Paying my respects

It’s hot and I don’t know how to think.  My mind moves in binary code, on and off, on and off.  It happened so long ago and here I am asking Cambodia politely to move into its black and cobwebbed memory hole and take it out, dust it off and hand it to me.  Hand it to me, so that it can break all over me and I can take it from them.  Take it from them in pieces; it’s all I can really handle of it, pieces.  Hard to say that now after all I’ve endured, I can only handle a country’s pieces, but if they would only dust it off, place it in my hands, and watch it break all over me, maybe my blood would mix with their memory and it would become mine.  Mine, so that they could for some time, forget about it.  I walked over their bones, bones and teeth and clothes and saw where it happened so long ago but for me in my empathetic container that I’ve always known to be my body and this strange thing that I have as a heart, I could feel it like it were yesterday.  I could feel it, like I can feel it in my stomach when people tell me their burdens, like I can feel it behind my teeth when people tell me what crawls behind their eyelids at night, I could feel it.  No, Cambodia, I will never ever understand what you went through so long ago before I was born, but not so long ago that I can’t imagine it; the same dusty roads, the same brown everything, the same.  With smiles so brilliant I can never let you have this suffering for your own so when I am here and when I come back and live here, I will take it back as mine so you don’t have to have it. 

I walked over them today, over their bones and teeth and clothes.  I felt it all over, more than I could have ever imagined.  I know their extremes of emotions as they made that journey to the fields, I understand and validate with an unconscious and unwavering love for humanity each and every emotion that they had during the last moments of their life; the patience and impatience, the idleness and nervousness, the calling out to loved ones, and the inevitable sink into the low-level functioning of acceptance.  I hold it in my heart and respect them all for feeling those emotions and for feeling the ones that I will never know. 

I saw the tree, the cryptically enchanting tree where babies saw the end and I heard the noise, the screams of their mothers, I heard it in that place behind my teeth where I would grind away my own screams at night when no one was watching.  Yes, Cambodia, give me those memories when I come back, when I can be inside of you forever if you’ll have me because I already see myself curled up in the fetal position, laying peacefully in a rice paddy like so many of your children have - peacefully looking up at the sky and the green and the nature that will never change to accommodate the human brutalities that forever occur under it. 

I walked over them, their bodies and teeth and bones, where they were left and where their clothes still are and I saw their skulls piled magnificently in a way that seemed to make people forget the terror they endured…not just a pile of bones, no these people were people, they took the same route I did from their prison to another prison; they took the same route I did and I walked over their bodies and I could feel what they felt.  I will never know it exactly but my teeth tingle and when my brain switched to 0 in the binary code, my arms and legs flipped to electric currents, pulsing though memories that were not my own, emotions that were not within my spectrum but that belonged to me, remnants of the last…pieces…and…I gasp for air and remember who I am and where I am and feel and feel and feel that by feeling what they felt the way I can feel what they felt, the way I walked over their bones and teeth and clothes and saw where the men threw her baby, threw hundreds of hers and babies against that tree that I am giving them an ounce of the pounds of respect that they deserved but never got.  That they inherently searched for but wouldn’t know until the afterlife when me and people like me would walk over their bones and teeth and clothes and marvel at how beautiful the nature was around these killing fields and now, miraculously, the souls of these people although as far away as the dusty Cambodian winds could take them from this hell.   At least their bones got to rest beneath the feet of someone who can marvel at their strength, someone who can feel their screams behind their teeth. 

Trees emerged and plants grew, green covered the brown and the deep unmistakable red but would never cover their killers’ shadows but at least their bones got to rest in the shade and now people come to cry like they did.  Gruesome violence makes these accommodations seem sufficient, doesn’t it?  I feel sufficient knowing that my soul got to feel their souls for a while, that my teeth will always hurt with that wildly painful and similar hurt, that that place inside my stomach will always be breathless at times like these, that this is my form of recognizing and respecting the immense suffering that these people, these thousands upon thousands of people went through.  It happened so long ago and today I walked on top of their bodies knowing that their hearts had flitted away in the dusty Cambodian air, but that their bones and teeth and clothes were still there and I felt it.  I don’t know it, but I felt it. 

My Womanhood is Purple

August 29^th

^{Look out.}

Womanhood is something that I love while traveling.  It’s buoyant, it’s radical, it’s simple and plain, loud and quiet.  We roar, we purr, we are slutty and we go home early.  We talk about it, we bond, we are jealous and envious and we hate each other.   We grow instantly and laugh and giggle over something silly and childish, like boys, masturbation, and books.  My womanhood is neither red nor blue, but rather purple, flowing between me and all other women, women I hate and loathe, women I love immediately, women who eye me with disdain and women who ignore me, women who hug me and women who lurk around me.  I bond with all of them because being a woman is everything to me.  I am neither red nor blue but I love the reds and blues, like the blood between my legs it is all and nothing of me.   I love the women who talk about it, the women who hate it and who will never talk about it; womanhood embodies all of it.  Womanhood, like a frayed rope, all together and nothing at all, ripped apart and held together by the very thing that we hate and love at the same time…a purple and red and blue and black and raped and survived garden of Eden which everything and nothing is our fault and we meet and gather and hate and love each other and everyone else and can bond over glasses of wine or cups of beer in every corner of the world. 

I can adore women from afar, from my couch alone in socks and sweatpants and ice cream, I can love them in bathroom stalls passing me tampons, I can respect them in hotel rooms talking about past failed loves and wonderful female accomplishments like making hard decisions and being intellectual and basically kicking ass in this male dominated world.  I love women who understand me, who understand my pain, the pain in my Pattaya hating soul, who can understand my hatred for hurt and suffering, who shudder when I shudder when the world’s women shudder.  I can love women who laugh with me, women who go off by themselves, who don’t need anyone else, women who used to need people but who have come to the point where they see that in the end all they have is themselves and they love it.

 I love women who don’t talk to me, women who befriend other women, women who are jealous, women who defy womanhood, women who hate women, women who don’t want to be feminists because to me they still are. Women…we are all women, bound together by this sameness, this magnificent ability to be women, to be one and the same despite all of these wretched, hilarious, hurtful, colorful, tearful and smiling differences we have.  I am purple, I am woman, hear me roar.

HANOI

August 23

HANOI. Needs to be in all caps because you should be yelling it.  HANOI is crazy!  There are no rules here!  There are barely even grocery stores!  Motorbikes go the wrong way on the sidewalk.  They go in herds in the wrong direction in the street, swerving in and out of traffic and through red lights like they don’t even exist.    Six way intersections.  Blind intersections, and one of the streets is a market and there is no one directing traffic, just hundreds of people in a  dance of madness, sidling around each other honking, people crossing the street at a crawl so as not to disturb the stampede.  It’s a zoo.  For reals.  Women set up shop in the middle of the sidewalk, placing their bamboo baskets with the wooden pole that they carry on their shoulders on the ground for a brief respite.  Those things are heavy.  These women are strong.  Pregnant women carry babies wrapped in mosquito nets…a rather odd sight until they smile and you remember the glory of womanhood…and the hardship.  Went to the Women’s Museum today and was incredibly inspired at what the women here have done, overcome, endured, and plain lived through.  I bought earrings at the gift shop – I wanted the purple ones, but I asked the woman at the counter which ones she liked and she told me the brown ones…for the sake of womanity, I bought those ones instead.  A beautiful moment!  We, although we are not the same, share so many enduring qualities that I will forever be proud of.  Drank some coffee after that and almost got ripped off, HANOI is pretty good at that…making me check myself like I always should.   I don’t like bargaining for meals, but it happens.  You can bargain for everything around here!   I got dressed up, wore my new woman earrings, got complimented by the hostel staff and took myself out to dinner and a show.  Traditional water puppetry – it was very cultural and amazing how the puppeteers maneuver the puppets in the water…I still can’t figure it out.  Then off to some Indian food, Vietnamese beer, and the exhilarating mind-jog of a walk back to the hostel.  A great day.

Introduction to Vietnam

August 21

Whew, Vietnam!  You thrill me!  Everywhere I go I have to maintain my animal alertness, a watchful eye for funny quirks and motorbikes on the sidewalks, dodging the smells that make me sick and the people sitting on those funny baby plastic chairs a few inches off the ground.  Dien Bien Phu sucked (I know it’s harsh, but really, it was bleak when I was there).  I would have been normally happy to find only pho stalls to eat at, but the smell worsened my already plan-changing stomach cramps (thank you, bad chicken in my spicy soup the day before) and I had to bargain down for a bowl of plain, steamed rice.  I don’t know how they eat rice every day, and love it!  I can’t figure out the equivalent that we have, not cereal, not bread, something simpler, like carbohydrates or water.  They love it, they can’t live without it, they ask me twice about it when I refuse to eat it with my curry.  “I’ll eat it like a soup, thank you”.  

Dien Bien Phu…noisy with dogs and car horns that don’t beep but rather undulate in a rhythm that makes me wonder if the car is broken.  In Hanoi, I thought, I will try and eat comfort food to recover.  I should probably go to the hospital, or take my Cipro, because every time I turn, my belly seems to remind me that there is a plant, or a seed, or a tree, or something non-human growing inside of it.  At least that’s what it feels like.

I thought I should suffer through the 12 hour bus ride (during the day so as to be more alert and not waste a sleepless night and risk getting sicker) to Hanoi as soon as possible so I could fully rest there amongst things I thought I would need, like water and breakfast (things that were hard to find in Dien Bien Phu).  Yes, a bus with air conditioning, or at least the vents for it!  I got a window seat; it was the type of bus, like a tourist bus, with two seats on one side and one seat on the other.  I wanted to sleep so I took the one seat to myself.  It didn’t recline.  The gap between the window and seat was too big for me to rest my head there.  It was fine; I can sleep in an upright position.  Before I knew it, luggage was being pushed into the bus to fit into any leftover space that human flesh did not occupy, meaning I had no legroom (I am bigger than the average Vietnamese person so I especially had no leg room).  The aisles had a pull out seat and within the first hour the bus (which also served as a local bus, post office, and party bus) was sitting five or six people across the aisle, with people climbing over other people, bags, and in and out of windows to get on and off.  My stomach was not up for this, but there was no bathroom on this bus and we only stopped three times during this ordeal. 

Ok, I have to admit, it wasn’t that much of an ordeal, minus the constant musical honking (honking because we’re turning, because someone is in front of us, because someone is to the side of us, because there is something on the side of the road, because it’s raining, because we’re braking, because there’s a turn in the road and we need to see if people are coming our way, honking for the sheer delight of it, to say hi to people, to tell them we’re full, to tell them to get on, etc etc) and the blaring Vietnamese music and videos (party bus), the people yelling into their cell phones, and the general discomfort of a bus at almost 200% capacity.  BUT, the scenery was stunning.  Water buffalo walking up the hills, being herded by kids with sticks…water buffalo actually chilling in the water, children and women walking with harvested corn in baskets on their backs and heads, bright green rice paddies, beautiful mountains and hills that we precariously climbed, picking up packages for people to be dropped off hours later at precisely the right pick-up spot (how did the driver know exactly the intersection in the town to go to?), people in traditional clothing, people in modern clothing, unpaved roads and shaky bridges -as long as my Vietnamese bus-riding pros did not make a worried face about the safety of our little town on wheels I knew we were ok.  Cars overturned in ditches…pouring rain that turned into minor flooding…people not wanting to sit next to me and not feeling comfortable enough until I offered them some food and then they fell asleep on me…all  part of this fabulous, sleep-less, rotating, moving sub-communal bus-ride. 

Did I mention the three stops?  Yes, the three stops.  For starters, the men here have a tendency to smoke something out of these huge bongs.  In trying to figure it out, a guy who was on a previous bus with me surmised that it was ground up bamboo, but then on further study I noticed that the bong was made of bamboo and that there could have easily been some miscommunication.  Opium is huge here.  At each stop, the men would sit in a circle, cigarettes in one hand, passing around this huge bong while eating fruit and drinking tea.  The women just ate and drank.  Yes, even the driver partook in this smoking circle.  I was nervous!  But they weren’t.  My local transportation fear-gauge seemed to be managing just fine.  When South East Asians get freaked out in a bus or car or train or elephant, it’s time to get the hell out.  

During lunch, the second stop,  the bus mate/money handler/hustler/driver-in-training tried to get me to eat, but once I motioned that my stomach hurt (absolutely NO English spoken on the bus whatsoever, not even hello or thank you.  People would speak to me in Vietnamese and expect them to speak back to them, making me think that they think its hilariously outrageous when tourists come up to them and speak a string of English words and then expect an answer), he settled on buying me a “Rhino-S” energy drink and offering me a cigarette, clearly the cure-all for immense stomach pain.  I took the drink, declined the cigarette, and only sipped it when he was watching me, not sure when the next bathroom stop was.  It was five hours later. 

Sure enough, bus mate invited me to the Men’s Circle.  The bong circle.  I was terrified.  I didn’t want to smoke, for a lot of reasons.  Plain and simple, I would never, ever do drugs and risk being thrown in jail in a place like Vietnam.   Secondly, I had no idea what was in that massive bong.  Thirdly, being invited to the Men’s Circle was odd.  Fourthly, if it was opium, this bus ride was already hellish enough without any external substances.  If they were smoking herbal sleeping pills or Pepto, that would have been a different story!  But I couldn’t decline at least sitting down in Men’s Circle and “joining the conversation”.  I drank some tea, which automatically made my whole mouth feel like the Mojave Desert, forced down a few more shots of it because all the Men were looking, and ate some strange green apricot fruit.  The bong was safely in the hands of the driver.  Safely?  The mate was engaging all of us in the most serious of serious conversations, eyes bulging, arms flailing about, voice showing even more emotion than the run of the mill Vietnamese, which already sounds really emotional.  He was really pulling me into his heated argument, or story, or philosophical debate, or opium-induced rant.   It went a little like this:

Him, “Vietnamese Vietnamese Vietnamese!!”  Arms in the air, looking wildly about.  His eyes rest on me.  Everyone waits for a response.

Me, “Yeah, man, that sounds gnarly”.  I make my eyes wide and nod my head.  Men’s Group follows.

Him, “Vietnamese Vietnamese Vietnamese!!” Arms in the air, looking wildly about.  His eyes rest on me.  Everyone waits for a response.

Me, “I have no idea what you’re saying, but it sounds super serious.  But then again, I don’t speak one word of Vietnamese.”  More eye-bulging and agreement from the Men.

This went on for a few more minutes until he decided he was finished and we all got up and got back inside our packed bus.  My introduction to the mystifyingly beautiful Northern Vietnamese male culture was interesting and a little scary.  I laughed to myself, grateful that through all of this, through hectic bus rides and women sleeping on me, through water-buffalo traffic and small fights breaking out in the bus, I could still maintain a sense of humor.  

Thank you, Laos

August 19

I’m nervous about going home.  I don’t know where else to go, but being in Laos gave me some clear vision, or the beginnings of a clear vision - I actually get to make that decision on my own now. As long as I don’t end up doing the things I know I don’t want to do, I’ll be ok.  I just don’t know what I want to do, but I can figure it out…I know that at least I’ll be guided but what I feel now is a passion for something, a motivation to try things out and shed them if I don’t think they fit.  

Thank You Laos, for giving me that, for allowing me to have profound conversations with people who have done that, for allowing me to sit on a hammock and look at amazing scenery, for allowing me to see and enter into a completely foreign and beautiful place; the most rural and untouched form of life I have ever seen, for reminding me that these people work hard and live hard lives and for making me realize that inevitably, I will have to do something-it depends on my motivation to have that something be the thing I want it to be.  I will never forget the rurality, the duality of tourism and traditional living, the naked children running down the river banks and jumping into the Nam Ou River, the way people go about their daily, casual, tough lives and making a living in incredibly difficult circumstances.  

The boat ride from Muang Ngoi Neua to Muang Khua ranks among my favorite connections that I have had, ever.  Sitting on a plank of wood, meandering slowly upriver through the muddy water, with a six year old boy and two young men (one mate and one driver) and five travelers.  Blissful, peaceful, quiet.  We stopped to check shrimp traps, watching naked children make mud towers on the banks.  We stopped at numerous villages along the way and watched as people led their lives in front of us.  We stopped to buy fish, to put banana tree trunks in the boat that the boys’ parents chopped down, to drop off the boy, the bathe in the river, to buy cigarettes for the driver.  It took three hours more than it was supposed to, and I couldn’t have been happier.  Watching mud fights erupt on the banks, watching men check more fish traps, watching women and their babies watch us, it was something I felt few people will ever get to see, a glimpse into a life that is virtually untouched by everything that touches and harasses my life on a regular basis.  

So thank you Laos for giving me peace of mind, for giving me a piece of your mind, for being a country that I had not known about before, that seems forgotten by the world, a country that I will never forget.  

Thank you Tom, for listening to my rants about people in my life who have hurt me, for always making conversation, for buying me beer and knowing when I needed to be alone.  Thank you Mel for letting me know that I can work abroad in an incredibly meaningful way if I want to.  Thank you Akemi, for letting me know that I am not so privileged as to think that I don’t have to work and can just travel forever, and that its ok for me to like going home, that it shouldn’t matter as long as I carry me and my happiness with me.  Thank you Nong Khiaw for making me feel grounded again, and Penny for making me realize that I have a talent for getting people to open up about their most personal life stories.

Thank you Laos.  Now on to Vietnam.  For a whole new type of gratitude.