Slowly the collection of Redbull canisters and water bottles filled to the brim with ash and cigarette ends has mushroomed around my bed like grassy moss. The scissors, fresh from an impromptu haircut made five days ago still tickle my feet at the foot of the bed. A few square inches of mattress are uncluttered just about allowing me to curl sideways. At the foot of the bed is my laptop balanced on juice cartons on a wooden chair. There are no windows. Time is going sideways and the dim neon tube never flickers, except when it does. Detritus. The satisfying splotches of squashed mosquitos dot the wall and ants, gorged to crummy satisfaction do not lose time relaxing. They are preparing for the winter perhaps? Or are they just preparing? Preparing for nothing in particular... Always preparing. Hastily making ready for a day that may never come. Preparing for preparation’s sake? An army of six legged boy scouts savagely storing surplus whilst I wait for China to come through.
And lo and behold they have at last. Long days have passed in waiting for the moment that I am handed a freshly stamped Passport; China in my hands. Hazaa. What a rubbery inner-tube of mixed emotions it is to see another stamp on my cocky little Maltese passport. And trust me it is a cocky little scrap of paper this passport. You can see it in the glint of the eyes of anyone who, on hearing that you come from Malta, exclaims “Oh, Maa-l-taa!”; tickled by the small victory, that they had heard of a country that they were not expected to have known about. Chuffed that they had somewhere crossed paths with this five letter word in some dark back-alley of their lives and been fortuitous enough to remember it; blessed to be able to show off their nominal knowledge of a distantly insignificant land to one of its inhabitants. It’s a bit like meeting a quantum physicist at a cocktail party and keenly saying something like “Oh quantum theory!? That must be an exciting job... it really just proves that anything is possible, doesn’t it?” as though one has spent every free moment of ones life deep in a lay person’s research of quantum mechanics.
And yet my passport bears no grudge. Especially not against those nice people at Bangkok Airways, who very nearly sent me away from the flight desk in Phnom Penh because “we nat shue Malta exist”. Thanks very much. Do invest in a pocket atlas before confronting me on the ontological status of my home country. It exists in as far as that 100kg light fixture above your head exists; you could argue that it exists because we allow it to exist, or that it is mostly empty space, or that the molecules and atoms that give it existence have no intrinsic being... but you’d step out of the way if it were starting to come loose of its hinges. In that sense, yes, it exists. As for its purpose? Well, if it didn’t exist our house would be some hundred feet under water... and that wouldn’t be good. Though, to be fair non-existence can be quite a good thing too.
For example when it is being expressed by a potential enemy. “I’m German” Well then you probably like beer and inwardly directed self abuse resulting from impossible ideals. “I’m Canadian” Well then you’re probably a jolly reindeer murdering, syrup guzzling non-aggressive American. “I’m American” Well then you must have more money than a diamond-sneezing iguana. “I’m French...Where do I surrender?”. “I’m Greek... I’ve got olives and amyl nitrate back at my guesthouse”. “I’m Swiss... I always know what time it is but I won’t commit to saying whether it’s early or late”. “I’m Spanish... and I’m pissed”. “I’m Maltese and....” Wait. What comes next? I’m Maltese and... I can be anything I want to be? I’m Maltese and you have no idea if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Just close enough in name to ‘Monaco’ so that I might be wealthy, and then again maybe I’m dangerous, or perhaps a bon vivant. Ah the Maltese passport, the great, blank, slate.
I spoke before about ‘non-existence’ and perhaps that is because I have spent a week in the land of not-being. The late night re-run of isolation and TV chatter. A fading glow of reality sputtering out like the last damp match in a hobo’s pocket. Lost in a world of waiting. Five days... or was it six? I’m not sure but the room bill will yield some clue. So many games of Yaniv played with souvenir playing cards with pictures of Luzzus and churches. A worthy score in ‘Red Alert 2’. The pallor of an internet junkie. My country a non-existent entity left behind to ‘make a sound’ or ‘not make a sound’ depending on whether or not it falls in a jungle and someone is there to hear it. Days are ticking off this Lao visa like hands on a bureaucratic grandfather clock and we are trapped between China, home and a cheap windowless room. We do not exist. Home does not exist. China glimmers in the distance like a fake Rolex on a hairy wrist fighting to exist. Either it isn’t a ‘Rolex’ or it is a ‘fake Rolex’. I sure hope it is something...
In the meantime, I should probably get some juice and step outdoors before the mushroom monsters and water bottle nasties receive the gift of life and choose to follow me around, worshipping me as their creator. I still need China to come true.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Omigod Backy
Omigod Backy, this is paradise...
Dear Backy, we have, like, totally stumbled into paradise. This plaise is like totally unreal. The people basically don’t speak anny Anglash and like, there’s this river which is brown. Oh and there’s totally mountains too... it’s not like, JUST a river. They have these long boats which are like made out of wood or something and lederally no-one speaks Anglash. Oh wait I already said that. Did I mansion the butturrflies? Hundreds of tham, lederally. Totally. Laderally. I’m serious; laderally.
Wash you were here! (Naat)
Janie.
Well omigosh and buttered poodles, could Janie have been righter? Poor Becky. To die for... And yet here I find myself whimpering quietly in pain, alone in a bamboo coffin with a squatter, clasping at my stomach like John Hurt in ‘Alien’. It seems as though the entire village community has decided to hold the primary school ‘father/daughter dance’ right outside our hut whilst I slowly but surely work on my ‘picking up the soap in prison’ stance (always bend at the knees). Bastard stomach. But I suppose this does give me the opportunity to sit in and write a few words whilst Tim sits by the river engulfed in a swarm of pesky butterflies.
Let’s talk about music since I’m singing the blues anyway. They say that to learn languages such as Thai, Lao and Chinese you need to have a pretty musical ear. This comes down to the many different tones that these languages use to change the meaning of a word; for example ‘kaw’ in Thai means ‘rice’, but saying it ‘Kaaw’ means ‘white’. Therefore ‘Kaw Kaaw’ translates as ‘white rice’ in Thai where nouns precede adjectives in sentence order. But what this all really boils down to, the central question at the heart of this vein-poppingly difficult concept in language is: why are Asians so bad at karaoke? I mean, it’s only like the national pastime over here. When people sing in the street small graphics appear beneath their faces bearing the lyrics they are singing being slowly filled up by a time-bar that keeps tempo with the music. They are literally dripping with cheesy Asian playlists full of whiny songs about love and mosquito nets; so why so tone deaf?
What I believe lies at the heart of this issue is the Asian concept of being polite even when inside you are creasing with laughter at the flatulently flat noises being passed off as singing. If a piece of toilet paper gets caught on your shoe as you leave a bathroom, well, you can forget anyone kindly but amusedly pointing it out. Also, I imagine that no Asian man has ever been concerned about the size of his penis or his performance in bed. People here are quite anxious about remaining shtum if they run the risk of offending or embarrassing. Now, this is all very sweet and sour pork, but if you think about it things can get pretty sticky rice when no-one speaks up. Just think about the singing...
But also think about the marriages and the infidelity; which I’m told by informed sources is positively rampant.
“Umm, Asian-Janice?”
“Yes Asian-Beatrice?”
“I’ve got something to tell you... but I’m not quite sure how to say it”
“Well don’t worry, you can tell me anything as long as it doesn’t put the tiniest wrinkle in our highly respectful relationship”
“Well actually that’s the problem Asian-Janice, I really believe that what I have to say will put a wrinkle in our honourable relationship”
“Well gosh then Asian-Beatrice, you must be very embarrassed about having brought the issue up in the first place!”
“I truly am”
“Let’s not speak for several weeks and then casually pretend this conversation never happened”
“That seems like an awfully good idea, lets”
Doesn’t seem like it would work does it? Though in Thailand men do actually get their comeuppance in a manner that finds them waiting ‘more than a little impatiently’ holding a bag of ice in the Penile-reattachment Clinic in Bangkok. It is incidentally, the most advanced clinic of its kind in the world, or so I’m told... Like, omigod Backy, you wont believe what I just did to Brian... Interestingly, even despite the terrible consequences of Brian’s extramarital affairs, Brian went off shagging away anyway. What was he thinking? He was probably thinking that no-one would say anything, but he was underpant-emptyingly wrong about that. In the meantime Asian-Brian is probably laughing himself to sleep every night after being politely told that he was more than sufficient in bed and that his guttural rendition of ‘Moon River’ is lederally the best version his wife and girlfriend have ever heard.
Even as I shake at the ankles at my most recent rendition of the song I’ve written called ‘Bamboo squatting bastard gastro-intestinal system e-coli blues’ I wonder at how people here vote. Can you imagine Gonzi at a mass meeting on the Fosos timidly proclaiming that if it wasn’t too much of a bother to the other party, whom he firmly believes would also do a great job of being the government, he would quite like to stay on as Prime Minister. Followed by a similarly sheepish statement from the Labour party that they also quite wanted a chance to sit in the good offices but they were basically okay with staying where they were because they didn’t really want to put anyone through the bother of emptying their drawers. Uh... nah! Not in a gadgillion years.
Though it is perhaps beyond the scope of this woefully uninformed blog to make suggestions, I will venture a simple solution to the problem of politeness in this green, mountainous and brown rivered part of the world. Why not start a new genre of Asian blues music with my song about diarrhoea as the flagship tune of this new musical wave? Think about it, the blues is one of those few musical genres where being tone deaf is just not an issue and its a format that leaves a lot of room for the whinging and bitching that is so absent from Asian life. Get them started on the blues and wean them slowly off the harmony that they have so long had to endure. I would sincerely like to develop this idea further and perhaps obtain international backing from the DNA Testing companies which surely have a vested interest in people being blunt, but, my stomach tells me its time to write a new stanza to ‘Bamboo squatting bastard gastro-intestinal system e-coli blues’... Good lord help me. Ciao.
Dear Backy, we have, like, totally stumbled into paradise. This plaise is like totally unreal. The people basically don’t speak anny Anglash and like, there’s this river which is brown. Oh and there’s totally mountains too... it’s not like, JUST a river. They have these long boats which are like made out of wood or something and lederally no-one speaks Anglash. Oh wait I already said that. Did I mansion the butturrflies? Hundreds of tham, lederally. Totally. Laderally. I’m serious; laderally.
Wash you were here! (Naat)
Janie.
Well omigosh and buttered poodles, could Janie have been righter? Poor Becky. To die for... And yet here I find myself whimpering quietly in pain, alone in a bamboo coffin with a squatter, clasping at my stomach like John Hurt in ‘Alien’. It seems as though the entire village community has decided to hold the primary school ‘father/daughter dance’ right outside our hut whilst I slowly but surely work on my ‘picking up the soap in prison’ stance (always bend at the knees). Bastard stomach. But I suppose this does give me the opportunity to sit in and write a few words whilst Tim sits by the river engulfed in a swarm of pesky butterflies.
Let’s talk about music since I’m singing the blues anyway. They say that to learn languages such as Thai, Lao and Chinese you need to have a pretty musical ear. This comes down to the many different tones that these languages use to change the meaning of a word; for example ‘kaw’ in Thai means ‘rice’, but saying it ‘Kaaw’ means ‘white’. Therefore ‘Kaw Kaaw’ translates as ‘white rice’ in Thai where nouns precede adjectives in sentence order. But what this all really boils down to, the central question at the heart of this vein-poppingly difficult concept in language is: why are Asians so bad at karaoke? I mean, it’s only like the national pastime over here. When people sing in the street small graphics appear beneath their faces bearing the lyrics they are singing being slowly filled up by a time-bar that keeps tempo with the music. They are literally dripping with cheesy Asian playlists full of whiny songs about love and mosquito nets; so why so tone deaf?
What I believe lies at the heart of this issue is the Asian concept of being polite even when inside you are creasing with laughter at the flatulently flat noises being passed off as singing. If a piece of toilet paper gets caught on your shoe as you leave a bathroom, well, you can forget anyone kindly but amusedly pointing it out. Also, I imagine that no Asian man has ever been concerned about the size of his penis or his performance in bed. People here are quite anxious about remaining shtum if they run the risk of offending or embarrassing. Now, this is all very sweet and sour pork, but if you think about it things can get pretty sticky rice when no-one speaks up. Just think about the singing...
But also think about the marriages and the infidelity; which I’m told by informed sources is positively rampant.
“Umm, Asian-Janice?”
“Yes Asian-Beatrice?”
“I’ve got something to tell you... but I’m not quite sure how to say it”
“Well don’t worry, you can tell me anything as long as it doesn’t put the tiniest wrinkle in our highly respectful relationship”
“Well actually that’s the problem Asian-Janice, I really believe that what I have to say will put a wrinkle in our honourable relationship”
“Well gosh then Asian-Beatrice, you must be very embarrassed about having brought the issue up in the first place!”
“I truly am”
“Let’s not speak for several weeks and then casually pretend this conversation never happened”
“That seems like an awfully good idea, lets”
Doesn’t seem like it would work does it? Though in Thailand men do actually get their comeuppance in a manner that finds them waiting ‘more than a little impatiently’ holding a bag of ice in the Penile-reattachment Clinic in Bangkok. It is incidentally, the most advanced clinic of its kind in the world, or so I’m told... Like, omigod Backy, you wont believe what I just did to Brian... Interestingly, even despite the terrible consequences of Brian’s extramarital affairs, Brian went off shagging away anyway. What was he thinking? He was probably thinking that no-one would say anything, but he was underpant-emptyingly wrong about that. In the meantime Asian-Brian is probably laughing himself to sleep every night after being politely told that he was more than sufficient in bed and that his guttural rendition of ‘Moon River’ is lederally the best version his wife and girlfriend have ever heard.
Even as I shake at the ankles at my most recent rendition of the song I’ve written called ‘Bamboo squatting bastard gastro-intestinal system e-coli blues’ I wonder at how people here vote. Can you imagine Gonzi at a mass meeting on the Fosos timidly proclaiming that if it wasn’t too much of a bother to the other party, whom he firmly believes would also do a great job of being the government, he would quite like to stay on as Prime Minister. Followed by a similarly sheepish statement from the Labour party that they also quite wanted a chance to sit in the good offices but they were basically okay with staying where they were because they didn’t really want to put anyone through the bother of emptying their drawers. Uh... nah! Not in a gadgillion years.
Though it is perhaps beyond the scope of this woefully uninformed blog to make suggestions, I will venture a simple solution to the problem of politeness in this green, mountainous and brown rivered part of the world. Why not start a new genre of Asian blues music with my song about diarrhoea as the flagship tune of this new musical wave? Think about it, the blues is one of those few musical genres where being tone deaf is just not an issue and its a format that leaves a lot of room for the whinging and bitching that is so absent from Asian life. Get them started on the blues and wean them slowly off the harmony that they have so long had to endure. I would sincerely like to develop this idea further and perhaps obtain international backing from the DNA Testing companies which surely have a vested interest in people being blunt, but, my stomach tells me its time to write a new stanza to ‘Bamboo squatting bastard gastro-intestinal system e-coli blues’... Good lord help me. Ciao.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
The Truth about Mountains and Rivers
The Truth: A poem by Beppe Coleiro
Roses are red, though sometimes they’re not,
And violets are blue, though you’d imagine they’d be violet,
And sometimes people kill each other with machetes.
I thought I’d start this bit of writing with a poem to ease into the hollow void of nothingness that I have to write about. That is to say that my mind is pretty blank right now, but I’m willing to wing it anyway. We have moved on from Vang Vieng, Laos, to a place called Luang Prabang on the Mekong river; leaving behind the throngs of ‘Keemon Mai San’ English boys and the ‘Ohmygod Backy’ American girls. Here the people are more ‘Hmm loowk a lizard’ and ‘Cor its hot innit?’, which is altogether more pleasant and reflective of my frame of mind. Uninspired as it may seem, at least there WAS a lizard and it IS hot... it’s so hard to fault people for being accurate even if only pointlessly so. I suppose the mighty reservoirs of stored up conversation have begun to dry and fill with mosquito larvae... but that’s okay. I can handle it. I’m made from mountain and river stuff so I’m basically good to go.
Mountain stuff. The mountain is the unchanging soul of man, weathered by wind and water but also added to by the occasional bird dropping or say, a dead lizard. This is the stuff of personality that remains, no matter what, essentially the same. Tim is a mountain man, and believe me I have on more than one occasion wished I could leave him on his mountain, but I’m more of a river boy myself and I like to take people with me. This is the problem with being a river. Rivers get lonely quite quickly and they cannot help moving towards an ocean. Well, actually I don’t know if that’s strictly speaking geographically true, but you know... figuratively I think it holds water. No pun intended. Really. “Puns are the lowest form of wit” said my mother, when I was waaay too young to really care... but she’s a river like me so I’ll build a bridge an get over it. Which I suppose is my next point about mountains and rivers.
You can work with a river if you’re willing to give in to its flow, but a mountain is always an obstacle. You can go around them, but mountains have big personalities and they tend to get in the way. On the other hand, if you conquer the mountain... well, that’s a pretty great feeling; but you never lose respect for the mountain. If you’re serious, you can divert a river, but you only beat a mountain by not letting it beat you. However, and this is quite a big ‘however’... you never tell the mountain that it won or was hard to beat. Not to the mountain’s face that’s for sure. The only way to really talk about it is through the use of metaphorical language on a blog that you’re pretty sure it doesn’t read anyway. That’s how rivers and mountains talk. Also, a final point about rivers is that you can wash your clothes in them and so they’re definitely better than mountains no matter what. Rivers always win.
Roses are red, though sometimes they’re not,
And violets are blue, though you’d imagine they’d be violet,
And sometimes people kill each other with machetes.
I thought I’d start this bit of writing with a poem to ease into the hollow void of nothingness that I have to write about. That is to say that my mind is pretty blank right now, but I’m willing to wing it anyway. We have moved on from Vang Vieng, Laos, to a place called Luang Prabang on the Mekong river; leaving behind the throngs of ‘Keemon Mai San’ English boys and the ‘Ohmygod Backy’ American girls. Here the people are more ‘Hmm loowk a lizard’ and ‘Cor its hot innit?’, which is altogether more pleasant and reflective of my frame of mind. Uninspired as it may seem, at least there WAS a lizard and it IS hot... it’s so hard to fault people for being accurate even if only pointlessly so. I suppose the mighty reservoirs of stored up conversation have begun to dry and fill with mosquito larvae... but that’s okay. I can handle it. I’m made from mountain and river stuff so I’m basically good to go.
Mountain stuff. The mountain is the unchanging soul of man, weathered by wind and water but also added to by the occasional bird dropping or say, a dead lizard. This is the stuff of personality that remains, no matter what, essentially the same. Tim is a mountain man, and believe me I have on more than one occasion wished I could leave him on his mountain, but I’m more of a river boy myself and I like to take people with me. This is the problem with being a river. Rivers get lonely quite quickly and they cannot help moving towards an ocean. Well, actually I don’t know if that’s strictly speaking geographically true, but you know... figuratively I think it holds water. No pun intended. Really. “Puns are the lowest form of wit” said my mother, when I was waaay too young to really care... but she’s a river like me so I’ll build a bridge an get over it. Which I suppose is my next point about mountains and rivers.
You can work with a river if you’re willing to give in to its flow, but a mountain is always an obstacle. You can go around them, but mountains have big personalities and they tend to get in the way. On the other hand, if you conquer the mountain... well, that’s a pretty great feeling; but you never lose respect for the mountain. If you’re serious, you can divert a river, but you only beat a mountain by not letting it beat you. However, and this is quite a big ‘however’... you never tell the mountain that it won or was hard to beat. Not to the mountain’s face that’s for sure. The only way to really talk about it is through the use of metaphorical language on a blog that you’re pretty sure it doesn’t read anyway. That’s how rivers and mountains talk. Also, a final point about rivers is that you can wash your clothes in them and so they’re definitely better than mountains no matter what. Rivers always win.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Gecko
I’m thinking of a number between one and two, and if you can guess it then you’re either psychic or infinitely lucky. I use the word infinitely quite purposefully here because in reality, numbers do not have any actual existence and there are an infinite number of possible answers to my challenge. You are limited only by your imagination. I could be thinking of 1.4 or 1. (seven million zeros) 3. Numbers can be infinitely large or small and they dictate the world we live in. In the last two days my life has been a long series of numbers... though, the more I think about it, it was probably a numbers game to begin with. Some hundred billion sperm, a figure in my father’s bank account, a record at the national statistics office for births and someday... well, the other thing. Hollow, void, intangible concepts that sadly outgrew my fingers and then my toes... and now? Hell, they seem to have slipped out of my grasp completely.
One thousand Thai Baht convert to two hundred and fifty six thousand Laos Kip, minus a three percent changing commission. A thirty day visa costing thirty five dollars. A twenty percent increase in the cost of food but a twenty five percent dip in the cost of whiskey. One hundred and seventy seven meters to the bar where I like to eat breakfast and fourty three degrees Celcius of pure yellow heat. This is life in numbers. But returning to my original question, can you imagine the infinite choices that lie between numbers, that is limited only by your imagination? I once read an article that convinced me that a twenty thousand dollar bottle of wine is a pretty good deal if the numbers are right; and I’m thinking in some depth about good deals lately, so it’s important to slide between the numbers.
“She say she have to think about what everything in here worth”
Well, that’s a fair question. What the hell is it worth? I haven’t the faintest shadow of a hair of an idea. But I should back up. The above words were said by a face. That face belongs to a man. It’s a dark face, almost as brown as instant coffee but with a slight darkening at the border of the hairline. I could describe this man more conventionally and I will, but first let’s just talk about this face. Why? Because this is my first port of call in the adventure that I call ‘getting to know if someone can be trusted not to rob you blind and stab you in the eyes for fun’. It’s a soft face. Not from a textural point of view of course but you know... soft lines. Young. Perhaps younger than me. It doesn’t look as though it has frowned too much, or laughed; but it’s too young to bear the lines and canals of emotion just yet. The eyes are kind and intelligent, or seedy, I’m not sure. In fact, I have to admit I’m totally stumped. The man I’m talking about is Gecko.
Gecko is showing me a bar. A bar that I want to rent from his family and to run as my own. This is where the numbers come marching in, riding on the lined copybooks of my brain like ghosts from the classroom of life. He’s talking to me about money and what things are worth. We’re both speaking numbers but I’m not sure we’re speaking the same language. What is life worth to Gecko? What is friendship worth to Gecko? What is anything worth? It’s funny; we assume that just because we’re talking in numbers, we’re describing the same things... but we’re not. Gecko is talking about income and I am talking about mountains. He is trying to tell me that this bar is worth money, and I know that if it’s worth anything, it’s worth the padded trail in the grass a hundred meters away that crosses a bridge and leads into paradise. I know it does because I walked there yesterday.
I realise sometimes that travel and work and life are so much about the things we call numbers and which we ASSUME are the subject of global consensus. But how much do we really agree about what numbers mean? Travel with anyone for a day or two and eat and sleep together, and see if you agree on the money value of comfort, of airconditioning, of health and food, of risk and gambles... you’ll soon realise that sometimes three is one and seven is five and the coordinates of numerical reality are lost in translation. Now that’s dealing with a friend or a partner, someone who in all likelihood shares your cultural and personal views on numbers to a high degree; but what about Gecko? What is his culture? What is his personal history? Beats the hell out of me with a stick, but somehow we have to reach consensus. We have to be of one mind, connected by numbers as though by blood if we are ever to reach an understanding. Without this we are lost on a sea of decimal places, each isolated on islands of our own, neither conceding to the other the exact distance between us. I’ve always loved that all-American phrase ‘let’s crunch some numbers’ and in a vague, milky, cereally kind of cornflakes way... I’m starting to understand it.
One thousand Thai Baht convert to two hundred and fifty six thousand Laos Kip, minus a three percent changing commission. A thirty day visa costing thirty five dollars. A twenty percent increase in the cost of food but a twenty five percent dip in the cost of whiskey. One hundred and seventy seven meters to the bar where I like to eat breakfast and fourty three degrees Celcius of pure yellow heat. This is life in numbers. But returning to my original question, can you imagine the infinite choices that lie between numbers, that is limited only by your imagination? I once read an article that convinced me that a twenty thousand dollar bottle of wine is a pretty good deal if the numbers are right; and I’m thinking in some depth about good deals lately, so it’s important to slide between the numbers.
“She say she have to think about what everything in here worth”
Well, that’s a fair question. What the hell is it worth? I haven’t the faintest shadow of a hair of an idea. But I should back up. The above words were said by a face. That face belongs to a man. It’s a dark face, almost as brown as instant coffee but with a slight darkening at the border of the hairline. I could describe this man more conventionally and I will, but first let’s just talk about this face. Why? Because this is my first port of call in the adventure that I call ‘getting to know if someone can be trusted not to rob you blind and stab you in the eyes for fun’. It’s a soft face. Not from a textural point of view of course but you know... soft lines. Young. Perhaps younger than me. It doesn’t look as though it has frowned too much, or laughed; but it’s too young to bear the lines and canals of emotion just yet. The eyes are kind and intelligent, or seedy, I’m not sure. In fact, I have to admit I’m totally stumped. The man I’m talking about is Gecko.
Gecko is showing me a bar. A bar that I want to rent from his family and to run as my own. This is where the numbers come marching in, riding on the lined copybooks of my brain like ghosts from the classroom of life. He’s talking to me about money and what things are worth. We’re both speaking numbers but I’m not sure we’re speaking the same language. What is life worth to Gecko? What is friendship worth to Gecko? What is anything worth? It’s funny; we assume that just because we’re talking in numbers, we’re describing the same things... but we’re not. Gecko is talking about income and I am talking about mountains. He is trying to tell me that this bar is worth money, and I know that if it’s worth anything, it’s worth the padded trail in the grass a hundred meters away that crosses a bridge and leads into paradise. I know it does because I walked there yesterday.
I realise sometimes that travel and work and life are so much about the things we call numbers and which we ASSUME are the subject of global consensus. But how much do we really agree about what numbers mean? Travel with anyone for a day or two and eat and sleep together, and see if you agree on the money value of comfort, of airconditioning, of health and food, of risk and gambles... you’ll soon realise that sometimes three is one and seven is five and the coordinates of numerical reality are lost in translation. Now that’s dealing with a friend or a partner, someone who in all likelihood shares your cultural and personal views on numbers to a high degree; but what about Gecko? What is his culture? What is his personal history? Beats the hell out of me with a stick, but somehow we have to reach consensus. We have to be of one mind, connected by numbers as though by blood if we are ever to reach an understanding. Without this we are lost on a sea of decimal places, each isolated on islands of our own, neither conceding to the other the exact distance between us. I’ve always loved that all-American phrase ‘let’s crunch some numbers’ and in a vague, milky, cereally kind of cornflakes way... I’m starting to understand it.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
You're my butterfly Paleface
In the middle of a dark room, Milosh who is apparently not German but Czech, switches on a bright reading lamp. At first it's pretty tough to keep my eyes on the white spot and I have to fight the maddening urge to shut my eyes. A little longer and I realise that if I focus on my breathing my eyes don't hurt so much. Off goes the light. The room is black again, but not totally black; not INKY black or an infinity of dark space etc. Just, you know... pretty dark. Kind of like someone wanted to print a dark room on a laserjet printer which is running low on black ink.
"Can you see your soul?"
"No I don't think so, but there's an awfully bright yellow spot where the light used to be.."
"That'd be it"
"Hmm."
I finally think I have some answers. After cleansing my aura and apologizing to the apparently not inconsiderable multitudes of people I've killed in past lives, Milosh, a Swedish novelist called Benji and myself sat down outside M's house for a bit of a chat. There was no tea.
Toothpaste is quite nice. I cant say anything bad about it. There is literally nothing bad about toothpaste; it keeps my mouth relatively fresh, it's more hi-tech than ketchup and it's never been anything but kind to me. I particularly like the kinds which are predominantly white but have those red and blue lines going through them; I remember using those a lot before the 'translucent blue toothpaste' fad hit, literally rocking no-one's world. Translucent blue is okay, but it seems vaguely detergentish and lavatorial.
Now I suppose the question is this: would I like to have red and blue streaks running through me? I'm not sure. But some people would, apparently.
"It's tribal memory you see" Milosh explains "that makes them want to be white".
"Trade skin with me" says a very frightening 16 year old female gang member, circling me in a completely unrelated swimming pool "I want to be falang".
"Please don't take my skin" I respond with literally no braveness.
"A long time ago when the silk route from China was being established, white races brought prosperity to the land and so, on a collective consciousness level, they associate white skin with good things. With wealth, liberation, adventure and so on..." (That was Milosh by the way).
They called those white people aria-thom, and for the life of me I've used up all my memory for names and dates; but I do know that aria-thom is supposed to be transliteratable as arian-dom, as in christendom or kingdom. It's a great idea, but I'm not sure about toothpastedom. If my toothpase were black, would I wish I were more brown sugar and less white rice?
So... you want my skin, but I'm using it. Where do we go from here?
So you want to be a falang superstar? Then you’ll probably need to know a thing or two about butterflies. The Thais, not unsurprisingly have a word for ‘butterfly’, but sadly I haven’t the faintest idea what that word is. It’s probably ‘nakbing’ or ‘lemonwhale’ so for the sake of discussion lets just say ‘mariahcarey’. After all, she had an album called ‘Butterfly’... though on second thoughts it might have been called ‘Rainbow’ or ‘Kitten’ or ‘A little bit overworked and prone to prescription drug abuse’ (or something like that). Now, in Thai culture a mariahcarey is someone who goes from partner to partner without ever settling down. I suppose the Americans would call such a person a ‘skank’ or in the case of a man a ‘player’, but the Thais, being quite concerned about etiquette and indirectness, have more subtle euphemisms. One particularly sweet example of this is that transsexuals are called ‘katoey’ which simply means ‘different’... isn’t that quite nice?
“Me butterfly like my mum” says frightening lady gang member, her tattoos glistening in the over-chlorinated pool water.
“How wonderful!” I say slowly edging away in terror.
“I have new kik, he’s twenty-eight”.
“Kik?” I say preparing to go under and free willy myself to safety.
Kik: friend with benefits.
“I love Thailand and I know its history and its culture better than most Thais” says Milosh in a completely unrelated front yard “and I can appreciate what’s great about it, and I can see what’s not so great.”
Benji, the Swedish novelist asks a question. I’m sure it’s a good one but I’m distracted by what appears to be a mosquito Lufwaffe air patrol squadron preparing for a quick Blitz attack on my pale Viking skin.
“The average mental age of a Thai man is twelve years old. They love to have fun and to joke around... but many of them are very immature”.
Ironically, Milosh believes that it is this same immaturity that creates the conditions for the huge sex trade in Thailand, something which has fascinated me for some time. A few years ago one of the leading newspapers in Chiang Mai reported on a study where students at all Chiang Mai’s primary school were asked what they would like to be when they grew up. The number one response was
‘a prostitute... like my sister’.
Ah the glamour of a paleface boyfriend, the money, the trips abroad, the relative luxury and prestige. Its not just about the cash, though it has a lot to do with it; there’s also the partying and drinking and mixing with white people with the ultimate goal of settling down with one of your (I believe the American word is) Johns. This is Thai glam-rock, this is Thai counterculture and ultimately this is probably a very sad story about false glitz and dirty tinsel.
“Walk into the jungle here, and half the things you see are edible” says M. “Historically, whenever the Northern Thais were attacked they would abandon everything and run into the mountains and survive off what they could find in the forests and jungles... they never knew famine. Not real, long term famine... that made them relatively comfortable. Lazy. They often do the minimum that they can to live... If a tuk-tuk driver has a good morning, he won’t work in the afternoon”
Is there something deeply unethical about saying that a culture is historically predisposed to laziness? Maybe and maybe not. But given that this place is as bonkers to me now as the first time I set foot in Bangkok, I’m willing to roll with it. So, Thai lady...
“How can they use the word lady!” observes B, whose cultural understanding of what a ‘Lady’ is comes under close fire in the land of Lady-bars, Lady-boys and “Boom Boom Thai Lady?!”
So, to sum up: Thai ladies, rather than work in a field for not-much, prefer to fly off to Koh Samui and sleep with lovely white men with lots of cash, and go to parties, drink vodka and wear glamorous western clothes. In short, they would rather be butterflies than earthworms. In the meanwhile lots of falang come here and have their hearts dashed when they find out that their precious Thai butterfly is servicing more than just his flower. Other falang men come here and are positively thrilled with the flower patch activity and are quite happy to sit on a stool and wait to be landed on. And whilst all this is going on the Thai men are also getting their kiks like the falang men, only with less success, or they’re playing marbles instead of working on ‘The Johnson File’ at the bank where they work in Mergers and Acquisitions.
"Can you see your soul?"
"No I don't think so, but there's an awfully bright yellow spot where the light used to be.."
"That'd be it"
"Hmm."
I finally think I have some answers. After cleansing my aura and apologizing to the apparently not inconsiderable multitudes of people I've killed in past lives, Milosh, a Swedish novelist called Benji and myself sat down outside M's house for a bit of a chat. There was no tea.
Toothpaste is quite nice. I cant say anything bad about it. There is literally nothing bad about toothpaste; it keeps my mouth relatively fresh, it's more hi-tech than ketchup and it's never been anything but kind to me. I particularly like the kinds which are predominantly white but have those red and blue lines going through them; I remember using those a lot before the 'translucent blue toothpaste' fad hit, literally rocking no-one's world. Translucent blue is okay, but it seems vaguely detergentish and lavatorial.
Now I suppose the question is this: would I like to have red and blue streaks running through me? I'm not sure. But some people would, apparently.
"It's tribal memory you see" Milosh explains "that makes them want to be white".
"Trade skin with me" says a very frightening 16 year old female gang member, circling me in a completely unrelated swimming pool "I want to be falang".
"Please don't take my skin" I respond with literally no braveness.
"A long time ago when the silk route from China was being established, white races brought prosperity to the land and so, on a collective consciousness level, they associate white skin with good things. With wealth, liberation, adventure and so on..." (That was Milosh by the way).
They called those white people aria-thom, and for the life of me I've used up all my memory for names and dates; but I do know that aria-thom is supposed to be transliteratable as arian-dom, as in christendom or kingdom. It's a great idea, but I'm not sure about toothpastedom. If my toothpase were black, would I wish I were more brown sugar and less white rice?
So... you want my skin, but I'm using it. Where do we go from here?
So you want to be a falang superstar? Then you’ll probably need to know a thing or two about butterflies. The Thais, not unsurprisingly have a word for ‘butterfly’, but sadly I haven’t the faintest idea what that word is. It’s probably ‘nakbing’ or ‘lemonwhale’ so for the sake of discussion lets just say ‘mariahcarey’. After all, she had an album called ‘Butterfly’... though on second thoughts it might have been called ‘Rainbow’ or ‘Kitten’ or ‘A little bit overworked and prone to prescription drug abuse’ (or something like that). Now, in Thai culture a mariahcarey is someone who goes from partner to partner without ever settling down. I suppose the Americans would call such a person a ‘skank’ or in the case of a man a ‘player’, but the Thais, being quite concerned about etiquette and indirectness, have more subtle euphemisms. One particularly sweet example of this is that transsexuals are called ‘katoey’ which simply means ‘different’... isn’t that quite nice?
“Me butterfly like my mum” says frightening lady gang member, her tattoos glistening in the over-chlorinated pool water.
“How wonderful!” I say slowly edging away in terror.
“I have new kik, he’s twenty-eight”.
“Kik?” I say preparing to go under and free willy myself to safety.
Kik: friend with benefits.
“I love Thailand and I know its history and its culture better than most Thais” says Milosh in a completely unrelated front yard “and I can appreciate what’s great about it, and I can see what’s not so great.”
Benji, the Swedish novelist asks a question. I’m sure it’s a good one but I’m distracted by what appears to be a mosquito Lufwaffe air patrol squadron preparing for a quick Blitz attack on my pale Viking skin.
“The average mental age of a Thai man is twelve years old. They love to have fun and to joke around... but many of them are very immature”.
Ironically, Milosh believes that it is this same immaturity that creates the conditions for the huge sex trade in Thailand, something which has fascinated me for some time. A few years ago one of the leading newspapers in Chiang Mai reported on a study where students at all Chiang Mai’s primary school were asked what they would like to be when they grew up. The number one response was
‘a prostitute... like my sister’.
Ah the glamour of a paleface boyfriend, the money, the trips abroad, the relative luxury and prestige. Its not just about the cash, though it has a lot to do with it; there’s also the partying and drinking and mixing with white people with the ultimate goal of settling down with one of your (I believe the American word is) Johns. This is Thai glam-rock, this is Thai counterculture and ultimately this is probably a very sad story about false glitz and dirty tinsel.
“Walk into the jungle here, and half the things you see are edible” says M. “Historically, whenever the Northern Thais were attacked they would abandon everything and run into the mountains and survive off what they could find in the forests and jungles... they never knew famine. Not real, long term famine... that made them relatively comfortable. Lazy. They often do the minimum that they can to live... If a tuk-tuk driver has a good morning, he won’t work in the afternoon”
Is there something deeply unethical about saying that a culture is historically predisposed to laziness? Maybe and maybe not. But given that this place is as bonkers to me now as the first time I set foot in Bangkok, I’m willing to roll with it. So, Thai lady...
“How can they use the word lady!” observes B, whose cultural understanding of what a ‘Lady’ is comes under close fire in the land of Lady-bars, Lady-boys and “Boom Boom Thai Lady?!”
So, to sum up: Thai ladies, rather than work in a field for not-much, prefer to fly off to Koh Samui and sleep with lovely white men with lots of cash, and go to parties, drink vodka and wear glamorous western clothes. In short, they would rather be butterflies than earthworms. In the meanwhile lots of falang come here and have their hearts dashed when they find out that their precious Thai butterfly is servicing more than just his flower. Other falang men come here and are positively thrilled with the flower patch activity and are quite happy to sit on a stool and wait to be landed on. And whilst all this is going on the Thai men are also getting their kiks like the falang men, only with less success, or they’re playing marbles instead of working on ‘The Johnson File’ at the bank where they work in Mergers and Acquisitions.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Viking Blood
Imagine yourself walking along a beach, just off the wet sand, daring the water to flood the arches of your feet. You walk for a while and slowly you notice that the tide is going down and you walk among little pools of trapped water. Suddenly shells appear, and crabs dashing for cover, and bits of seaweed. Now replace all the shells and plants and driftwood and crabs with people and places and events and things. This vaguely captures how I felt this morning as I staggered out of bed and tried to recall who and where I was. Wandering around Chiang Mai I collected the various flotsam and jetsam of my identity and tried to remember just what was going on. One of those days I guess, where the world seems like a faraway place and one begins to wonder just where one fits inside it.
So imagine if you will peering across to the washed out horizon of one’s self and seeing... a Viking ship. First the sails flush against the wind, peering over the curvature of the earth, and then the bow of dark chocolatey wood... and then the image looms larger by the minute until finally a German man called Milosh shouts out “hey, have you ever meditated?”
Huh?
What is going on?
He hands me a card which I push under the plastic wrapping of my Marlboro lights (I do this because the cigarette packs here have photographs of various awful diseases and I’d been staring at rotting lungs for two days; now covered by Milosh’s card). I’ll describe the card to you. It’s yellow with new roman lettering. On the top it says:
111/3 Moon Mauang Road / Mediation Daily
Under this, inexplicably, are two pictures; one of a dog and the other a cat. I feel out of my depth to speculate what these have to do with the meditative services offered but I can look past it. Under them are some numbers and a yahoo address and the name of a temple: Wat Dok Kham.
“From Malta!” Milosh exclaims (naturally, we’ve fast forwarded a bit here and he didn’t simply exclaim this at random... though it would have been very pleasant if he did).
“I have been to Malta! To Gee-gaan-tee- ya and wid is zuwr rik and Medina...” he says articulating each place name with no small degree of imagination. Milosh tells us about himself; he says he speaks eight languages and is a palaeontologist. He claims that he is well versed in the history of all countries and that he learned to meditate from a man who lives in the jungle.
“You could pass for a German” he notices “do your parents also come from Malta”.
I assure him that though I can’t prove without a shadow of a doubt that they do, they’re good people and I was quite prepared to go on their word that they are. I went on to say that my blond hair, fair skin and blue eyes are inexplicable, a freak genetic mutation.
“Do you know why you look the way you do?” he asks.
“Hmm, could it be that the universe is actually the world’s most complicated jigsaw puzzle and somebody fucked up?” I wonder.
“Do you know wid is zuwrik?” he asks again.
“Yup.”
“That’s where the Vikings landed on Malta”
“Shit, really? Are you trying to tell me that I’m a Viking?”
“Yes”
“You really think so?”
“Definitely”
“I knew it”
Somewhere deep inside I guess I always kind of knew I was a Viking. I mean this explains so much. My love of the open sea; my desire to wear a helmet with horns; my love of drinking out of inconvenient cone shaped things. As a young boy I always felt different. All the other boys would play football and all I ever wanted to do was rape and pillage. ‘Little Raper and Pillager’ I suspect they would have called me in a more Viking-tolerant society. And here lies the subject of my greatest confusion. ‘Why me?’
Why was I called upon to be different? To be a Viking in a world that doesn’t understand my kind? Okay before this all becomes too silly, I’ve made two lists:
Things that make me Viking-like:
I’d quite like to go to Valhalla when I die, as it’s the closest afterlife to a videogame that I’ve heard of so far.
I’ve always wanted a nickname and I think Beppe the Magniferous would be quite good.
It’s blonde all the way down.
I didn’t hate the trailer to ‘Beowolf’.
Things that make me un-Viking-like:
I’m not sure how I feel ethically about furs.
I’m quite shy to use urinals in clubs, I’m not sure what the Viking-ship lavatorial situation is, but it doesn’t seem promising.
I can’t grow a very thick beard, but I’d definitely be into the plaits.
Right so; after a bathroom break that was a little bit more urgent than I would have liked, I have come to the conclusion that Vikings were the original hippies. I suppose the long hair and full beards were the first giveaway but there’s also the fact that all the little Viking boys and girls left their Viking homes and Viking parents (who were probably all stiff upper-middle class Viking accountants working in Mergers and Acquisitions) and dropped out of their Viking undergraduate courses to strike out on their own. Since caravanning and fjords probably don’t mix they decided to use quaint little ships instead. Armed with a poorly defined notion of a free spirited life they backpacked their way through Europe, taking from the various villages and towns they happened upon in a mead-induced haze without ever really giving anything back to society until much later in their fourties.
Hmm.
Perhaps Milosh was on the money.
I am a Viking with a Degree and a fear of urinal cakes.
So imagine if you will peering across to the washed out horizon of one’s self and seeing... a Viking ship. First the sails flush against the wind, peering over the curvature of the earth, and then the bow of dark chocolatey wood... and then the image looms larger by the minute until finally a German man called Milosh shouts out “hey, have you ever meditated?”
Huh?
What is going on?
He hands me a card which I push under the plastic wrapping of my Marlboro lights (I do this because the cigarette packs here have photographs of various awful diseases and I’d been staring at rotting lungs for two days; now covered by Milosh’s card). I’ll describe the card to you. It’s yellow with new roman lettering. On the top it says:
111/3 Moon Mauang Road / Mediation Daily
Under this, inexplicably, are two pictures; one of a dog and the other a cat. I feel out of my depth to speculate what these have to do with the meditative services offered but I can look past it. Under them are some numbers and a yahoo address and the name of a temple: Wat Dok Kham.
“From Malta!” Milosh exclaims (naturally, we’ve fast forwarded a bit here and he didn’t simply exclaim this at random... though it would have been very pleasant if he did).
“I have been to Malta! To Gee-gaan-tee- ya and wid is zuwr rik and Medina...” he says articulating each place name with no small degree of imagination. Milosh tells us about himself; he says he speaks eight languages and is a palaeontologist. He claims that he is well versed in the history of all countries and that he learned to meditate from a man who lives in the jungle.
“You could pass for a German” he notices “do your parents also come from Malta”.
I assure him that though I can’t prove without a shadow of a doubt that they do, they’re good people and I was quite prepared to go on their word that they are. I went on to say that my blond hair, fair skin and blue eyes are inexplicable, a freak genetic mutation.
“Do you know why you look the way you do?” he asks.
“Hmm, could it be that the universe is actually the world’s most complicated jigsaw puzzle and somebody fucked up?” I wonder.
“Do you know wid is zuwrik?” he asks again.
“Yup.”
“That’s where the Vikings landed on Malta”
“Shit, really? Are you trying to tell me that I’m a Viking?”
“Yes”
“You really think so?”
“Definitely”
“I knew it”
Somewhere deep inside I guess I always kind of knew I was a Viking. I mean this explains so much. My love of the open sea; my desire to wear a helmet with horns; my love of drinking out of inconvenient cone shaped things. As a young boy I always felt different. All the other boys would play football and all I ever wanted to do was rape and pillage. ‘Little Raper and Pillager’ I suspect they would have called me in a more Viking-tolerant society. And here lies the subject of my greatest confusion. ‘Why me?’
Why was I called upon to be different? To be a Viking in a world that doesn’t understand my kind? Okay before this all becomes too silly, I’ve made two lists:
Things that make me Viking-like:
I’d quite like to go to Valhalla when I die, as it’s the closest afterlife to a videogame that I’ve heard of so far.
I’ve always wanted a nickname and I think Beppe the Magniferous would be quite good.
It’s blonde all the way down.
I didn’t hate the trailer to ‘Beowolf’.
Things that make me un-Viking-like:
I’m not sure how I feel ethically about furs.
I’m quite shy to use urinals in clubs, I’m not sure what the Viking-ship lavatorial situation is, but it doesn’t seem promising.
I can’t grow a very thick beard, but I’d definitely be into the plaits.
Right so; after a bathroom break that was a little bit more urgent than I would have liked, I have come to the conclusion that Vikings were the original hippies. I suppose the long hair and full beards were the first giveaway but there’s also the fact that all the little Viking boys and girls left their Viking homes and Viking parents (who were probably all stiff upper-middle class Viking accountants working in Mergers and Acquisitions) and dropped out of their Viking undergraduate courses to strike out on their own. Since caravanning and fjords probably don’t mix they decided to use quaint little ships instead. Armed with a poorly defined notion of a free spirited life they backpacked their way through Europe, taking from the various villages and towns they happened upon in a mead-induced haze without ever really giving anything back to society until much later in their fourties.
Hmm.
Perhaps Milosh was on the money.
I am a Viking with a Degree and a fear of urinal cakes.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Zanthor
The heat is unbearable. Not a particularly exciting string of words and certainly not anywhere close to being original. Other words that have floated to the top of my mental list on writing this include scorching, furnace, boiling and shittingly warm. However, since these words seem to have lost all meaning in this bone piercingly meaty heat I will make one up... ‘zanthor’ (a complex mixture of all of the above rolled in pita bread, shoved in a toaster and roasted on Satan’s barbeque grill). So, it is quite zanthor today. Much more zanthor than I counted on, admittedly. I’d read about the heat in
So, it’s hot, we covered that. There must be more to say on the subject of
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