begged me after the first few notes.
Who was it?...I asked somebody if they put out a garden. They said no. 'Not even one tomato plant?' I asked.
'Not even one.'
____
Now, see? That's a natur...what I'd call a natural ending, a perfect place to stop, and we could end it right there, but, see?...this is what I'm talking about. But there's more, like Tom said about redundancy, 'It sounded so good, I'm gonna say it again.'
Picking up sea shells, putting all them fucking railroad ties in that raised-bed garden in Indiana,* going over the rapids after that guy, all those drugs, the comedy routines that turned a favorable audience hostile, the basketball, swimming out to sea...somebody should have told me where to stop.
A woman will tell a guy when to stop. 'Stop right there. If you cut any more, it's going to look weird.'
Flat out, she'll say so.
'If you keep...(fill in the blank), you're going to...'
uh...
So, I guess we need that hand check, like editors and whatnot. 'Here, take a look at this. Tell me what you think.'
Honest people will tell you if it's for shit, or not. Nice people, and your friends will tell you it's the greatest, some of your best work, you're the greatest, keep it coming, you've should've won, you should've been on the starting five, you've could've been a part time network anchor.
Manny used to say everybody needs somebody to tell them when to stop.
'Don't go too far, Tony.' Remember that line, from 'Scarface?'
'No, Mel. You've gone too far.'
When to stop, walk away, count your losses, regroup, take a step back, pump the brakes, ease up on the choke hold, assess the damage, see if it fits, call for the switch hitter, relief from the bullpen, clear the bench, put in the subs, toss in the towel, tap out, beg for mercy, look for a new job, pit crew, a new hobby, quit bull-riding, bronc-riding, smoking, overtime, hard drinking, hard drugs, peyote meetings, fucking around, going 'out', driving a car...
'One of these days he's going to have to stop driving.' They said. Your mom, your sister, your kids.
You need a refill? Tell me when to stop. Say when.
-end
*When we moved from the area, an Old Order Church of the Brethren (big hat, long beard, black suspenders, long-sleeve blue shirt; on her, a pioneer's dress and bonnet) couple moved in. I joyfully thought I had bequeathed them a prize-winning victory garden, with raised beds, hanging plants, and flagstone patios and walkways. They had it torn up and reduced back down to bare, straight rows again. It was, 'too fancy', they said.
.
01.04.11
Say When To Stop
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Just realized why I'm here and not there, and there when I'm not here. It's so I can garden year-round. It came to me in a flash yesterday while working around the palms, which incidentally, have yielded a crop of about ten thousand offspring, palmlets, now about six inches high.
They're all over the place, thousands of them, after the palms flowered last year in little yellow...how would you describe it?...loose, almost grape-like clusters out-of-a-pod profusions those little tiny-ass yellow bees went after like crazy, then next came little oval smaller-than-a-pea hard green seed-like...seeds...that eventually fell to the ground, took hold, and now, VOILA!
I'm sitting on a fucking gold mine, baby! Alls I gotta do is put them in individual pots with a little potting soil and coconut barks and fibers, let 'em lay a couple years, maybe three, or five, and we're talking a substantial amount of cash, especially if you can sell your product to naive foreigners, twice above and beyond the normal, everyday Thai.
A nursery. A nursery, they'd call it in The States.
Okay, granted, it's labor-intensive. I've learned that on the first fifty. You can hire a Myanmar, factor in the cost, the plastic pots and soil mix, and you still come out ahead, unless you keep giving them away. One-year old yellow palm tree-to-be...fifty cents? A dollar? Two years, five bucks, sure. Three years, you're looking at a 7-10 dollar tree. See how it goes? Four years, five years, yeah, now we're talking...plane tickets.
'How mush you need?'
"How mush you can pay?"
___
I Give You Three Choices
Yeah, some of you people on that contact list, I haven't heard from in a LONG-ass time. What've you got, three options? You see who it's from, and delete it, straightaway to trash; you can open it, and read it, and never respond; you can open it, read it, chuckle or not, and drop me a note.
As in, drop me a note expressing how you can relate, how the story put you there, how it made you roll on the floor, tears in your eyes, how it made you wonder...either about the content, or the writer.
No feedback. You know what they say that does to a nigga, don't you? Make a nigga go bananas, momma used to say. Or, no, maybe that's an isolation chamber. Yeah, an isolation chamber make a nigga go bananas. No feedback is something else...lack of knowledge of results. And if you don't know what the results are, you can keep on making the same mistakes, over and over, the same redundant mistakes.
over and over.
___
It was Damon who came in here telling me, 'You're lucky. You know what you do. You're a writer.' And he went on to tell me he had a new drug that he thought I'd like, if I wanted to come down to the bar, something like ecstasy, 'It'll make a nun turn into a prostitute,' he said. I told him in declining that it didn't sound like something good for me. I'd have to catch him later.
Point was, he told me I'm a writer, which was a comforting affirmation from the outside 3-D world, outside my head, of who I think I am, and so after laying off for a good spell, partly because the coffee shop internet cafe on the rez isn't the best place for writing, and partly because I didn't have no good ideas, then came a flurry of entries launched at the end of the year to make it look like I'd done something in 2010, as a writer.
____
Say When
Take landscaping, for instance. Or a piece of artwork. Or a military venture. Or a lot of things I undertake; sometimes I don't know when to stop. I see it in others, as well. Head across the Gobi, up the Nile. Some people don't know when to stop; like, drinking, for instance, on the rez, or me, when I think I'm being funny and getting a good laugh from the audience, I keep on until I make my own self nauseous.
People are just being kind, I know, when I run through some of my routines, like Hitler, a speeded up mimed rendition of his speech at Brandenburg, pointing at a map, pinching a child's cheek, flashing off a salute... clutching at his chest with clenched fists...everybody has seen the same footage...you could say it's funny...it sure feels funny when I do it.
Or, say, a piece of artwork. A shield; 'Those feathers look good on there. Let's add a couple more. Balance it out. Add eight. A couple more, until the whole thing looks fucked up, and not the simple thing you set out for it to be. Know what I mean? Check out your garage, for instance.
Could you get a car in there? That's what I'm talking about. And dinner last night, for instance. Somebody should've stopped him. What the hell, two scoops. Supersize that motherfucker.
And out there in the garden, or a landscaping project, the dance floor, the lie, the never-ending story, the bullshit-without-end, the fanatical pursuit of a current project, like the nursery, where like tobacco prayer ties, you make fifty, and you can't stop right there, so you make one hundred fifty more, and it's starting to look and feel real good, so you're on a roll with a couple hundred more, and before long, you've got a thousand seedlings and a long string of ties and somebody tell him when to stop.
And then it's done. Done, to the point where you can say so, if you're not a perfectionist, over-critical of every eensy-teensy little flaw. Just say, 'Thanks,' man. Done with the shields, the amulets, the theses, the painting, the drums, the aircraft, the back flips, the kites, the saxophone...now there's one, where the kids always told me when to stop. They told me to stop when they saw me pick it up...begged me after the first few notes.
Who was it?...I asked somebody if they put out a garden. They said no. 'Not even one tomato plant?' I asked.
'Not even one.'
____
Now, see? That's a natur...what I'd call a natural ending, a perfect place to stop, and we could end it right there, but, see?...this is what I'm talking about. But there's more, like Tom said about redundancy, 'It sounded so good, I'm gonna say it again.'
Picking up sea shells, putting all them fucking railroad ties in that raised-bed garden in Indiana,* going over the rapids after that guy, all those drugs, the comedy routines that turned a favorable audience hostile, the basketball, swimming out to sea...somebody should have told me where to stop.
A woman will tell a guy when to stop. 'Stop right there. If you cut any more, it's going to look weird.'
Flat out, she'll say so.
'If you keep...(fill in the blank), you're going to...'
uh...
So, I guess we need that hand check, like editors and whatnot. 'Here, take a look at this. Tell me what you think.'
Honest people will tell you if it's for shit, or not. Nice people, and your friends will tell you it's the greatest, some of your best work, you're the greatest, keep it coming, you've should've won, you should've been on the starting five, you've could've been a part time network anchor.
Manny used to say everybody needs somebody to tell them when to stop.
'Don't go too far, Tony.' Remember that line, from 'Scarface?'
'No, Mel. You've gone too far.'
When to stop, walk away, count your losses, regroup, take a step back, pump the brakes, ease up on the choke hold, assess the damage, see if it fits, call for the switch hitter, relief from the bullpen, clear the bench, put in the subs, toss in the towel, tap out, beg for mercy, look for a new job, pit crew, a new hobby, quit bull-riding, bronc-riding, smoking, overtime, hard drinking, hard drugs, peyote meetings, fucking around, going 'out', driving a car...
'One of these days he's going to have to stop driving.' They said. Your mom, your sister, your kids.
You need a refill? Tell me when to stop. Say when.
-end
*When we moved from the area, an Old Order Church of the Brethren (big hat, long beard, black suspenders, long-sleeve blue shirt; on her, a pioneer's dress and bonnet) couple moved in. I joyfully thought I had bequeathed them a prize-winning victory garden, with raised beds, hanging plants, and flagstone patios and walkways. They had it torn up and reduced back down to bare, straight rows again. It was, 'too fancy', they said.
.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Schedules
Brovic - Blogging since 1903
12.27.10
Schedules
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - I was laying on my back, there on the floor, gently rocking, and thinking about how one's life can revolve around schedules, habits, and routines, and how yoga on a full stomach isn't a good idea, especially the inverted postures, especially spicy fish.
What to eat and when to eat pretty much determines a yoga routine, or conversely, the yoga, routinely, determines when to eat and what to eat. And then there are other things, like time, or alcohol, or work, that are precluded by the routine. I'm left thinking, 'will it interfere with the yoga?'
Hey, I'm not a yoga freak, like some people I know. On and off for 40 yrs, mostly off, with entire muscle groups neglected or atrophied, and energy centers blocked, calcified, or non-existent. I practice now because I have to if I want to walk or ride a motorbike, or sit in an airplane seat. How about you? Can you knock out some jumping jacks for me? Gimme a couple minute's worth.
'It's the hamstrings,' I kept thinking. 'It's all about the hamstrings.'*
Well, there's a lot of 'I's' up there, I know, but how can you tell a personal story if you don't use 'I'? How you going to get to know someone if they don't self-disclose? That's what I told the shrink when she asked why I was asking so many...have I already told you this?
Over at the VA...in South Dakota. Anyway, how is a person going to relate? I knew she'd never been in combat...spent all her time going through med school**...so...oh, never mind. Talk about ideas.
Like schedules.
Yeah. Schedules. There was school, with the bell going off, Mrs. Rose ringing a hand bell on the playground at recess, practice schedules, haircuts, everybody's got work-related schedules, always late for church, can't be late for a date, a squad of rubber mold presses dropping every fifteen minutes, track practice laps, mid-terms, conditioning schedules, press deadline, medication schedules, time to mow the lawn, pick up the kids, doctor's appointment, parent/teacher conference, tax deadline, time to harvest, time to plant, and ohhhhh, this could go on for...
"SCHEDULE???" Exclaimed Bo as he and Misty and I were headed down Slim Buttes Road into Chadron, and I had foolishly said we were running behind schedule, something you don't really say on the rez. Late for an appointment, sure, but not schedule.
"We ain't GOT no fuckin' schedules," one of 'em said, and I can't remember who. I'm thinking it was Misty, but it could've been Bo. All I remember was slowing down and thinking I'd used a poor choice of words. All three of us squashed together in heavy winter coats on the bench seat of that old, cold-ass Chevy truck, running late, in my mind, for something.***
That's the way it is on the rez, where most people, something like 95%, are unemployed. Astounding, isn't it? But the flipside is, there's low stress. If you discount a number of early death-related factors. So rez life should be pretty loose, which it is. Why am I talking about the rez, and not Phang Nga province or coolies in rice paddies? I don't know.
I had yellow rice and chicken for breakfast, with sticky rice and coconut...then swam in the Sea. Facebook stuff.
Point is, we're conditioned since, who knows, the womb?..since the womb, to be on schedule. Give or take some delivery time and time between then and potty training and the recess bell and when the boss is picking you up for lunch, your anniversary, your meds, and when's the funeral.
And all along, our bodies are recording the whole shebang, the muscles and tissue layers responding to the injuries, the scars, the deaths, the trauma, laser scorching anger, defenses, the boys don't cry, the drill sergeant, handcuffs, trapeze fall, heavy lifting, humiliation and shock of surprise, and fears, all constricting and leading us to a certain particular way of walking on Earth.
- end
* Everybody knows it's more than just the hamstrings.
**I'm going to ask her, what's her motive. Can't be the pay. Service to her country?...the war effort? She can easily answer that one, don't you think? I asked about missing the trees in Indiana, the oaks, the sycamores, the maples, hickorys and hardwoods you don't get in South Dakota, and she seemed uneasy with the question. "I miss them," I told her, just wanting to see if she could relate.
***Maybe I already told you this one. I did, didn't I? But not in the same context.
.
12.27.10
Schedules
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - I was laying on my back, there on the floor, gently rocking, and thinking about how one's life can revolve around schedules, habits, and routines, and how yoga on a full stomach isn't a good idea, especially the inverted postures, especially spicy fish.
What to eat and when to eat pretty much determines a yoga routine, or conversely, the yoga, routinely, determines when to eat and what to eat. And then there are other things, like time, or alcohol, or work, that are precluded by the routine. I'm left thinking, 'will it interfere with the yoga?'
Hey, I'm not a yoga freak, like some people I know. On and off for 40 yrs, mostly off, with entire muscle groups neglected or atrophied, and energy centers blocked, calcified, or non-existent. I practice now because I have to if I want to walk or ride a motorbike, or sit in an airplane seat. How about you? Can you knock out some jumping jacks for me? Gimme a couple minute's worth.
'It's the hamstrings,' I kept thinking. 'It's all about the hamstrings.'*
Well, there's a lot of 'I's' up there, I know, but how can you tell a personal story if you don't use 'I'? How you going to get to know someone if they don't self-disclose? That's what I told the shrink when she asked why I was asking so many...have I already told you this?
Over at the VA...in South Dakota. Anyway, how is a person going to relate? I knew she'd never been in combat...spent all her time going through med school**...so...oh, never mind. Talk about ideas.
Like schedules.
Yeah. Schedules. There was school, with the bell going off, Mrs. Rose ringing a hand bell on the playground at recess, practice schedules, haircuts, everybody's got work-related schedules, always late for church, can't be late for a date, a squad of rubber mold presses dropping every fifteen minutes, track practice laps, mid-terms, conditioning schedules, press deadline, medication schedules, time to mow the lawn, pick up the kids, doctor's appointment, parent/teacher conference, tax deadline, time to harvest, time to plant, and ohhhhh, this could go on for...
"SCHEDULE???" Exclaimed Bo as he and Misty and I were headed down Slim Buttes Road into Chadron, and I had foolishly said we were running behind schedule, something you don't really say on the rez. Late for an appointment, sure, but not schedule.
"We ain't GOT no fuckin' schedules," one of 'em said, and I can't remember who. I'm thinking it was Misty, but it could've been Bo. All I remember was slowing down and thinking I'd used a poor choice of words. All three of us squashed together in heavy winter coats on the bench seat of that old, cold-ass Chevy truck, running late, in my mind, for something.***
That's the way it is on the rez, where most people, something like 95%, are unemployed. Astounding, isn't it? But the flipside is, there's low stress. If you discount a number of early death-related factors. So rez life should be pretty loose, which it is. Why am I talking about the rez, and not Phang Nga province or coolies in rice paddies? I don't know.
I had yellow rice and chicken for breakfast, with sticky rice and coconut...then swam in the Sea. Facebook stuff.
Point is, we're conditioned since, who knows, the womb?..since the womb, to be on schedule. Give or take some delivery time and time between then and potty training and the recess bell and when the boss is picking you up for lunch, your anniversary, your meds, and when's the funeral.
And all along, our bodies are recording the whole shebang, the muscles and tissue layers responding to the injuries, the scars, the deaths, the trauma, laser scorching anger, defenses, the boys don't cry, the drill sergeant, handcuffs, trapeze fall, heavy lifting, humiliation and shock of surprise, and fears, all constricting and leading us to a certain particular way of walking on Earth.
- end
* Everybody knows it's more than just the hamstrings.
**I'm going to ask her, what's her motive. Can't be the pay. Service to her country?...the war effort? She can easily answer that one, don't you think? I asked about missing the trees in Indiana, the oaks, the sycamores, the maples, hickorys and hardwoods you don't get in South Dakota, and she seemed uneasy with the question. "I miss them," I told her, just wanting to see if she could relate.
***Maybe I already told you this one. I did, didn't I? But not in the same context.
.
Monday, December 27, 2010
God 2010
Brovic - Blogging since 1903
12.27210
God 2010
KHUK KHAK , Thailand - A friend recently wrote in an end-of-the-year email, 'God 2010 has been tough.' Without punctuation, you can easily see where this ambiguity could lead. 'God, Twenty-ten.' It sounds kind of like, 'God 2.0', a new improved version.
For those of you still using God 1.0...you must first uninstall your old version of God, and then download...
'Your download should begin automatically. Simply click and drag the God icon into your applications folder. If God 2010 has been less than user-friendly, you may find God 2011 to be more kind to you. More kind, more loving, faster.'
If you are having difficulty, click on 'Help'.
___
In other good 2010 news I forgot to tell you, a couple of weeks back, after years of foot-dragging, the US finally became a signatory party to the UN's Resolution for Indigenous People's Rights, a great day for native people around the world.
I observed in a minor journalistic role, along with Milo Yellow Hair, Tom Cook, Loretta, Uncle Joe American Horse, Uncle Joseph (Larue) Afraid-Of-Bear, and several other members of the Oglala and Great Sioux Nation who met with representatives of the U.S. Departments of State, Justice, and Interior, when they gathered at Ft. Robinson several years ago during tribal consultations on formulations of drafts to the resolution.
It was confusing, to say the least, with Indians bringing a mountain of issues, complaints, and wrath to the meetings, for which the government officials were unprepared to address.
Much of those proceedings, which boiled down to Indians asserting their right to sovereignty, have been forgotten or lost in bureaucratic lack of inertia, with the head of the government delegation promising, 'We'll get back to you on that,' which they never did.
The funniest part of the whole business was following that comment, one of the Indians stood up and said, 'We give you three days.'*
That was in 2005.
- end
*this was particularly funny because back during the treaty-making days of the 19th century, government officials would issue this sort of ultimatum to the Indians, to be concluded with, 'or else we will consider you hostile,' with the unspoken '...and hunt you down and kill you.'.
.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Coal In Your Stocking
Brovic - Blogging since 1903
12.24.10
Coal In Your Stocking
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - There are some things you shouldn't do alone, they say;
Eat
Sleep
Drink
Swim
the holidays
A poll asked if you'd been good this year. The results were positive overall, but nonetheless disturbing, as 65% of the respondents declared they had been good, flossing, fighting the forces of evil and saving the planet from the other 35% who reported being bad.
Problem is, I know as well as you that a fairly substantial portion of the people who said they'd been good, are outright liars, such as myself. I haven't been that good, really, enough to say that generally, 'I've been good'. Not as good as I used to be.
No. Quite the opposite, in fact. People such as me would skew the results and render the poll invalid, tainted, or at the very least, unsubstantiable. And how much bad would be required to offset the good, tipping the scales into the 'bad' category? Can you say you've been good ALL the time?
yeah, yeah, yeah. bullshit. I don't believe you. If it was true, your actions, your neighbors, loving God and all that, then why, pray tell, would we be in such shape as we are, world-wise?
Ahhhhh. 'Shit happens', you say? Well, shit happens because of prior shit happening, no? And, leave God out of it, even if He has His hand in all things, despite whether or not you think God is a man and has hands.
___
Thankfully, the bike repair shop guys were still working on Christmas Eve, because Christmas doesn't mean anything to the Thai. The guy could've changed that tire in his sleep, he'd done it so many times, changing out the tube and ready to go again before I could stub out the cigarette I'd lit while he worked. About three bucks. In and out in five minutes.
The front tire went flat while I was going about 3/4 bat out of hell, not quite full bat. I felt the wobble and immediately slowed down, hoping the thing wouldn't throw me, like that other guy the other day; an ugly slap of metal on metal, the truck's screeching tires, the bike spinning across the road, the rider flailing, rolling, tumbling across the asphalt.
Not good. Another chalk outline on the blacktop. Sometimes there's not much you can do, if you were thinking of aid. Sometimes the best you can do is hold their hand while they die. Tell them everything is going to be okay.
That's another thing you don't want to do alone.
-end
.
12.24.10
Coal In Your Stocking
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - There are some things you shouldn't do alone, they say;
Eat
Sleep
Drink
Swim
the holidays
A poll asked if you'd been good this year. The results were positive overall, but nonetheless disturbing, as 65% of the respondents declared they had been good, flossing, fighting the forces of evil and saving the planet from the other 35% who reported being bad.
Problem is, I know as well as you that a fairly substantial portion of the people who said they'd been good, are outright liars, such as myself. I haven't been that good, really, enough to say that generally, 'I've been good'. Not as good as I used to be.
No. Quite the opposite, in fact. People such as me would skew the results and render the poll invalid, tainted, or at the very least, unsubstantiable. And how much bad would be required to offset the good, tipping the scales into the 'bad' category? Can you say you've been good ALL the time?
yeah, yeah, yeah. bullshit. I don't believe you. If it was true, your actions, your neighbors, loving God and all that, then why, pray tell, would we be in such shape as we are, world-wise?
Ahhhhh. 'Shit happens', you say? Well, shit happens because of prior shit happening, no? And, leave God out of it, even if He has His hand in all things, despite whether or not you think God is a man and has hands.
___
Thankfully, the bike repair shop guys were still working on Christmas Eve, because Christmas doesn't mean anything to the Thai. The guy could've changed that tire in his sleep, he'd done it so many times, changing out the tube and ready to go again before I could stub out the cigarette I'd lit while he worked. About three bucks. In and out in five minutes.
The front tire went flat while I was going about 3/4 bat out of hell, not quite full bat. I felt the wobble and immediately slowed down, hoping the thing wouldn't throw me, like that other guy the other day; an ugly slap of metal on metal, the truck's screeching tires, the bike spinning across the road, the rider flailing, rolling, tumbling across the asphalt.
Not good. Another chalk outline on the blacktop. Sometimes there's not much you can do, if you were thinking of aid. Sometimes the best you can do is hold their hand while they die. Tell them everything is going to be okay.
That's another thing you don't want to do alone.
-end
.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Low Water Mark
Low Water Mark
12.16.10
Brovic - Blogging since 1903
VIENTIANE, Laos - Looking down on the street from a fourth-floor balcony must be something like being in the spirit world; you can hear and see people, but they can't hear or see you, nor do they, in going about their business, appear to have any idea you're there at all.
'Square up' to the bucket, coaches said. Square up to the keyboard. You could get a crick in your back.
Do people suffer alone, or do we pretty much share the same ailments? Spared some, and given others, huh? Blessings wrapped in a karate chop. That silver lining people speak of.
I've got to get to work on China. I read the stats on this blog for the first time since...since 1903, I guess, and saw that most of my readers are in Germany and the States, with a few readers in Thailand, Mexico, Sweden, and Japan, but only eleven people in China. Holy Smokes, isn't that a HUGE population over there? Seems like that's a market I should try to crack.
No need to go on about the bad knees business, but this being a 'walking city', where motorbikes are too fast for gawking, and the 1950s vintage sit-up-straight French bicycles are too corny to be seen riding, I needed to wait until the endorphins kicked in, or go find the strongest possible pain-killer possible before venturing out onto the street.
Where do you find the strongest possible pain-killer in Vientiane? Motorcycle taxi driver, where else? Hooked up a mere twenty minutes after going through immigration. 'You want girl? You want lay-dee?' he asked in a whisper?
'Nah. Just the...'
Problem is, after taking them, they were so good, I was afraid to leave my room.
Paranoia. Paranoia, an unrealistic fear. Paranoia can have you:
Run to the window.
Swallow the roach.
Talking about the illuminati.
Flush your stash down the toilet.
Turn the music down.
Slow to under the speed limit.
Keep looking in the rear-view mirror.
Thinking the reptilians are out to get us.
Spray the air.
Light incense.
Brush your teeth.
Use mouthwash.
Keep looking around.
Close your Facebook account.
Remain in the car.
Remain in your house.
Remain on the couch.
Slap on some after shave.
Wonder if that's a cop.
Peek out the curtains.
Swear to God you'll never do it again.
What do they say? 'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.'
Nothing stays the same, except when it doesn't. Down along the river, where the 'Mighty Mekong' was lined with quaint little restaurants on stilts and the embankments thick with gardens and vegetation, has now all changed.
Close your Facebook account.
Remain in the car.
Remain in your house.
Remain on the couch.
Slap on some after shave.
Wonder if that's a cop.
Peek out the curtains.
Swear to God you'll never do it again.
What do they say? 'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.'
Nothing stays the same, except when it doesn't. Down along the river, where the 'Mighty Mekong' was lined with quaint little restaurants on stilts and the embankments thick with gardens and vegetation, has now all changed.
For a year they've been continuously trucking in loads of earth from somewhere downriver, grading it, packing it with steamrollers, and have built a new sea wall, capped with concrete, and constructed a huge, expansive sculpted block inlay promenade that now has the place looking like...Geneva.
It's quite nice, with potted plants, artistic landscaping, a children's playground, and each evening throngs of people exercising, bicycling, or coming out for the sunset, but not the same. You wouldn't recognize the place.
It's quite nice, with potted plants, artistic landscaping, a children's playground, and each evening throngs of people exercising, bicycling, or coming out for the sunset, but not the same. You wouldn't recognize the place.
Gone is the huge pavilion where the Lao girl in spandex would lead an aerobics class of a hundred each night, and where I laid down on the cool concrete and passed out after running a four-block wind sprint after taking a strong pain-reliever two years ago.
Gone is that Vietnamese riverfront restaurant that rented the bikes, and all those other places you could sit and watch the sun drop into the Mekong while having a tall beer Lao, a spicy lab salad, or Mekong river fish.
So now, to relieve the two-way traffic congestion, they've created another road running parallel to the promenade, the river, and the old street. That's a new road between the river and the old road. Everything is different.
Gone is that Vietnamese riverfront restaurant that rented the bikes, and all those other places you could sit and watch the sun drop into the Mekong while having a tall beer Lao, a spicy lab salad, or Mekong river fish.
So now, to relieve the two-way traffic congestion, they've created another road running parallel to the promenade, the river, and the old street. That's a new road between the river and the old road. Everything is different.
Dick Martin, the late Richard Martin, my wonderful journalistic mentor and cutthroat editor, would say, 'Don't tell me about it - show me!'
Like they say, 'a picture is worth a thousand words.' And so that's what I'm trying to do with all this new digital technology that I have an innate resistance to, to which I have an innate resistance, Dick, Martha, Kathy Short, the librarian...and so there's some photos up on this blog.
And another thing...for the first time since...1903, I guess...I checked the stats...already told you...checked the comments, too, for the first time. Geeeee, you guys! Thanks so much, and thanks for the encouragement. Here I was thinking nobody was reading because few of you email or let on...and then there's this guy in China...
What? I need to catch you on Facebook? I'm too paranoid.
Another thing...you can go all over the place (virtual world) can't you? I mean, I'm just finding out. Never mind.
I noticed while going through a number of airports recently, the aforementioned body scan, and everybody playing with their electronic gadgetry. It's a remarkably easy fake out, to pretend you're on a phone, loudly taking a call, or fiddling with your thumbs on an imaginary device, not interacting with your immediate environment, 'being' somewhere else.
The dedicated SLR slung around your neck is a museum piece. Electronic technology has made everyone 'at the scene.' Everyone is a photographer. Everyone is a writer. No more waiting for the paper to hit your doorstep. Those days are long gone. Paperboy Same same milkman. News is instantaneous. Kind of takes the unique sort of journalistic fun out of it for me. Unless you've got it running through your veins.
Another thing...you can check out around other folk's blogs...sure...I'd just never done it, and lo and behold! There are some really nice blogs out there! Design-wise, some beautiful work, give me some ideas...like putting up photos...and content-wise, as well. Some good ideas floating around, and not all nonsense, like some people. Or some of that angry stuff people post on U-Tube. Unfuckingbelieveable what some people say.
Where does that leave us? Numb? I mean, can we be shocked by anything, anymore? Two wars? Two wars? Katrina, tsunami, job gone, house gone, retirement gone, 911, Sarah Palin, heyyyyyyyyy. Anything fucking thing can happen, can't it?
Every once in awhile, something really cool happens...the internet, guys emerge from a cave, black man's elected president, San Aung Su Kyi set free, Dick Cheney goes away, Voyager keeps plugging to the edge of nothing, guys find anti-matter, and what other remarkable shit has happened that you're glad to witness?
Meanwhile, to keep you occupied...'This week, Lindsey Lohan...'
Did you ever wonder where the term, 'Who gives a flying' fuck?' came from? I'd like to tell you I coined it, but I didn't.
And another thing...(can't nobody say that like a black woman), this time, from the Funny Front; that toothpaste to which I'm preferential, 'Darlie', nice eco-friendly green and white box, dapper fellow in a top hat and big smile, I recently found out, was modeled after Al Jolson in blackface, and originally named, 'Darkie'.
WTF! Yeah, 'Darkie'. It's sold widely throughout Asia, and is produced under another company under Colgate Palmolive, who changed the name because of, well, you know, it's just not politically...what do you say?..politically...it's not proper, racially, to have some big lipped nigga in a top hat grinnin' a big-ass white smile, so they toned it down, turned the brother into a white man, shrank the lips, shrank the smile, and changed the name.
Except for the Chinese. The Chinese still sell the product in China as 'Darkie.' Wanna know why? Because they don't give a frying fuck about black people or other sensitivities the rest of the world observes, in some cases, to be fair, in their own interests of course, just like us, but their tune is slowly changing because of precious minerals and other commodities. In Africa.
In any case, I'm not buying the shit any more. Darlie, Darkie, got me looking at all the toothpaste manufactures labels. Colgate? What else do they make?
Everything. They make everything.
Man, I came up here with no proper writing instruments. No laptop, no paper, no pen. Had to wait until I was in line in immigration to fill out the arrival card because I didn't want to appear the fool to the Chinese guy sitting across the aisle in the plane by asking to borrow his gold pen.
On my way out (of Don Muang domestic terminal in Bangkok), I got side-tracked over to a couple of immigration officers taking care of the overstay people. As the lady did the paperwork for two days overstay at 500 TB per day, I began a prepared routine...
"I stay for the King birthday."
"One thousand baht," she said pleasantly.
"The King gib me one day," I said. "FREE!"
She looked up. "The King give me one day," I repeated seriously. "I sa-tay for the King's birthday."
His 83rd. It was huge. The whole city was lit up, jam-packed with people in the streets. Everybody lub the King.
She considered, and it looked like she was changing the receipt. She said something to the man on her left at an adjacent desk, and another uniformed man slouched in a chair behind them. They laughed good-naturedly, shaking their heads no.
"FOR THE KING?" I asked incredulously. "You charge me for the King's BIRTHDAY?"
They blushed. The lady wouldn't look me in the eye. Ashamed, she said, 'Sorry. One thousand baht.'
1 USD = 28 Thai Baht. Last year, 33. Five years ago, 42. Ten yrs. ago, 48. When we print more money to fix our predicament, it becomes devalued IN the world; don't need an economist to tell us that.
___
I was feeling kind of bad for not connecting with my immediate environment, and it wasn't a cell phone, but rather, an insensitive disregard for the less fortunate who crossed my path, maybe I already told you.
So I was sitting at dinner, just off the sidewalk, watching the guy with no hands approach tourists up and down the street. And there was that lady in the hand-cranked tricycle cart, the one I'd ignored the previous day while I sat eating breakfast.
'I'm not going to jump up, but if they approach me, I'll give,' I thought.
Neither of them approached me, but after dinner I was doing that old-man-after-dinner stroll down the row of vendors, not looking to buy anything, and there he was, right behind me, the handless man. He didn't see me. He was hitting up some other people, who refused. When he turned toward me, I already had the note out, which he accepted between his two stubs and thanked me in Lao.
I walked off, but turned to see him turn and give the note to a little boy, who scampered off the sidewalk to his mother in the hand-cranked bike/cart, giving her the note with a grin and big eyes.
'Oh. They're all together.' We didn't sit at the same table, but in a sense, we all ate together.
__
My New Digital Camera
So, these new photos posted herein are a result of importing the recordings off the chip and exporting them to the blog, which I did, after erasing my previous work and the 265 shots of a visit to Hong Kong by a group of young friends, one of whom, the redhead,* dropped her brand new 10.0 Sony Cybershot onto the beach, which was found by the Swede, who gave it to me, since she already had one.
She was staying at the Mariott, according to her digital recording of the room, the view, the dining room, the beach. The Swede said she tried to find the owner, but no one would claim the camera, so I thought about it in a karmic sense and the connection between my good fortune and the misfortune of someone else; the camera coming to me, my sense of worth following the motorbike accidents; Vietnam as a medic...
and then there was the connection between the doctor/therapist and the patient/client, the teacher and the student. Which is which, and who is who?
-end
*see photo
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