Part one in what might be something as long as two parts! Stay tuned!

I

She felt rested and ready to go out at last. After being in the hotel room for the first two days in Chiang Mai, Sarah finally felt ready to go out. Her new husband Jeremy had already been out, and on the first day he brought her back some trinkets from the night bazaar. He had tried to convince her to go out by telling her about the sights he had seen, how it felt so different to be there, and how polite everyone was. The travel channel didn't do it justice, he said. He said it wasn't the same without her there though, and he wished she would go out, just for a little while. "I have jet lag," she lied, and stayed indoors and watched Thai TV which she didn't understand. There was a lot about the king, which she recognized from the 1,000 Baht bill, and some amusing advertisements that she didn't understand at all, but she didn't want to go outside. 

On the second day she slept until the afternoon sometime. Jeremy had woken her up with some food from a street vendor outside. It was some kind of sweet pastry that was surprisingly good. After they had eaten, he told her that he heard of a casino in the centre of the town and wanted to check it out, and wondered if she wanted to come along. He understood that the bazaar was a lot to take in all at once, and maybe this would be a little easier. They could take a cab, the hotel manager had written down the address in Thai, so it would be easy. The manager said it was one of the best casinos in the city. He said they would enjoy it very much, both of them, whether they gambled or not, and there was a shopping mall quite close as well. It would be highly enjoyable for both of them. "You go ahead," she said. "You'll enjoy yourself. I'm going to stay in for one more day. Maybe tomorrow." He was disappointed, she could tell, and he sat down on the bed and put his hand on her arm and told her they were going to have a talk later tonight when he got back and she didn't say anything and then it was awkward, but he left. After that she showered and felt ready to go out.

She walked carefully downstairs and nodded to the friendly hotel manager, who told her that her husband had just left. "Thank you, yes," she said, and walked outside. She felt the heat and the humidity immediately in stark contrast to the air conditioned hotel. The bazaar was right in front of her, and it was just setting up. Locals arrived on scooters or bicycles and began unlocking the metal storage containers that transformed into booths full of merchandise. It stretched for blocks in every direction, according to her husband, and she felt suddenly out of place. She walked slowly across the street and along the main road. The sun was beginning to go down, and that was when the bazaar exploded with activity. As she walked, more and more of the cubes began opening to display trinkets and novelty items ranging from lighters to jewelery. 

Everything around her seemed so miniature; the vehicles, the food, even the people. She felt enchanted, and as the sun began to set and the market continued to grow around her, the feeling grew. There were lights everywhere, and smiling faces trying to sell her anything and everything. She smiled back, and said "No, thank you," to everything, until she found a small jewelery stand, and she stopped to look at everything. She picked out a small ring with three tiny rubies in the centre. The woman swore it was 62.5% pure silver, and the ruby was real. She didn't care though, and she paid the two thousand Baht for it. The lady was disappointed when she didn't barter, but she left back to the bustle of the market with her new ring on. She wanted to get lost suddenly, she thought it would be wonderful to lose herself in this world of friendly, carefree faces, and not go back to the hotel room at all. As soon as she thought that though, she began retracing her steps. She was feeling tired. 

She arrived back at the hotel room and no one was in the lobby and she went to her room and quietly opened the door, but it was empty. She felt a little relieved, thinking how disappointed Jeremy would have been, but also a little upset. She felt like the trip was a little meaningless, until she looked back down at her silver ring.

Cabin Fever I

Written many moons ago.

The old man came down from the mountains every spring to buy flour and whiskey and whatever other supplies he needed. The storekeeper's daughter once told me that he'd come into town and stop first at the store, smelling of the forest and sweat and urine, and place an order for so much whiskey that they'd make a special order just for that. Then he'd stay in town until it came, two weeks or four or however long. He wouldn't go back to the mountains without it. The spring he didn't come back it was joked in the taverns that it was the whiskey that finally killed him. Neither the storekeeper's daughter nor I laughed though, because only we knew how much whiskey it was, and that it was probably true.

It's all for you.

I've been spending a lot less time doing actual writing, and a lot more working on the title picture (above). Now that it's absolutely, unconscionably perfect, maybe I can crank something out.

Cabin Fever II

Sometimes the brothers would finish the season early, they loved the mountain but the one thing they couldn’t stand was having nothing to keep them occupied. On such occasions they would take the narrow path down to town, the fast route only taking what they needed to live off of. They would stay until they remembered why they loved the mountains again, a week at the most, and then leave, and it never caused any trouble, except they liked to gamble. They were good at it, being smart and able, they were willing to take the occasional chance, and unlike everyone else they bet within their limits and usually broke even. If they won anything they were inclined to buy drinks for everyone, which helped to soothe some losers and aggravate others. The bottom line, they gambled because they enjoyed it and I guess when the younger brother hit that royal flush he could have said anything, or nothing at all, but he looked at the old man straight in the eye as he laid down his cards and said "Either this isn't your day, or it very much is mine," and according to Sally, who was on her way past their table with a few drinks, it was definitely his day. But Sally was always partial to the boys, secretly waiting for them to crawl back down off the mountain every year.

We are less than published (we are un-published)

We are the bridge, the generation before.
We are not dissatisfied because we strive for not.
We are the gap, the hollowed-out hole
We live and conspire in the trenches waiting for another to bury us there
Warfare is child’s play but politics is a vicious game
We are less than philosophers since our sight has been muddied
Our philosophy will build the canal, someone else will open the flood gates
We are the foundation the others finish.

journal entry I from theodore

They take quick, short breaths because they don’t live long.  Not that they know it, I am sure they think they live a long time and considering the fact that they are aware of little less then being alive it’s hardly a surprise.  They exhale all at once to refill their lungs like they are reluctant to give it up: oxygen, water, nitrogen; anything that is a contributor.  Curiously they need little to nothing to really maintain existence and yet they are so motivated to preserve life.  I have heard of one or two of them actually self destructing with an overdose of adrenaline.  Their blood pumping too fast for their poor little veins and their quick beating little hearts exploding inside their chest.  Every time I think about them it reminds me of how meaningless their sad little lives are.  I envy the simplicity, the closure when they fall asleep and don’t wake up.  They live short little lives but they don’t know it.

-theo

The Trenches Explained

It could be argued that trench warfare birthed modernity. It took everything that was thought about war; the valour and romance and glory, and reduced it to the grim and grimy and gut-shot shit that it was; like reality. Nevertheless, the propaganda machines back home kept printing colourful, eye-catching, necessary posters to keep the faith and romance of war alive. If that wasn't what they intended, at least that's what happened.

I say that it birthed modernity because of the dissilusionment that people seemed to feel for the first time. Darwin had recently committed deicide, but that was just a snowflake in the cultural avalanche. Everywhere the lines between good and evil were being reconsidered, blurred, or redrawn and in the middle of all of that came hopelessness and the fear that it didn't mean anything.

Eliot, Yeats, Hemingway, all saw it firsthand and relayed the sense of impending nothingness to the world, who taciturnly agreed with them. The result over the past one hundred years has been a semi-curious, often apathetic investigation of hopelessness and despair. Most of the time we try to ignore it, but when it surfaces it's hideous and powerful.

We're still in the trenches, but we aren't sure who the enemy is any more. Sometimes we wonder if it even matters. We spend a lot of time trying to pretend that nothing is very important any more, and media has made that very easy. We're our own propoganda. We're entertaining ourselves to death.