Home of the fumbler…

Siam Paragon was what it was always – busy, transactional and filled with Thais and tourists alike. As I walked by the new Mos burger outlet, I saw people standing in small groups all staring at a spot in the pond of white furniture. A woman was standing and tightly hugging a man who was seated at a table and in severe convulsions. They were obviously foreigners, Westerners. The man was spasming uncontrollably and the woman had her head down over his head which was buried into her stomach. She had her arms tightly wrapped around him almost like she was trying to love him out of his epileptic state.

I couldn’t do a thing, nobody could. This woman and her husband, boy friend, friend whatever he was – were completely alone and together in this sea of pitying, curious, horrified faces all staring intently at them. I couldn’t see her face but I know she was feeling a level of fear that can only come from loving him. She was probably knowledgeable about his condition as she had the poise of somebody who had dealt with this before but I know she was still fearful for him, for her, for their distance from the safe harbor of their home.

The man’s convulsions eased and a staff member brought a wheel chair. The woman helped the man into it and they left. Their sense of dignity was deeply affecting. My sense of helplessness was overwhelming, is overwhelming. I felt a tight pain in my chest twisting its way around my neck that spoke to my shame, in-equanimity and lack of understanding of my feelings.

I want to know that the man is alright, that they are used to this happening as a couple and this was just a rare recurrence of his condition, that he had perhaps forgotten to take his pills and that the woman was now laughingly scolding him for forgetting. I needed to know they were now kissing and this only made his love for this woman who obviously loved him stronger. I wanted to know the woman wasn’t feeling despair with having to deal with this and she would be there for him forever.

I desperately want her to be saying to him – this is our world, my dear and I would give anything up for this.

Been reading about this all day:

Nobel winner blames cultural decline on “blogging and blugging”

Almost everybody has ripped into her. I am torn between laying into her myself and well, holding it inside. Hmm, that last sentence pretty much encapsulates my views I guess .

Is it fair to expect Nobel prize winners to not be idiots who feel the urge to shoot their mouths off about something they are not remotely familiar with? Look lady, you just won a Nobel for your ability to write. Stick with it – you won a prize and a neat bundle – you did not suddenly become the all-knowing goddess of all things. Pick up the cheque, go home, switch to premiere Darjeeling tea – you can afford it now and write some more books that will probably find their way onto Scribd or Google books and catch the eyes of millions more than the couple of thousand people who have probably read your books now.

And congratulations. To be fair, the rest of the speech was beautiful and inspiring.

True absolute dark terror is having to live in a community, a society, a country or a world where religion or other social norms have devolved to the extent that the helpless are punished for being helpless – as it has in Saudi Arabia.

A country where a rape victim is jailed for 6 months and given 200 lashes because she was alone with a man (man?) who then gang raped her with six of his buddies has given up all pretensions to morality – it has soaked up inhumanity to the extent that justice is no longer a recognizable noun.

What is wrong with these people? Generations have lived under an interpretation of a religion that has been passed through dark prisms repeatedly till all color is gone from any light that this religion once perhaps contained – but GBud, they still call it light!

They didn’t stop there though. They called the wretched soul an adulteress…for getting raped!

The pain this woman must be going through…how will she ever gain peace again, GBud? Will she ever know it’s not her fault, will she ever know that she has to live through this but it *will* end, that her suffering is impermanent, that this is but a moment? If she doesn’t, if nobody speaks this into her ears – her world will kill her and then decry her to death for the crime of murder.

This coral’s shape echoes the hand
It hollowed. Its
Immediate absence is heavy. As pumice,
As your breast in my cupped palm.

Sea-cold, its nipple rasps like sand,
Its pores, like yours, shone with salt sweat.

Bodies in absence displace their weight,
And your smooth body, like none other,

Creates an exact absence like this stoneSet on a table with a whitening rack

Of souvenirs. It dares my hand
To claim what lovers’ hands have never known:

The nature of the body of another.

Sometimes you read something that you would never be able to write but is exactly what you wish the talent to be able to articulate.

A mouse and a frog meet every morning on the riverbank.

They sit in a nook of the ground and talk.

Each morning, the second they see each other, they open easily, telling stories and dreams and secrets, empty of any fear or suspicious holding back.

To watch, and listen to those two is to understand how, as it’s written, sometimes when two beings come together, Christ becomes visible.

The mouse starts laughing out a story he hasn’t thought of in five years, and the telling might take five years!

There’s no blocking the speech flow-river-running-all-carrying momentum that true intimacy is. Bitterness doesn’t have a chance with those two.

The God-messenger, Khidr, touches a roasted fish. It leaps off the grill back into the water.

Friend sits by Friend, and the tablets appear. They read the mysteries off each others foreheads.

But one day the mouse complains,

“There are times when I want conversation and you’re out in the water, jumping around where you can’t hear me.

We meet at this appointed time, but the text says, Lovers pray constantly. Once a day, once a week, five times an hour, is not enough. Fish like we need the ocean around us!”

Do camel bells say, “Let’s meet back here Thursday night?” Ridiculous! They jingle together continuously, talking while the camel walks.

Do you pay regular visits to yourself? Don’t argue or answer rationally.

Let us die, and dying, reply.

~ Rumi

(From The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks)

I especially like the mine-detecting flowers – seeds that save lives at 16:16

An aberration of evolution just sent me a private message on a social networking site asking me for job. I quote

dear all

m vijay jaiswal hv done MBA in international business n working wd Fedex bt m not getting international exposure, can any one help me to find out d job in Bangkok.

I bet there is a leaky nuclear plant near where this guy was born…

This had me sitting with a stupid grin for a few minutes…

I am going to watch The Simpsons Movie tomorrow. I spent the last 6 weeks in Toronto watching seasons 1-9 and I’ve snorted enough morsels up my nose during my frequent laughing fits to fill Homer up.

I am not going to judge the movie too critically. Well, if I was the kind to be critical, I probably wouldn’t be a Simpsons connoisseur anyway…

Apu: Please do not offer my god a peanut.

I find it difficult to start things. This is no different. So, I have decided to continue things. I am going to pretend I have been blogging for ever and just hope that this works where 5 previous attempts at regular meaningful blogging didn’t.

I’m no sage, luminary or prophet – of these I had illusions but no more. I now think of myself as a rake : not the long-handed tools with tines – but the term used to describe a stock character in a play or a movie.

Stock character or not, I have something to say and everything to save for my own posterity. Presenting…