It's hot. How does Bangkok do it? Day after day, this apartment at night has a temperature rise, the building disappating far too much heat into this concrete on concrete space. I'm in front of the fan, my feet swollen from flight after flight. I've had only one day without "kankles" on the last trip, and the sweat runs down my back, my temples, my knees even. And I love it. I love the motorbike taxi on which I perch, one hand filled with monk accessory store purchases, the other holding my Hatchi bubble tea as I work on the iced milk tea to capture the most "bubbles". This country can't be compared. Thailand becomes more unique every time I leave and return. It's commercialism and old-school politics/thuggery all in one. It's a coffee shop at a toll booth, it's the food and massage and gold leaf at every corner. Posh, nice infastructure, convenient, and hotter than any city should be at 11pm.
I've been thinking a lot about returning to Portland. Espcially on the heels of the realization that I'm flying back in three weeks. Only three weeks. I feel wholly unprepared. Unplanned. Now why would this feel any differently than being here, as that unplanned aspect seems to be the motto for my life since leaving.... Because in Portland I have a car. I have stuff. I have intense friend groups and not-friend groups. I have an ex-husband, ex-entanglements, ex-life, and I worry that despite my growth, I've not grown enough.
I want a cigarette desperately tonight, in this swealtering heat, Aaron is asleep in the next room, a tangle of limbs under the strongest fan we have, and he's sweating. I'm on the balcony overlooking Bangkok, wondering how to have this Sukhumvit apartment again. How this time had so much magic with the view and the person I happened to end up traveling next to. Every night the city spread out in its hazy lazy blinking light high-rises just a finger-point away, every morning the sun rising through buildings and trees and the cries of tropical birds, the bells of broom salesman carts through the narrow sois.
I judge a future that isn't here yet, thinking of returning to Portland, to the scene of the Rebecca on Rebecca crime. I'm fortunate because the times those values come into question are generally spectacular. Descending a narrow, rusted staircase clinging to the side of a 370 meter cliff, for example, the wind blowing me back up a half-step as I watch the sun soaring higher and lighting the crevaces between the lion's feet entrance to Sigiriya, Sri Lanka. I wonder, how will it be to see Andy again? I'm also wondering if I can leave my lungs half-filled and do some shallow breathing at this lung capacity level and hover longer over the lion fish, a fish that will kill you with one touch of its spines before you can surface again. Can I be the friend I want from others? Can I give the love I want to receive to others, to myself? This is the thought as I decide to paddle for this wave over the others, my arms tired and frantically trying to get into the momentum of the just-about-to-break.
Last night and this morning were hard days. I'd been traveling for hours, trains and buses and flights, the nice buzz of a dinner beer had faded into a relentless headache, and my travel buddy was in a funk that mirrored my own. Bad combo that feeds itself until someone naps or eats. My Sri Lankan dress showed every drop of sweat from nerves, lack of sleep or just plain heat, leaving me criss-crossed with dark marks, glossy and flushed and exhausted. Bangkok welcomed me with open arms, familiar and exotic, with a language that when I relax, comes to me in spurts of semi-recall. We spent the day hanging out laundry only to bring it down within 2 hours, crispy dried in the heat, packing bags for the Philippines, bags for Portland, bags for Bangkok then Portland.
Sri Lanka feels like a misty dream of tea plantation mountains, safaris and crumbling gray ocean, topped with curry and sambol. I love eating with my fingers, picking out a saree, sitting up in an attic over the narrow main street in Kandy under an ancient wire fan distorting the Indian pop songs filling the stifled space and drowning out the hum and clatter of old sewing machines. There was something about that country that got into me. No, not a parasite. But a dream of life there, a desire to return, to go deeper into that culture/life. I was charmed. Like the snake charmer I saw between parked cars, taking the lid off of his basket, playing the music, and the cobra rising just meters from where I stood as I swayed with them both.
Tomorrow is packing, eating, massage, packing more, and work! Then in one and one half days, it's a flight to Manila. Another place to wrap my head around. Another colony evolved, another religion, another metropolis, another culture. What will be their unique take on coconut to eat, as a tool? How will Catholocism evidence itself? Does anyone speak Spanish? Or the questions that really get to me. The ones about whether or not I can be in a relationship, whether I can stay in my integrity and what the hell does that look like anyway? Will I get out of Portland again? Do I want to? Can I keep my job? What do I do with my stuff? Will I lose all of my friends if I don't live there? Is this the end of the Portland chapter? Is this just another Portland chapter and I'll never make it back to SE Asia?
In the vein of trying to be as honest as is possible, these are the contents of my heart. And there's a lot more that bringing up only turns up the volume of an inner voice I've been long running from and face on long marches through airports, stinking and sweating, tired and hungry and an hour past needing to pee and my boyfriend is in the same state and we can't even be around each other for the next four hours because its enough to deal with being alone with our thoughts. I remember leaving Portland when I needed too. When what I'd been doing wasn't working for me any longer. I arrived here, in Bangkok, with all of that unresolved shit, and acted that out right here. For a while, I was able to. But that wasn't what I came here to do. I came here to discover another life, another way of fulfilling all of that wander-lust, thrill-seeking, personal-challenge spikes I crave in my life.
Have I proven it to myself yet? That I'm tough enough? Brave enough? Adaptable enough? Good enough? No one else can give that to me, no matter how many people I ask that from, no matter how spontaneous or authentic the recognition, it's enough only when I know its enough. No one else can tell me that. And my life is a sweet curve into the awesome adventurous zone, only getting better, more intense, more varied, more challenging as I go. Maybe I'll give myself a grade later and keep asking the questions. Faith is turning out to be a very different thing as I get older. Faith that the moment is exactly enough and I just need to be in it totally to see just how exactly enough it is. Faith that love never lets you down, no matter what face that lesson wears, or how much I fear hurting. A cheesy tune can dramatically improve a mood, as can a motorbike ride, so happiness is simple, available, and just a mental key turn away.
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It's the next night. I'm in Manila and have no clue about this place. It's been another long travel day ending in bad internet service which has soured everyone in the hotel-ette micro room I signed us up for without having a clue how actually tiny and awful it is. I'm wiped out and about to take a shower. More soon.