:(

another very good friend of mine died in the most horrific of manners this morning. he had been missing for 2 weeks, and i knew he had gone to play with the girl dog in heat down the street so i didn't worry too much about him despite the fact that there are many dogfights around at these times. he still trudged home at night to get his fish and rice. two days ago he came back for good, with a limp and a general listlessness that wasn't like him. i figured he had just been in a fight, so i pet him a lot and showed him i loved him, gave him a bath for his new fleas. but then yesterday morning he started bleeding from his nose and mouth, nonstop, and had serious problems breathing. puzzled, i threw him in a jeep and drove him through the jungle to town, where luckily there was a vet available. the vet took her time in diagnosing- drew blood and urine, felt around a bit. finally she pulled me over excitedly to the microscope and said "look here!" i peered in to see a mess of squirming worms tainting a drop of scruffy's blood.

heartworms are horrible. they take over the heart, of course. i have seen some gruesome pictures of them in the last day. what they did to scruffy was infiltrate themselves into his lungs as well. the bleeding was an embolism, and heartworms produce a chemical which prevent the blood from clotting. i didn't know this until much later on. the vet gave scruffy an injection and me some advice to keep him still and quiet for 2 weeks while he endured some of the harshest treatment available to dogs- heartworm treatment is almost as bad as heartworms alone. scruffy seemed ok and i drove him on the long trip back home while he slept and bled quietly.

later on, something clicked in my head, and i suddenly just knew scruffy was dying. it hadn't really occured to me it might be serious. i looked up heartworms on the internet and knew for sure- he had an advanced infestation and couldn't possibly live through treatment (the drug is a form of arsenic that leaves toxic dead worms in the body). i made scruffy a bed of newspapers and pillows, prepared him a bowl of water with electrolyte solution, and began the long night. he must have bled his whole inside out. for hours i just pet him and crooned to him while he stared helplessly at me. it wasn't too long before he vomited black blood like earth. soon after his kidneys started to fail and he peed straight blood with a small scream. still he held on through morning as i paced and tore out my hair. his breathing was horribly labored and he couldn't move on his own. i touched each of his parts so he would have one last snuggle with life.

at about 2am a very surreal thing happened. i noticed a fly fluttering on the wall. a small gecko came out and chomped it. slowly i realized the room was filling full of these flies. they were pouring in swarms through the slat on the window. flies hit my eyelashes and buzzed in my ear. puppy started humming curiously upstairs at the flies that had gathered there. scruffy sat up and looked around in a daze. all the lizards flew out of their hidey holes to enjoy a surprise midnight snack. i ran to turn off the lights and flip on the one in the bathroom, prompting the fluttering hoard to change venues. scruffy gave a good natured cough and ended up spluttering and glazed over for 20 minutes.


finally at 10am this morning he stood up unsteadily as if to run out the front door and play. he immediately fell over, hitting his head. i picked him up and held him and rocked him as his lungs failed him at last. he had a small seizure and gasped fruitlessly for breath for what seemed like days but was probably only a minute or so, then one violent shudder passed through his body, i told him goodbye, and he was gone with a grimace.

i have never seen something so horrible in my life.

it just so happens every single one of my friends have left together on a big visa run trip, so i have no one to share this with but you readers. i have cleaned the puddles of blood and various other bodily fluids from my floor, threw out the drenched pillows, and dragged scruffy's shell out to the back step. i am waiting desolately for my neighbors to come around and help me bury my very favorite pal, but i am finding it hard to believe i just watched another dog so happy, full of life, and gorgeous in spirit disappear from my life forever. i feel so bad that i couldn't help... but at least i let him know he was loved before he went. and maybe, as they say, i will see him someday on the other side of the rainbow bridge.

goodbye my scruffy dog. you were too good for this world.


RIP, you were a beautiful friend to me. 10am 9/27/06

prevent heartworm

........................

the thing is i have so much to write about, but i learned my lesson about making things public. by the lack of boundaries i allow myself to be taken advantage of. so should i slam and lock all the doors to my identity a la 'x' and start over again? (can you find me?) or should i just proceed with abandon and eliminate the overconfident critics from the reign of my concern because i am true to myself? hmmm.

just so you know

thailand is not really the pedophiliac destination splashed all over the news right now. one pedophile who may or may not have killed jon benet ramsey was found here. that does not by extension make every other foreign man a child rapist. i would be willing to bet that there are more pedophiles in bible belt america than in thailand any day. while it does have a seedy side, it's not so intrusive unless you purposely immerse yourself in it. there are definitely areas with weirdos sniffing around for whatever their depraved fantasy is that evening, and conmen incognito, both thai and farang! but they are concentrated in their little ghettos. stay out of the ghettos and there are nice people. enough said.

balance

having never had real friends before in my life (never stayed in one place), i have not been aware of the pitfalls inherent in them until just recently. first of all, it takes a long time to get to know them, and always just when you think you have them figured out and are starting to get bored, they throw a different mask at you, and you reel and start the discoveries all over again. i have learned not to be presumptuous enough to think i know somebody until i have put in the work. i have one good real friend in my life, who can make intricate masks all the day long, but i still see him peeking out from under them. other friends all fall somewhere along the spectrum of superficial vs. not. when you have people who are in and out of your life constantly, you take on responsibilities. the responsibility to be honest with them, to be loyal, to be fair, to be kind. but also the responsibility to make them aware of their flaws so that they can get out of little traps that trip them (and you by extension) and everyone is happier for it. somehow you have to confront them while reminding them you are still their friend, which means embroiling yourself in a battle between their defenses and your willingness to go the length in order to resolve bad energy or stagnant problems on either side. friends are easily lost at that stage, but only mediocre ones. friends take up your time, are a pain in the ass, can be embarassing, mean and manipulative, redundant vacuums of people sometimes. but being addicted to psychoanalysis as i have always been i much prefer having them than not. (not that people are science experiments, but they are learning tools). and sometimes you get a bit of fluffy love in fun moments that make you feel wholly human and want to keep trying to get to know that person you are smiling at better because you can't imagine them not being in your life in some aspect.

that said, i have to force myself to take some space from my friends. people are all mad in their own ways but their respective madnesses are impeding my life at the moment. they are expensive, two-faced, and dangerous as well as being happy, fun and free... back to no friends until i get my wits back about me and can assert myself better and know what am really getting at. also my friends now serve to portray me as a poster child for shyness, the disease. but when i am not around them i am not so shy. i don't feel respected or loved by them a lot of the time, i feel used and humiliated. can't be too nice to people. shape up. back to hermitdom for awhile. have to stop partying and work a bit anyway!

pratet thai

a quote from captain bob of the thorn tree:

"Most western countries have a feeling of restrictiveness and seriousness in the air. The moment I even step on a US-bound flight I'm hit with the American vibe of stress and uptight rigidity and false forced politeness. "Have a nice day or I'll sue your ass". Arrival in Germany (another country I've lived in) means stop smiling and get out of my way. The random playfulness of Thai society wouln't be tolerated for an instant. Est ist nicht ordnung! Just two examples. Thailand is the antithesis of both - playful, permissive, tolerant, smiling, and moreso than other Asian countries (probably due to Buddhism). It's just so easy to relax and do what you want in Thailand. It's like the happy home a child dreams about and society takes away when they grow up. Just don't do drugs or dis the King and stay out of the way of drunk teenagers (and psycho ladyboys) on their motorbikes. The street is the one place where Thai calmness seems to go out the window. Even Australia the "lucky" "no worries" country seems to have lost a lot of that feeling. Very strict and antagonistic everytime you have to deal with bureaucracy or anyone with a nametag behind a counter. I lived in NZ and Oz for about 6 years and my last visit to Oz I was shocked by how militant and unfriendly many people were - probably just because now I've lived in Thailand 3 years I see things differently. Have always felt welcome in Thailand. "

i agree... as long as you don't try to have a relationship with them (doh! hits head) and keep it lighthearted this is a great country to live in. it can really feel like home. patting myself on the back (though rather nervously) and congratulating myself for not giving in and going back to NY this past week.

carnage

snake 5 mins. ago


snake now

among the many animals i have watched in horror as my dogs slaughtered, is this unfortunate snake. i felt sorry for the poor guy. i didn't realize that animals scream... the snake screamed silently, his black eyes pleading... something that might remain with me for the rest of my life.

the rat screamed quite loudly though... i moved the fridge, it ran out, a hilarious chase ensued (rat jumped on puppy, puppy flung it off onto me, i hit it with the broom- screeching hysterically), it tried to run up the stairs and scruffy got it by the neck and chomped it's head off, shaking it and snarling with maniacal glee. he was my hero since i couldn't bring myself to kill it with a sticky glue trap.

there was a tookay also, a few geckos. i hope no hapless kitten wanders past. anyway, living with my dogs (dogs being half wild in thailand) is definitely a lesson in anthropology/zoology.

everything is a killer.

diao ni

man i do fall behind don't i. sorry for the almost month-long intermission.

parties. more parties than i have ever been interested in going to in my life previous have happened to me recently. a party where dum lek wanted to kiss me (so i won our little game "touch dum" for the day- good for the ol' ego that one) and parties where boys were slobbering lunatics, alternately fighting with beer bottles and sobbing hopelessly over the recent girlfriend, parties with happy people who like to dance in the dark, parties falling in and out of love with people, parties with sunrises!!! so many that i've felt like i was spinning. playing tag team with people on the rest of the island- starting to know it well, such nice days... some aspects of that i obviously don't write about (here). so not been much to say.

i am torn between going back home to NY (by choice for once!) and taking a 3 month contract for some extra backup (hmmm alarm clocks, stiff meetings, subway trips staring at shoes, $100 dinners,loneliness amongst every kind of people, food, films, shopping, music, and art) vs. staying here and continuing to get certified in tantra yoga (2 hours a day with my indian teacher feels yummy), making flyers and working the cozy party at my strange friend's bar, hanging out with my love-bestowing dogs (chasing down rats in the corners), and juggling whatever good work i can manage for far flung people during monsoon season. (hrmmm).

do you have to do time for your happiness?


  
the famous dao and the lovely malee (mae mort sam khon)

my friends are lovely. sometimes a bit trying (which makes me love them more), but for once i have girl friends (mostly english). i miss boy friends but you can't have them here- you are either fucking or not (sigh). the americans popping up bother me. i never noticed to what extent americans are boring until i started hanging out with europeans. what self-obsessed, control-requiring, tedious blabbering idiots i have met (along with one or two cool ones). our country is far too analytical. we don't have balance. everyone needs to take a deep breath and relax their sphincters. laugh a little.



do yoga


... hi michelle, your kids are cute and your life strange...

everyone be good.

links since i can't be bothered to write

i recently discovered that my good girl friend katie from NY has started a website. you can all meet her at: katwise.com. she's lovely.

also, a girl she hitchhiked through africa with has an amazing website: kinga freespirit. sadly, she has just passed away from cerebral malaria in ghana. her photos and stories are touching.

also check out x's site, he has been updating his photos and journal: decadent world.

land of the free (ThAiLaNd)

had a little injection of freedom in the past couple of weeks that i was sorely lacking before. once a week i take the jeep somewhere new. i have done just about the whole island now but at least my horizons have expanded a bit. saw some sunsets, went swimming in the snorkelling area, slept in the car after a party or two, had breakfast at the top of a mountain, made some new friends. nice.

the little fling i had has been difficult to keep as a little fling, as the other half of it has managed to magically appear in thong nai pan twice this week. but i figure it's a test that i am meant to pass, and so far so good- i am so happy there is this concept of a 'gig' (ie. friends with benefits) in thailand. i do NOT want to stop being single, or more specifically i do not want anything remotely resembling a full time humdrum relationship- yick! and on top of that, if i did want one it most likely would not be with a 23 year old bar boy who does and has nothing. i swear i am not stupid. it's hard though when they start hynotizing you with all their sappy lines etc.

i bought an american guy i know a drink for his birthday, which led to our drinking together until 2 in the morning around a bonfire on the beach. the next day he called me up from the tattoo shop i had promised the night before i would patronize. so i went and chugged a beer and smoked my last cigarette ever and had my little tattooist friend draw me a black star on my wrist. it actually means a lot to me but the biggest reason is i am convinced it will stop me from smoking cigarettes. so hopefully i have just saved my own life, or extended it a bit.

soon i have to start thinking about work again.


my little jalopy



parents week for my english girl friends



the doors of wat khao tham

mae mort

having evaluated and discarded every person of the male gender in my village and the next one, and being rather down about it, i surreptitiously planned a day to run off and find this young lad named 'mmm' (yes thai), whom i met in koh lanta a couple years ago and spent a nice couple days with, and who has recently come to live on koh phangan. as he lived all the way on the other side of the island, i determined to make it an adventure. i invited my friends dao and malee, whose every blonde bubbly fucked up day is an adventure that usually far surpasses mine, but is happily distributed amongst the three of us when we set out together. i rented a jeep (which amazingly i have discovered just now and which gives me greedy freedom) and drove on the wicked road all the way round the island to had yao. teeter tottered over the hill to the beach, climbed up to the roof of a bar to watch the sunset on the powdery white sand. chilled out a bit in the feeling of someplace new and not thong nai pan. went to a bar where my friends got drunk and i laughed at them (driver), while flirting with the young, small but lovely and super achingly sweet mmm in the peripheral. drove back around the island to the black moon party and danced on the beach...a bit of fuzzy warm hallucination. discovered mmm sitting alone there, and decided to take him home.

i can't give all the details after all...my village knowing everything is bad enough... but a nice time was had... and i remembered how beautiful thai boys can be, and i left him back on the road to had yao with a slight sad twinge of regret in having to leave it, and that's that. love ya mmm goodbye.

schizoid in a bottle

in life you are not all things to all people. some people bring out some
sides of you, some places bring out others. you are never the same person
from one minute to the next, let alone in one place with one person. i
learned this from a nearly decade-long relationship, the only permanent
aspect of a lifetime succession of lives.

lately i have missed the other "me"s. in this village i am a very simplified
version of elocin. when i am hungry i eat. when i need to poo i poo. when i
feel sleepy i drag the mosquito net over the bed and hide away. i have the
same routine every day, see the same people, feel the same feelings. every morning it is beautiful. every day i take deep breaths and say "puppy let's go to the beach". there is no alarm clock, there is no must do or must be. there is no conflict or discord or pain. it's a life of tranquil sedation, which in my other perspectives can be justified only by a (slowly but surely) waxing bank account and a waning interest in the rat race past. even so, in this life i am 100% the happiest i have ever been.

but like a friend told me, the goal of life is not happiness, it is life.
secretly i know this to be true, but here i am hiding in my simple life, from
life. some people want to run away from familiarity and routine, and i am
typically one of those people who understands that to settle is to die, but
never really having experienced placidity and familiarity before, i am
finding it seductive, for now. it's not a bad thing, i shouldn't feel so much guilt, i just wonder sometimes what happened to all the other lives, all the other sides of me, and if they will ever come back again.

if there is any introspection these days it is of a sexual nature. partly
because i have a glaring lack of sex in my life, partly because it just seems so important to everyone else here in uninhibited tourist and transactional sex land, partly because with no barrage of obstacles it is easier for those things buried and embedded inside the meat of me to start wriggling their way out. it's not like sex isn't freely available, i could walk out of my house and be in a compromising position within the quarter hour. it's not like i am not admired or propositioned. but the truth is there is not a me that exists that is not terrified of sex. or more specifically, of men.

...long explanation deleted because i am too honest and people love to dress up false interpretations for themselves and flaunt them like rabid popparazi in the wrong circles ("me"s which are sadly not me at all)... but perhaps some deduction can be made towards the fact that my chosen sexual partners have all been "safe" rather than ideal, and that i am in denial of my reproductive programming and feminine wiles. that i will always fight against my nature (which may not be bisexual at all). and since from a very early age i learned that when i looked into a man's eyes i am simply a woman, i don't know if i can ever accept that i am.

here's hoping i meet a nice young lad to break down all those tedious barriers and set me free before i wither into an old hag on the hill with my dogs, happy though she may be.

boy howdy

i have been asked to move the photo of scruffy's mangled balls out of sight, so here is attempt to wrassle my brain to the ground and squeeze out a few drops of writing. hi! i live on an island. it's nice. hard to get food where i live though, and no one will sell me a car for my budget and i don't have a license. so i depend on gaeng, my local taxi driver, to lug me behind him through the jungle to town. i sometimes treat myself to khao mun gai in the old market or an english breakfast and coffee in the new one. i pick through vegetable stalls and carry around smelly bloody fish wrapped in plastic. wake up the newspaper man for the day old paper.

songkran (thai new year- a water fight extraordinaire) was in town, er, a month ago. it was lovely. i will never spend songkran anywhere else again. nice wander through the festival market with mae (the thai mom of a friend). pick up cheap plastic bracelets and cream donuts. smile at little kids shooting water guns on the street. hit the main road, get drenched, live djs, street party. lots of beer, everyone soaking wet and covered in powder. dancing. thai boys conjuring loud elaborate feuds. then the taxi adventure home with the local redneck driving beer in hand and people falling off the truck when going around sharp mountain curves, thai music blaring.


best pals before the 'songkram' deluge

after that i fought with my best friend and was thrust into a new life without her. (normally she lives with me part time). that entailed going to lots of parties and meeting lots of nice men with my other best friend, who is sort of, well, gregarious. i am not gregarious at all. i hover in corners beaming at people and spill my drink. later i dance, sometimes wildly, often with myself. the men have all been perfectly acceptable, and most of them educated, well off, interesting, doably hot foreigners. hmph! but i turned them all down because i love my life right now. here, in thong nai pan, i feel the best i have ever felt (health not included). i love my house, my dogs, my friends, the village where i know most everyone (after a lifetime of moving every 3-6 months to new places), the nature, sunshine, books (read a whole one on my fun visa run to cambodia the other day), surprise visitors. drunken ladyboys poking me at parties and asking me to help them scheme in getting boyfriends i would rather snag myself (hot! those damn gay men). bodysurfing with my pups. my beach mat and "spot" under the tree, cooking, spiders, dvds. intentional touching but not acknowledging and not taking it too far- flirting i suppose (he's 19). coconut milkshakes and storms. hmmm.


gift from 'puppy'

could use better food as i mentioned, some art occasionally
(though i do meet artists). a decent music scene, films. but that's why i went to bangkok last week, where i stayed downtown and lounged in air conditioned places and snaked around via skytrain. marinated myself in lovely scented baths, slept on fluffy pillows, ate 7-11 and $30 steaks. i also met my best german hippie pal 'c' there, where she had stopped after months of running around and away with her thai boyfriend 'w', also my good pal. they got a visa to go to germany, where she lives in a house with 30 people, drives taxis all over germany, and writes books. good luck to them. he is ecstatic to leave thong nai pan after 31 years! (eek!)

now i have to actually schedule out my time and keep accounts for my little freelancing operation here. i have meetings on IM and with VOIP. i actually get paid for it too even though sometimes it is long in coming and i freak out and turn psychotic on them but then they usually pay right up.

got a sunburn today riding on motorbike all over the other side of the island with my friend-again. visited some other thai friends at their snake- and mosquito- (and rambling swiss man-) filled place at the top of the mountain (wheeze) overlooking the crowded and sparkling had rin. will finish a smoke on my porch, watching the sun come down, feed my doggies, listen to music or wander to the beach and see who i can find to flirt with or chat to now. maybe jump in and make stars with the phosporescent plankton under the full moon. life is good.

april genius

i am so far from civilization and it's unfortunate sometimes. today my dog 'scruffy' was attacked by about 5 other dogs on the same spot of the beach that we go to every day but for some reason was evil today. they mangled his testicles (ow?) and put a hole in his leg. i gave him some aspirin but he has been bleeding nonstop all over my house for hours. sure wish there was a vet here. sigh... i hope he doesn't die of shock or something, i really couldn't handle another dog's death.
:(


poor scruffy in pain


some other pictures i have taken recently----



my best neurotic english pal 't'on my porch


lizard who lives in my roof


local charity party for the village school


p.s. i need to control my vices a bit. oh, and stop falling in love with gay men.

rats!

my adamant plans to break free of the umbilical cord tying me to the lush thong nai pan, my cozy house, and my affectionate pets crumbled dramatically under the weight of a sudden offer of a full time job from an interactive agency called 'ruder finn' in NY. i have been taking random one-off projects from various people for the past 3 months, but just making enough money to get by, and thus figured it wasn't worth running in place here for...(?!) but a full time job at pretty near to a normal US rate is nothing to blink at, and it means i can actually save money from my lovely home office for a bit.

so here i was planning decadent trips to borneo and uruguay (well, really i had pretty much resigned myself to going back to work in NY), and now i need to swallow all of that excitement and dust off the old laptop. time to re-think just about everything.

luckily i am extremely happy, if a bit lonely here. i'll update more later. one of my plans is to work more on this site, but any of you who've been reading for any length of time know how realistic that plan is. ;)

?!

argh. indecision and neuroses. though i am the happiest and most well-adjusted now that i have possibly ever been, i still can't escape those two pesky feelings.

i have a lovely life in thailand right now- probably couldn't ask for better. i live in a beautiful place, have great dogs, a few good friends, a gorgeous beach and tropical foliage and animals everywhere. decent nightlife. enough projects to keep me surviving here if not thriving.... when i go back to the US this is what i slave away for months to get to, and pine for.

but you just can't ever be satisfied, can ya.

i guess i feel like i am sort of running in place. just turned 30 (?!!?!). no assets or real savings. no stable relationships (or accompanying sex!). still bottlenecked as ever so not producing anything creative. drinking and smoking too much. a bit lonely (as usual) even in a crowd. just... uninspired really. i don't want to travel, i don't want to start a company, i don't want to get married or buy land... i guess i don't really know what i want to do. last year was about working to get what i wanted, which was a way to stay in thailand and still make foreign money. succeeded admirably in that. guess i don't have much to challenge me now. also a bit scared that the longer i stay here the more likely i will be to get involved in another disastrous relationship with a thai man. and i am 100% disillusioned with thai people after 7 years or so of visiting and 3 years of living here. i don't think another set of such money-obsessed, morally bankrupt, and double-sided people exists anywhere else on the face of this earth. it's hard living amongst people you trust not one iota (though i still love and have fun with them).

so i am considering getting out. going back to NY and working or maybe just spinning a globe and escaping to wherever my finger lands and regrouping my thoughts a bit. i will start looking for a new home for my doggie (sob) and someone to sublet my place and i think i will regain my freedom for a bit and see if it brings me to my senses.

after days and days of being seriously ill in bed, i flew to bangkok and spent a couple of days last week with 'x'- the love of my life whether either of us likes it or not, and whom i will only get to see once a year or so from now on if i am lucky. :( both situations probably influenced my current mood, as well as the fact that my two best friends here are leaving (again with the leaving!)


cire

life

i guess i don't really update my blog anymore do i. it's not that i am lacking in inspiration, i am just lacking in the desire to communicate it to the general public. right now is about being free! i am bemused by life, by how it delivers to a person what they need and want in such subtle ways. i feel lucky! i am exactly where i want to be! i wouldn't mind travelling but that is the sum total of my problems for now.

i swear at some fuzzy point in the future i will get a wild hair on my ass and give this site a makeover, maybe focus a bit more on thailand travel info. for now i just can't be bothered, i am busy living.

distraught

my neighbors poisoned my best friend... he was sick two days ago and i stayed up all night with him, sleeping with my arms around his neck and telling him i loved him and everything would be ok... the next morning he really seemed ok, so i went on a visa run to burma that took me almost 2 days... about an hour before i returned he died. my friends (to whom he wandered) tried to help him but said he suffered horribly for that 2 days... i feel so guilty for not being with him. he was a good dog, my favorite. he will be horribly horribly missed.

between this and 'o', who has really shown his true colors lately, i am feeling pretty bad about thailand.


RIP khao baby

hi

dogs

i really don’t have a dog fetish, though if you spent 5 minutes in my neighborhood or took a glance at my door step you would disagree. i am too nice to dogs, as my past relationships could account. my puppy (little puppy!) is in heat and has acquired quite a few boyfriends (the thais joke that they're "gigs") overnight. i am having nightmares about canine hordes. i need me a cattle prod.

speaking of past relationships, i have realized (or admitted might be more apt) that my recent breakup was with a gigolo. damnit! it wasn't my intention in the least. luckily i am not the only one being fooled in thailand. but hey! is it so bad to see the potential in someone and try to encourage it so they feel good about themselves and are in a better position? erm... to care? ...yes it is, when all they care about is what you can give them and not what they can give themselves or even (arai na?) give back to you... lesson learned. thais have a lack of interest in love and an obsession with status and security. i miss 'o''s cooking and driving and thai
jabber but otherwise i am loving my space. and the extra money!

my island, like most of thailand right now i think (?) is full of honeymooners or young couples with kids. there is a severe dearth of interesting people here now, hiding out in their bungalows. the village people think it's quite hilarious that i am alone and don't hesitate to point and talk openly. i just beam at them and shrug. i do speak thai enough to laugh with them at least. and i was never under any illusion that i was anything but a farang. i still eat kway tio daily and buy tamarind in their shops. keep their bartenders from getting too bored. nod to them on the beach or at the karaoke place. dodge their speeding pickups.

i am allergic to everything suddenly, and thus spend a lot of time cleaning my house... after which the dogs skate through with muddy paws dangling dead rats and ashes from one of the assorted noxious fires scattered around. when i lay down to sleep i have to be prepared for an hour of sneezing. my sheets smell funny after monsoon. i take antihistamines that must have some kind of meth in them because my eyes instantly peel back into my head and i stop breathing. but it gets better.

i made my own thai food! so far yum pla muk (spicy squid salad) and tom pla (an herbal fish soup). the latter succeeded nicely, i fear the former was raw. thai boys schmai boys. tonight i will make stir fried chicken and ginger with my friend who is here.



my little sister who is now a big girl just visited and freaked me out with her confidence and cheer. last time i saw her she was and awkward and innocent 13, now she's 21. it's nice to have the connection of a history together, even if most of it sucked. she's lovely. the thai boys sensed a newbie and tried to tease her into corners the whole time. she likes to dance and drink with me and brings out my girliness a bit. i met her in bangkok and took her on the train to kanchanaburi, where we cautiously petted huge tigers at a temple and hung out with a wide eyed american boy who waiied everyone and spoke his two words of thai upon every meeting. ran through the ww2 museum in a bored daze. drank the requisite buckets of sangsom in a bar with a group of rowdy europeans and a thai guy -with an actual job and courtesy who proved they are not all alike. met an old but rather bouncy and giggly mamasan who tried to get us to party instead of sleeping and failed.



after which i brought lil sis to my village, which is admittedly sleepy and isolated but somehow infectious i hope. she got too lazy to do anything and i was feeling staticky about my new and disturbing situation there, so after a couple of days on the beach with my romping dogs and a stressful trip to the full moon "party" (i would call it a gathering of heathens actually) we ditched my island and went straight to pattaya on a neverending bus ride. (yes, another gathering of heathens!) there we ate mexican and got drunk on margaritas, judged teams of ladyboys dressed like divas for the evening, watched queerboys swim in their undies in an aquarium, critiqued a bit of thai boxing and snake...touching. made fun of fat old farangs with blossoming, painted and sparkling young girls in hand. walked through the air conditioned mall as often as possible and slept in our messy hotel room in front of bad thai tv.

then koh samet which was for nightlife but weirdly again there was none. the beach was sparkling white though and there were fish in the water. we slouched under umbrellas with coconuts. our room was super plush. there were lots of small animals to coo over.

i was sorry to let her go in bangkok. little sisters are lovely things.

back in my village i am again weirded out by the lost feeling, the isolation even in a crowd. but i have another project lined up so i will tough it out(!) here in paradise working from my house and fending off dogs (and men) on the beach for american money for now.

life

it’s funny, there is something magical about how one life shifts suddenly to the next. one minute it’s one life, and the next it’s the next. i have never really had that happen in one place before, and I am a little freaked out, but i am already learning that as long as i have baht to spend here i am more than welcome, and i live in a beautiful place.

i awoke tangled sweatily in my blanket this morning at a very early 4am, by- you guessed it- karaoke. sigh…. and drunk karaoke is loud karaoke. i caught myself humming along and fell suddenly into a sneezing fit of about an hour’s length. drifted off to dreams of my mean mother around 6am, was awoken by a thunderstorm and howling dogs at about 8. fell asleep again to sounds of bustling neighbors…woke to the arrival of the mosquitoes…

finally in the real morning (after email check and coffee) i had kway tio in the shop full of grandma and grandpa thais in sarongs, lolling on the floor. the women shout to each other at the top of their lungs and the man coughs up a lung every 5 minutes and picks his teeth. the soup has a lot of garlic and herbs. across the street the jungle looms over the one main road. chickens dodge speeding motorbikes driven by 8 year olds. tourists wander, taking pictures or observing the thai observers standing in the shadows. it is sometimes unnerving to walk down, so I ride my silly bike. people still look and whisper at the sides of their mouths. my dogs run behind me and piss people off.

behind the main road is no man’s land (it’s nice) and then there is the beach, which has finally stopped thrashing and has chilled. mostly scottish people strolling in insular groups right now, the sand is powdery and white but still littered with monsoon remnants and threatens to be dumped on some more with another approaching storm (argh, just as i have to get the ferry to samui!). thai guys play volleyball or soccer (football, yawn). nondescript bungalows pepper the beach. the food sucks. the music is iffy… but as long as you keep looking at the turquoise water and white sand framed by scraggly rainforest it’s lovely.

i alternately read sleepily and felt sorry for myself today for a long time, on a mat on my floor in front of tv (hey at least i don’t really watch it- well except for air crash investigations and bitchy LA socialite documentaries.) my book was the life story of a hermaphrodite (“middlesex” by jeffrey eugenides). i tried to call ‘o’ but he pretended he didn’t know who i was so i snapped out of it pretty quickly, and back into feeling sorry for myself for being such a hopeless weakling (i hope this stage passes quickly). his murderess cousin has quickly remarried another loaded doctor in germany and the family is scheming for the new money…. fucking isaan.

tonight i had to pay an inordinate sum of money to ‘mean su’, the greediest lady in the village, for a teeny scratch on her motorbike that i didn’t even think to try and paint over. her shy ticklish looking husband came to passively demand it (can’t resist him damnit!), and even though i rightfully owe it i felt indignant all evening. tomorrow i will go have coffee and make friends with her because otherwise i will never survive in the village. they have black magic here, i'm sure of it.

so later i hopped on my bike down the lane to susie’s place and had chicken provencale served gracefully to me by my very strange ladyboy friend. he is the most ambitious and straightforward thai person that I know, but he has another freaky side that comes out in parties (eek!). he had a cute little waiter from chaing mai who was a duplicate of him working and I beamed at him while fumbling with my beer. i met a nice buxom gal from merry old england and got her drunk along with me, took her back to my place for a bit, and then kicked her out. a friend made and discarded in a matter of hours is sometimes a very good friend.

and now i am off to dreamland again. feeling staticky and dislocated but basically good and at home.

shrug

after the worst breakup blowout i have personally ever had, and 'o' finally f***ed off back to his mommy in bangkok, i was left feeling very drained and sort of pathetically scared and lonely yesterday. granted, the guy was a petulant spoiled brat and i put up with him for far too long (hello 3 year anniversary), but i did truly have some love for him and i will miss him and his charm (and his warm body) horribly, at least for awhile.... and he has left me in a village that is far from civilization.

but at least i have pretty good friends here, which wasn't the case in either bangkok or the other side of my island where i lived previously very isolated. and i have my pups, which have surprised me by stealing large pieces of my heart when i wasn't paying attention. and i am starting to realize that the independence i lost somewhere along the way is simply dormant, not dead.

but slowly slowly- today i almost killed myself trying to exercise that independence. i rented a motorbike and took on the pothole-ridden, hilly jungle dirt road from my beach to the main town. i stayed in first gear the entire way so it was a laughably slow trip. managed even the insane main road into town with no problems except an occasional wandering of the mind (shake head, realize i am not in a video game). visited my best pal who i discovered hiding nearby after all. did some shopping, walked on the beach, and triumphantly made my way back before a hovering stormcloud could burst.

and crashed and burned halfway home. i was going down a holey hill too fast and forgot how to use the brakes. ((ow.)) some nice man picked me up and left me shaking and trying hard to look inconspicuous at the side of the road for the next twenty minutes, until i had convinced myself it was the brakes' fault and i was totally cool enough to get back on and continue my journey. i made it home but, unfortunately, i am black and blue and in pain. so much for independence.

funny, too, that my relationship with 'o' (oh!) began and ended with a motorbike accident. sigh.

i have no idea what i am going to do now.

(and it's raining again! what voodoo has been perpetrated on my island this year?!)

new year thank gawd

...and on the last day of the year (and of december), my best friend whom i visit daily ('c', german hippie writer) had been missing for 2 days already, leaving me rather frantic until she finally messaged me to say goodbye, she had left this crazy bad island. and (at first i thought very coincidentally) 'o' was missing also.... except for a blurry 10 minutes in the very early morning when he came to my house drunk and i tried to beat him up in a xanax haze on the porch and he left again... along with all of the money i had just withdrawn from the ATM to cover monthly expenses? or did i hallucinate going to the ATM?

oh, and it rained again, no electricity. i got drunk at a bar alone and watched fireworks on the beach with my doggie and went to bed by 1am to the sound of at least 4 bars raging.

but now it's 2006 so take that!