TheOtherSide

« Wet & Dry, Day & Night, Eternal Smiles | TheOtherSide | Spot! »

April 29, 2005

CRU

I woke up at three-eighteen in the afternoon and skipped my regular morning yoga and stretching session. It wasn't morning anymore, after-all. I also skipped my regular trip to the fridge and was left feeling a bit empty, in stomach and in soul. At three-thirty-seven, nineteen minutes later, I woke up again with very cold water pouring over my head from the shower in the downstairs bathroom. I got some in my ear. Had I paid my respects to the fridge yet? With my favorite blue towel around my waist, I pulled out the end-piece of watermelon and dug in with the biggest spoon I could find. Beyond the juicy munching that almost monopolized my ears as much as my tastes, I could hear my buddy Ray stirring in the other room. What had happened to us last night? Maybe he could shed some light. All I got in response was a series of moans that sounded like those zombies in that cheesy pseudo-horror movie we watched last week. If he couldn't remember, maybe we'd never know.

The day progressed in an expected and accepted slow and lazy manner, to say the least. Over lunch, our collective minds patched together pieces of last night into a montage of pool, food, beer, dancing, laughter, discos full of Thai people, where we stuck out like the tall white-boys that we are, bright lights and dancers on stage, confused multi-lingual conversations that typically ended in a cheers then a move to another table, and a strange trip with our new friends to a late-night restaurant where we were the elected sponsors to buy another full set of 100 Pipers Deluxe Scotch Whiskey which, at five in the morning, washed down the entire night with the included ice, soda water, and coke. Was that all? Lon had to catch a bus at five-thirty, and between eating, showering, reminiscing, and tying his shoes, he almost missed it.

Still tipsy from last night's adventure, I waved him off and found a piece of paper in my pocket. Another missing scrap of the montage, perhaps? It was a name and a phone number. Fawn was the name. The number should be called, I figured, so I dialed it up and waited nervously for an answer. After a confused exchange with a girl who didn't speak a word of English, I remembered who she was and I wanted to see her again. She invited me to her University about six kilos out of town. This girl gave me butterflies and I wasn't feeling so hot, so I debated going home, taking another shower, sleeping a bit more, and just takin' it easy, but this is Thailand and I'm here to experience that which isn't so easy and push myself to do and try new things that aren't so comfortable sometimes. I hopped on the 125-cc Wave and hoped my still-developing language skills weren't too impaired by the severe hangover I was fighting.

Fawn is a twenty-year old student at Chiang Rai's Rajabaht University (CRU from now on). She studies Food Science and is about thirty centimeters shorter than I am. She's a great dancer but like many beautiful girls, feels inadequate and mai soo-ay (translation: not beautiful) because of various unfortunate cultural reasons. She is of Thai and Taiwanese decent and has beautiful eyes and hair to prove it. She is proof also of my improving proficiency of the Thai language, as her English language skills are extremely basic. Likewise are those of her friends, who were all very eager to meet me and ask endless streams of questions all at the exact same time. I tried my best to concentrate.

Fawn, six of her friends, and I sat outside around a small painted picnic table for well over four hours. There was a bag of lychee and two bowls of glass noodles in the center, the later of which no one touched the entire time. I'm still not sure why. We talked about anything and everything with our somewhat limited language skills. A feeling rose in me that I'd almost forgotten... Can you remember those good days in grade-school at lunchtime, or on camping trips when life was so simple yet so new and exciting? I honestly can't find the words to describe those times, they're beyond adjectives, but I hope you feel what I'm getting at. At CRU, we were mature but open-minded human beings placed back into those innocent and fun-filled days of fifth, sixth, and seventh-grade.

We continued the good times by the lakeside near to their dorm for another few hours. Friends of friends drove by on motorcycles and stopped to share a few laughs and worries about tomorrow's looming test. Thai pop rock music and it's sickeningly sappy love-song lyrics drifted to my ears; fortunately I only understood enough to keep me from going insane. There were only about four stars in another typical Thai night sky, filled with haze and clouds and an almost full moon. No one was smoking. No one was drinking anything but water. Everyone was smiling, laughing, interested, and therefore interesting. I haven't spent time like that with people like them for many, many years.

Where has our cynicism come from? Consciously or not, why do we let pessimism and ill-contentment run into these minds that have such potential? Can we not just be together as the funny social animals we are without some kind of altered state or a need for something unreachable? We can, you know we can, but it's easy to fall into the vices of our civilized world and let the cynicism take over. As my half forgotten last night proved, a lot of fun can be had with alcohol and the altered states that come with it. As tonight proved, there's something magical about a healthy liver and a clear head that is deeply in love with life and the amazing souls that populate it.

They say everything in moderation, right? Altered states of mind are only altered if you maintain a connection with the real mind that you've had since before you can remember. It is the same mind that could carelessly swing on the swing-set for hours everyday, hang from the monkey-bars just to hang, play cards in the shade of the cedar for fun instead of shots, or just talk of nothing but silly matters that are more important than we realize. Those simple times keep us young, happy, and full of life. We can't be kids forever, but nothing says you have to grow up past your true human nature.

Posted by Tom Bodhi at April 29, 2005 03:58 AM

Comments

Posted by: gian at May 4, 2005 11:12 AM

Post a comment