letters to thailand - part 3

To the boys and girls of the LEO CLUB
c/o the honourable chairperson BeeBee;
The Construction View Hotel Ao Nang, Krabi


“I’m like a stranger
Stranger in my own home town
Some folks I’ve known since my childhood
Yet they don’t see me walking around”
- Ray Charles

This song, my dear friends, is haunting my brain for days now.
There is so little I understand of this society I left some 17 years ago and so little do most of my friends, my old friends,understand me.

It seems that now I can love my city only through my memories, the beach being that one exception where I freely embrace the present.
Was I naïve to think I could return and simply surf that giant wave of hectic city life?
It’s worse for there is no such thing as 'return'…it seems impossible to come back into a society once you’ve been away for so long.

First of all you find nobody cares what you did all those years…"ah, you lived in the middle of nature, mmm how interesting…gibbons in the hills around your house? …cobra’s you say?…well you know, my girlfriend and I always watch a program with this guy Steve what’s his name, anyway, that guy catches crocs with his bare hands, unbelievable."

They babble some more about their trip to Disneyland, they’ve been 3 days in Paris… "cost a fortune but hey, ehhh."… and I, I want to scream and take the first plane back east.

Time is like a giant glacier, moving… unstoppable, taking everything in its stride, leaving nothing behind; crushing all that is rooted too deep to replace, like memories; mostly of the collective kind.

letters to thailand - part 1
letters to thailand - part 2