for hire
yellow sky
I watched the Patriots game in the back room of a local bar, and afterwards I walked home.
I’ve spent the winter inside. I sleep late, waiting for the sun to rise, and then I work late, and by the time the cycle’s done, it’s dark again, and there’s nothing to do but stare into one screen or another. Sometimes I leave something in my truck; I go out late to get it, and I accidentally look up, and then remember the stars are there. But it’s cold at night here, so I don’t look long.
I’ve forgotten what it feels like to walk outside, alone. The world looms over you, passing slow; no world this way looks normal or expected, and there is joy in that. The cypress trees, tall and leafless in the bayou, the slowly slumping shacks on Main Street: this is and is not home. A hundred black birds rose up then over the street. They signaled their arrival with an enormous collective cry, and then disappeared east over the curve of the earth. Off behind the graveyard a boy practiced batting; I could hear the irregular clang of metal and leather. It was warm, finally, and the sky was yellow and the winds gathered patiently.
Almost home, I watched a girl on her scooter make elliptical loops. She was tiny against the giant sky, nothing compared to a hundred black birds. But this world was hers, maybe the only world she’s known, and the one she’ll always remember when she thinks back to innocence and scooters.
Hours later, after dark, the storm finally came. The winds tore at the house and hail battered the windows. It felt like a big one, like a tornado might come and lift us all away. Jess got up and looked at the window, and I guess she didn’t see houses and cows being sucked off into the heavens, because she came back to bed.
some wisdom
Yesterday we made our escape from the city.
I know nothing of Thai geography, so I had no idea what to watch for out the bus window—when the city might ascend to suburbs, then country. But the city just sprawled on and on, another big and bright car dealer every few kilometers, rising over the rice fields. Farms and malls piled on top of one another, neverending. It’s all frontier here, to my eye, everything at the sloped edge of wildness, a step or two away from a street-corner hustle and a campfire.
I passed a thousand homes, more. Laundry flapped from high rise balconies and teak shacks shuddered on stilts over still water. It’s self-absorbed, but the word I thought of was anonymous. These lives would always be nameless and blank to me. The night before I’d dreamed of home, of all of my homes: South Dakota, college, Connecticut. Those homes are probably anonymous, too, to these millions. Who will take the same bus ride, past my house in Mississippi?
Back inBangkokwe visited the Jim Thompson House. The man was an architect and intelligence officer; he built a home a beautiful home in the city from traditional Thai teak houses. Then he disappeared in Malaysia.
Sometimes I imagined the bus stopping. I’d hop off in a town I’d never heard of, where I could stop being a tourist. Just eat the food and sit in a shack over a river. Grow old there, anonymous.
We visited a wat today, and there was Buddhist wisdom nailed there to the trees. Old age is no cause for regret, one said. Regret that one is old, having lived in vain.
the asian chip-off (round 1)
Lay’s “Hot Chili Squid” v. Lay’s “Nori Seaweed.”
Seaweed is the clear victor. Not that hot chili squid is gross; it’s actually must better than it sounds, but it could really be anything. Seaweed tastes like seaweed.
Watch out, though. “Bacon cheese with seaweed” may run away with this thing.
