Dating particularities

The other night my friend Saadia (see post below) were talking about dating... I think. The conversation is a bit hazy. I remember her saying something about how she could never date someone who wasn't really really into literature or something to that effect.

I went back to my room and I think began writing a blog post, or at least what was to become a blog post had I not fallen asleep. I am thinking this was meant to be a list of things I could never see as attractive in another person.

So I woke up the next morning, turned on the computer and opened text edit to start some work. And a text edit window opened, blank except for one single line.

"I could never date someone who listens to James Taylor."

Ha! What else would you need for a solid list of dating requirements? The rest kind of fall into line after that. I f someone is an actual, true blue fan of JT, then you probably can deduce that they are boring, shallow and lost in the way wrong decade.

I believe, and I think the great Christopher Hitchens would agree, sometimes a bit of the drink helps one see much more clearly.

Today was a robot day

Frequent readers of this blog will know, some days I just need to draw a robot to make everything feel better. I am lucky in my life to have friends that sometimes just need a robot drawn for them to make them feel better. So it's a pretty good situation I find myself in.

This one is kind of cheating. It's the robot from one episode of the Twilight Zone. But he is offering Saadia hot chocolate, so he's not all bad.

birthdays and water fights

Soooo… that happened.

As you're probably aware, last week was my birthday. The big 2-4. Pizza was had. Dancing was done.

But that's not what we're here to talk about. I'm here to talk to you about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Just kidding.

I'm here to talk to you about Sonkran. The biggest party I've ever seen. And I've seen some parties. New Years Eve in New Orleans. Halloween in Austin, Texas. Obama's Inauguration. But nothing holds a candle - or a water pistol - to Sonkran.

Sonkran is the water festival to celebrate the Thai New Year. What was once a family celebration where young people washed their elders' hands in scented water has become an all out water war.

Saadia, Ollie and I spent four days locked and loaded with water guns running through a city where the better part of the 13 million-strong population are throwing buckets of ice water and flour on anyone walking by.

Obviously, if you're not in a dry taxi or inside, you're not safe. You'd be stupid to travel by motorcycle or on foot through this war zone. So, brilliantly, we took a tuk tuk, one of those motorcycle carts that leaves you vulnerable to the elements. And explaining the things we saw from this tuk tuk here won't do it justice. But just imagine thousands of soaking wet people crammed into a few streets in central Bangkok with fire engines blasting water hoses into the crowd. Imagine that plus crazy sound systems and you're getting the right idea.

Armed with a water gun in one hand, a beer in the other, clad in our best swimming outfits, we hit the streets ready for war. And we survived… barely. We survived Silom. We survived Khao San -twice. We survived RCA. I lost my shoes and Ollie lost his water gun, but we all made it home in more or less one piece.

So, team, the war is now over and I feel the need to say as commander of this unit (yeah, I just decided that), MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. And also, I'm never drinking again...

(Thanks, Zhava for taking all the pictures!)

Thai moonshine

is never a good idea.

I had to buy cigarettes, nature had a gun to my head

Does anyone remember that early line from the film Wonder Boys when Michael Douglas says, "I don't drink, usually... but this was turning out to be one fucked up day." Ha. Sorry for the expletive (Fr Doll) but he said it, not me.

I wouldn't consider myself to be a smoker. But consider this. It's not yet the rainy season in Bangkok. But I have heard thunder for over an hour as the sky gets darker outside my office window. I automatically have "Kathy's Song" stuck in my head by Simon and Garfunkel.

I hear the drizzle of the rain
Like a memory it falls
Soft and warm continuing
Tapping on my roof and walls.

And from the shelter of my mind
Through the window of my eyes
I gaze beyond the rain-drenched streets
To England where my heart lies.

This song is like a verbal version of the beautiful melancholy outside my window. Even now the wind is picking up and it's getting dark grey outside. Almost like tornado season in Omaha where the anticipation trumps the actual weather.

My mind's distracted and diffused
My thoughts are many miles away
They lie with you when you're asleep
And kiss you when you start your day.

And as a song I was writing is left undone
I don't know why I spend my time
Writing songs I can't believe
With words that tear and strain to rhyme.

So, obviously, I had to stand on my balcony with a cigarette, welcoming the rain whenever it gets here. I didn't really have a choice in the matter.

Sometimes, when I have a song stuck in my head, I put it into this bank of songs I have in my brain that I someday want to sing to my children. My parents sang to me and it's one of the things I really look forward to when I'm a parent. I like this song, mainly because it's easy to sing and sounds kind of like a lullaby. An honest, slightly mournful lullaby, but a lullaby at that.

And then I start talking to this daughter I have yet to meet. About thunder storms and why we shouldn't be afraid of them. That we should be grateful God gives us these big storms to remind us how small we are and how it'll be gone in a few hours and we''l still be here.

And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you.

And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I.

And I think it's a good one to sing to your children, even if Paul Simon meant it for Kathy, who I assume is an adult. "The only truth I know is you..." seems so fitting for a mother to say to her daughter. So, to my someday daughter, I'll say this, knowing it's true before I even know you, "There but for the grace of you go I."

And now you know why I wanted to smoke on the balcony. It just adds that last bit of romance to an already romantic day. Anticipation, thunder and smoke rolling into the wind.

How would Leonard Cohen have written about this moment?

Something to the effect of, "When the light had abandoned them they shared small white candles to brighten their way. And their goods glowed with brilliance of something I just couldn't say."

So I was walking down this street market in Luang Prabang, Laos on holiday with Julian. He was sleeping at the hostel and I was looking for a cheap massage. This is the average street market in SE Asia. The kind where, in Bangkok, I get sick and tired of the same cheap stuff being sold stall by stall. But in Laos, on holiday, I can't get enough.

The electricity had gone out on the street, as it does in a third-world communist country. And all of the street vendors began distributing small white candles to each other, just as the night was going from dusk to total darkness. And almost instantly the market started to glow. And all of the brightly embroidered bags and scarves lit up. And immediately it changed from a market to a what looked like a holy place. It felt like a holy place.

Julian and I were talking the other day of how we experience something so beautiful. Since I experience things through a religious, spiritual

lens, and he doesn't. After all, in the past few days we have seen stories-high waterfalls pouring into turquoise-clear water, suttees behind limestone cliffs, full moons glowing orange over old French colonial architecture, lit up ancient wats, dark caves and misty rivers.

But that's not what we're here to talk about.

We're talking about street markets… I think.

The point is, after seeing all those incredible things, I was most in awe of this glowing street market and the people handing candles to one another.

So how do I experience it when I see something so incredible?

Gratitude. Just utter gratefulness that I get to be there to see it and that I have the capacity to experience it.

So thanks.

Wee morning hours

It's 5 a.m. In Bangkok and I can't sleep. It's the perfect temperature in Thailand in the wee morning hour before the sun rises; it's still hot and humid but there is a brief reprieve from the sun that seems to be up all day and never offers any shade.

An afternoon in Bangkok is like a day in Maycomb, Alabama, I imagine, except not at all quaint. What was that that Harper Lee said about Maycomb, about black dogs suffering in the heat and the women taking morning and afternoon baths to stay cool? Yeah, it's like that. Excepts everyone suffers in the heat and we don't have bath tubs.

But now it's lovely. The fans are sufficing, which is unusual, and I'm enjoying it so much I'd rather not sleep. This reminds me of those great early summer days in Omaha, like May or June when school just ended and I feel like I can enjoy the weather for the first time. I used to always wake up early and on days like these get up and go for an early- morning drive. I felt like the city belonged to me, with the streets nearly empty. I'd be tuned into KGOR but would be playing it quietly, as if singing Billy Joel above a whisper from a moving car would wake up the neighborhood.

I loved those days. You only get one or two in a summer. And I love today too. I certainly don't feel at any time of day like I own this city, though. Believe me. I have been out on the streets of Bangkok at every hour in all the weather Thailand has to offer (which isn't much), and it always feels like Bangkok owns me.

But that's ok for now. I'm not really in "Bangkok" as it were right now. I am on bed listening to the birds and waiting for the sun to come up. My roommate is asleep and it's the beginning of a new year.

Not a bad way to start 2012. Let's hope serenity is the name of the game this year. For all of us. Happy New Year everybody.