WHITE SPACE

WHITE SPACE

 

Time often seems to pass very slowly for me here in Kravan.  Days are intensely hot, and I've had to learn to stay out of the sun for a large chunk of the middle of each day.  Our house here is, also, always filled with people, many of whom are old and have little else to do.  They speak entirely in Khmer, which still for me might as well be Swahili.  I talk with Pee and Gung, An, Aht, Oie and Oat across the street, but otherwise my life is pretty private, which I think makes time pass slowly.

A few minutes ago I was taking my umpteenth cold shower of the day (today's a real scorcher), and it crossed my mind that one thing I've done in making this big change in my life is to create a lot of empty space, or white space as they call it in book design terms.

This morning I worked on my Canadian and American tax returns (I have to fill out both each year).  Twenty-four years I have been filling out the two tax returns, meticulously, as a self-employed person.  But this morning, like the old women speaking in Khmer, the tax return looked as if it were in a foreign language.  "Business Use of Home."  I don't have a home and I barely have a business.  "Office and Supplies."  I just bought a new machete at the Cambodian market, around three dollars.

It's Sunday as I write, and on Sundays everywhere in Thailand you can usually hear groups of men gathered, breaking into sudden cheers.  Sunday is Thai boxing day, and Thai boxing here is the same as Sunday NFL in the United States, or Hockey Night in Canada.  It's funny, because hearing people cheer makes here feel not so different from there.  And in many ways it's not.   But for me it is.