I’m in Cambodia. I saw Angkor Wat today. Initial reaction: “This place makes me proud to be human.”
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I’ve worked out a way to compress and post the videos I’ve shot on my camera. There aren’t many, and they’re not of very high quality, but I’ll upload a few and dump them on the new Videos page. Now that I know how to get vids on the site I want to shoot more–when I get my camera back, that is. I dropped it off last week at a big chain electronics store in the MBK Center in Bangkok, and was happily surprised when they returned it all fixed in a couple of days. I soon discovered, however, that in fixing one problem they created another; I could move my lens again, but they screwed up the the autofocus.
I’m supposed to pick it up tomorrow; I’m also scheduled to receive my visa to Myanmar. We shall see. Neither the Myanmar embassy or the PowerBuy superstore left me soaring on wings of confidence. PS Can we take up a collection to buy an air conditioner for the Myanmar embassy? In the meantime, I’ve posted many new photos–all of which were shot post-accident and thus at the same middle-distance focal length. It was an interesting challenge to take pictures without relying on zoom or wide-angle. I leave it to you to judge the results.
The first video is 1:48 of young monks chanting at a wat in Luang Prabang. . . .
Again. Songkran (April 13-15) was the second New Year in two months that I’ve celebrated in Bangkok. And just when I was getting used to 4705. Well, Happy 2550 everyone.
Songkran is a kind of karmic spring cleaning; traditionally, houses are tidied up, Buddha statues are washed and doused with lustral water at the temples, and elders’ hands are sprinkled with water in a sign of respect and renewal.
Practically, though, Songkran has turned into an insane, multi-day, nationwide water fight. Everyone, young and old, is in on it, armed with water pistols, cannons, buckets, and hoses, as well as plaster made from talcum powder. There is no escape. In Bangkok, the water festival went on for four days straight; in Chiang Mai, Songkran is said to last a week or longer. It was fun for a couple of days, this drenching and getting drenched, but by the fourth day I had hung up my water pistols like a grizzled Clint Eastwood character and just stayed inside my guesthouse. No more damn water.
Can you even begin to imagine what a disaster this festival would be in the US?
Das ist the title of a trashy-looking German novel I saw lying around in a guest house a while back.
Well, I too am alone with the angst here in Bangkok. L. has returned to Germany, and I am temporarily camera-less. (I dropped my Kodak P880 off to get repaired and won’t have it for a week or so–it was functional but the lens was stuck in one position after the big moto crash.)
What to say about L.? It’s hard to describe, and still hard to believe, how intensely our paths collided and converged, how much we experienced together over such a short time. As she wrote to me when she got home, it’s like sharing a secret that neither of us can ever fully explain.
One of my favorite experiences in Bangkok came when I wandered into a temple at the end of a long day of sightseeing to find a group of monks performing their chants. At first I was happy just to have a floor to sit on (feet not pointing towards the Buddha!), but after a few minutes I got completely caught up in the chant. It was hypnotic–a low repetitive drone, with higher parts coming from the older monks at these really unexpected (to me) intervals and harmonies. 
It was so simple, but the longer I listened, the more complicated the patterns started to become. About 20 minutes in, a single bell was struck, and seriously–something inside of me shifted. I was suddenly aware of the birds singing outside. After they finished, I walked back into the world feeling calm, observant, aware. Mind like a mirror. Which lasted for about five minutes as I was set upon by tuk-tuk drivers and women selling silk prints of ancient erotic art outside the temple, but still.
This was at Wat Pho, the temple which houses the incredible Reclining Buddha, 150 feet long and the biggest of its type in Asia. The reclining position shows the Buddha about to achieve Nirvana. (Other basic positions: sitting, standing, walking. And within each position are a variety of gestures, or attitudes. For example a sitting Buddha may have both hands in his lap, which shows the moment he attained enlightenment. Or he may have left hand in lap, right hand over his knee with fingers touching the ground. This position is called subduing Mara; Mara, evil personified, had tried to distract the meditating Buddha with demons and monsters and worldly pleasures.) Read the rest of this entry »
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