tuesday rhapsody

[tuesdayrhapsody]

thoughts, 4

I survived a haircut. He bought a motorcycle. 

[tuesdayrhapsody]

cafe life in Hoi An, Vietnam

[tuesdayrhapsody]

Ban Lung, Cambodia

A van, packed. One blunt French Canadian here for a year to teach spoke for us, asked if we needed any help, why we were here. Windy, hilly, dusty roads to a tree house lounge and our beginning bungalow. There are ants everywhere. The hill top landscaped with blues, clays. The sky changes and here is the view. We brought all the backpackers to the cafe down the road where there are four bookcases and one moody Canadian who is always there sitting and smoking in the same chair. The candles are always lit. The power goes out for dinner and a little later. Heat lightening defining the night's overcast shadows, but not enough to erase the crescent moon. By day, we got lost. A parade of foreigners on motorbikes, speeding through farm land greens and red dirt streets. Row after row of trees.  

[tuesdayrhapsody]

thoughts, 3

I feel the silence between his guitar strings. I witnessed a gecko's stillness. a cactus grows surely in even humidity. my legs are numb from the day's fatigue of doing nothing. I never imagined myself in this moment. where does water come from? how many friends does the average person have? I don't want to be average. I want to be friends with myself before anyone else. who invented the word "cause"? "donation"? I've always wanted a dog. I've always had a cat. 

[tuesdayrhapsody]

a long bus ride through Cambodia

mirrored sky in still rice pools. trees stand like a photograph.

a woman drives a bicycle down a straight mud-licked road. she carries a basket full of greens off each handle bar. I don't know where she has been or where she will go.

vans carry many from country side to city. blank stares met in slow passing. all babies eat the same way. 

a farmer's motorcycle sits out in the open. he kneels in front of a life's work. a boy rides his motorbike with one hand and wind in his shirt. a girl chases all the ducks out of her pond. 

[tuesdayrhapsody]

thoughts, 2

things I think about when I can't sleep: if a person does not write, what does their brain feel like? everything smells and sounds like itself. doctors of senses. I want to study the anthropology of postal mail. sometimes I think people forget we are made of water. metaphor is only a word. it's the middle of the afternoon on the other side of the world. every day is a new day. I can't tell if I have slept. there are two kinds of people in the world that matter: poets and scientists. energy is a bed sheet shared between two lovers. white sheets don't make sense. 

[tuesdayrhapsody]

our last day in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Every morning these last few days, we wake in sweat. It's hot here. September being the wettest season of the Kingdom jungles and city parts too. The rain does not break much of humid frizz and slower walks. I open the front door to rinse in our outdoor shower. 

It is expected that a cat will be waiting when I make it to the outdoor kitchen of our rooftop garden space as of late. Expected lays down his furry head against the door, back upside down -- or right-side up for the universal feline freedom -- on the typical woven floor mat. Expected, because on the first day of our week-long lounge in this space, we just so happen to buy milk to enjoy a bowl or two of cornflakes complementing the first fridge we could call our own in months. Expected, because that same night we induldged on cheese we hadn't tasted in weeks. Expected, because I called him Cat, never picked him up, and pet him in all the once-a-cat-owner-always-a-cat-lover places even in the foreign lands. Expected, because I always meowed back even if he sounded like a cow when he peaked nighttime energy, and a horse just when he stirred from a late morning nap.

Which is where I expected to find him this morning, but he wasn't sleeping. We had set an alarm and I took a quick shower. No, our Cat was awake and waiting where he had these last few mornings. But this morning, he held a gecko in his mouth. The gecko, without a tail held on too. He, the gecko, was still alive. The cat was too. Welcome to the jungle of a city in Cambodia. Survival of the fittest for breakfast. The champions are having a meeting in the basement but this kitten just wants to play. 

[tuesdayrhapsody]

thoughts, 1

some days, it's just too hot. there's no give. there's no slack. I've forgotten how to sweat. or maybe it is that I am sweating so much I have forgotten how not to. afternoons have become the precipice of this consciousness. I cannot do anything but sit. 

[tuesdayrhapsody]

postcards, 4

in the last week, we have slept in 6 different beds. we were in an easy city, Siem Reap, then off the beaten path to Kampong Cham, and now we're in the capital and largest city of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. our first night in this city, we slept at a party hostel. we hadn't seen tourists in a couple weeks and it was a shock to hear English and understand what people were saying around us. our escape route put us in one of the creepiest of hotels. our room, a walk down a long narrow hall, did not have a window and had locks everywhere. there were strange markings on the walls. there was a curfew; wifi was "broken." we thought we were the only guests, but then woke up to a man in the room immediately next to ours yelling in Russian, and erratic sounds of construction. after a fitful sleep, we left.

[tuesdayrhapsody]

postcards, 3

we are sharing cafe space at a place called "Smile". much of this country is community oriented. although Adam and I still feel like outsiders every day, we experience places like this. a restaurant made up of staff entirely of young adults who are orphans. they learn how to cook and craft through a school whose graduates work here. the restaurant sits across from the Mekong River, which is easily the widest river I have ever seen. September being the tail end of the rainy season, everything is lusciously green. it is a beautiful day.

[tuesdayrhapsody]

postcards, 2

transportation here is all kinds of wack. in Thailand, it's a "bus-walk-tuktuk-van-bus-taxi-boat-long-boat" string of events, tiring a day and most times the next day. most days we walk out of the apartment/hotel/hostel, we are bombarded by a barrage of tuktuk drivers who yell things like "tuk tuk!" with a guess at our nationality. we have often gotten "bonjour!" assuming we speak French. admittedly, guessing nationalities has been a hobby of ours, too. walking through markets is just as loud and incoherent. women selling things of all kinds, always say "hi you want to buy something" as if it is not a question. young girls with babies on their hips are not to be trusted. they are the most vicious in getting your attention as they are able to corner you, cut you off from who you are walking with, pull on your shirt, yell when you start to walk away. it took us a week in Cambodia to understand that we need not assume people do not speak English. however we often ask the one person in the room that does not understand what we're asking for and will turn to yell in Khmer at another attendant for translation. needless to say, we need to get out of the city.

[tuesdayrhapsody]

Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia

[tuesdayrhapsody]

postcards, 1

we're staying at a rooftop studio garden space where we have been able to cook, watch movies, take outdoor showers, hand wash our laundry, dry our laundry on a line, meet a stray cat and offer it milk, act like we own the place. it's something that we both reluctantly admit that we needed. I say reluctant because I have learned that the appearance of travel as seamless is an illusion. we have had our fun though (my god, I almost spelled it "phun"). we spend a lot of time doing nothing, thinking about food, making or eating food, playing cards, talking, laughing about nothing, talking and sometimes crying, talking about our day's challenges, the challenges of travel in a country that does not speak our language, and lately reading to each other. I assume that these are all the things we would be doing if we were in one place. we do spend a lot of time "planning" which has been unnatural for me. 

[tuesdayrhapsody]

Siem Reap, Cambodia

Follow the trail of the typical backpacker and you will often find a bookcase stocked with different languages covered in wear. Most of these bookcases are for free, otherwise considered in exchange of another, like love, of the "take one leave one" philosophy, some are found in travel agencies or at "tourist information" desks, cafes. Oh the collection of cafes. After a month overseas, we made it to Cambodia. Siem Reap, a town with a different scene than that of our Thailand explorations. It is dusty in all the interesting places. It took us a few days of walking to find a neighborhood with more than its locals. Foreigners flood the old French quarter. A row of stores with avocados on the menu. If the word "happy" is eaten, you will be high.  We're sitting on the second floor of a cafe (Sister Srey) with round reading chairs and open window bar stools. There is art on the wall, and there is a bookcase, "communal" they call it. Imagine a world where literature is free. I picked up two books and I'm not going to tell you what they are just yet, not yet, before I tell you that out of the whole bookcase, I picked up two copied copies. These two books were photocopied! Now imagine a world where literature is free. 

On our walk to this cafe, we were stopped by a man to be asked "Do you speak English?" He was looking for free wifi but this information is not relevant yet. Now imagine a world where wifi is free. 

After a month overseas, I am contemplating the intention of globalization and I am considering what it means to just be. 

[twopages]

Us.

[tuesdayrhapsody]

Railay, Thailand

Shoes scatter the floors of store fronts. Bungalow retreat hillside into the jungle of foreign bird calls. Or should I say, we are the foreigners. I’ve only been to this part of the world for a little bit of time, but I take my western inquiry with me when I am then reminded: Humans Should Not Be Here. There are bumper stickers that read “Keep Railay Clean” around what feels like an island, but is actually a peninsula without road access. Long boats ship in beers, water, pineapples. Locals carry in what they can through the high tide at lunch time. 

Railay is divided by its names ‘East’ and ‘West’, but not much is different across the 15 minute walk to the other side. A resort town with a variety of languages pacing the crooked sidewalks. The view is all around. Look up to the limestone crags and palm trees. Look through the tourists and tree houses to the endlessly rewarding clear water beach. 

It’s the second night, and we’ve gotten pretty good at slapping mosquitos to dust. 

[tuesdayrhapsody]

Ao Nam Mao, Thailand