Thai Thoughts And Anecdotes Part 138

INTRODUCTION

Easy to judge
So so right–
Easy to laugh
At other's plight.

But ever try
To not compare?
To just accept–
Do you dare?

Just give and love–
No patronizing
From above.
Do you dare?

Just love and accept.
Try a new game.
Not the same old
Same-Same.

You are only as good
As what others feel.
What vibes are you sending–
What's the deal?

HAPPY OR SAD

"So within each man is the quick of him, when he is baby, and when he is old, the same quick; some spark, some unborn and undying vivid life-electron." (D.H. Lawrence)

Sometimes in Thailand I don't know whether to be happy or to be sad. Removed from the cultural net of my own country and language and customs I am confronted with things that just defy easy categorization. I used to go to the Chatuchak
Weekend market two or three times a year. Because I am by personality a generalist rather than a specialist it was fun to wander around just to see what I could see. One year there was a store selling used cowboy boots. Cool. Makes you wonder
though. I mean what was his source of supply? Dead cowboys? Or did he just rip the boots off sleeping cowboys? I'm single. I've got time to think about these things.

And of course I would always make the obligatory trip to see the fighting roosters for sale plus the fighting rooster tonic potions that are supposed to get them jazzed up. Standing there in the hot sun holding one of these little bottles
you have to wonder what effect it would have on your system to choke down the mysterious contents of about twenty of these bottles. Hey, I can't be the only one thinking this. Maybe that is where the so-called Viagra research started–some
foreign guy wondering how to make human roosters with dicks of steel. Anyway you don't see much of this stuff in Boston and you don't have many of these thoughts in Boston.

Then of course there was always the food. I'd never buy anything unless I had a teeruk with me but it was fun to look. What the hell is that? And what the flying crap is that? And what in the world is that? Fun to watch the Thais eat
because they know what they are doing and they are happy. Makes me feel happy to see happy people. I like tropical fish so I would investigate that. But just a tourist looker. Tough to get plastic bags of time zone disoriented fish through Detroit
customs on the way home. The upscale textiles and clothing for women were sometimes works of art. Reminded me of the extraordinary clothes for women that you can see in the Night Market in Chiang Mai if you look. Made you want to buy some of the
clothes and frame them and put them up on the wall. Jewelry was always fun. I love jewelry. There is a lovely middle aged woman with hair to her ass who works at the check-in desk at the Nana hotel who has jewelry up to both of her elbows. Fun
to talk to. Again works of art.

And so it would go. Wandering around to no purpose other than pleasure. Tourist. Incredibly crowded and incredibly hot. Being a tourist. And at the end of the day I would always make my way through the landscaping section (want to buy some
giant rocks?) and go across the street to the park to wind down and cool down. Not that many people know about the park. But it is right across the street and fabulous. A large well tended botanical garden with water elements and benches and paths
and civilized people. The perfect end to the hot and crowded market. So that would be my trip once or twice or three times per year to the Chatuchak Market.

And every year and every trip I would forget about the elderly Thai couple that were weaving animals out of straw. Every single trip I would walk into them or come upon them or almost trip over them and internally exclaim,

"Oh, these guys. They are still here."

And then I would stand and watch. These two elderly people, man and wife, had no money to rent a stall or pay others to weave the animals or even the infrastructure of a table and chairs. Right in the middle of the sidewalk crowd they would
just plop themselves down on the concrete and weave little animals out of straw. Pigs and roosters and water buffalos and snakes and birds and frogs and fish and butterflies and dogs and chickens and elephants and monkeys and scorpions and spiders
and beetles. The animals of their agrarian youth. The animals of their lives. The characters in their stories and memories and dreams. Just the kinds of things that modern Thai youth sneers at and does not want to be caught dead near.

A public relations weasel and a smarmy agent would have recommended that this couple of ancients should be weaving Mercedes Benz automobiles and cell phones and karaoke microphones and . . . but that would not have been them. Their race was
run and they were what they were and the little straw animals were as representative of them as their cells. The little animals were well woven and artfully made and about six inches to a foot high and very cheap. I never saw a single person buy
one.

I used to stand and watch and pity. Poor and illiterate, shabby and filthy, without the means to protect themselves from the vicissitudes of life and reduced to weaving straw animals that no modern Thais wanted. And I used to think the paternalistic
questions that so infuriate the destitute and the dispossessed. Questions like:

Where do they sleep at night?
Do their children remember them and help them and love them?
Are they receiving any medical care?
How long have they been married?
Do their grandchildren even know who they are and do they respect
them?

Do they get enough to eat?
Why are they so filthy?

But over time they won me over. They would look up and smile. Smiles without calculation. Acceptance without guile. Smiles I do not remember receiving from my own parents. Smiles I will never receive from a wife or children. I would squat
down and look carefully at each little animal. They would say things. Of course I never had any idea what they were saying but they were talking to me. Not negotiating or lying or pushing. Just talking to me. No one else at the market had talked
to me all day. I would always buy one or two of the little animals.

In the years to follow I made some advances in my thinking and the pity turned to admiration. They had each other and had had each other their whole lives. I had no one. It was they that probably pitied me. Their ancient Thai thoughts might
have scrolled:

Where was my wife?
Where were my children?
Where was my love?
Why was I alone every time they saw me?
What was wrong with me that I could not attract a woman?
What part of my life could I make with my hands?

They loved each other. They had each other and their little straw animals that no modern Thai wanted to buy. Each one was made unhurriedly and with love. They had a common interest. They had something that connected them to their lives. And
throughout their lives they had not abandoned the electron spark of their lives that D.H. Lawrence speaks of. The essential thing that we are born with that makes us unique. The part of us that can not be sold or bought or modified or denied.
They were what they were and that is what they went with in their lives. And to find someone else to share your primal electron spark of humanity and uniqueness is everything. It is beyond love. It is mating. They had and they had had everything.

Natural lives lived in concert with the life spark that had been given to them at birth. The same baby cries and twitches and eye movements at the start would be repeated on the death bed. We are what we are. To forget or deny bone marrow
deep wisdoms is to miss out on life in the pursuit of the ephemeral like social acceptance or material things. The only things that matter are to love and to be loved. Animals that mate for life know this. Many people do not.

What was I doing wandering around looking at stuff I did not need? What grotesquery of foolishness caused me to judge these people based on their lack of power or their clothes or their poverty. I had not one thing that connected me to my
life. Like many modern people my life was one of schedules and timetables and quotas and production meetings and bills to pay and then a vacation to some faraway place. But if someone came in my apartment and tried to pick out something that was
me nothing would cry out for attention.

What is the quick of me?
What is my spark?
What is my undying vivid life-electron?

Maybe there was no me to me. Christ, I am feeling sorry for these people and I do not even have little straw animals as talismans of my life or my accomplishments or my past. These people are doing better than me. I had been feeling sorry
for them because they did not have any things and they might have been feeling sorry for me because I did not have any memories.

Sometimes in Thailand I do not know whether to be happy or to be sad. Why do I go to the Chatuchak Weekend Market? Because it makes me feel happy. Doing inconsequential time filling tourist things makes me happy. Never successful in my business
or personal life I am now reduced to little things that make me happy–like going to the Chatuchak Market. But then I would stumble into the elderly couple weaving little straw animals. Now I feel kinda sad. But I'm not sure whether I feel
sad for them or whether I feel sad for me. Happy or sad? Sometimes in Thailand I do not know whether to be happy or to be sad.

Sometimes in my own life I do not know whether to be happy or to be sad.

Stickman's thoughts:

The greatest submission writer of them all is back! Yeeha! I wonder where he has been? Maybe he fell in love….?!