Folding The Tent

After two years in this wonderful country, we are reluctantly leaving Thailand and returning to the US. Avid readers of this blog may remember an entry made over a year and a half ago concerning my fourteen-foot fall through a roof to a concrete floor below. The three of you will recall my sheer joy over having miraculously survived it and the conviction that I would eventually enjoy a total recovery from my internal injuries. It hasn’t happened. I haven’t known a day without pain since and my problems are worsening. So we are going back to familiar turf to get some answers and search for solutions.

We put off making this difficult decision perhaps too long. A battle of conflicting emotions raged within us for months, before we realized that our best option was to reverse sails and head back.

I may be able to make a few parting entries before we leave and I hope to continue the blog after we return, although it’s shape and content will no doubt change. It’s a difficult parting and much of our hearts will remain.

A Fly, Dioramas and Schrödinger's Cat

It’s the small things. After spending years of hammering large things into bits of useless notions – pitch pots and yarn-wrapped coffee can projects a third grade teacher assured would please Mommy – the meanings and misunderstandings of life – obsessions with dissecting self and other’s motivations – drawings, paintings and words hopelessly looking for colors that might communicate something, anything, to anyone – meanings behind everything from God’s will, to Buddha’s teachings, to a unified theory, to synchronicity, to the inscrutability of greed, human cruelty, fuel prices, fashionable clothing and gravity – a fly lands on the edge of my plate of ginger chicken and noodles and, between sucks of savory oils off my plastic dish, nonchalantly explains it all to me in a tiny, clear voice.

“Find what you can, eat what you can,” it says, “That’s it.”

A fly surviving as it can. There is no more than that. The chafe is flying in the wind and I can turn off mind-mill. I need not write on. The feasting fly explained the whole of it. There is no more. But I am desperately vain. Despite the pesky insect’s wisdom, I still find it difficult to soot my mirror and look without rather than within. I write on. I am human and continue wrapping yarn around coffee cans, hoping to transform them into flower pots; so I muse along, but I also (too slowly) strain to wean myself from the weight of heady reflection – now at least aware of the futility of it all – awareness purchased through many years of stupidities, vivid, unattainable yearnings and irrelevant catastrophes. Nothing is the whole of it and the whole of it is nothing.

At last understanding there is no understanding and that my observations cannot be conveyed through any medium, I am free to experience small things safely alone and cloaked from criticism. I expect guarded, privileged freedom to be my reward – an ecstatic, revelation-laden solitude. But, of course, there are no gifts and my rewards are imagined; transparent, fleeting rainbows known only to me.

I'm visible. Sometimes I laugh loudly. It’s impossible to hide my tears. Private isolations, desolations and ecstasies are destined to be shared communally; not totally, not as I experience them, that’s impossible, but occasionally through subtle, temporary agreements between me and whatever accidental audience happens by. Solitude, reflection and knowledge always near, but never fully experienced and frustratingly impossible to share. So the whole of it is nothing and isn't nothing - it's Schrödinger's Cat.

That's my excuse for the shallow descriptions of the countless scenes of Thai life we peer into day after day. It’s difficult enough to describe the culture of the life I was born to, but it's impossible to unravel this alien culture. It is the uncomfortable lot of expats to view the countless dioramas we peer into – wondering children looking through windows – to realize that the crèche on the other side of the glass has no meaning for us at all, only the meanings we impose - meanings that disappear the minute we look away and reenter our personal histories. So we sit on the edge of the plate, find what we can, eat what we can and, like the fly on my plate, tell everyone who asks, “That’s it,” and hope they go away without taking a swat at us.

Dangerous Monkey Business

The above photo is from a BBC news website reporting how a group of rhesus macaques killed Delhi's Deputy Mayor yesterday. There also have been numerous cases of these monkeys biting and harassing visitors to the Krabi Tiger Cave Temple, which A recently visited. It is wise to be super wary of these cute and charming monkeys. We are edging them out of their habitat and they are doing what they must to adapt to ours.

I can see a Spielberg movie called THE MACAQUES, done in the style of Hitchcock's 1963 horror classic, THE BIRDS.

Festival For The Recently Deceased

We deal with the discomfort of our awareness of our mortality in a variety of ways. Divergent religions and cultures provide an assortment of rites designed to honor the deceased and help to acknowledge the inevitability of death. Religious ceremonies, while dissimilar in appearance, all share a basic ingredient; the hope of an afterlife and the continuation of our id. The Mexican culture believes we die three times: Once when our heart stops, again when our bodies are interred and finally, when there is no one left on the planet who remembers us. Judy King, an expat living in Mexico, wrote an interesting explanation of the history and practice of Mexico’s renowned celebration, The Days of the Dead. Here is a link to her LOS DIAS DE LOS MUERTOS.

The second event in A’s Krabi holiday took place at a country temple ceremony intended to honor and connect to deceased spirits whose bodies died in the past year. It began with a procession from the village to the temple grounds.

The drum, gong and harmonica corps.

Like fêtes such as this around the world, special foods are prepared for both the living and the dead.

Money trees also abound and every person who adds a leaf of money to a tree receives merit from the spirits.

Buddhist nuns wear white robes.

After the ceremony inside the temple, in which the gifts are presented to the deceased spirits, the spirits in turn, return the offered gifts to the living. The offerings are then taken outside to the grounds and laid out, where members of the congregation sift through them and take what they want. They are now gifts from the spirits and not from other members of the community. (I believe the spirits hang on to the money though and charge it to the care of the monks who manage the temple.)

The pillars inside the temple hold the ashes of deceased villagers.

Crematorium on the temple grounds.

Krabi Tiger Cave Temple

One encounters unusual road traffic when you head north from Phuket.

A’s recent trip to Krabi with our friend, Pim, began with a stop at the Tiger Cave Temple, also known as Wat Tham Sua. It is one of the most famous temples in southern Thailand. The monks live in a jungle valley contained by a warren of natural caves and share their habitat with numerous monkeys. The temple teaches Vipassana (insight meditation), based on the earliest Buddhist texts. The central cave displays peculiar photos of internal organs and split cadavers. These are intended to remind monks of the transitory nature of the body and to help them center on spiritual matters.

There is a 1,272-step climb up steep steps to see the “Footprint of the Buddha” and a large, golden Buddha statue. A and Pim didn’t attempt the grueling climb in the high humidity, but they climbed the first level to get pictures of the monk’s living quarters, which are smaller than the average tool shed found behind most American homes.

There are many statues of long-dead, revered monks in the entrances to the caves. These monks are Buddhist versions of saints and most Thai homes have small altars dedicated to them.

The monk's skeleton honors the monk and also reminds us of our temporal nature. Malas, Buddhist prayer beads, are also fashioned out of bone from the skulls of deceased monks. They are considered especially auspicious because of the thousands of hours of meditation the skulls experienced.

The young monks on the cell phones in the photos below somehow don't fit into the notion of an austere life of spiritual contemplation. Who do you suppose they call and what do they talk about? Nirvana? I suppose, considering the many hours people spend staring at the screens of their cellphones, it marginally qualifies as a new form of meditation.

A and Pim did a little exploring at entrances to the caves, but didn't venture into the dark recesses.

The monk sitting to the right of the Buddha statue gives an idea of its scale.

These monkeys will wash your car and check the air in your tires for 100 baht (about 3 dollars).

You pay him.


This unusual shrine is no doubt for the purpose of protecting travelers.

A very elegant Buddha statue carved out of a single limestone block.

And from here, A and Pim continued on to Pim's hometown for a religious festival and a wedding.

Jim Howe - In Memoriam

(Photo of Jim Howe taken by jazz vocalist, Diane Linscott, at a session last Monday.)

I unexpectedly and prematurely lost a wonderful friend Friday and the world lost an incredible jazz bassist. Jim Howe's personality brought laughter and joy to everyone, but especially to the musicians he played with. He played with many of the greats and was a tireless promoter of jazz. He was a musician's musician and never settled for anything less than excellence. Our ears have lost his wonderful sounds, the world is darker without his glow and I can't bend my cheerless mind around the fact that I will never again feel the warmth of his hugs.

Spirits Descend On Phuket

Thousands of people gathered at Chinese shrines around Phuket yesterday to participate in pole-raising ceremonies before for the Vegetarian Festival, which began today. Tall bamboo poles were raised at the auspicious time of 5.09 pm. Nine is the most auspicious number throughout Thailand. (Five is an auspicious number for people with day jobs.) The poles' function is to join the physical and spiritual world, allowing various spirits to descend to Phuket, where their presence will be evidenced by the 2,000-odd mah-song, or “mediums,” during the festival. The mah-song mutilate themselves in various ways in the manner of Indian fakirs.

The Vegetarian Festival is a Chinese/Hindu celebration initiated 150 years ago when large numbers of people on the island of Phuket were dying from an unknown disease. This festival is unique to Phuket and not celebrated throughout Thailand. Fasting, resolutions of good behavior and self-sacrifices of various sorts were thought to have brought about the end of the epidemic, which, in all likelihood, had simply run its course. But the rituals and the holiday still survive, although some think it has evolved into a mere tourist attraction and gory carnival. Thais seem to enjoy big crowds and cacophonous noise. The Festival involves elaborate ceremonies at Chinese shrines, ear-shattering fireworks, parades and the infamous once-a-year (or once-only) fakirs that are into self-mutilation - like lacing bicycle handlebars through their cheeks and other fun tortures. Many believe that the mediums, who poke huge holes through their bodies achieve a spiritual, trance-like state and become vessels for the spirits that have come down the bamboo poles. (Now wait a minute. Let me think about that. Wouldn’t I have a glazed look in my eyes resembling a trance if I had just jabbed a spike through both my cheeks?) It’s thought that the mah-song are protected from pain and harm by the spirits temporarily inhabiting them, but ambulances are very busy carting young, "entranced" men to hospitals throughout the festival. It’s totally bizarre. It is a gruesome, voyeur's delight - a reality show that beats them all and it draws many tourists as well as honestly believing Thais. The specially prepared vegetarian festival food offered by the hundreds of stands along the parade routes is delicious (but a bit difficult to chew if you have a crowbar skewered through your cheeks).

There was a big kafuffle over one of the fakirs last year, because he paraded through town with a knife jabbed through his tongue and someone noticed that it was not his tongue at all. He purchased a pig’s tongue at a fresh market that morning, stuffed it into his mouth and stuck a knife through it. A crowd of people followed him back to his shack after the parade and proceeded to beat him severely. Policemen and monks stood by and did nothing to stop the thrashing, saying later, for the newspapers, that he got his just deserts for being a phony fakir. After he got out of the hospital, he was de-robed, or whatever it is they do to disgraced fakirs. Rumor has it that he is going to march in this year’s parade anyway, with knitting needles poked through his penis. (I think local owners of water buffaloes should check their beast’s undercarriages for missing parts.)