Offering

“A momentary gesture

fleeting as time.

A flower, a smile.

An offering.”

“An offering would be fine,

In keeping with our space in time.

But an offering of a flower with a smile?

Like gleeful golden daffodils?

Beside the lake, beneath the trees.

Ten thousand Buddhas at a glance,

By chance did you see these?”

Excerpt From: “Canadian in a Cambodian Mindfield; American with a Suitcase Fullof Sutras.”

by Ed Teja and John Pocock 

A book of poetry, photographs and strange insghts

(available in paperback and ebook at  amazon, iTunes and Nook

Rain

It seems odd to be wishing for rain in SE Asia. It is the tropics after all, but it has been hot. Even the breeze, when there is any, was hot. And it was humid. The sky hung heavy. It needed to rain. Rain cools things.

Finally it did rain. Several times. We found new holes in the roof and the gutter had backed up so a wall was running water. Who cares? Things cooled down. Life became more energetic. The moo frogs were happy. The tokay gekos were shouting "oh oh!" (that means they are happy).

Now it's hot. The breeze is hot. It is overcast. I hope it will rain.

Getting around

It's important to get around in style. When I was downtown the other day, just across the street from the Kampot Province Economic Affairs Office, I took this photo. You often see these pony carts at the market. Along with motorized transport, these carts, and some pulled by water buffalo are still very much in use.

An ordinary trip downtown can provide a fair amount of inspiration .

Weather is only human

I read about the drought that is going on in the US the other day, and that it was the worst in 25 years. That led me to the curious thought about what makes one drought worse than another. I assume they mean less rain over a longer period of time, but this seems to be a government statistic, which makes using common sense a rather foolish thing to do.  Governments seem adept at avoiding sense, of either the common or extraordinary variety. So I wonder. I don't suppose it matters what the criteria are though. It's bone dry.

I heard from a good friend in MO that he hasn't seen any rain since June, and he has been looking for it. That means something. For one thing it means that he has to buy vegetables, since gardening takes water. Instead of a yard full of veggies they have temperatures over 100 F and no rain. Having lived in New Mexico I understand what that means. New Mexico's major tourist attraction is droughts. End-of-the-world apocalypse movies are shot there as they require no extra work to prepare the scene. Practice makes perfect and they have gotten good at droughts. So I understand.

In a rather petty way (by comparison), we need rain here too. Oh we get rain from time to time, but not the good old wash-the-roads-out-of-existence rains that this area is known for. Without those rains it is hot. The rice paddies aren't looking so good. Just hot and humid. The skies tease. looking like they do in the photo below, which I took at sunset a few days ago. Now you'd think a sky like that would produce some rain, but no. Weather is arbitrary and does what it wants. Like people. You have to admire that. Actually it is like people who are contrarians and I like that even better.

So it is hot. That makes it hard to think (old wooden houses do not have and would not benefit from air conditioning). So we swim in the river. The water comes from the mountains and is cold enough to lower the body temperature down something below 451 F so my books don't burn when I touch them.

Meanwhile, there was a deluge in Beijing and a large tropical storm crosses northern Viet Nam that is probably flooding the Mekong. Is that balance?


Sometimes weather can seem more frustrating than governments. Nah! That's unfair. Its just that weather is only human after all. Capricious, yes. Officious and pompous, no.

Moo frog chorus

I suspect that there are many among you who thought I was exaggerating when I wrote about the moo frogs. They seem mythical to me, but they are pretty amazing. Sure, we've all heard frogs in the yard or creek at night. This is, I assure you, different. Last evening, after a rainy day, we were treated to quite a chorus and I captured a bit. I don't have a recorder handy so I used my camera. I can't figure out how to put just audio here so I uploaded the video. The steady black stuff is what the yard looks like at night. The sound in the video is amazingly like it sounded sitting on the porch, with the difference that this is just over 30 seconds and we get to hear it most of the night. Some other soloists joined the orchestra later in the evening for a bit of a jam session, adding a nice glissando as a counterpoint to this, but I had already packed up the camera. Just thought you might enjoy it. Call it a taste of the rainy season.

For those who are into musical arrangements, the baritones are the moo frogs. Then you will hear an alto voice that seems to tie the moos together nicely, or perhaps the moos punctuate the alto lines. The percussion from the gecko and insect groups fits in rather nicely, I think you will agree. Overall, a bit repetitious from a melodic perspective, but the arrangement is excellent. Good sound balance too, so kudos to the sound technicians. Here we go.

Collecting and republishing the past

I got an email today from someone curious as to what I was up to. He wanted to know if I had a blog, and I sent him the link, but I realized that primarily what I have posted is observations, not updates of the ongoing effort to proved the world with new and improved art and music. So here is an update.

When we lived on an old wooden boat in the Caribbean, part of the way I earned my keep, when not doing boat work, was writing about living on a boat. I did a monthly column in the journal Caribbean Compass for at least five years, probably longer. It was caustic, and made fun of the readers, other people who wrote for people on boats, and even the very idea of life on board. It turned out to be very popular with readers, and advertisers didn't seem to hate it. At least the editor, Sally Erdle, never complained.

As I worked to edit and republish The Legend of Ron Anejo  and worked with my friends John Pocock and Tom Tsui to finish and publish Chancy,which is also about sailing, I thought of those short pieces and wondered it they still held up. Were they still funny? Would a collection be something worth republishing as a book.

But first, did they even still exist? My traveling lifestyle has been death on any old manuscripts that I might have had. Hell, the computers haven't survived, and I threw out the 5-inch floppy disks they were stored on years ago (any of you too young to know what those are can Google to find out).

I contacted Sally in Bequia and told her of my idea of publishing them as a book. She not only had the text files, but happily zipped them  and sent them to me. Dagny and I read through them, kicked out a few, and now are editing the 60,000 words that remain into a fun book. The good news is that very little turned out to be perishable. Since I seldom  address ideas more topical than what I had for breakfast, there is little to fade.

The intention is to publish the book both in ebook and in paperback formats; the ebook should be ready fairly soon, fairly being a time interval between one and three months. Being the chief editor, formatter, designer and distribution manager takes time. And this isn't the only project going on. But here is the dummy for the ebook cover.

So, if you happen to pass up the Kampot River and don't see us swimming, you now know what is going on in those strange wooden houses along river.

Cows and bats

If it seems like I am on a roll talking about interactions with animals, it is because I am. Living in a rural place, even if it is a small community, tends to put you back in contact with the creatures we share this world. I enjoy most of it, even if I would be happier if certain creatures (insects, turkeys...) were left out of the equation.

Recently I noticed that Mr. Sau, who takes care of the grounds, using a new lawn mower. This was  a nice upgrade for him from the weed eater they were using to cut the grass. There is a lot of grass now, and that is a slow way to get the job done. Doctor Philippe, the landlord is quite proud of the new lawnmower, and rightfully so. They are not common here.

Nonetheless, I wasn't surprised to look out the other day and see the supplementary equipment at work.

The animal belongs to one of the neighbors, and I assume that Mr. Sau came to an arrangement with him. So every afternoon, this beast is tethered somewhere on the grounds, filling her stomach while taking over part of the lawn maintenance burden.

The other recent encounter was nocturnal. When we first moved onto our boat in the Caribbean, we had no electricity. So the evenings were spent in the dark. When we got electricity sorted out, we found that we preferred spending evenings in the dark. There were fewer insects and you could see what was going on around you under the moonlight. We were an exception and most people turned on lights at night. When we visited other boats, looking out into the black night seemed odd. We preferred things our way.

In our house here, we like to sit in the dark. Habits die hard, and there is still the issue of insects. They love light. Our neighbors turn on porch lights and we watch the mosquitoes plan their attacks. But we have no reason to be smug. Darkness brings like-minded creatures around. In this case, a bat. The bats fly around in the evening catching bugs. They fly through our porch.

One bat, however, was not content with this routine, and on an evening not long ago, as I sat contemplating the universe, I was assaulted with bat guano. Now this is a rather nice form of that substance, and not caustic like that of the fruit bats in Venezuela, and certainly not as troublesome as the vampire bats we had there either.

But I didn't like it. We used a broom to discourage the little guy; I just poked it near him and he flew off. The next night he came back to the exact same spot under the porch roof--directly over my chair. We turned on the light and he left. The next night, he decided the light was okay, and he would stay, but I turned to chemical warfare and sprayed in his direction with bug spray. Again he left.

  Here he is hanging right above my chair. 

So what are you going to do with a guy like that? We like him to come around and eat bugs. He would even be rather welcome to hang around if he would pick a different spot, but he has not shown a willingness to negotiate. So we close curtains at night now and hope he will find a nicer spot. Maybe he can go hang on a roof beam over the cow and they can talk over the craziness of people.

Turkeys on the porch

I've learned a number of lessons in this current incarnation of living in Asia.

• Asians are not in the least inscrutable (they yell at you when they are pissed just like everyone else.).
• Eating fruit for breakfast every morning makes me feel good.
• I don't like turkeys.

Of course, none of these lessons is in the least profound, and perhaps none are useful, except for the bit about fruit. And the only real surprise is the last one.

So I will explain a bit about how I came to uncover my dislike for turkeys.

At the moment, my writing days are spent in a small cottage a few metres from our house. It looks like this.

This is a wonderful place to work, except for the turkeys. Bear in mind that throughout Asia, poultry are inescapable, even beyond the dinner plate. Chickens and turkeys have the run of the place, despite the risk they run from motorbikes and cows. Mostly it works out.

Chickens are okay. I am not a chicken lover, at least until they are cooked, but we get along. But the turkeys on my porch are vile and nasty and noisy. 

It isn't all their fault. They did not build the coop next to my porch, but in all fairness, neither did I, and we should all have to come to some agreement on how to share space. They run over the entire compound with their shrill chorus (and it is always a chorus... you never hear one turkey) echoing, and I really have less problem with that than with the piles of turkey dung (large) they drop everywhere. 

But I can deal with that. 

The problem is that when I am trying to write, the word gets out and they assemble on my porch and sing to me. Unfortunately I don't care for the song, have heard it before, and actually would prefer a Sousa march as music to work to. I suspect this is all down to my evil neighbor telling them about the US holiday of Thanksgiving, and hanging the responsibility for the role turkeys play in it on me. There doesn't seem to be any other explanation that fits the few paltry facts.

I don't understand their intent (that of the turkey's not that of my evil neighbor) but it has antagonized me and I am in the process of ordering some cook books that focus on turkey dishes to give as presents to the Khmer people who take care of them.

I am sure an equitable situation will evolve over time. Patience is of utmost importance here. After all, I have to send off for the books, and the mail is slow here.

The rains come, the tourists go

The onset of the rainy season is also the onset of slow season in Cambodia. The rains can make travelling about miserable, so it probably isn't the best time to visit. The rains ease up in October, usually, maybe November and the inrush begins again.

Rainy season doesn't just turn on one morning. We kind of ease into it. Today was a beautiful day, and I took the motorbike into town to get needed supplies (cabbage and Irish whiskey if you must know).

This is one of the normally busy streets at about 0830. The khmer start mornings early, and perhaps the backpackers are all still sleeping in, but I don't think so. Along this street you can buy welding gas, bread, cell phones, some packaged junk food, get your hair done, and a bit further down is the main bank, Acleda.

 Behind the stack of tires is one of the many motorcycle repair shops. This one is just around the corner from the Honda dealer. One lovely thing about riding a motorbike here is that if you have a problem in town, you are never far from someone who thinks he knows motorbikes better than you, and certainly knows them better than me, and has tools and parts.

 This is the Eastern end of our main market (psaa). It was more crowded earlier when I went by. I came back to get a shot of one of the pony carts, but they had finished loading and lumbered off to wherever they lumber to. This is at the intersection with the main road that goes to Phnom Penh and the market really starts down where the umbrellas are and is quite extensive. I bought two cabbages and four nam groaech, which are sweet deep-fried rice flour pancakes.  The shops closer are mostly where you can buy cell phones. My Nokia was less than $20 there.

The shop ('Hang' in khmer) on the right is across the street from where we live. This is where I buy 20 litre jugs of drinking water and Anchor (pronounced "an chore" so as not to confuse it with "Ankor" beer).

Even in Paradise

It is tempting to think that once you have moved to a tropical location, life becomes simple. All you need to do is sit back, drink wonderful drinks with umbrellas in them (don't eat the umbrellas, as they can reuse those), served by lovely serving girls and enjoy life. Unfortunately, life follows you. There are always domestic chores and the business of life. Some are more onerous than others.

A couple of days ago, my office was perfumed with a familiar and unwelcome odor. Shortly I was surrounded by the noise of work going on. When I investigated, I learned that the sediment filter from the septic tanks was backed up. Our landlord had the staff hard at work, and he joined in. This was important. After all the blockage was from his house. So for three days, the crew hauled out the gravel, cleaned and sorted and put it back together.

In case you were wondering, Mr. Ka, who is smiling on the left, wasn't thrilled by this particular job, or at having his photo taken standing in the tank.... he just smiles a lot. Very nice man. Our landlord is the one in clean clothes. (These guys are good workers!)

Another wedding and its music

The folks at the basket maker's house next to us started setting up the tents for a wedding on Saturday. I call it the basket maker's house, because when they aren't having weddings, they make huge baskets out of reeds--all day long. A very industrious group. So they deserved a party.

You can' see the house in this photo. It sits back from the way and the tent runs all the way from the road to the house. The second tent, to the right, is in an empty lot. I suppose it is for friends of friends of the family.

The daytime music, which is largely traditional music, which I was told was written specifically for weddings, is interesting. Khmer music uses five tones, but they aren't the same as the Western pentatonic scale (the "rock" scale). It is all whole tone steps, no sharps or flats. And the arrangements tend to be rhythmic. The music has no harmonies, and independent melodies are interwoven. At its best, it is really nice, kind of Asian Dixieland. At its worst (according to my ears) it is like a bad jam session.

The nighttime music was certain to be that terrible mixtape of Santana (long instrumentals by a Santana clone who is good but little imagination) and pop and awful Karaoke. So went to the city for the evening. Stayed at a nice wooden guest house on the river front. We had a khmer massage, which is a very soothing way to spend an hour, and ate frogs legs while watching family hour on the riverfront. We call it family hour because the vast majority of the traffic is motorbikes with Mom and Dad and a couple of kids on board. They stop at street vendors and buy boiled corn on the cob, or beer, or some of the other interesting foods available. But more on food another time.

The right temperature

It's the hot season in Cambodia. May will be hot too. But each day is different. Some mornings it gets hot early, while on others it stays pleasant until ten or so. In the evening it might cool quickly or stay hot until nearly midnight. So far, however, it always cools off at night.

Our house

Yesterday evening, about six, I tool a stroll to the front gate of the compound that the house we rent is part of. Actually, I was taking out the garbage, but everyone knows that writers don't take out garbage, so I was taking a stroll, communing with the universe. Those are things writers are expected to do, and I intend to represent my group proudly.

It had been a hot and still day, but suddenly I noticed that the temperature was absolutely perfect. I didn't recall a moment when it began getting cooler,but clearly, while my attention was elsewhere, it had dropped to a perfect temperature. Now don't expect any numbers from me in either Celsius, which is what we use her, of Fahrenheit, as  if I had a thermometer it would most likely be in whatever oblivion I assigned my watch to many moons ago. Time and precise measurement don't fit this kind of living well. The very idea of quantifying pleasant is, well, unpleasant.

Pretty much every day, since it likes regularity, the Kampot sun sets behind Bokor Mountain, which is behind our house. If you guessed it was to the West, you've been paying attention. When I returned to the house from my stroll, and the garbage mysteriously taken care of, I was still enjoying the evening, so I hung out on the porch. I noticed our neighbor Andreas standing in the yard looking at something. He pointed behind my house.

"The sky," he said.

I looked and saw a yellow orange sky, fading out as the sun set. I should mention that he is from Sweden and the idea of sunset always being at six is a bit of an adjustment for him, even though he lived for a time in Thailand before coming here.

This morning was cool. We eat a breakfast of fruit on the porch and look out at the river. Some mornings are too hot to sit long, but clouds rolled in from Viet Nam with no Visa whatsoever and blocked the direct sun. The weather pattern is already shifting. The clouds were coming from the Northeast and now they are from the Southeast. Perhaps the rains will come soon and May won't be so hot.

We find that it is easy to deal with the heat when you become aware of those magic moments when the temperature is perfect. It's easier to deal with anything that isn't going well when you see the magical light of sunset and sunrise surprising you with its choice of colors and patterns.

Perhaps I am easily amused these days, but it feels like a gentle time.

The Twelfth Year

Moving into the twelfth year of something is important in Cambodia. A nearby house starts its twelfth year of existence soon, and the owner brought in monks and held a small ceremony to ensure it will be propitious. I find it interesting that the idea is to celebrate the year at its beginning, but it makes a lot more sense than the normal cry of relief that we give in the West to announce that we have survived another year.

Closer to home for us, a local couple invited us to the party for their wedding anniversary. Having been married for eleven years, they are moving into that auspicious twelfth year. Parties are important here, so we got fancy invitations telling us that Mr Sor Yuthka and Mrs Yuos Sophy, known to us as Ka and Sophy, were having a party and we were invited.

 An anniversary party here looks a lot like a wedding party. There is a huge tent or two, lots and lots of speakers for the LOUD sound system (that plays music really LOUD! And I mean REALLY LOUD!). As an honored guest you get to sit in front of the speakers. Fortunately, we were on foreigners and able to suggest that we sit slightly off the main target range and further back (stupid foreigners never know a good thing).

When enough guests arrive to fill a table, the food starts to arrive and people chat as well as the music permits, and toast each other. So you face the prospect of a well dressed housewife looking you in the eye, clinking glasses with you and saying "joul moaay", which means you have to drink your iced Cambodia beer down in one go or face incredible humiliation in the eyes of everyone around.

Early guests getting ready for the feast

We left not long after the food was done, but the party proper was just ramping up. The emergence of a generation of karaoke artists caused the volume of the music to increase, with a commensurate increase in distortion. We were going to hear it anyway, at least until midnight, but decided to put some distance between ourselves and ground zero.

We find it interesting that Cambodians almost universally love loud noise. The old and young alike have no use for a volume control set even a micron below maximum. It seems hard to relate this quality with their many virtues.