Pretty good and positive but have a little bit of a sore throat which hopefully doesn’t develop further. This morning though it’s hella hot and humid and most of the booths for the Open House are out in the sun and students are dripping sweat from their faces and I’ve sought refuge at House for a couple of hours.
Today I’m grateful for:
The Hokkaido milk ice cream waiting in the new freezer for a refreshing afternoon treat in this dripping melting heat.
The best thing about today was:
The afternoon concert finale to the school Open House when the students let themselves go a little and got a friendly teenage mosh pit going to their favourite songs and as I tried to encourage my shy students to join, my more outgoing students tried to drag me in to join them too. It was an excellent afternoon of happiness and joy.
What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?
The ferocious mosquitos as the sun sets are a reminder that not everything is great in this paradise. Just as the sun goes down the temperature becomes perfect to enjoy being outside (getting some gardening done, enjoying a meal or just relaxing in a hammock) and all is well and good except for those blood-sucking critters. They do settle down a little about an hour after sunset but they still lurk.
I handled them by acceptance and wildly flailing my arms whilst I was hosing down the bricks outside the kitchen. I came back inside covered in red welts and hope that they fed themselves so fat on my blood that they were too drunk to fly.
Something I learned today?
At breakfast, I learned a little about the post-Beats, the Barbarian Poets and read a cool poem by Julia Vinograd called ‘For The Cafe Babar Poetry Reading’. Later I read about why space telescopes are stationed at the Lagrange point, L2, to block sunlight and orbit at the same speed as Earth due to gravitational pull.
Imagine three things that could go wrong in the next 24 hours.
I could be seriously injured in a car or motorbike crash.
I could be fired from my job.
Amy’s grandmum could pass away.
Being seriously injured would certainly be a drag here in Thailand. If I was conscious I would request to be taken to Bangkok Hospital as I believe the care there would be superior though the cost would match too. There are cheaper options but it’s better not to scrimp when it comes to health. I would hope to get some reading in during a recovery period!
Getting fired would also be a drag of course as I’m really enjoying what I’m doing these days. I think if I couldn’t find another job teaching junior/high school here I would give up and help Amy figure out what we could do here at home.
Amy’s grandmum passing away is likely to happen soon and I can see Amy is already mentally preparing for it. She talked about how her grandmum helped her when she was little and she’s upset to see her confined to a bed and slowly withering away.
This text is a mental preparation for possible futures. Best to be ready for what the world throws at you.
Nong Fern took this action shot because she and her classmates wanted me to dance with them.
Oh! I went riding around in the hills and valleys again today and I savoured every minute of it. The cool morning air countered the sun and heat, the sky white with mist and smoke, though thankfully not the thick cancerous smoke that will soon be with us every day until rainy season. Every paradise humans have found required a garbage dump.
I’m surprised I’m energised this morning after a 7 hour drunken sleep, woken somewhere in that time by Indian indigestion. I guess the two coffees kick-started me well enough so as soon as I got back from the cafe I hopped on the bike, no destination in mind.
The locals stare curiously at this white-haired monster screaming through their quiet village daily life but return the big smiles I beam at them. Spread the love. I get stuck behind what may have at one time been a truck but has been mangled into a new form so as to navigate its territory. On the back, two old uncles cling on to the stack of metal merchandise, though one is drunkenly singing and dancing to the traditional Thai folk music blasting from the rigged up PA system. The audio system far more important than the vehicle, which drops bolts and parts to the ground as it bounces around. It’s just turned 10 am.
Finally, I turn off and deeper into the hills through dirt tracks, some familiar, others new to me. Besides the divots and bumps, sleeping dogs must be navigated, their nerve holding much longer than mine.
Eventually, time to turn back, sore butt yet soaring thoughts. For brief moments in time it is wonderful to be alive. Let’s seek them out.
Suitably invigorated I set about the task of finally moving the stack of bricks that has been sitting in the middle of the garden for the past two years. They had become so familiar that they were practically invisible now. Every now and then I would be reminded by the cats sitting atop the stack, surveying the garden, waiting for birds to fly into their mouths.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the garden and half the clothing I used to wear has decomposed, my sweat probably had eaten through the fabric. Stacking 12 blocks at a time into the wheelbarrow I soon regretted not having gloves but whatever, time to toughen up these dishwashing hands again.
Nearer the bottom of the stack, I started to notice discarded snakeskins so thought to be a little bit more cautious, particularly as the blocks have 3 deep pockets through them. And finally, in the bottom of the pile, a small shy snake tasting the air with its tongue from within one of the pockets.
I carefully removed all the other blocks, keeping a good eye on the snake in its home. At one point it decided to make a break which gave me chance to capture a photo which I could get an ID for the snake later on Facebook. The snake exchanged one pocket for another as there was nowhere else safe to go, just open spaces around.
I figured I’d give it some time to chuff off on it’s own accord but then realised the nearest place of solitude was in our room where Amy teaches. Not the best option. So it was, pockets facing away I carefully picked up the whole block and chucked it over the fence into the deep scrub and long grass outside. Situation dealt with.
Godspeed….
Through the Facebook group, I discovered the snake was a highly venomous Thai spitting cobra. In our ignorance of its existence until this day our cats and I had been lucky and likewise, today this shy, delicate yet deathly dangerous beast let our relationship end without grief. I just hope our relationship has ended permanently.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful at my ability to bounce back and be positive again. I remember a time a minor thing would play on my mood for many days.
The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times. The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.
Mihaly Csikszentmihali
To-do list
Hang washing ½
Cut grass at front ✅
Record new TCRAH ✅
Write blog entry as if abducted ½
Finalise more details for WDS
A quieter and much more enjoyable day today. Time goes too quickly though. I wrote a different blog entry today but want to explore that idea about feelings of loss of freedom.
Tonight I will savour more about my trip to Japan.
Tomorrow’s lessons are all planned out though I need to be prepared for the unexpected as always. Our daily schedule will be a little different in that we have to take the car for service and Amy can’t drive. We’ve planned ahead though so it should all work out. If anything does go awry then remain calm.
Things I could have done better today was maybe not going for coffee in the morning. I had told Amy I would hang the washing when I came back but she had already done it despite her busted arm. She wasn’t upset at doing it but I missed an opportunity to be helpful. Tomorrow I will try to consider more opportunities for acts of kindness.
As I was walking from my desk to the kitchen in the office, I got this sudden urge to kick a football. I almost took a swing at an invisible ball mid-stride. Do you know that feeling when the ball strokes your foot at the perfect point and shoots off ferociously towards an imaginary goal, avoiding the desperate stretch of the imaginary keeper? Since school days I mostly did this by myself against a brick wall. When I’m settled in Thailand again I’ll have to get a football and then all I’ll need is the brick wall.
I was on the school football team from middle school until I left high school, aged 16. I was pretty passionate about it for a while there. Actually, I was passionate about it until I came to Australia really. There wasn’t much of a league going on at that time and there were no live games or much in the way of replays from England then either. I got interested in cricket for a while, especially as Australia couldn’t lose a game for trying for a while there. But Australian Rules football ended up being my new passion, but that’s another story.
In middle school, the best players from years 1 and 2, and from years 3 and 4 would make up the school teams. This was a big honour if you were in the lower year of the two but, as is the way of school kids, everyone stuck to just being friendly with kids in their year. Even though you had the privilege to play with the older kids against other schools, no one talked to you.
In the summer break between years 3 and 4, I had been picked to go to a soccer selection camp but as the date drew nearer I lost my nerve and told my mum I was too sick to go. I’m not sure why I felt like this now. Was I too shy, too scared, too insecure? It’s possible I missed a great opportunity and my football coach at school was disappointed when I told him I didn’t attend. I’d like to say I paid him back by helping us win every game and scoring lots of goals that year but to be honest I can’t remember now.
In high school, I maintained a place in the team as the centre-forward but I recall us losing more games than we won. I don’t recall scoring too often either. The worst, although possibly the best, memory is when we played another school that just didn’t give a shit. We tried so hard and they just kept kicking the ball back and laughing at everything we did and everything they did too. They cracked up at each other’s mistakes and unbelievably ended up beating us something like 3 goals to 2. I think I knew it was over then. Football wasn’t for me. Particularly as my only other memory is playing in a hail storm and though we stopped the game, there was nowhere to hide as those painful little pellets peppered our faces and legs. Fuck that for a game of football.
Our inter-school games were on Saturdays and I used to ride my bicycle the 4 miles to town and then up the hill to school. It was around this time I started getting into music very seriously. Our tiny local record store, which still thrives to this day, would attempt to track down rare imports from America for me. I would bring them lists of records I’d heard about in borrowed copies of Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll or that were occasionally mentioned in Sounds or NME. I can’t clearly remember the day picking up Bad Brains 12″ on Alternative Tentacles and Black Flag’s ‘Damaged’ album on Unicorn. Our football game was in the late morning this day and I picked up these records before riding up to school. It was a bit of an annoyance to have to lug them around with me but I was so excited I couldn’t help looking at the covers as we travelled on the bus to our away game.
I recall nothing about the football game that day and know that when I got home I would hide the records under my shirt as my mother was sure to ask where I got the money from to buy them. Well, mum, that lunch money you gave me…. never had a lunch in the whole 3 years I was in high school. I would beg and borrow pennies from my friends and just eat a couple of lollies from the ice cream van. This may explain why I became such a skinny-ass weakling and my lack of enthusiasm for playing sports so much around this time.
Those two records I bought that day had such a huge impact on me. Black Flag spoke directly to me somehow, even though they were singing about getting beatings from the LAPD and I was sulking because my mother made me do my homework. ‘No More’, ‘Room 13’, ‘Depression’, ‘Padded Cell’, the intensity, the passion, the violence! I was 15 at the time – hearing those songs now will take me right back to then.
With Indian ink, a needle and the aid of a mirror I tattooed myself the bars, smart enough not to reverse them in the reflection. It wasn’t until years later in Australia that I got them tattooed properly and they sit proudly on my upper right arm, a reminder of who I am and where I am now.
I did a whole bunch of my own tattoos with a simple needle and ink, though all but a few have been covered over with more professional art since. I was partly inspired by a heavy metal girl at school whose name I now forget. She was mad as fuck, not to be messed with and had ‘666’ tattooed on her forehead, though hidden by her ginger hair. I later heard she became a born-again Christian though I’m guessing that might’ve been someone’s idea of a joke.
My own dodgy work, including ‘LIFE IS PAIN, I WANT TO BE INSANE’ (again Black Flag-inspired, more specifically a tattoo that adorns their singer Henry Rollins) seems to have served me quite well in some instances. Whilst they might’ve been a reason for a beating when I was younger, these days it tends to keep people at bay and an indicator not to mess with me. Which is amusing because I generally will run a mile from any trouble anyway. I’m also a pretty friendly guy too. These days I tend to actually like people.
Thinking about tattoos also reminds me of a couple of experiences in China. The first I was walking through some back allies in Beijing, just enjoying the experience of being lost. I ended up a small square with just a couple of older folks around. One guy was pulling a cart along and stopped to look at me out of curiosity. As I got closer he reached out and grabbed my arm and just ran his hand up and down my tattoo, laughing in wonder. I laughed with him for a minute before we both went on our way, realising we had no other form of communication to take this encounter any further.
The other time I was travelling with a bunch of Aussies from all walks of life, as part of a dragon boat team. One of the ladies was an Occupational Health and Safety officer, hard to say how old she was, but she seemed much older than me. Even now, I feel most of the people I meet are older than me, perhaps a refusal to believe that I am not in my early 20s anymore. This lady looked at my tattoos and started asking questions about them and then finished the conversation with ‘You’ll regret them when you’re older.’ I was 41 at the time.
My tattoos are my own historical document. Memories for me to consider, a past to ponder. Anyway, as I often tell people, ‘They come off when you die.’
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Amy is getting excited and it’s infectious. We have some locals building our fences and as we’ve given them no time frame they’ve arranged themselves a party table in our garden where they can kick back after a day’s work with BBQ and whisky. Apparently, around 5pm cool breezes waft across the valley and it’s a perfect indicator that it’s time for a relaxing icy cold drink of your preference.
The Burmese builders have finished building their shacks and have also set themselves up a party table, though for them it’s also their breakfast, lunch and dinner table. Our house is a party house before it’s even complete. I get the feeling the locals might still come around to party after they’ve finished here too.
Amy is choosing wall paint colours, inside and out and looking more seriously at bathroom fittings now. It’s exciting, though as we discuss, a little weird as almost everything should be complete by the time I get there. I can just breeze in and go to bed in a brand-new home. I hope, anyway.
Where is your paradise? Is it as good as mine? Where’s the place you want to stay? Can you go there now, today? Is it a very long walk? Is it a place where we can talk? Paradise – out of reach
1994ever 