Cetaceus

I am not normally a huge fan of Katha Pollitt, but she has absolutely hit the nail on the head with regard to one of the many supreme ironies of John McCain’s vice-presidential choice:

…She wants to use the magnificent freedom the women’s movement has won for her at tremendous cost and struggle–the movement that won her the right to run those marathons and run Alaska — to take away the freedom of every other woman in the country.

Quoted from the Nation Online here.

This is one part of it, as Pollitt is referring to Palin’s pro-life positions. But in doing so, she does something that the right, as usual, fails at: contextualizes the situation in front of us. I try not to be this politically rhetorical, but here anyone with eyes to see has to notice something fantastically profound about the so-called party of good old fashioned Christian values celebrating this tough, liberated woman. How many times have we heard that terribly dirty word “feminism” derided, maligned and ascribed all kinds of social and moral evils by the religious “pillars” of the Republican party? Too many to count.

The more important point here that I want to make is the simple, semi-tragic (and dare I say smacks of classical Christian themes?) one that progressivism, justice, doing the right thing and struggling for hundred of years against the repression of conservative cultural forces is the most thankless of jobs. Second perhaps only to dying for everyone’s sins. You absolutely know that we have arrived (at some plateau anyway) when you start seeing prominent conservative members of historically marginalized social groups. Especially when those individuals are lauded like this by people who still profess those same conservative values that had to be struggled against tooth and nail for so long to put that person in this high position in the first place. Especially, especially, when a given member of that group is so distanced from the movement and history that put him or her in that place that they are completely oblivious of both it and the debt of gratitude he or she owes it.

This is actually one of the things, if we’re talking identity politics, which we are, that worries me about Obama. If he was a Republican, the man would be a shoe-in. But as it stands, even being half-white, the the campaign is pushing the envelope. Palin is at a point where she and McCain can so totally dupe all these people who are actually against everything that allowed her to even be who and where she is that they see her as some kind of champion. It was not the right–to be fair, not the religious right, the economic right doesn’t care about this stuff–that bled for so long to see women, and black folks and most of all my people (working class 2nd and 3rd generation Americans) get what we’ve all been denied for pretty much ever.

I wonder if Sarah Palin has ever picked up DeBeauvoir, let alone some of the more ornery feminists who really laid it down for her so that she can now stand on their backs in a position of power, next to a fossil like McCain so that they can, together, being the work of throwing out the memory and the work of all those women. Pollitt puts it exactly right when she points out that someone like Palin is in the perfect position to deny millions of other women not only the hard fought right to choose, but the entire contextual package of what feminism–and nothing else–has bequeathed women in the West as thier birthright. These things go hand in hand. They were fought for together, as a part of an entire social, moral and political project, and they are as such and for other reasons strongly tied together.

Like I said, you know you’ve arrived when you can stand at the top and not hear the groans of the people beneath you under your weight. Perhaps, in that case, there is more to celebrate here than I thought. If not for the impending disaster of what this profoundly clueless team will–not might, will–undo and take away, maybe we can find solace in the fact that so much is now taken for granted.

Are here.

While this may seem like a somewhat obvious statement, as I alluded a few posts ago, I tend to organize the lebenswelt for myself pretty strictly in terms of space and time. This is, I think, different than seeing things thematically, for example, as I think that the physical and temporal properties of a given thing or event are, to me anyway, the most compelling. I don’t mean that as some kind of correlative statement of truth, but rather that it’s what seems to work for me. I feel like the recent writing I’ve put up here about my trip back to Asia has been kind of spotty, leaving out a lot of details and maybe even a bit confusing. Also, because the first week of my trip took place not in Thailand, but back in Japan, which I haven’t mentioned at all, I think it’s worth erecting a chronology here. (Loosely: 8/5-8/12 = Japan; 8/12-8/23 = Thailand). Also, I seriously have to apologize again for all the spelling and grammar problems in the first Thailand post. I really didn’t have time, but looking back over it it’s a bit of an embarrassment.

I should also say about myself, because I don’t think it’s obvious as I often seem distracted, that I really enjoy soaking up as much information about other people as I can. I tend to interrogate folks when I first meet them, mostly because there are a lot of things worth thinking about and caring about when someone presents who they are to you. This seems to go hand in hand with obsessively seeking self-knowledge, which maybe isn’t always so great. One thing I’ve noticed about the things other people will say to you about who they are is that when it comes in the form of a descriptive statement, people are about 50% of the time completely wrong (“The thing about me is…” or “I’m the sort of person who…” Yeah buddy, sure). I know this is true of myself because it certainly is true of others. Anything I or anyone else says about who we are should be taken with this in mind.

That all said, here’s how it went down in the month of August, 2008 of the Common Era:

8/4 – 8/5: I spent the night in glorious South Philly sleeplessly beating back a cat all night on the couch of sister #2, the indomitable Jeanette Wyche. (Thanks to the limitless attentions of the cat, I also made significant headway into Gianni Vattimo’s Nihilism & Emancipation, which I found really enjoyable and eminently readable. I have a thing or two to say about contemporary Italian philosophers, but I’ll spare that here.) That same sister, as awesome as always (and as the other two) from the good graces of her heart dropped me off at Philly International, the worst airport ever, that fine sweltering early morning just around the wee hours. After working everything out, making those last few calls and passing through the transcendental gates of Homeland Security, I took to the air, hit Detroit, took a monorail ride about 10 feet (they insisted) and was off westerly, again, to Tokyo.

I have made much in these pages over the past month about the small and subtle ways that going back to Japan was important to me, specifically in light of recent revelations of the self-knowledge sort, themselves brought to the light of day by the seemingly traumatic events of a few months ago. Luckily, aside from the random dream of violence (which I also chalk up to geography, I am half Sicilian after all), this too has passed. I won’t belabor the personal import of getting back to Tokyo, seeing some old and displaced faces and paying my respects to Hiroko on the passing of her sister in my absence, suffice it to say that (as I told Angela), I felt like I needed to ‘close the circle,’ which as far as I can tell was accomplished. That is, it was done, but not at all as I had expected. To quote Angela: “I think you just made the circle bigger.”

We crossed the Dateline in a Boeing, and I hate to say it but I prefer the Airbus planes because the domestic items don’t have the TV screens right in the seat in front of you, but rather movie-theater style and forget that. I listened to a few Speaking of Faith podcasts, went through the You and I genealogy for myself (the complete Y&I discography, the complete Assistant discography and two Hot Cross albums) on the iPod and tried to sleep. Sometime around 6 or 7 Japan time, I stepped out into the pristine halls of Narita, back in Chiba after an absence of 13 months and half a lifetime of changes: jobs, new freedom, and my acceptance into graduate school at the University of Chicago being the big-ticket items there.

My first stop in Japan, pre-arranged some time before leaving, was Kichijoji, a Tokyo neighborhood I had never visited before. I would be spending the nights of the 5^th and 6^th as the guest of a friend from the year before, LL, friend and bandmate of the famed and much loved Kate Sikora. Lindsay (this is what the first L stands for) lives with a “neuro-atypical” (I referred to this as “other-brained) British translator named Rich, who would meet me at the train station in Kichijoji after an hour or so bus ride out there from Narita. I was really excited and happy to be seeing Lindsay again, as over the past few months we’d had some substantive email exchanges of note, and, as I’ve said elsewhere, probably the best part of the acts of going and coming are where they involve reconnecting with people. Rich had requested via LL that I bring him a chocolate Liberty Bell, and believe me I’m a huge fan of British Empire humor, although I wasn’t able to track one down before leaving Philly. I got him a $2 metal one instead and insisted that he set up a double boiler and dip it in chocolate himself.

It was hot as hell in Japan when I arrived, and it remained so for the rest of the week. Looking back, I hadn’t seen anything yet considering the weather in Thailand. I went back to the house with Rich and went out for a walk in the heat to hit a payphone and call my man Tony, who I’d be staying with in a day or two. I came back sweltering again to find Lindsay home, and we went out to a small local place for some drinks, scallops and a very bitter but delicious salad made out of a carbuncled green vegetable I can’t recall the name of. The nearest taste I could compare it to was broccoli-rabe, but if broccoli-rabe were an extremely dense cucumber, or if it were served as a lumpy sausage.

Catching up with Lindsay was really fun and we got to talk about some aesthetic points of mutual interest as well as trying my best to calm my brain down enough to be as good a listener to her on some other things as she had been to me over email of late. More importantly, I think we got to discuss the concept of reverie and what that means, both to us and in general. I can’t rehearse it, it was too long ago now and too full to make sense here. If I was going to describe Lindsay with one adjective (the way I described Jeannette above), I think it might be “dedicated.” Hanging out over the next few days there was unveiled a laundry list of interesting activities and goings on in her life (work she seems to really enjoy, something like 3 different musical projects and other sorts of social things). We had our drinks, we talked our talks. Newsome came up, as did Minnesota, as did Keats. It was my kind of conversation, I think. A woman came finally and said that she was going to clean the bathroom, which as far as I could tell meant it was time to go.

8/6 The next morning we ate some yoghurt and granola and had tea. More talking was done, with and without Rich, who is an absolute character and a riot. I really liked him, and I think that one could do worse in terms of roommates than him and his wife. LL had work in Shibuya, and I escorted her there and we parted ways for the day. I made a few calls and took a series of trains across town to board the old and very familiar Keiyo line east out toward Chiba to accomplish the primary goal of my trip. I chalk it up to where I come from and how I grew up, but it is with the utmost seriousness that I tell you that my gratitude to the two sisters Hiroko and Peggy and Hands on English in general is deep and profound, and I am not sorry that this may fly in the face of other people’s feelings on the matter. Without going into too much detail, my life is extremely good and almost exactly how I want it right now, and going in the direction I want to see it go in (give or take, of course). This is in no small part at all thanks to the very fact of my having spent the Spring of 2007 living in Chiba and working at that school. It’s that big a deal.

Peggy passed away this year, and this was all important enough for me to really want to express my serious condolences to her sister Hiroko. Seeing friends back in Japan again was exciting and fun, but this part of the trip took on an air of solemnity that few things have recently. There is a very important reason for this, dear friend and reader: I believe in gratitude and reciprocity. That’s something I learned from growing up as I did, and I treasure it.

I got out to Makuhari around 2pm, and walked across the cabbage-clock park to the school, which was closed. I went back to my old friend the Plenia department store and had some sushi at my old place on the 4^th floor, kicked around a bit and went back at 3 to find the place open with this year’s teachers inside. One of them, who I think I met last year before my departure, told me that Hiroko was out with her mother and would be back around 4. Like a dope I forgot the first rule of everything and had left my book back at LL’s place, so I went and very, very slowly drank an iced coffee while listening to the iPod.

Not for nothing, but walking back into the school to find Hiroko there, her face still the face of a saint/your Japanese grandma, made me really happy. Even more so when Hiroko’s eyes lit up in disbelief at my being there, and when, get this, she gave me a huge hug. Hugging is not a common sight in Japan, and I really appreciated it. We sat down and started catching up, and I told her how sorry I was about Peggy. It is clear that her entire world had been upended by this, and that she’d also lost her best friend. We went down the list of students as well, talking about everyone: who was still there, who had left, who was in what grade now and so on. I stayed maybe an hour or so until her limited English vocabulary had run dry and I was satisfied that I’d said what I came to say.

All in all it was a good visit and it accomplished what I hoped it would. The thing about closure is that I don’t think it actually exists. You kinda can’t actually close the circle, despite what I told Angela, the world just doesn’t work that way. Everywhere there are loose ends, and in every situation. You can never perfectly complete anything, say or do the exact right things, or whatever. You can however try your best and be honest, and especially be honest in your actions. This isn’t such a bad thing; it’s just different from the narrative frame out of which we tend to view our selves, lives and the world. I had hoped to tell you the exact right things, after initiating this conversation. However, even if it were premeditated, which it was not, I assure you, this wouldn’t have been possible, because things just don’t go that way.

I left Makuhari and just pondered around for a while, had some food, made some calls, did some reading. I met LL again that night at the Kichijoji station, where she was carrying a yellow Crate amp. I had confused which entrance I was supposed to be at and wandered aimlessly a while with garbage in my hand for lack of any public trashcans in the entire country (Japan’s major flaw, IMHO). The amp, such a major conversation topic that a group of young Japanese guys approached her about it (this is really uncharacteristic, Japanese people don’t usually just strike up conversations like this), was yellow and angled and was mostly of note because it could be charged and then played portably wherever. I thought that she was talking about something like a Pignose, but this was a pretty big amp for something portable like this. We ended up choosing drinking in the park in front of a pond in the lamplight over going to a studio, and as such the songs I had hoped to hear I am awaiting patiently in digital format. Matters, again, of personal and aesthetic gravity were discussed, things got blurry, we high-fived in passing on the way to and from the bathroom as the other guarded the amp, and I volunteered to carry the thing back to the house where sleep was quick in overcoming all parties. The pond had been beautiful and the park, typically, full of Japanese kids hanging out and generally being good. Ah, most importantly, the conversation around meaning-making, of late had in depth with Brandon Joyce on numerous occasions, came up in this context, with typically much said and much lost to the heat and drink.

8/7 The next morning it was yoghurt and granola again, in the company of two Thai women couch surfing at their place, and Rich (who is big into hosting couch surfers) and his British-banter hitting accentuating notes (often in the form of non-sequitrs) in the conversation. The Thai girls, after trying in vain to impart some vocabulary for my upcoming trip to their country, departed for shopping in Tokyo, and LL and I talked some more until it was time to go. She was headed to work and me to my next sleeping destination, westward and the house of the famous and awesome Bad Spellers, aka Tony and Yasuko, who’d been married the year prior in my absence. This is enough for now, I will pick up the story later, where I meet Tony at Ushihama (cow beach) station near his house later that day.

It is Monday the 25th and I have been back in the States for 2 days now. I spent the weekend in Philly catching up with important local luminaries, and just got to my mom’s where I’ll be packing for my move to Chicago in about two weeks. I wrote this post on Angela’s internet-less laptop a day or two before I left and saved it to be published later.

Like the other one, I am too tired to get to crazy about the proofreading here. There are probably also some factual errors that I am too jetlagged still to want to fix (I can never get “stupas” and “pagodas” straight, it’s like stalactite and stalagmite to me). There is your fair warning. Oh, and as tomorrow is Tuesday, I will most certainly be wearing my pink over sized polo shirt in honor of her majesty the queen.

Thai Religion:

I definitely want to say something about religion in Thailand, especially as I am supposed to be somebody who knows something about that subject. In an act of amateur anthropologizing, I want to break the larger concept of religion in this country into three basic categories: 1) Thai Buddhism, 2) Syncretism and folk religion, and 3) Civic Religion. Now, if you were to present this to a Thai person in this way, they would have no idea what you were talking about, and would say that aside from the Muslims in the south, the only religion in Thailand is Thai Buddhism. They generally take all the other random stuff from Hinduism and various folk beliefs and roll them up into Buddhism. When I say civic religion, I mean the entire package around the monarchy here, which probably would never be conceptualized this way locally. In any case, I won’t say too much about Buddhism because if you really want to know about that there are far better sources than me.

I will say that I love the temple architecture here, and the Buddhist art is particularly interesting when compared with the Japanese and Chinese iconography that I am more familiar with. There are essentially two types of temples in Thailand. The first is the ancient style that you’d probably recognize more immediately as the type of buildings in a famous place like Ankgor Wat. Appropriately, this is called the Khmer Style, and is characterized by the big pine-cone looking stupas, usually very large and in rows as the focal point of the temple. Rather than a central temple building, you have these big things that house smaller icons and I assume any ritual associated with them is and was practiced outside. Don’t quote me on this one, but I have a feeling that the shape is influenced by Hindu lingam, which I would recommend looking up on Wikipedia or something. The second, much more historically recent and still current style is, I am almost certain, influenced by Chinese temples, but with a decidedly Thai sensibility. These are larger buildings that are more like what you’d think of as a temple or even a church: a big open room with a huge image inside it and ample space for other images, personalized devotional practices and the like. I say that these are probably influenced by Chinese architecture because of the sloping tile roofs, the type of building in general and the placement of the image inside. Not to mention that the decorative motifs (I really don’t know what else to call these—pointy things maybe?) that you see in the lintels and sticking out of the top of the roof are, again, decidedly Thai, but are vaguely similar to the sorts of things you’d see on a Chinese temple.

The coolest examples we saw of all of this were in Ayutthaya, which is the ancient capital of Thailand, about an hour or two north of Bangkok and destroyed many times over by the Burmese, who used to like to get away from it all on weekends by invading Thailand. What was great about Ayutthaya was that there is essentially a huge park in the middle of the city housing almost all of the ancient capital ruins, and inside there are some fantastic examples of the Khmer style buildings right next to fully functioning contemporary style temples. The contrast is really striking, as in this one little area you get a really great sense of the historical-aesthetic sweep of Thai history. The view of these three tall, ancient pagoda peaks set against the massively large roof of the newer (but not new) temple right outside the old walls is quite beautiful. The large temple houses one of the biggest bronze Buddhas in Thailand, and the original structure was blown up by Burmese cannon in the 1700s. To make up for it, the Burmese rebuilt the place in 1956. I guess there’s no statute of limitations on these things.

While I really like Buddhist art history, what is more interesting is what I’ve referred to as Thai “civic religion,” which others have described more loosely as the clinically insane devotional fawning over the king. The king, Rama the 9^th, is everywhere. His picture and that of the queen are all over the place, in every house, in every corner, and you can’t escape his huge glasses and half-bored look. I imagine that this is something like what Saddam’s Iraq or Stalin’s USSR were like, at least in terms of the effect this has. But people seriously love this man, love him, and to be perfectly frank it is ridiculous. All they talk about is everything the king has done for them. Honestly, and this is an amazing and beautiful country, looking around at the lack of infrastructure, the inefficient everything, the massive crush of cars everywhere, air pollution, the crumbling buildings and stray dogs, I have to wonder what the hell people are talking about. But still, the man is untouchable to folks here, and the stuff you hear you can hardly believe.

At Angela’s birthday dinner, we were privy to an act of this kind of civic religion in the form of an absurd praise ascribed to the king by one of the teachers from Angie’s school. Essentially, the woman was, with an absolutely straight face, telling us about some of the king’s supernatural abilities. Indeed, despite the southern part of this country being ravaged by the tsunami when it came, this teacher was telling us that in this province, “we don’t have to worry about storms here, because our king will protect us.” And went on to say that in fact on two separate occasions the king somehow did just that. While talking, her eyes were ever so slightly glazed over in devotion, and I haven’t felt that uncomfortable in a while. I wasn’t about to ask how an 80-year-old man who is married to his cousin and doesn’t actually have any political power could really protect anyone from anything, let alone something like the weather. My sister did her best to cover for our American disbelief, and given the language barrier I think she pulled it off. I do want to ask someone if the king “does so much” for everyone, as we hear constantly, how about he hooks up some trains that run on time, or maybe a subway system in Bangkok? Thinking a little smaller, my man could, with ease, build some schools that have air conditioning. But hey, I’m just a politically and religiously secular farong, what do I know?

The final interesting thing about religion in Thailand is what I’m calling “folk religion,” which generally includes random stuff from Hinduism and the odd animist spirit stuff. The most noticeable and interesting manifestation of this are the “spirit houses” you see everywhere. These are basically tiny temples on somewhat tall platforms found anywhere there is a building, be it a house, gas station, car lot—literally everywhere. Interestingly, these things have their own architectural style and aren’t just miniatures of the larger temples. They have tiny people in them, and sometimes animals, and are usually to be found with some kind of offering—a glass of juice, fruit, cigarettes, whatever—diligently kept up by somebody. These things are part of a system of what I want to call “cosmic imminent domain.” Basically, Thai people believe that there are sprits everywhere, and that the spirits make their homes in whatever patch of ground and stay there. It’s like they have houses that you can’t see, or something like this. The problem is that people need the space too, so the issue comes down to crowding. There just isn’t enough room for people and spirits to cohabitate with each other. Angering spirits being a supremely bad idea in any culture, the solution is to build them a new house on a corner of your property and keep them sugared up and happy with offerings and stuff. So far as I can tell, so good. I have not heard one report of a spirit-mauling the entire time I’ve been here, and people going to cosmic-court over this stuff is unheard of. Now if only we could take this idea home, and have the government or whatever company actually build people new houses when they decide to put roads through their yards.

As usual, this is a long post, with more to come. So, on that note, goodnight.

I am going to be reprinting a few posts from my old blog here because they speak to things that have again come up in my life and in my thoughts, and as David Byrne said, “say something once, why say it again?” I should probably think more about that in my spoken exchanges with people. Probably.

Anyway, the following is an excerpt from a post dated July 7th, 2007, just before I left Japan the first time. It speaks to a conversation I had, in Japan a few weeks ago with a good friend and one of my gracious hosts, and I wanted to go back and see what I had to say last year about this. It came about within the context of the exiting from Japan at that time of someone who has since traumatically exited my life. I’m not sure how relevant that is, but I think it might be.

6.7.2007

I’m also going to very much genuinely miss Japan. Seriously, this is a great, great place. It’s beautiful, clean, safe and fun. Once you meet some the people are awesome, and like about 80 million other times and places in my life, just when I am beginning to form relationships with people somewhere, I’m heading out the door. Not for nothing, but I was after all born a ramblin’ man (the Hank Williams Sr. version, ok?), and there’s this movement to my life with consists of a kind of Huck-and-Jim geographical/interpersonal coming together and breaking apart, accompanied by a grasping at keeping in touch with these absolutely amazing human beings that I can’t help but turn up under every rock I check. The internet makes the maintenance of this situation a little easier, but the last word rests with the personalities and lives involved. Over the course of four months in 2005, I (and Ben and other Dan) met so many great people, but I think I can list the ones I know I’ll see again, and quietly nod at the ones I regretfully know I won’t. Mostly, I know this because the ones I know I’ll see are the ones who have reciprocated my interest in actually keeping touch. I know I’ll see Petra and Martina, Juanjo, Vitor, Gabrielle, and possibly Lukas and Lucy again back in the Old World, but the many others whose lives we entered over there, who can say?

But see, this is one of the greatest lessons I ever learned from Jack Kerouac, who I unabashedly continue to admire: life is full of people, and they are all more rich than you can imagine. The ones that you will see again are the ones that you will get off your ass to see again, and the ones that you will write to and keep in touch with, and—and this is the most important—the ones with whom upon your parting, you tacitly nod in agreement that the impending distances of time and place are meaningless, and that you won’t assign them the undue power of the erosion of your friendship. A lot of people out there think that not talking to or hearing from someone for a long time, having your interaction put on hold for a spell, means that friendship itself is somehow subject to the ravages of time. But the thing is, it only is if you believe that, and if you don’t you’d be amazed at how easy it is to just pick up again with someone, even after years, for the very simple reason that you’ve both agreed to want it that way. The Beats I think importantly understood this, as do a lot of people who elevate travel to a central position in this one and only life, and I think that coming to this realization must as such be a natural outgrowth of the life of movement, at least these days.

I’ll miss a lot of people in Japan, and I know I will probably miss certain students the most. I was telling one of my private lessons (Yukiko, who lived in Oregon for three years) tonight that next week I’d be leaving, and she took on a look of consternation and in her semi-fluent English said “I think a lot of teachers are always going away.”

Not much time to write much right now. We’re sitting in Angela’s classroom at the highschool she teaches at waiting for the morning English class to arrive. She teaches two classes for an hour and a half each here. Pi Pop, the most amazing person in Thailand, Angie’s co-teacher and best friend is here also, getting ready. Pi Pop is an absolute saint, and she’s been taking good care of us all week, especially where food is concerned. She is a 50-year old teacher who studied for a year in Florida, and is one of the only people Ang can really relate to here. The culture barrier, especially where women are concerned, is beyond formidable. I will say more about this at another time. Pi Pop is a major exception, and she has been Angie’s bulwark here.

Yesterday we went with Pi Pop and another amazing and sweet teacher, Pi Oh to these amazing caves near the beach. There is a tiny Buddhist shrine deep in the caves, which have two huge rooms in them that open to the sky through these massive sinkholes that fell in ages ago. The most interesting thing we saw was a small shrine with statues of animals at it along the path beneath the one sinkhole. Apparently, loads of animals, including tigers, have slipped and fallen to their deaths when walking up above on the mountain, either by accident or by trying to leap across the gap. This tiny shrine is to the departed tigers and other lumbering beasts who’ve met thier fates in this place and manner. I really, really got a kick out of this. I also tried my hardest to scare Angela by describing in detail how the entire cavern is swarming with the terrible ghosts of crippled tigers, hungrily loping about on thier mangled and fractured ethereal limbs. Thier translucent paws ever ready to snatch up and devour the unwary tourist, subjecting them to the same fate of eternal crippleddom at the bottom of this hole in the mountain as they themselves.

Normally, this sort of thing would really get her, but the climb up the mountain and down into the caves was brutal, and we were sweltering, so I think she was too tired to be scared.

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Oh, and PS: my housing crisis is over, as I have gotten the place I wanted through Chicago’s grad student housing. Living alone isn’t exactly my idea of a good time, but I think I’ll be fine and it’ll be really good for my studies. Plus if I have houseguests I don’t have to bother with other people. Appropriately enough, my housing crisis is being resolved through a government bailout. I just hope Freddy and Fanny make out as good as I have.

Hi,

So I’ve been in Thailand with my as always amazing sister Angela for a few days now, and I’ve been taking notes because there is so much to be said about this place. I posted this post yesterday but because of the huge amount of stuff to say about everything, I’m going to just edit it into one gigantic post and bullet point things, as I am too tired and taxed for extended expository writing.

I did not bother to proofread or spellcheck this post, so cut me some slack here. I am too tired and have other stuff going on.

>>>Japanese War Crimes. We are currently in the town of Kanchanaburi, famous for being the site of the actual “bridge over the river Kwai,” which was built by allied POWs under the Japanese during WWII. The place is famous for the unspeakable brutality of the Japanese military here, and the mind-numbing numbers of the POWs who died of all kinds of horrible things while building the railway to connect this part of Thailand to Burma. If I may comment on this a moment, as a veteran of many of the sites of WW2’s most awful horrors, adding this one to the list as a place I’ve visited, all I can do is quote Sherman: War is hell. There really are no fucking winners or losers, and everyone is a fucker. I remind you of this now just in case you had forgotten. It is also very, very interesting and moving to compare the sight of some of the worst Japanese war atrocities to the site of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, which I visited last year. Next time we meet, ask me to tell you my thoughts because I haven’t sorted them out yet.

There are some weird things about how this place and this event is remembered, if I can indulge in some amateur museumology for a minute: There is one amazing museum to it, which is probably I would imagine the most clean, orderly and generally well put together building in all of Thailand. Sadly, this is because it is run and funded by some dead-serious foreign war veterans, mostly this one Australian guy, who have both the money and the knowledge of what Westerners expect in a good museum to pull it off. It’s also right across the street from the extremely moving cemetary for the British Imperial Subjects from all over and Dutch people from Sumatra that died in the construction of the railway. The cemetary, like the museum, is for the same reasons probably the most well kept outdoor space in all of Thailand.

The other museum we went to on this subject is further south in town and right along the River Kwai (which is absolutely gorgeous, seriously) is called the JEATH museum, which is an acronym of the names of all the nationalities involved in building the Thai-Burma railway under Japanese duress. This place was fascinating for other reasons. It was constructed by a former Japanese soldier who had served as an interpreter in the POW camps during the war. After it was over, he came back to help recover the bodies of the POWs buried throughout the jungle from here to the Burmese border. Through doing so, he was so moved that on returning to Japan he renounced everything and took orders as a Buddhist monk in order to devote his life to peace. Part of that–and this is really impressive considering a lot of the stuff around the war for Japanese people and with regard to Japan in general–was founding this very, very moving museum here to document all the horrors that occurred during the construction of the railway. Unlike the other place, this one has way less money and is housed in a seemingly authentic replica of the bamboo huts that the POWs lived in. Which means it is really hot and dank in there, and a lot of the displays are moldy and curling from the heat and humidity. It’s also on the grounds of a very large Thai Buddhist temple, which adds another dimension to it. The most moving part of all of this is that this place has tons of letters to this Japanese monk from grateful former POWS, extremely emotional acknowledgements of his magnanimity and compassion. There are also plenty of photos of him with visiting dignitaries, especially from regionally involved countries like India and Australia. Despite the shabbiness of this place, and its very small size, I found it really, really effective as a place of memory.

Tomorrow we are actually going to take the train along what’s left of the railway to its terminus and then check out “Hellfire Pass,” a place where the POWs had to work overnight to carve out a huge cut in the solid rock. It is so named because of the shadows cast from thier campfires as they worked in the dark. There’s also a tiger santuary run by monks, which as you know is right up my alley on numerous fronts.

>>> Gender Roles. Stepping back a few days from our present location, here are some random points on Thailand I’ve been gathering: In chronological order, the absolute first thing I noticed about Thailand in meeting Angie at the airport was that, in case you were wondering, no, feminisim did not happen at all here. Every single person we talk to, everywhere, looks straight past the smart young woman speaking Thai holding a fucking cell phone, to me, the dumb blank-faced farong with the huge luggage. Even when she is the only one talking, the only one exchanging money, they keep looking at me. It’s like her head is the sun and they need to avert thier eyes or something. I was more or less livid at first to see my sister disrespected like this, but I know there’s little we can do about it aside from re-directing them again and again. And beleive me, according to Angie, this isn’t the half of it.

>>>Public Space. The second observation I had was that I think it is probably a much, much larger experience of culture shock coming here from Tokyo, where I was all last week, than from the U.S., namely because this country (and I think it’s great, I’m not trashing it on the whole) is really filthy. There are the ubiquitous south east Asian stray dogs everywhere, garbage all over the place and the smell of sewage just sort of floats around everywhere. The buildings are usually a bit moldy from the ridiculous humidity, and the urban planning and development in general is a disaster. Bangkok is disgusting (although it does have it’s charms, I swear). The air pollution is formidible, and you take your life in your own hands getting on any sort of motor vehicle. We took a tuk-tuk ride from the palace to our hotel in Bangkok the other day, and I have never been more afraid in my life, both of getting spontaneous lung cancer and of having this tiny vehicle (a motor-trike with a bench for passengers) getting eaten alive by a tour bus.

On a serious note on this point, this is not just an “oh gross how annoying” thing. It’s a “this is a developing country doing a lot of things wrong” thing. There is one trian in Bangkok, and it doesn’t go anywhere. The national trains are slow as molasses and dirty, so everyone takes sweltering busses and vans around the country. People drive HUGE cars of American proportions, even though gas costs an arm and a leg, and trucks and busses spew blackness out of themselves like they are carrying the fires of hell in thier mouths. One of the biggest sub-issues here, as it was explained to me by a few people, is that the development here is not happening for and by the Thai people, but rather haphazardly and opportunistically to accomodate the massive numbers of foreign tourists that come here. It’s an almos entirely tourism based economy, at least in Angie’s area, and it does not bode well for the locals, at all.

>>>Education and Angela’s coworkers are some of the kindest, most amazing and generous people I have ever met. Yes, education here is more or less backwards, and things like group-learning, critical thinking and, shit, READING are more or less non-existant here. But despite that situation, these are some fine and caring teachers. I got to go to school with her yesterday and, although I already knew this, it was even clearer how much of a gift for what she does my sister has, and how much the folks here know that and appreciate it. In the schools she works at, both the students and teachers were excited beyond what I can describe to see her yesterday, and I could tell that it was completely genuine. The children are amazingly well behaved, smart and excited, not to mention that the little ones are cute beyond belief. Angie is doing so much good work here, and I am so glad to see how that is acknowledged. The tiny ones at the elementary school were clamoring over her, and I had a good time hanging around and getting involved in the English lesson. We did a fun “telephone” like game, but I was next in line after a new girl and she was terrified of me.

>>>What I was told is true: the food in Thailand is the real, real story. Because the bulk of my experience here has been outside the tourist areas of Bangkok and in the company of at least one Thai speaker (Ang is really, really good: 3 languages? I am so lame!), if not like 3 of her coworkers, we have had the most amazing stuff that I cannot even describe. Suffice it to say, it is nothing at all like the stuff they pass off as Thai food at home, nothing. The exception being Pad Thai, the quality of which is beyond anything I’ve had at home. I could list everything I’ve eaten, but luckily I have pictures.

>>> Apparently Thai TV and movies are ridiculously gory, to an absurd extent. On our million-hour busride here two days ago, they showed a movie that Angie said was typical. It had violence in it the likes of which I have not seen in American film in a while. It was fucking repulsive. Ang says that despite the poverty and filth, Thailand doesn’t have a lot of actual violence (save in the south, where there are Muslim separatists–way to play to the stereotypes guys), so she thinks that people here have an off senese of what this stuff really means or could mean. They just don’t get how horrible any of this might actually be. I dunno, so I guess that makes sense.

>>>Flora and Faun. I have made a very serious study of this issue, and my scientific creditials being as formidable as they are, I have come to the following discovery: There are two types of animals in Thailand: dogs and geckos. Let me elaborate, systematically:

• Geckos. This is pretty self-explanitory. They are tiny, very cute and extremely intelligent lizards that are absolutely everywhere, especially in your house at night. This is not a bad thing, as people here love the geckos. They hang out and devour bugs like crazy, whilst chasing each other around and biting each others faces in feats of pure comedic gold. They have tiny hairs on thier feet that allow them to stick to anything, but every once in a while one falls and that’s hysterical too. Ang has decided that there is really only one gecko who is everywhere at once, and his name is “Gecko.” Any time Gecko does something funny, she shakes her head and softly says, “Gecko,” as in “oh you, there you go again.” Geckos are also really smart and will talk politics with you while you are on the toilet. Due to some really great social programs in place by the Thai government, many Geckos are now realizing thier dreams of higher education, and if you are pooping and have nothing better to do, they will gladly tell you all about thier PhD dissertaions, which I have found to be on consistantly fascinating and timely topics.
• Dogs. There are in fact three categories of dogs in Thailand, which category two having three subspecies. Let me explain:
• Type 1: Noble Hounds. The famed “noble hound” is the most rare sort of canine in all the (Thai)land. He is elusive and comports himself with greater dignity than you could probably muster, and as such when you do catch a rare glimpse of him, you are unfailingly filled with awe and respect. See him now, trotting with such purpose, careful to keep his fine paws apart from the filth and brackish waters that abound in this landscape. The two features that set him apart are his stately gait and upheld, upright head, eyes fixed forward and general composure, along with the presense of a color and ID tags. Truly, he cuts the finest figure in the land, and all must make way as he approaches.
• Type 2: Mangey Curs. There are actually three sorts of mangey cur, as I have said. All are by definition mangey, so take that with you as you read on:

***The first is the unfeared but much loathed Flea-Ridden Supplicant. No Thai dinner, walk, conversation, day, night, general existence or the like is complete without running into some half or mostly starved filthy and pathetic dog with it’s tail between it’s legs, fur missing all over and its eyes downcast as it approaches you looking for food. We went out to dinner on the beach in Hua Hin (near Angie’s place) the other night and this horribly pathetic animal came and just sat there starring at us for at least 3 hours as we ate, talked, drank and left. The sun went down and we had 5 dishes between three people, and this thing did not move. She was the saddest, most repulsive site I hav ever seen.

***The second subtype of Mangey Cur is the Snarling-Ass Mongrel. This is the dog, or group of dogs, that are off thier leashes in the front of someone’s house that will, on your morning, noon, and evening constitutional, scare the living crap out of you as it and it’s friends make you quite certain that your life is about to end in a flea-infested feeding frenzy. I seriously thought we were in for it last night coming home from the internet place, as about three of these things (including sorts of dogs you would never fear otherwise) let us know in no uncertain terms that our very souls smelled like sides of ham to them. These dogs look just like the other gross dogs, but thier demeanor, rather than being pathetic, is terrifying. Think of “hell hound” where hell is a developing south-Asian country.

***The third sub-type of mangey cur are collectively known as Dead Dogs. No, this isn’t some poetic discription of thier patchy hair or evil ways, it is a cold, hard clinical diagnosis of thier state of being. Today, on the side of the most major right in Kanchanaburi, was one of the saddest, most nauseating things I’ve seen in a while. I pacthy-haired dog, filthy, smelling horrible, dead on it’s side with it’s legs sticking outright, defying gravity through rigor-mortis. The cloud of flies around it’s half-opened mouth only accenting the sight of the pool of dried blood under it’s face. I couldn’t take it, we had to move on. I am grimacing now even to think of it.

• Type 3, the final general type of Thai dog is Scorpions. Yes, big, extremely frightenting, black scorpions. My scientific research has shown conclusively that just as pants are just a shirt for your legs, scorpions are really just a type of dog. Like the noble hound, they are seen somewhat rarely (although moreso definitely than the NH), but like the snarling-ass mongrel they are scary as shit, big and full of the venom of langor and death. I would not reccomend trying to talk scholarship with the scorpion, or even sports. They are not.effing.interested. I would imagine the only thing they’d be up for is a Bergmanian chess-match, just to give you a sporting chance before they dispassionately dispatch your vital breath and spirit you away to thier murky colonies. A place I’d rather be pre-done-in-for before having to see, I reckon.

>>>The last thing I’ll say about Thailand before turning in for the night is that the bathrooms here are the worst I have ever seen. Yeah, I’ve seen squat toilets before, sure whatever. What I have not seen in squat toilets that you have to manually flush by dumping in water from a plastic pail set beside a cystern of stangnant water. I am going to ask Gecko to talk to someone important about this next time I have to deal with it.

>>>Oh and finally, if there are punk kids here, interesting young artists, people making DIY culture, I have no clue where they are. Neither does Angela. Actually, she speculates that for various reasons I don’t want to type about now, even in Bangkok, there might not be any. Just a lot of imported cultural mish-mash and floating signifiers the likes of which I haven’t seen before. Talk about a soup of random imagery.

OK, time for bed. I have an early day of war atrocities to check out. After this, I think I need to round out my collection by finally visiting Dresden. I’m joking about this a bit now, but I take it pretty seriously.

A letter from Thailand:

Dear Friend,

Of late you have given me everything for which I had hoped, and for this I am grateful.

Sincerely yours,

Daniel Wyche

PS: Words are gifts too.

Today–this week too, but mostly today–has been a day of goodbyes. I said goodbye to someone I just met this morning, and proceeded to walk down 48th street to work and say a tremendous round of goodbyes to all kinds of good, screwy but good, people at work that I’ve only known nigh on a year. I will miss some of them terribly, and more than anything I will miss the actual work. I have been down in the trenches since last winter, and it has felt so good. After Japan, I was wondering in the wilderness there for a few months until I found this place. Sure it may sound cliched, but “right livelyhood” is part of that 8-fold path for a reason. Unlike most other jobs, being here has made me feel more than good, it’s made me feel right, both about the world in general and myself in particular.

After interviewing someone to take my position, I walked outside and decided that instead of my usual new memory-dodging walk up to the 46th street El, I’d say fuck it and just wait for the 34 trolley at the corner of 48th and Baltimore. I spent a lot, a whole lot, of time on the 34 these past two years, and I got on it knowing that this was probably my final ride. Once on, it seemed like the thing decided to move extra slowly, so as to parade before me that meaning-and-memory filled block of Baltimore between 47th and 48th. Passing Fu Wah and Lee’s, I looked left and took one last pillar-of-salt glance back at my old apartment. I could only see the back area and that metal porch from where I was, but that porch alone was enough to send me into a meloncholy reverie that I only allowed myself to indulge in for a second before shaking it off. The porch alone, the two chairs, that crappy table: there is enough floating there to fill a hanger.

We lumbered on down toward 40th where the surface becomes the subway, reviewing Baltimore from that vantage one last time. Like a parade of remembrance, the 34 felt like Lincoln’s death carriage moving slowly through the streets, or of that part in Underground when Tito dies. Or, I guess, like I was taking the same old trolley I always have, only the poor 34 not knowing that I am about to betray it.