for those who cant do, at least teach well.

[ .lee hae seong ]
the only pic of my elusive student.

today, a kid commented this other kid in the passage was probably wasting too much time 'wrapped in her own thoughts, daydreaming'.

"that's not good right? to daydream only"
"mm. to do things without thinking is not good either right? the best is to think well, and then do."
"yes. you're right."

it might have been tough if he'd asked, "like, how?"

.

id started many, if most only in mind,
a thousand teeming ghosts,
- screaming truthward -

i became weary,
found blind comfort in
daily loves and solo hopes.

still, they were.
never quite raised by my hand.
and i, still am.
seeing nothing beyond.

winter escape.

[. from landscape ]

thats a suitably bleak picture. and many will find it romantic and lush, full of insinuated meanings and vague, blurry, triple-layered nuances.

sometimes you wake up feeling like that picture; a sharp, uncoloured awareness of yourself, and all around you. and of course, itll never feel abundant or happy or gay. you'll realise you are you, and there wasn't much to you. and that it was your own unintended fault.

or you'll feel coldly alone. except, as those who've lived homeless for long become 'used to', you'll see again the bonds that tie us all. there's the obligations and the indebtedness; the love and familiar.

there's those you held above change, above time, above physical movements and friction. those are the ones you start to wonder about in the wintry time of your soul. you muse if you let open your hand just a little, will it lift and be away, gone, to its own cadence and purpose, and/or lured away by the persistant sweets of other trains.

another feature of this wintry awakening is the incredible distance. things once held near seem far, or missing. or maybe, for the sake of longterm sanity, discovered unreal or misconceived. all directions from you, you see the lapses.

in judgement and in perception, you realise perhaps you have not failed, but oh what a distance to make up for.

of course. the landscape around you is not empty. it shouldn't be, for you are never alone in your context, but inevitably tangled in engagements, in relationships - all markers of your position in time and space. ...to see not even the physical blots is a whiteout of the soul. you're blind and dead for a time, a worse kind of winter, for you lose even perspective of your perspective.

these winter times are when the winds around me howl the greatest, and my senses demanded to be painfully acute.

do you hear me, talking to you.

occasionally, the inverse occurs, and mere words string together to invoke disparate thoughts, melding together and calling forth ideas, then teasing out the past -or suggesting a future, finally tumbling into a blossom of images.

a reverse photo-thought like that seems all the more potent, a final birth from vague concepts to concrete reality,

except that that reality only exists in a poignant 2D etch.

and invariably almost, thoughts of individuals, disparate through time and space, conjure up ideas of the bonds among, and in between.



[germany. berlin]
and a favourite appears again. an unassuming stranger who whips out those love-glasses at the last moment, and rather gleefully agrees to having his picture taken.

interesting ad in the back ground.




[germany. berlin]

/ lucky I'm in love with my best friend
/ lucky to have been where I have been


[thailand. nongkhai]
looking across to laos, and people since then.


/ lucky we're in love every way

/ lucky to have stayed where we have stayed
/ lucky to be coming home someday
-jason mraz

search.

with these:

+ a newfound respect for temple architecture
+ intense fascination with the beliefs these buildings were funded on
+ immense wonder at (usually a temple's) time-drenched history
+ quiet, tremulous awe, and a kind of infatuation, for the people living what seems to be a truly alternative existence
+ a single recommendation to visit a temple poetically named "field of flowers", by sombut (whose own name means something along the lines of 'quiet mind')

even if without these:

+ enough baht to go spending on transport to-ing and fro-ing
+ a local friend who could show me the inner works, of belief, of thai culture, of a monument's past
+ the bit of map to show me the way
+ assurance that i would find what i was urgently hoping, praying to see and have

plus sunblock, the crazed certainty wrought by the former was enough for me to brave these:

+ 2hour (time to get lost) walk west of the old city in the sun (a 330pm sun in thailand is like a noonburn, baby, burn)
+ 1.5hour walk back in a drizzle
+ half a map (the wrong half)
+ lingering around the compounds of this 14thC temple, wanting to see, hear, feel, more

[wat suan dok. chiangmai]
gates.
closer.. until my entire world is a simple, undistracted focus, framed by you.



the main stupa. a brilliant contrast against the white and grey sky.
it commanded, invited, silently.




[wat suan dok. "city of the dead"]

endless white all around drew me;
there is this eagerness to join with it,
an elevated purity, away and clear at last.

eyes never leaving it,
i climbed over the fence, and entered through the side.
found myself in a white land of past kings and queens,
dead, quiet, and not here.

an average plot seemed a daunting portal.
i looked around at the different sameness,
mind scratching at the other language,
an uncomprehending fool wanting to join
with-







on the outside, i'd waited, for the sun to relent a lil, to recall/refine a purpose. and on the outside, another monk'd paused, and took me through a rather psychedelic ride through yearnings and past pains, humourous musings and, inside. he took me within.

and we sat unfolding our thoughts to each other, a million monkey minds.

a cambodian monk, living and studying in the north of thailand, chattered about the many turns of a life, and hassled with me over the workings of how we (are used to) thinking. formal language faltered, but his hands, glittering eyes, and a face smiling, thinking, musing, made me do all three along with him. i think you would make a good president, chenda, a one-of-a-kind.

the remnants of a past sojourn through thailand exist in embedded memories, photos, scraps of paper, etchy words, and an email:

... but you can think about Mind with me.

Your friend,
Chenda

[all pictures at wat suan dok.
thailand. chiangmai]

a memuse.

[singapore. malan road]
how does memory work;
what gives rebirth, what causes death.
the inexactitude of love and life,
you just laugh, and smile when you do remember.

"... and a mould. a mould carries the imprint of those once passed- and it reproduces its sentiments from that perfect first copy, according to its needs and wishes. it does not mourn, it simply bears, it simply has. ..."

traveling, not bumming.

[pai. thailand. taken and stitched by hc]

midway, my frantic temple touring and trawling thailand's towns ceased and i wondered what was the point. i love traveling- im not supposed to feel ennui like this. id felt like i needed a project, a grand question to fulfil, or at least some heavy weight cleansed. i felt on the periphery of local life, skimming along in my head. plus i wasnt spending much to feed the local economy. i was being the worst kind of tourist- detached, apathetic and not much help or fun.

and id missed you terribly, seeing a whole expanse of time to know you better ebb away with each day you couldnt join me.

then it slowly fell into place; when i stopped chasing meanings and striving for reason, and just let the people i was with and the place i was in touch me. it relaxed into a more primitive interaction, on their terms instead of mine. and things always crystallise toward the end, if you pay open attention. i started taking more focussed pictures, which now form the physical remnants of the trip, waiting to be unfolded.

got on, trusted your back.
the map proved a vague practicality-
the end is unpredictable, multitudinous,
the journey ungrand, until we relaxed-
a rainbow. two.
iridescent lights, it was silent but bold.
and that was a prime sight to be able to have
someone to turn to and smile and be in awed with.
stumbled and fretted along,
but managed rightplace/righttime.
taking measurements in the moments,
we're doing rather beautifully well.

love, in celebration and ceremony.

[- all images from. snippet and ink]




[julie and kaori's wedding day. - all images from. snippet and ink]

when one can
-and is able to-
say,
i love you,
regardless of your quirks, your failings
and their quirks and failings.

...that is the right to love.
and to celebrate that love.