This is the post where I've been staring at the screen, writing a word, erasing it, writing another word, erasing it, pushing out a full sentence, erasing it, staring at my fingers on the keyboard and trying to find how to get into what wants to be said.
Usually, I go back to my thesis advisor's advice: just show what's there. Usually, I would try to describe one thing, then another, and hope the description was tight enough to explain or express why it seemed significant enough to write out. Problem is, there's nothing to show.
After a night urping bubbles of acidic chemical bile and making hourly trips to the geyser pot (waterfalls are a tempting metaphor but too passive), I put on the shirt that fit pretty well when I came over. I rolled up the sleeves because I don't like the cuffs hanging down to my knuckles and wished for a similar trick with the collar that hangs open down my chest. Pants, belt, well, it was the smallest belt I could find, stateside, and it's two holes smaller, now. I started putting on my shoe at the same time I started brushing my teeth, hobbled around with the last of the day's packing, and still couldn't hold in a whimper at the final, stomping, squeeze.
Morning descents of the staircase have given me a huge appreciation of a big, solid bannister. The left foot fights to move under the edema and the right is somehow able to scream louder from under the layers of edema, inflammation, and pain, with veins swollen and as stiff as the ligaments and tendons that haven't really been used in a couple of months.
Outside, it's just after 7 and already in the high 30s. Without direct sunlight, the ambient humidity has condensed into misty haze in the trees. Homicidal drivers roar and honk every whichway on the road, songtaus honk and hoot at me, and scooters loaded with three or four of the dear students I get to try to yell over for most of the day in hundred-plus rooms packed with sixty kids blow past with the little darlings cackling "HARRYPOTTYHARRYPOTTYHARRYPOTTY!" well above the ambient roar. I've learned, very painfully, not to notice, though, because the sidewalks are an uneven minefield of missing cobbles, raised cobbles, unexplainable sink holes, sewer drains, rusted drain covers, missing drain covers, dog poop, piles of burnt garbage, piles of fresh garbage, sooty piles of burning garbage, scooters, bicycles, cars, pickups, military transports, shagged-out tour coaches, the odd cow, sometimes an elephant, all packed in between the breakfast carts that serve noisy groups of commuters sitting on stackable chairs at folding tables--look up and you're flat on your face, which is about the only way in the world to quiet such a crowd of Thais. No mention of how scary a scratched knee has become.
But I'm walking toward an airconditioned office at the top of 3 flights of stairs invariably loaded with smiling, "Hello teacher! Good morning!" and the occasional reach for a hand or arm.
Across the street is the cart where I just smile and point to the display case of leaves and pig whatnots and the shriveled lady makes a soup without the cubes of coagulated blood and extra liver, then smiles and hands me an extra baggie--rinds trimmed from strips of deep fried pig belly. She saves them for me.
Overhead, egrets glow pink in their commute to the swamps and paddies, and whooping jungle sounds come from trees around the stadium.
I'm in Thailand. I live here. This is my commute.
And at this point, I'm not afraid anymore.
There's nothing to show for it, but that's what's changed.
Not delusions of indestructibility or confidence that nothing else can go wrong. THAT is one set of illusions living here has broken down, beaten to a pulp, kicked holes in, and, on a bad day, pissed on.
It's that the prospect of losing or hurting something else is no longer scary, it's simply an experience. Getting to see a one-horned rhino and watch elephants bathing in the morning; getting another intestinal parasite. Getting hooted and cackled at; getting to listen to Pali chanting before the traffic kicks up. Being sick away from home. Not having running home as a reasonable--or even as a desperate--option.
How to say, "It doesn't scare me anymore" without being cliche, without failing to communicate what I really mean by that.
And today.
Waking up as I'm already lurching toward the bathroom, the constriction of which squeezes out a juicy drop. At one time, this would be embarrassing. Now, I'm just glad it wasn't more and that I woke up in time to reach the pot.
I had a start when I saw what looked like a huge mezzaluna bruise circling the inside of my left ankle, the "good" ankle, but when I looked more closely, it's a crazy dense web of blood vessels under skin that hasn't seen much sun since, um, well, I guess the last time I really wore shorts was in Italy. It's not a bruise but the beefy vasculature to help with the edema, and in fact most of my ankle is a similar web of blue veins in pasty skin on what could just about be an anatomy class model of a "working" ankle: no longer are there the odd muscles from climbing mountains and refusing to not tap my foot while playing music, just a framework of bones and tendons with a couple of sadly emaciated ligaments.
HOW FANTASTIC!
For the first time since about March 12, just after leaving the Himalayas, I can see my ankle!
And it goes on. How to avoid cliches while conveying that you might not have a choice in what happens to you, but you do have a choice in reacting to it.
This morning, I woke up and knew that the only way Thailand will beat or break me is if I allow myself to be beaten or broken. And no way in hell is that going to happen.
In fact, the only good choice I see is to come out of this a whole helluva lot stronger (spiritually and mentally, certainly not physically), smarter, and happier than when I came here.
I guess I'll tell myself that I've earned the cliche and declare to the past year(ish) that's been dragging me down like an ape on my back that I bite my thumb at thee, and I will not allow the flaming wads of poo flung my way ruin a trip to one of the strangest zoos in the world.
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