JEFFREY ALFORD

Rain Outside

2011-09-20T00:17:00.000-07:00

Mid September

2011-09-20T00:15:00.001-07:00

There's rain now every day. Rain rain rain. Virtually every orchid is in flower, and the gardenias, frangipani, jasmine. But there's also mold on our bedroom wall, and the other day I happened to look at my leather coat – the one I treasure as my airplane "uniform", found discarded on Bloor Street in Toronto – and it was covered in mold. So I took it out into the sunshine (despite the rain, it's still sunny almost every morning) and washed off the mold, and then sprayed it with white vinegar (the same thing I do on the interior walls), and back to life it came. I was so happy.

I love rainy season. It's my favorite time of year. But it has its problems. I remember years ago living in Kathmandu, in Nepal, there for my first time in rainy season. My close friend, Shyam's, daughter got sick and three days later died. "We hate rainy season," Shyam told me. "People get sick in rainy season." At the time I was staying in my favorite room in my favorite hotel, but I was getting bitten so badly by fleas that I had to move. The fleas lived on the rats, and then bit me. My body was covered in black and purple welts; I looked like I had a terrible disease.

Just the other day I was remembering about Kathmandu, and about rainy season there. Here is not as bad as that, but it's definitely a time of illness. I've been sick on and off, as has everyone. It's not big sick, just a fever or malaise or allergy. In Thailand people will say "no power". And that describes it well.

Outside, as I write, it has just started to pour, hard as a hammer.

bestpadthai.com

2011-08-07T02:42:00.000-07:00

i have never made a website before, so i thought i would try. i am not even sure it is working yet, but maybe. fingers crossed.....

THE FARM

2011-07-24T23:23:00.000-07:00

SUNGLASSES

2011-07-24T23:16:00.001-07:00

I've worn glasses almost all my life, discovering when I was ten years old that I was badly near-sighted. It was a shock to my mom because I am the youngest of four children, and no one else in our family had ever worn glasses. I remember the day we came out of the optometrist's office with my first pair of glasses and I looked up at a tree, seeing actual leaves for the first time. I told Mom how exciting it was, but that wasn't what she wanted to hear. She felt badly for not having found out earlier. She felt guilty. Moms.

For thirty-three years now I have bought all of my glasses in Asia. In Hong Kong, in Taipei, in Bangkok, one pair after another, I have been luckily enough to buy all my glasses here. First of all, they are WAY cheaper. And second of all, they are way better. Over the years I have had several friends who became optometrists in North America, and they have always told me that glasses cut in Asia are simply cut better. Some of it apparently has to do with government
regulation, or lack of government regulations. But they have been good glasses.

Or up until recently. Here in Thailand a chain of optometrists – called Top Charoen - started buying out the smaller "mom and pop" stores, and now they have bought out so many that in some towns Top Charoen is the only available option (like here in Prasat, where I live). Top Charoen stores look fancy. They have glass, mirrors, and halogen lights everywhere, and young women "clerks" all dressed in tight-fitting white dresses. One or two might know how to do an eye exam, but then the order is shipped off to Bangkok. No one in the shop is actually cutting the glasses. In Bangkok there are still a few of the older shops around (Petchaburi Road, near Soi 11), but they are rapidily disappearing.

All to say that for the last three years I have gone through one miserable pair of glasses after another, compounded by now needing reading glasses as well. I must have at least ten pairs, and none of them right. One day recently I looked in an old bag of toiletries and there I saw some way-out-of-date contact lenses, and I thought, hmm, might as well try. So I bought some solution and one day put them in. And they work! I can see! I still need reading glasses, and for several different strengths (the tiny Thai writing in my dictionary needs one strength, the computer screen another), but I can see.

And best of all. Now I can wear dark brown sunglasses, Ray Ban immitations! Two dollars a pair…. And every afternoon I can look up at big white beautiful cumulus clouds, rainy season clouds.

SUMMER SOLSTICE

2011-06-21T20:11:00.001-07:00

This morning I went for a walk around the lake just nearby, something I do now almost every day. I used to be a jogger, but I just can't run anymore. My knees start to hurt, or my feet, or my back. I've never much liked walking, but now I do. I love it! I bicycle up to the lake, put on my ipod with all my new music, stretch a bit, and start walking. I walk six times around the lake, which is about three miles. It works.

I then came home, sat down at my computer, and started to write a book, a book I have wanted to write for a long time. A few years ago I wrote one book – a novel – about living in Kathmandu in 1981. This will be my second.

Late afternoon I got back on my bike and headed over to Leelawadee Gardens to have a beer with friends. Suddenly I realized that it's June 21. Summer Solstice.

REALITY CHECK

2011-06-21T20:10:00.001-07:00

Kravan, Pea's village, is only 25 kilometers from Prasat, the small agricultural town where we now live, but in many ways the two places are different worlds. Yesterday we drove out on the motorbike to work all day remaking the large back garden behind Mae's house. The 25 km drive is never something that we take lightly, because on a 125 cc motorbike on a two-lane highway with trucks and busses travelling fast, it's not an easy trip. Wind is almost always a big concern, wind created from a passing truck or wind from an afternoon storm about to hit. Motorbikes share the small margin of the highway with bicycles, other motorbikes, and farm vehicles. One of the most dangerous parts of the drive is when a bicycle turns out casually onto the highway, unaware that a motorbike is coming at fifty miles an hour, and that it may be impossible for the motorbike to switch lanes because of an on-coming truck.

Pea always drives (though not that she's happy about it). She has way more experience, and she's a great driver. We're almost always heavily loaded, either taking food from the Prasat marketout for Mae and family, or bringingplants from the garden and buie (fertilizer, most often from cow and pig) backto town. Pea often goes out to Kravan by herself, but when it's the two of us,it's a heavier load and harder.

Arriving in the village is always a pleasure. The town of Prasat is an unpolluted, peaceful, well-cared for small town, but nothing to compare with the village. When we turn off the highway and ride down the mile-or-so of pot-marked dirt road leading into Kravan, life is simply – fundamentally - different. Or at least it is for me. At some point last year I realized that I
couldn't continue to live a long time more in the village (and especially inside a language – Khmer – that I had so little of), and that's when we moved into town. But a big reason why I live "here" – in the southern part of northeastern Thailand - is because of Kravan, and all the hundreds of villages just like Kravan. Somehow, for me, they are something of a reality check.

Yesterday we pulled up to the house on the motorbike, a group of older people like always sitting inside the thatch hut that we built last year. They all yelled out in greeting, but not in the overly-polite Thai sort of way. Khmer people here, and especially in the village, are much more informal. They are more likely to tease, or to make a joke, than to bother with a polite greeting.
But there is just as keen a sense of welcome.

We immediately unpacked the motorbike and I headed straight to the back garden to check things out. I love the back garden. There's a canopy of beautiful tall areca palms stretching far into the sky. There are mango trees, and jackfruit, pomelo, custard apple, banana, coconut, star fruit. There are pineapples and dragon fruit, and piper ….. vines growing throughout. The soil,
after years of decaying palm fronds, banana leaves, and a world of wild insects munching away, is brown, almost black with humus (unlike most of the lateritic soil here in this part of the world). I used to dream about making a small thatch bungalow for myself under the canopy of the areca palms, but it's better for growing vegetables.

I worked all day, happy. My major job was digging new fence posts and redoing the netting so that the ducks and chickens can't get in. Last year Pea grew yardlong beans, winged beans, several varieties of eggplants, bitter gourd, bird chiles…. With rainy season it will soon be a jungle!

By late afternoon the southwest sky became dark, almost black. Thunder started to boom. I picked up my tools and put everything away, and then headed for the thatch. The eighty-six year old neighbor – a man who always smokes a cheroot and never wears a shirt – was there for a drink of lao khao. So too was Eit, a woman who is probably sixty years old, and one of my favorites. Last year at planting when I injured my back, she got me back up feeling good, the best masseuse in the village. There was Ahn of course, and baby Off. And Kaesorn, sister number one. There were children taking shelter from the rain. Like so many times in the village, it felt like a time when time was standing still. Eit told a funny story about going to a Seven-Eleven in town, having never seen an automatic door. All the older women chewed betel.

No one talked about the economy. No one talked about a sports team.

Pea told everyone about the enormous pla duk (catfish)that we'd seen for sale the day before in the market. She had all ears.

THE RICE IS IN

2011-06-02T00:50:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we planted all the fields. June 1. Last year we planted on May 18, but this year the rain has been more sporadic. We planted with Mae, brother number three, and two cousins: a small group. But the planting went well, somehow easier than last year even though we had fewer people. Maybe it was just me, getting more accustomed to the process. I have learned to toss the rice farther and with more force, so I can cover more ground faster. This year no one even came over to give me lessons on technique.

It was funny, though, starting out. I started right beside the old barn, right in the place where the cobra lived last year. The area is bare now, but still I looked around carefully as I tossed the rice. It's amazing how much the farm transforms from dry season to wet season and back again to dry season. Soon the fields will be deep in water and there will be fish and shrimps, crabs and
water snakes.

Pea was hugely happy to be planting. She loves the farm from deep inside her soul. And so does Mae. They're just happy to sit there in the quiet, a breeze blowing, clouds racing across the sky. They've known that farm all their lives. They've planted the fields and harvested the fields all their lives. It's their place on earth.

Yesterday we even had an extra bonus: we're in the height of red ant egg season! We came home with a bounty of red ant eggs, riding the motorbike tired but cool with a breeze. In the air there was a wonderfully familiar smell of tender rice seedlings coming up in fields all around. It's a smell that's hard to describe: sweet, almost like jasmine rice cooking in the kitchen, but more
delicate.

DREAMS

2011-06-02T00:47:00.001-07:00

Living here in Prasat, this small town in northeastern Thailand, it's always "interesting" waking up in the morning. It reminds me of the first time I lived in Asia in 1977 when I was twenty-three years old. I lived for five months in a yoga ashram in Kerala in South India, and then for three months with a family in Kandy, Sri Lanka. Like now, I had a lot of time to myself, a lot of time each morning to wake up slowly and to remember, if I could, my dreams from the
night. Like now, I remember almost never having a dream set in the place where I was living, or with the people I was living with every day. I would dream about friends I had in junior high school, Chad, Matt and Everett (people I had virtually never seen since junior high school). They became characters, almost symbolic. I'd also dream often about the village of Ventry in southwestern Ireland, a place I had lived for eight months a few years before. Almost once a
week I would have a dream about walking on the road, along the ocean, heading for Ventry. But I'd never get there, never actually arrive in the village.

Here in Prasat I dream several nights each week about my father, who has passed away. The dreams can be about anything, but my father is a constant. The people I know here in Prasat – Pea, Gung, my friends from the Leelawadee – are almost never in my dreams, and almost never in a dream am I here in Thailand. Besides my father, I dream very often about "stuff", like one's worldly possessions. Junk. I will be at a great garage sale, or a farm auction, or at a thrift store. Sometimes these dreams are like nightmares, like arriving "home" and finding my possessions all strewn about a front yard, people having already walked away with many things. Or I will be in a crowd and discover my camera bag missing together with all my money, passport, and valuables. I'll wake up in a panic and look across the room, as one does, happy to know that it
was a dream.

LANGUAGE

2011-05-27T23:59:00.001-07:00

I've read in the newspaper about a unique language school in Bangkok that doesn't allow students to speak for the first one thousand hours (or something like that…) of class time. A student goes only to listen, the theory being that a tonal language like Thai is best learned – as children learn a language – through imitation, which first means listening and learning to hear. From my experience here, the school's approach sounds like a good idea.

Last year living in Kravan, living everyday in the village surrounded by Khmer, I was frustrated. I'm not a person who has a particular gift for language. I'm a plodder. The only language (apart from English) that I have ever had a chance of learning – really learning – is Thai. So finally, here I am most of the time in Thailand, and two years ago I end up living in a village where
everyone speaks Khorat (a Thai-Lao dialect), and then last year living in a village where everyone speaks Khmer (a language not at all related to the Thai-Lao family). I was happy living in Kravan, but language-wise it was frustrating.

But here in the town of Prasat, three languages – central Thai, Lao-Isaan, and Khmer – exist almost side by side. School kids learn central Thai. A bank employee or a government official will speak in central Thai. Most people here in Prasat are Khmer-Thai, meaning that Khmer is their first language, but everyone learns to speak and function in Thai. But outside the bank or a
government office, that Thai most often becomes Lao-Isaan, the dominant language of northeastern Thailand.

To give an example, to say that something is really delicious, in central Thai you say (in transliteration)arroi mak jang luhy. In Lao-Isaan: sep lai lai. And in Khmer: jiangan jinap. They are all completely different. But in Prasat, with three languages to chose from, people mix and match in fun and creative ways (as people do in many places where multi-lingualism is common – like in India, or Beirut…). When I first started living with Khmer people here in Thailand I would commonly hear Thai words mixed in, and I would think that Khmer has borrowed Thai. But then I started to think just the opposite: that Thai borrowed Khmer. NOW I think that both are true, and that it happens each and every day, never staying still.

When I look back now on my time in the village, I think that my Thai actually improved by not being able to talk. It improved because I had to listen better, hear better. One of my big pleasures in Prasat is just listening to people talk together, flowing effortlessly between three languages. I love listening to Pea talk straight Khmer with her mother on the telephone, or in three languages with a same-age friend. Last night I sat out on our porch listening as best I could
to our neighbors' small birthday party (a lesbian couple who are both high school teachers). An educated group, there was a lot of central Thai, but as the night moved along, a lot more Khmer.

I think it's finally dawning upon me. What I want most to do is to learn the language of where I am, and that "language" is a mix.

In Khmer: "Dtoh na?" Where you go?

Off and the new dog...

2011-05-26T22:20:00.000-07:00

RAIN, BEAUTIFUL RAIN

2011-05-26T22:09:00.001-07:00

I'm sitting out in the garden under an overhang, rain coming down. It's hard to describe how wonderful it feels, the rain. After two long months of almost excruciatingly hot humid sunshine, just the pleasure of being cool is huge. But it's much more than that. We haven't had rain for almost six months, and with the rain everything is different. Smells are different. Colors are different. The pink, yellow, orange and red hibiscus flowers glow like lanterns. The orchids – the "orchid walls" hanging all around me, are always beautiful, but with the rain they have a softness, as if the overcast sky is wrapping itself around every petal. The white gardenias. Pea's tangerine, violet, and
cream-colored roses. The Dracaena, Dieffenbachia, Ixora, Ctenanthe. Everything is happy! The birds are happy. The frogs are happy.

Six months from now I will most likely be looking forward to dry season, to the end of the rain. But for now, it's only bliss.

FORAGING

2011-05-08T00:24:00.000-07:00

BACK TO NORMAL?

2011-05-07T21:55:00.001-07:00

I'm back now in Prasat and everything feels much the same as when I left a few weeks ago. The thousands of people who came here from villages near the border have now returned home. The night sky is once again peaceful and quiet. I can read the Bangkok Post online, and know that everything is still not right between the two governments, but for now there is calm.

The far bigger news around here is that the rains have started. When I left Thailand the grass in my front yard was a few inches tall; three weeks later it was a foot and a half! People are hustling to plant the fields. Last year we planted rice on May 18, and this year we will most likely plant on May 9. Days are still extremely hot, and the lateritic soil still hard as rock. But every few days there is a rain, and some of the rains have been big rains. When I left the dominant color was brown (after six months of dry season); now it is a pale, tender green.

This is in many ways Pea's favorite time of the year. When the rains first start to come, and the earth is still baked hard, a late afternoon or evening rain means that all the life that has been living underground – the frogs, crabs, snakes, crickets – come to the surface, or just near the surface. If big dark clouds start to gather late afternoon, you can feel the excitement in the air. People will prepare and eat dinner quickly, then head out to the fields with flashlights on their heads.

Now is a forager's dream.

update from Prasat

2011-04-27T17:21:00.000-07:00

Just talked with Pea by telephone - 8 pm Canada time on Wednesday April 27. There was rocket fire all last night, the worst yet. There are now 30,000 people evacuated from the border and many are in the town of Prasat. There are approximately 2,000 people living in Gung's (Pea's daughter) school in the village of Kravan. Everyone is extremely afraid. And, from all indications, this problem was brought about by the Cambodians, specifically by Hun Sen's son, who is head of the military.

FIGHTING NEAR PRASAT

2011-04-26T09:12:00.001-07:00

I'm here in Grey County but concerned about Prasat.Fighting has erupted on the Thai-Cambodian border, approximately twelve miles from Prasat in Surin Province.I was talking with Pea on the phone two nights ago and there was a big blast, which we both assumed was thunder (rains have already started to come, early this year).But the next day when we talked, Pea was noticeably shaken. It wasn't thunder; it was the sound of rockets being fired across the border.Villages were already being evacuated.Our friend Porn's village was evacuated.So too was Rung's.People on both sides of the border have been killed. 25,000 villagers have been evacuated. Prasat District has been declared a disaster zone.This is the first time that there's been fighting in this region.There has been a longstanding problem between the two countries over a Buddhist temple and plot of land about 150 miles to the east of Prasat in Sisaket Province, but never here.As I write I am out in a rural area in Canada, and internet is not so easy to find.I don't know the exact reason behind the fighting, but what i do know is that it's fueled by nationalistic politicians on both sides of the border, not by ordinary people. Most of the people who live here are ethnically Khmer, though born in Thailand. There is no animosity
whatsoever between people living here, just the opposite.

Pea: Master Cook

2011-04-14T10:18:00.000-07:00

Tokyo

2011-04-12T17:35:00.000-07:00

I am in a hotel just outside Narita Airport in Tokyo for 16 hours, the result of a bad air connection. In this short time I have felt two significant "aftershocks" - earthquakes. It's horrible to think what people here have gone through, and are continuing to go through.

Pea, Gung, and Orchids

2011-04-12T17:30:00.000-07:00

EAT WHAT?

2011-04-01T07:55:00.000-07:00

After I stopped writing this blog I had a bunch of really nice emails. Someone wrote recently and asked: “what do you eat?” A really good question, but I laughed to myself. What we eat every day is totally unlike food I have ever eaten before, ever.

We eat the rice that Pea grew over this past year (and will soon grow again, fabulous rice), but many days we don’t eat rice at all. It’s hard to describe. We eat a ton of vegetables, for sake of a better word. The title of the book I have been writing is EATING LEAVES, and that’s my best way to describe.

The most common and distinctive tree leaves we eat come from the botanical family Leguminosae. Most of these Leguminosae trees are very big trees, the size of mature maples, and have many important uses apart from having edible leaves. As Leguminosae, their most important contribution, as with all legumes, is in fixing nitrogen in the soil. The leaves commonly grow in a feather-like fashion, like the feather of a hawk.

The four most common leguminous tree leaves eaten here in southern Isaan are khilek (Cassia siamea L.), tamarind (Tamarindus indica L.), chao om (Acaia pennata Willd.), and kratin (Leucaena leucocephala Lam.). In Pea’s family, the last two are eaten much more often than the first two, and tamarind leaves are generally cooked with other foods, seldom eaten raw.

Eating leaves is almost meditation for Pea. She will pick up a long thin stem of, say, chao om or kratin, and then carefully pull the fresh leaves and stem from the harder, bottom stem, discarding the bottom stem as she does it. With the tender leaves, still attached to a tender stem, she will begin to fold them in one-inch lengths, making a small “bundle” of leaf. She then dips the bundle into a chile paste or sauce (nam prik), and then eats it.

Eating leaves makes for long meals! And it’s not like these leaves are flavorless, liking eating celery. Just the opposite. All of them have very distinctive tastes and smells, something that I (and I think others) find addictive. Times in the last few years when I have not been here in Isaan, tree leaves are what I miss the most.

One of our favorite meals is a meal made simply with small fresh Thai oysters, a plate piled high with steamed kratin, a large bowl full of slivered shallots fried until brown, and nam jeem. No rice, nothing, just leaves, oysters, shallots, and chile.

We also eat a lot of flowers from trees. Like with the leaves, the flowers are most often lightly steamed. We eat vegetables like baby eggplants and squash, okra and kale, and tender young galangal, ginger, and green onions, but all these vegetables we most often eat as if they are the spoon – or the tortilla – there to dip into the nam prik, the fresh chile sauce (of which there are literally hundreds).

The nam prik (think roughly the consistency of guacamole) – cooking-wise – is the heart of the meal, the heart of the cuisine. At dawn every morning I hear Pea pounding with a large clay mortar and hardwood pestle. Nam prik takes time, and many of the ingredients will be grilled or dry-fried before being pounded. The house starts to smell like roasting garlic, shallots, and chiles. And then pound, pound, pound.

Nam prik, tree leaves, and veges: that’s what we eat. We also eat frogs, fish of many varieties, pork, chicken, duck, crickets, grasshoppers, red ant eggs, field rats, snakes, silkworm larvae, eels… Pea will almost never buy food that someone else has prepared. All fish, frogs, crickets and grasshoppers arrive at our house alive, never dead.

She is also extremely good with a slingshot. In the village, under twenty feet, I’ve never seen her miss downing a chicken for dinner.

April 1, 2011

2011-04-01T02:13:00.001-07:00

I write now from the town of Prasat in the province of Surin in NortheasternThailand. I've been living here for almost five months, and before that fornine months in the village of Kravan, 25 kilometers from here. Before Kravan I lived about a year on a farm outside of Nang Rong, a town much like where I live now, an hour's drive away in the province of Buriram. For three months between Surin and Buriram I lived in Bangkok.

Life here in Prasat is, for the most part, very good. The population is approximately 17,000, not unlike Laramie, Wyoming, the town where I grew up.There are enough people so that it feels like there's always someone new tomeet, and yet it's small enough that there is never a day in the market when Idon't run into someone that I know. Many of the people I run into are from Kravan, the small village where I lived. People come into the market regularly because Prasat is the district center (the amphuh). This is an agricultural region, and Prasat is the main town. Here there is the farmers' coop (sahagorn), the major banks, the motorbike dealerships, the hospital, the district offices… If you live in the surrounding villages (of which there are hundreds), there's always a reason to come to town, and if you come to town the number one pleasure is the market.

The market goes from morning till night (and a smaller part runs all the way through the night). It's in the center of town, just adjacent to the bus station, impossible to miss if ever you should be coming this way. It sprawls in many directions, inside under a roof and outside in the open air. On the fifth day of every month it is especially big, and again on the fifteenth and the twenty-fifth, when everyone makes a special point of coming to town. The market will be three or four times its normal size, with vendors coming with special wares. Women who have spun and woven silk sarongs will sit on the ground with a few of their handmade sarongs laid out on a piece of cloth in front of them. So too will villagers with a harvest of red ant eggs (khai mot daeng), or crickets (jinglet), or shiny pitch black scorpions (meng bpong). The daily market is wonderful, but on the other three market days there's a particular sense of excitement. Teenage boys and girls eye each other without wanting to be seen. Children buy sweets (kanom). Parents look for bargains.

My favorite market, however, happens in a different placejust on the edge of town. It takes place every Friday afternoon – today, as a matter of fact! Soon we will drive over on the motorbike, along with virtually everyone else in Prasat. The traffic starts to get thick, and then thicker. Finding a place to park is a problem, but always resolvable. The market works because everyone collectively makes it work. People are happy; it's the highlight of the week. There are rides for the children. There's food, and food, and more food. There is a variety of vendors that's almost impossible to describe. People sell tropical fish, second-hand clothing, high-heels for two dollars, orchids, tools, curtains and pillows, everything! The whole market is based upon one long path that ultimately makes a circle. You can walk one direction or the other direction, but if you walk long enough you will ultimately see everyone, or at least everyone walking in the opposite direction. Today is April 1. The national lottery happens on the first and sixteenth of every month. Guaranteed today the market will resound with khow, nung, sahm: 9,1,3, the winning numbers.

back again

2011-03-15T21:17:00.001-07:00

BACK AGAIN

Well, back blogging again, eating my words. Life and work take the paths they take, and perhaps I've finally come to realize that the future of publishing- or my future, if I have a future, in publishing - is online. And so here goes! Thanks to everyone who wrote emails to subc03@yahoo.com

a closing blog

2010-12-12T05:31:00.001-08:00

For anyone reading here, this will be my last blog. Blog-writing hasn't set well with me for quite a while now. I have thought of googling "how to eliminate a blog," but instead, I think that it can just sit here in cyberspace, or whatever it does. I don't care, and no one else probably does either.

The reason why I've decided to stop "blogging" is a little bit like one of the reasons why I wanted to leave North America. Part of it starts to feel a wee bit artificial, fake.

I am writing a book. Either I can get the book published, or I can't. If I can't, then it probably isn't worthy of getting published. No amount of self-promotion – which a blog, in some ways, sometimes, is - will help. I don't facebook; I don't twitter (whatever that is). I have an email address which is subc03@yahoo.com. People who want to be in touch with me can always reach me there.

I LOVE internet! Hurrah!

But this is one blog that doesn't need to be.

Thanks for reading.

jeff

KHEE KIAT (Lazy)

2010-10-26T21:41:00.001-07:00

KHEE KIAT ("Lazy")

It's still feeling complicated trying to know how to keep this blog going. Writing life, working life, and life are all much the same right now. It's late October and I am back in Kravan after a three-week trip to Canada. This trip was much better than the trip in April (see below); perhaps I knew enough not to walk down the street where I used to live.

I spent most of my time on two farms two-and-a-half hours north of the city. The days couldn't have been more beautiful. The leaves were changing color – the maples, ash, birch and beech, butternut and tamarac. After a warm rainy summer, the grass was a beautiful deep green, a green that I never see here in Kravan, a green like missal-toe at Christmas. An English green.

Fall, for me, has always been such an "emotional" time in rural Ontario, as it was in Wyoming where I grew up. Life is about to change, dramatically, no matter what. Winter is long in Ontario, and even longer in Wyoming. And summer is a jewel.

When I was a kid I always wondered why I'd been born in Laramie, Wyoming. Why not southern California, where people wear shorts and short-sleeve shirts all year long? The answer I knew was an easy one: because I hadn't. I was born in Laramie, and I moved to Ontario when I was 31 years old, and now, for the time being, I live here, in southern northeastern Thailand.

Does Thailand have an autumn? Yes, of sorts, and it's now.

Today in Kravan is the first day of harvest, of cutting rice by hand (tractors have been busy for almost a week now). It's October 27. I should be cutting rice but I am writing a blog instead.

HOMELESS

2010-10-26T21:39:00.001-07:00

HOMELESS

It's Saturday today and the sky is overcast. I'm in Ontario, on a beautiful farm, and next week, on Saturday, I'll fly back to Thailand. Different worlds. I've "crashed" on six different households in three weeks. Everywhere, everyone, wonderful. But I feel like I am imposing, and I am imposing. And I don't like imposing.

In Toronto I was walking down Yonge Street and suddenly I was desperately in need of a toilet. A homeless guy was sitting out in front of a shop holding a paper cup in search of spare change.

"I need to pee," I asked him.

"Across the street," he answered quickly, understanding the urgency. "The restaurant. Ask them for the key."

I made it to the toilet, and when I came out i crossed the street to give the guy a dollar. A nice guy. But when i got there i found myself asking "can I sit down here?"

"Sure," he said.

And then we talked a long time. And at some point we got up and walked south down Yonge. His hostel at night costs fifteen dollars, so I gave him a twenty.

He was a very good guy. Finally he needed to part company with me, so we said goodbye. He was Irish, forty something and handsome. Not at all dumb. "Why is he living on the street?" I wondered.

For cash he "services" men on Bay Street, men in expensive suits and trench coats.

I don't like feeling homeless. I don't think anyone likes feeling homeless. I'm ready to get on the plane.

[I wrote this blog in April of this year, but never posted it. I'm not sure why. The day before I was scheduled to fly, I went back to the city from the country. On the small street where I lived for twenty-four years I asked three different people if I could sleep the night on a sofa, needing to leave for the airport at 5 a.m.. They all, in one way or another, said no. Probably, I thought to myself, they're worried that I might somehow "pollute" their million-dollar homes. I slept the night in the back of my van in a busy well-lit parking lot downtown. Early the next morning a wonderful young person drove me to the airport. Leave it to young people.]

heart of rainy season

2010-08-27T01:28:00.001-07:00

It's late August in Kravan, almost September. Amazing! The rice fields are full of water. Every day at the farm Pea catches fish (pla chorn, pla duk, pla mo, pla nim…). She catches baby shrimp and crabs. And every two or three days, a snake. We have a snake in the refrigerator right now! Soon, she tells me, there will be no reason for buy food. There is pak boong in the water and long delicious lotus roots. There are wild mushrooms, a zillion different kinds.

The other day it struck me that August and September in a monsoonal climate are almost like summer is to North America and Europe. My flower and orchid garden in the front of the house is happy and beautiful beyond description. A few of the orchids are in flower, but most orchids here use rainy season as a time of growth, producing roots and leaves but not flowers. The jasmines and gardenias are in flower, the hibiscus, and all the plants for which I don't even know a name. I think everyone here in the village thinks I'm a little bit nuts with my garden (why grow flowers when you could grow food?), but people have been really nice. Almost every day someone brings a start for something I don't have, or seeds.

Pea doesn't think I am nuts. She's just as obsessive, and way more. We will be driving down the road on the motorbike and she will suddenly stop, turn the bike off, and then go to gather some seeds from a flowering plant that she particularly likes in someone's front yard. From the forest at the farm she brings home wild irises, and aquatic plants to live in the fish and frog ponds (we now have five!). Everywhere there is LIFE.

In the morning, every morning, with a cup of coffee I go into the garden. I do a little of this, a little of that. An hour passes. Several hours pass. It's bliss. Almost the entire garden exists under the large mango tree which stands at the front of the house. There is also a wild lime tree, a domestic lime, a custard apple tree, and a papaya tree. So basically, it is a shade garden. If I put something out into the direct sun, and leave it, it perishes. I have everything planted in pots, something I learned last year in Nang Rong. And I put very little soil in the pots, basically planting most everything in finely slivered coconut husks (which I am constantly cutting). I first started doing this with the orchids, but then realized that it works for almost everything. The lateritic soil here is way too dense to use as potting soil.

It rains most every day, but not guaranteed. Yesterday it must have rained a good three inches, but today, so far, nothing. I have a friend coming to visit next week, but getting away for more than one night is out of the question. Pea works five or six hours every single day at the farm, and the gardens here in the village really suffer if they go more than two days without water. It's weird, so much water and yet never enough. We can't even get into the farm anymore on the motorbike because the road has been for weeks washed out, but still, we're hoping for more rain. If we get big rain three days in a row, then the farm is full of big fish.

One thing (or I mean many things, but one more than all the others) I don't understand is where the fish come from. For six months out of the year it is dry season, and the fields are baked hard as clay. Then rainy season arrives and the fields fill up with water, and then there are fish. But where do they come from?

And wow, do the fish grow fast! Same with the frogs!

apologies

2010-07-16T02:06:00.001-07:00

sorry for my not posting any blogs of late. the number one reason is that i am currently working on a book proposal, and i don't know how much blog material can or should end up in a book (but i, hopefully, will find out). reason number two is because of the large number of comments being posted in chinese. i can't read them, and i know that most people reading this blog (written in english), cannot read them, and so while they may be very well intended, they are annoying. at last i have figured out a way of restricting comments to "members of the blog", and hopefully that will solve it.
meanwhile (writing fast because internet time is still very dear), I'm well, and the rice field is 50 percent well (there has been more than two weeks of very little rain), and i promise to be a better blogger!

planting day

2010-06-14T03:45:00.001-07:00

POWER

2010-06-06T05:22:00.001-07:00

POWER

A common expression in Thailand is for people to say "today I have no power." It means the same as "I have no energy", but somehow I like it better.

The last few days I've had "power", and it feels wonderful. Rainy season has at last really arrived. For weeks we worked in anticipation of the rains: fixing the eves; cleaning out the ongs (the large clay or cement "jars" that collect the rainwater); planting the rice and getting gardens ready. But we worked in the hot sun and with hard-packed clay soils, all of it unrewarding.

But now the rains are here and I wake up every morning anxious to be outside. I have power! When I go to sleep at night every muscle in my legs and arms aches, my knees barely able to climb the steep wooden stairs, my hands and knuckles inflamed, almost frozen in place. But each morning, like everyone else, I go outside and happily walk from garden to garden, looking for what has germinated the night before, looking at all the life.

I am so often these days reminded of first living in Asia, in Trivandrum, in Kerala, in South India. It was the first place I'd ever lived in Asia, so at the time it was all that I knew. I arrived in October or November, 1977, and I stayed for five months in Trivandrum until moving to Sri Lanka for another three months. Both places were intensely tropical, just like here. The first few months I was there it would rain nearly every day. Men wore sarongs and flip flops, always. It was hot and wet, and there was LIFE in every nook and cranny.

Kravan is a very different place now compared to a week ago. I'm not the only one with power. Kids bicycle home from school drenched in rain, laughing. Last year, toward the end of rainy season, I remember almost looking forward to dry season, but for now, all I feel is power.

A THATCH HUT

2010-06-05T19:12:00.001-07:00

A THATCH HUT

I'm way behind in writing, but it's been one of those great times to be behind. There's been so much to write about, but also so much to do. Four days ago I started to build my first ever thatch building, for sake of a better word. I guess I could call it a bungalow or a hut, but this structure has no walls, just a huge grass roof and a wooden platform to sit on in the shade. "Shade" is the important word here. This last month has been hard in ways for me because of the heat, and I think of myself as very good in the heat. But as I've written before here, it's been really hot!

I've had this idea for a while to build a shady grass structure, but one evening, I guess five nights back, Pee suddenly announced that Oie and Oat (baby Off's parents who live right across the street) have time to help us cut eucalyptus at Pee's farm and to transport back with their two-wheeled tractor. So off we went, gathering every sharp machete we could find, and once we got to the farm, we worked till dark cutting 20 to 30 foot lengths of eucalyptus. It had already been a long work day for everyone, so we were all tired. But we got the wood back and unloaded it and called it a day.

The next morning I embarked. My plan was to copy a structure Oie and Oat had built across the road, a place we now call "ban Off," or house of Off (who is four months old). All day I measured and cut, and again, working in the sunshine and the heat, it was really hard. All the time I looked to the sky for clouds, but nothing.

Day two was much the same as I started to actually build. I knew people would help me if I asked, but I was happy to do it on my own so that I could learn. The end of day two, cumulus clouds started to build, and then boom. Rainy- season rain!

With optimism from the rain (another subject altogether), day three was a letdown, again hard and hot. The structure is just a hut, but it's not like I have actual boards with straight lines (which I am used to). I am building with the eucalyptus, lengths about five inches in diameter. Nothing is straight! Around two in the afternoon Oie arrives with her father, Aht. They walk across the street, take a look at things, not saying a word. And then they start in! Together we work hours – again in the sunny hot – but their movements are incredibly efficient. Aht has been building this way all his life, and so has Oie. They start on the roof, and at this point I step back. I have no idea of how it gets made, or maybe a little idea, but no idea of how to execute it. I'm just in awe watching them. And as they work, other people start watching. A crowd gathers, everyone with an opinion. And then suddenly there is a roof!

Then chat chat chat. I don't know what is going on; my usual state of existence here in the village. And then suddenly there's an old beat-up burgundy Toyota truck and a super nice guy. He offers to drive me to buy grass for the roof! We need approximately 150 already-made lengths of woven thatch, each one about 3 feet by 5 feet. We jump in the truck and start out. It starts to rain, so he closes his window, then takes off the window latch and hands it to me so that I can close my window (he has only one). We drive about thirty minutes toward Cambodia, then in a small village we purchase the thatch, drive home, buy some bottles of lao khao (rice whiskey), and everyone again shows up to help. Thirty minutes after dark there's a roof!

Okay, so there're a lot of details I've left out, but right now the rain is pouring so hard (and so much thunder) that I must shut off my computer. This is evening of day four, and the rain is beyond incredible, and we are maybe three hours in. It's one of those five inch rains!! My god.

WHITE SPACE

2010-06-05T19:10:00.001-07:00

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.

PLANTED

2010-05-24T19:50:00.001-07:00

PLANTED

May 23, a Sunday, and as of tonight the fields are now planted! Everyone was up before six, making food, gathering supplies. Pee's brother number three, Tee, came with a small Kubota tractor. Two cousins came each with a two-wheeled Kubota, each pulling a wooden wagon. We loaded the wagons with six hundred pounds of rice seed, and all our various supplies and we headed out.

I didn't know exactly what to expect. I felt a little bit silly having spent three years of my life working on a book about rice (Seductions of Rice), yet never having planted a single seed. Last year at this time I helped with planting at the Yindichati farm, but only by preparing lunch each day and by transporting people from field to field.

When we arrived at the fields everyone unceremoniously got started. Everyone knew it was going to be a long day. I watched what the others were doing and then copied them. I picked up an empty five gallon plastic bucket, made a sling with my cotton sarong (which I felt proud of myself for bringing…), and then loaded the bucket with rice seed and lifted it so that the sling went over my shoulder and shared the weight of the seeds. They were lighter than I'd anticipated, but still it was a bit tricky getting used to it. I walked out on the field where everyone else was and then started to toss the seeds, looking at all the others to see exactly how to do it. I would gather a large handful and then with a strong flick of the wrist I'd toss the seeds as I walked. Several people came by to help me improve my method, but generally, we all just worked. Pee and Ma, Doi, and three cousins: we were seven people tossing the seeds.

After the seeds were spread on one field, which didn't take long (the fields are small, about ¼ of an acre), Tee came with his tractor fitted with a disc hoe (I don't know if this is the correct term) and a rake behind. The tractor took much longer to cover the field than it did for us to spread the seeds, but after the tractor had finished with a field, it looked beautiful. It was all quietly remarkable.

We drank lao khao (rice whiskey) from six in the morning onwards, as if it were coffee.

Pee at one point left the fields with a bucket and a fish net. A few months ago I would have wondered what she was doing, but now no longer. I knew that she was going foraging, and probably for frogs. I walked with her, a foraging slave. Wherever there was water that I would never in my life set foot in (snakes!), she'd walk right in, her blue jeans immediately soaked, and then with the net she'd "fish" for whatever she could find. She pulled out tiny frogs, about ½ inch in length and less. She pulled out snails, huge snails, about 3 inches in length. She pulled out crabs. "Snake" she called out, as if she were simply saying "frog". She pulled a small snake from the net and tossed it at my feet, knowing that it would cause a momentary distress (she likes that stuff…) .

Right before lunch Pee went foraging again, only this time for salad greens. She walked right into the large field pond (where there are BIG snakes) and gathered an aquatic green, two large handfuls, and then brought them back to where we were making our picnic under a beautiful large tree (which sits right in the middle of Pee's four rai). Pee started to strip off the outside skin of the green, and then Doi immediately began to help. As always, she passed me one to taste, and sure enough, it was sweet and delicious.

Food started to assemble. Everyone had brought a lunch, but it was all put out to be eaten together. It was a FEAST! And it was WILD! There were tiny crickets (jinglet) that Doi brought that were particularly delicious. There was a soup-like dish made from red ant eggs which was also flat-out yummy. There was a frog curry made by Pee that was, of course, super hot. There were tree leaves, raw and steamed, maybe six different varieties altogether. There were at least three different nam priks.

If lunch can be a powerful experience, lunch was a powerful experience. Here we were planting a family's fields of rice (Ma has eight kids and thirty –six rai, four rai per person including four for herself), six hundred plus pounds of seed, land and seed that can sustain life. And to eat with the rice, crickets and frogs, tree leaves and fish, everything "free" and sustainable.

The day became hot and hard, but everyone stayed happy. I layed down on a pile of rice straw in the barn to take a thirty-minute sleep, but I got bitten badly on my neck and arms by who knows what, waking me up in a not so happy way. Three days ago I was working at the farm to get ready for planting, and I put out my lower back. Ugh, something I haven't done for a long time. But three different people stopped by the house for nuet, massage (three people with very strong hands and a lot of experience….), so between my bites and a creaky back….anyway.

By eight o'clock everyone was asleep. The fields are planted!

FIRST BIG RAIN

2010-05-24T19:49:00.001-07:00

FIRST BIG RAIN

The first big rain came on May 17, but then the next morning it felt as if it never happened. Sunny skies, excruciating heat. Forty-two degrees C, and one hundred percent humidity. The red laterite soil baked hard as clay once again. But then on the next day, May 19, a sudden storm hit late in the afternoon, and that I think marks the beginning of rainy season. My view across the street of the tall palms bent at wild angles with wind and rain reminded me of watching hurricanes on the television. The rain just poured and poured, for hours, eight, maybe more. Everything was mud, streams of mud. The eves on Pee's mother's house totally overflowed, and we were all soaked to the bone trying to damage control. I think in everyone's mind, same as in my mind, was the realization that this was the first day of the next six months. It's amazing how an environment changes so quickly so dramatically.

Waiting for the Rain

2010-05-20T18:15:00.001-07:00

Today is May 14, and here in Kravan it's extremely hot. I believe that everyone in the village feels the heat, because today's extreme. I'm sitting in front of a fan, but the fan is blowing hot air. Every once in a while I will turn the fan off, wait a few minutes, and then turn it back on. For a time the fan will blow somewhat cool air, but then it will be hot again. Today's hot! Most days right now are hot, and then every third or fourth day there is a day like today. It reminds me a little of being a kid in Wyoming in the winter when severely cold patches would come through, and all that anyone could do is to stop and wait. Here in the village the odd person will drive slowlyt by on a motorbike, covered to protect from the sun and the heat.

I'm back in Kravan after travelling to Canada, to Wyoming, back to Canada, and then finally to Bangkok. Pee came to Bangkok to meet up again, and for a few days we simply lounged in an air-conditioned hotel room and watched TV. It was great therapy. Then finally we bussed the 6 ½ hours to Kravan. We knew that it would be hot here, and the earth parched, the soil caked hard, almost impenetrable, with the heat. But any time now the rains will start to come, and then we'll work fast to get the fields planted. Pee has four rai (about 1.6 acres), and we'll help Mae with her four rai, and sister number one, Kaesorn, who's leg is so bad that she can barely walk. We plan about 600 pounds of seed rice for four rai. Brother number three, Tee, has a small Kubota tractor, which will really help.

Kravan is in so many ways similar to the Yindichati farm, but also completely different. There are eight children in Pee's family, just like the Yindichati farm. But unlike the Yindichatis (with eight girls, all but one living in Bangkok), here numbers one, two, three, four, and five live in the village, and half the children are boys, half girls. It's different.

Brother number two, Tat, is the one who everyone seems to respect the most (as it seems so often happens in a large family). Pee's father died when she was just a kid, getting hit by a car when he was coming home on his motorcycle. My sense is that Tat took over his father's place. He works the farm but he also works in Bangkok, working way too hard. But he "looks after" in that Thai sense of the expression. He has three great kids, and his spouse, Doi, seems to be just like him: steady and reliable.

The other night we were at a wedding in the village and there was Kantrum music, the Khmer version of Morlam (and it's great by the way). But I ended up dancing with Bpoo, number one son of Tat. We got to dancing more and more, just the two of us, and while he was in a whole different league than me, it was really fun. Boy, could he dance. I don't know exactly how old Bpoo is, maybe 15 or 16. At some point I had to bow out, totally spent, and for sure he could've gone hours more. And just a great dancer, long limbs dancing in four different directions, body always in control but so loose.

A few days later we were all together one evening and after dinner someone put a video on TV of Bpoo in a dance competition sometime last year. Bpoo was the only young dancer, and it was all traditional Khmer dancing, and no question, he was again by far the best, and this among really good dancers. Pee made a comment about Bpoo being the only "katuey" (transvestite) in the competition, and people just smiled, acknowledging that she was right.

Later that evening when I brought it back up with Pee, she told me that his father, brother number two, had also been a great dancer, but that Bpoo has taken it to a higher level. "You know," she said, "it's very good for body and he can make a lot of money with it sometime if he wants."

I finally, at this stage of being in Thailand, resisted the idiotic North American question (for which I am so adept) about how his parents feel about him being katuey, and living at a young age in a small village as a katuey. They are immensely proud of their son, and so is everyone else here.

2010-04-01T19:20:00.000-07:00

New Home

2010-04-01T19:09:00.001-07:00

NEW HOME

There's been very little time to write these last few weeks. One day in Chiangmai I met a woman named Pee. She's tall, about my height, and looks much more like someone from the Indian Subcontinent than she does a person from Thailand. We started to talk, and sure enough, she's Thai, but not. She's Khmer, but born in Thailand. Her first language is Khmer, not Thai (the two languages have nothing in common).

We started to be friends. My brother Rich was coming to Bangkok for a visit, and out of the blue I found myself asking Pee if she would like to come along. "Sure," she said. So we took an overnight bus to Bangkok and had a great week with Rich. And, well, as long as we were on the road and that far south, we decided to bus the seven hours east to her village, a tiny village south of Surin, just north of the Cambodia border. On the way there we passed through the town of Nang Rong, a town I now know well because of the Yindichati farm (an experience which is now, sadly, I think, over).

We arrived at Pee's village, at her home, and here we still are. I have no idea how long we've been here. Days are seamless. The village is entirely Khmer, similar but completely different to the Yindichati farm. Everyone here is a farmer, but the houses are clustered and the actual fields are all outside the village, surrounding the village. The Yindichati farm was much more like a farm in the American Midwest: one farmhouse and the fields, then another farmhouse and the fields. Another big difference is that here everyone speaks Khmer, whereas at the Yindichati farm, everyone spoke either Korat or Lao. And, though I know little, here I think is considerably poorer.

Pee's father died when she was a teenager. She has seven brothers and sisters. We live here in the house (from where I am right now writing) with Pee's mother (who raised eight children on her own), Sister Number One (who has a severe muscle disorder in her legs), and Pee's daughter, Gung, aged ten. It's a very happy house, and constantly busy. Morning starts between four-thirty and five, chickens pluck-plucking. Kantrung (the Khmer version of Morlam) and luktung music goes on the communal stereo. By six it's daylight and charcoal fires are already burning in front of every house.

Right now Pee is killing a chicken for breakfast. The other day I asked her if she liked wet season or dry season. "Wet season," she immediately replied. "In wet season I catch frogs every day, easy." Next to the house Sister Number One has a cricket farm ("jinglets"), as do many households in the village, but she also has a small scorpion farm (with huge scorpions). The food here is beyond good: crickets, frogs, snails, cockles, leguminous tree leaves, fresh garden kale, fish and fresh nampriks and nam jims beyond description.

Pee and I are getting used to each other, happily. I ask a lot of questions, constantly, and every third or fourth question she will turn and look at me as if her look could kill. "Shut up your mouth," she will answer, in English. Next door there is a baby one week old, so beautiful. Directly across the street there is another baby, now one month old. His name is Fu...k Off. People here, and especially Pee, joke constantly.

The other day we bought a motorcycle, and today we are going to town (an hour away) to buy a small washing machine. I'm starting to smell the chicken grilling. Oh, and one other thing. Instead of coffee in the morning, here most everyone, men and women, start the day with a shot or two of Lao Khao, local rice whiskey. It's great! Gotta go.

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two dutch

2010-03-01T01:21:00.001-08:00

TWO DUTCH

Last night I was sitting with Jon and Chris, sitting at a table set out on the street, drinking a beer. Up "walk" two people, a man and a woman, the woman with a large cast on her leg, walking with crutches. They ask us if we can help them find a tuk tuk, and sure, we say. But please sit down. And then hours later, we're still all sitting together, telling stories, laughing. Nice friends.

They were on a bus in Burma, four hours north of Rangoon. The bus spun off the road. It flipped once down a hill, twice, three times. All in the flash of a second. Bodies were piled upon bodies. People were dead. The Dutch man screamed, wanting to know that his partner was alive. She answered, but she was bleeding badly. He pushed off bodies, heavy weights on both he and her. He broke the glass of a window and then helped her climb out of the bus. She'd torn 34 tendons in her ankle.

They road in the back of a pickup to Rangoon, looking up a sky filled with stars. In the hospital in Rangoon the doctor wanted to stitch her ankle up, but he had no idea about the tendons. But she knew; she's a nurse. So they caught a plane to Bangkok, still all in shock. They got to a good hospital, on Sukumvit. Four days of surgery.

And here they are, continuing their travels! They want to go to Nepal.

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2010-02-04T22:38:00.000-08:00

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Cake

2010-02-04T22:34:00.001-08:00

CAKE

Cake is an amphetamine addict, 25 years old. She's the same size as Noi, small small small. I've never really been around an amphetamine addict, so I don't know how much of Cake is on account of that, and how much of Cake is just plain Cake. She is definitely living her life on the street. From morning till night she walks the streets (of where I won't write here….). And she walks fast; often she runs. And she never walks in a straight line. Yesterday we spent all day together walking. Today my feet and legs are tired! Often she would disappear for a minute or two, and then reappear.

Cake talks to herself, and sings to herself. She sings beautifully, morlam luktung. She has a tiny mouth but when she sings it doesn't seem tiny at all. And her eyes, always bloodshot, can pierce like bullets, or shine with love, often back to back within a few seconds. Is there part of Cake that is mentally ill? I don't know. But we were pals and now I am leaving town and I miss her.

We were walking down the street and there was a spirit house piled high with fresh offerings. Cake casually walked over, checked out the bananas, the oranges, the dragon fruit. She decided on the oranges, and tossed one over to me and took one for herself. "Kamoy", theif. But she doesn't steal in shops. And she has friends. The young man without legs is a friend, a victim of polio since the age of four. The crazy man that plays the flute terribly while he sits on the sidewalk looking for money from tourists; he is a friend. Most people, I think, hate to see Cake coming. They may not know her, but instantly they can read that she is trouble.

Around midday Cake turned into a dark, almost empty shop house (I can never ask where we are going; I just follow, or I mean I can ask but she never responds, usually just singing a few lines). We walk to the back of the shop house and then up a flight of stairs into a big empty room. I still have no idea why we are here. Cake looks around quickly, then goes into action. Against one wall there are odd looking game machines, not like anything I have ever seen before. They look a little bit like 1950's pinball machines, or not quite so big. Cake plugs in every one, quickly (like everything she does). She looks at me and smiles. The room is now lit up with lights, bells, and whistles. It's all ours, to have fun!

We played like kids, for hours. The machines all come from China. They are crazy! And there was Chinese money to play the machines, tons of it. I bought beer, other people came. One particular machine was a little bit like a slot machine, for sake of a better description. I never quite figured it out, but Cake was obsessive, her fingers moving on the buttons like an incredible typist. But her fingers moved fiercely, aggressively. And then she would step back and the machine would zoom with lights and sounds, and then suddenly money (old Chinese money) would come pouring out. Cake would take a long drag on her cigarette, the smoke hovering around her head like a lenticular cloud, and then she would attack the buttons again.

I met Cake dancing, like I meet most everyone these days. Cake danced like she walks the streets. Fierce. And everything is theatre, fabulous theatre. We first sat at a table, but then Cake pushed all the chairs under the table so that all we had was a table. And then it quickly became clear that we would dance around the table, one direction, the other direction, like a dancing chase, seldom if ever touching. Fun fun fun!

People are afraid of crazy people. I was sometimes a little bit afraid of Cake, though not in a big way. But just the unpredictableness. At one point I was fed up and I said "I'm going home." I looked at Cake and from a bloodshot eye a tear came down. I didn't go home.

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traveling

2010-01-23T02:54:00.001-08:00

TRAVELLING

This is a very curious thing: a blog. It's personal, but it's not. It's shared, but only with people who want to read in.

For most people reading this blog, I think, most everyone knows that in my life, right now, life's in a transition of sorts. I'm living in a place that's very "foreign" to me, even though I'm in a country where I've been coming all my adult life. I'm watching, observing, but I'm also a participant. It's not a "place" where I've ever been before.

I spend a lot of time these days trying to figure out life. Where I am, from one perspective, might appear somewhat simple, certainly bucolic, and for sake of better words, peaceful and quiet. But here for me as a foreigner, it's never peaceful and quiet, and definitely not simple.

A few weeks back I had a revelation in my quest in figuring out life.

"What am I doing?" I asked myself (the perennial question).

"I'm travelling," I suddenly answered back. "You know, travelling."

I (the one asking the question, and the one answering) devised a theory about "travel" a few years back. "Good travel" is travel that one learns from, travel that impacts one's life (almost in that way of a significant drug experience). And good travel is generally when one makes one's self vulnerable, where one engages to such an extent to where things can really go wrong.

"I'm travelling," I said to myself. And that revelation helped. And the people immediately around me are also travelling.

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dancing

2010-01-23T02:49:00.001-08:00

DANCING

Hmm? This one's tough. Dancing? I think I'm an addict. Right now I'm in Bangkok and basically I'm going to sleep at five a.m. and waking up at five p.m. (I blame it on English...). I dance at a place called Tawan Daeng, out on Petchaburi Road, about Soi 60. There are three Tawan Daeng in Bangkok that I know about, but this is my favourite. The music is morlam/luktung, music from northeast Thailand and Laos. This particular Tawan Daeng is unique, at least for me (I've been to many all across the country...). It's intensely urban, is how I would describe it. The music is a live band, and there are singers and dancers always on stage. On any given night I would guess that there are about sixty performers. In some ways it's burlesque. In some ways it's the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Many of the best singers and dancers are transexual; they are extremely good at what they do.

At this point I'm a bit of a regular. I get a table at the front, and in between songs the performers come and sit with me (in a room of three hundred people, I'm usually the only foreigner, so I am visible...). I order a bottle of rum (not that I can drink it), and they come, sit down, have a quick shot and go back to work.

I dance. I have no idea what any of the lyrics of any of the songs mean, but the songs are now implanted in my head like childhood memories. Everyone dances, a sort of dancing hysteria. It took me a while to realize that I could go by myself (I usually go with the Yindichatis), but now I know that I can simply show up. There is no dance floor; everyone just dances by their chair. But people migrate around, dancing from table to table. By midnight things start to heat up, and then the next three hours are bliss.

Sexuality, as far as I can tell, really doesn't matter. It's the most sexually ambiguous place that I have ever been. What's far more important is performance, almost like karaoke. Singing dancing singing dancing. And incredible good will.

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english

2010-01-23T02:47:00.001-08:00

ENGLISH

I met these two great guys about ten days ago, or so I think it was about ten days ago because the days have been so much fun that they are a bit of a blur. I was eating noodles from my favourite street vendor on Petchaburi Road in Bangkok and another foreigner comes to sit down at my table, the only available seat. Turns out that he has just flown in from England for his umpteenth visit, and this street vendor is his favourite as well. So we laugh, order a beer, and basically hit it off. He is staying at the Opera Hotel, same as me, a place I have been staying twenty years.

Anyway, he asks me if I have ever taken a motorcycle taxi. I have, I tell him, in a different area of Bangkok, but never downtown. So we leave the noodle stand and take two motorcycle taxis to his favourite bar. And it's a little bit wild, riding through the dense traffic of Bangkok on the back of a motorcycle. Motorcycles have different rules, and that's the advantage. They can weave in and out through the traffic; they can even go on the sidewalk if need be. They are the same price as a taxi, but they crisscross across the city in a much more efficient way.

But for sure, on my first experience it was a tiny bit scary.

When we got to the bar we had a very good time. English (I call him English and he calls me Jerry, because he thinks I look like Jerry Springer) makes me laugh (and laugh and laugh). I understand way more Thai at this point than I understand his English, "shagging the birds...", but I've learned to just say "yes, yes," even though I haven't a clue what he's saying.

So we were sitting in the bar and another guy comes to sit with us. His name is Mark, Mark from Australia. Mark is 52 years old, English is a baby (35). Mark renovates golf courses in Asia. He was three years in Vietnam, three years working for the horrible generals in Burma. His Thai is excellent. We talk about green manure and fertilizers, tropical soils and tree legumes. And meanwhile English sputters away about shagging the birds.

We go from one bar to the next, giggling like teenagers, behaving like teenagers. I've no idea what hour the evening ended, but I think that we'll all be friends for a long time. They'll come visit the farm. And now we chitchat on our cell phones (very cheap in Thailand), still giggling away.

Oh, and about the motorcycle taxis: my third or fourth time, probably after a few beers, I decided to relax. I hold on tight, wear a helmet, and then just enjoy the ride. I think of it as a kind of yoga of motorcycles. Every driver I've had has been excellent, so I just sit in back and cruise through the city. I wish that I could relax in life the same way that I now relax on the motorcycles. Maybe that's for later.

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noi

2010-01-23T02:45:00.001-08:00

NOI

Noi in Thai means small, and Noi is definitely small. I asked her how much she weighs (it's okay to ask these things in Thai..). She weighs 38 kilos. She's twenty-nine years old. Her parents divorced when she was twelve. She comes from "banok", countryside, outside Sisaket just near the Cambodian border. She came to work in the city when she was fourteen years old, and worked many years in a supermarket.

I met Noi dancing in a bar. We were both dancing by ourselves, off in a corner. She had on a pair of running shoes and a hoodie, and as we started little by little to dance together, we both laughed, two very unlikely dancing partners. But dancing... Dancing is its own world.

"You want to go Tawan Daeng?" I found myself asking, having no idea.

"Okay," said Noi. She took off the black hoodie and underneath she wore a bra sort of thing and miniscule shorts. We caught a taxi, arrived at Tawan Daeng, and danced our brains away.

Noi's gay. She's lived with the same woman for nine years. Never in my life have I danced with such a dancer, limbs, rhythm and incredible intensity. Sculpture in motion.

Chance met. I just hope Noi well. And a little bit, sure. I'm sad.

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Fw: mister joe

2010-01-23T02:24:00.001-08:00

MISTER JOE

I'm always, speaking to myself, speaking bad about cities. I like the country, but right now I like Bangkok, too. A very nice person stays at the Opera, same as me. His name is Joe, but we call him Mister Joe. Mister Joe has had two strokes at a young age; I think he is same as me, mid fifties. He calls them his "strokes of luck" because he survived, and now he gets a tiny disability that allows him to not work. He is one of the kindest men I have ever known. He has very little money but all of it, every day, goes to people here at the hotel, or to the people at the convenience store just down the street where he goes to buy beer. We sit drinking beer and telling stories, and Joe says hello to everyone in a completely earnest way. I think he is just happy to be alive, and happy to be here in Bangkok where people don't think twice about befriending a very nice man who has had two strokes. We joke a lot about the young women who work in the convenience store (walking is hard for Joe, so the convenience store is within close reach). I love Nang Ning, he loves Tip. But they all really love Joe. He buys them a pizza, or gives them a dollar. They know a nice man when they meet one.

Mister Joe has somehow slowed life down, appreciating everything. He has a friend, a long time friend, named Mee. She comes most every day. Mee has a friend, a woman, named Boo, who Mee refers to as "the Boo". One day The Boo was here and headed to the beauty salon, wanting to look like "a potato."

Joe cries a lot, and it's infectious. My father cried a lot too, in that same loving life sense.

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