A Poem/Journal Entry From Thailand
If you’re like me, one of your fondest memories from Thailand was the thunderstorm. Maybe it was an odd midwestern homesickness, but I had been in the country for months and when the first thunderstorm started brewing off the coast, I was ecstatic.
Around the same time, I was trying to reconcile what I had learned and experienced with what I observed to be the experiences going on around me. What follows is something I wrote shortly after leaving Thailand over 10 years ago. It’s equal parts poem and journal entry.
Just because we share an environment, doesn’t mean we share experiences.
“Some More Drowning Horizons”
The smell of the storm days before it struck had my insides boiling over. Such anticipation for the return of this friend, almost forgotten in my new environment. The snap of its arrival rolled through the gaps the temples left on the landscape. Not the temples with sitting statues in them, the ones with open bars, the ones built for the wanderers hoping to find the freedom they couldn’t find back home. I’ve never understood why people think they can go to Paradise and find anything that they didn’t pack in their suitcase. There are all sorts of things to find on the way to Paradise, but no one thinks to look there.
These 6’6” potbellied wanderers with disappearing hair would get distracted from their freedom search by the loneliness, I think. They would trade currency for food, liquor, and the most versatile commodity offered: company. By day, “company” was a 5-foot, 95-pound translator to be yelled at for not translating quickly enough. It was her fault she had not become fluently bilingual since leaving her village to support her extended family. The men’s money is appreciated, though. Of course, the family thinks the men are a factory with sardine housing and no safety inspector. It’s better than accepting how the money is earned at night. The men make new friends and the girls keep their families from starving. Fair trade.
I knew a girl like this, Jainy. I think the name came from a song. Never did discover her real name… or actually speak with her… We traded smiles once. She was quiet, gentle, and must have had a room in my building to make her temple. I saw her with 2 or 3 different men the times I took a late and solitary dinner at the restaurant downstairs. The sunlight was hers; the turtle men needed to rest. The restaurant gave her a bucket of fried rice. I saw her sharing the meal with the dogs that had claimed the beach as their home. I sat back in the nook that I dug myself in the dune and watched these friends play. Someone appreciated her gentleness. She could still find joy in simple moments. I was envious.
Later, I ran after the storm’s smell through the lobby, walked along the pool, (safety first) passed my beach nook and onto the island that would soon be disappearing. It was low tide, but the skies were trying to make up for it. There was a swirl of cotton candy up there so deeply purple that it was falling into pink. The colors rolled together, surrounded by that cloud gray that only the birds know the name for. With calm resolve, the clouds came towards me. I danced. The waves on the sea crashed onto my island; the wave of rain swept across my body. My soul leapt, washed and rejuvenated. I felt a tear in my chest for those remaining, stained in the temples.
