LETTER FROM RURAL THAILAND: DANCING WITH JOY
november 10, 2008: I'm sitting under a tamarind tree, drinking a coffee. Nearby a boy is trying to get a kite to fly. There's a warm soft wind, and in the distance I can hear voices as people wash dishes, clean, do morning chores. There are no sounds of cars, of motors, of stereos. There is nothing but wind and voices. Everything calm.
But the last seventy-two hours in this tiny village in northeastern Thailand, just north of the Cambodian border, have been anything but calm. Delirium is the word that comes to mind, ecstatic sustained delirium, but all within a sense of proportion, and with love.
Last Thursday night two babies and four of us adults sat on a mat on the floor eating supper. All that we could do to prepare had already been done, much of it months before. All we could do now was to wait. The babies went to sleep, and the adults. But by 2 a.m. people began to arrive, three vans from Bangkok, a car from Korat. Out came whiskey and soda, beer and ice, laab and sticky rice. We caught a little more sleep, but by 4 a.m. all was in motion.
By six oclock in the morning I'd already lost track of the number of vans, trucks, cars and motorcycles arriving. The outdoor kitchen already had not a space to spare, and the enormous indoor kitchen was full of pots and pans, mortars and pestles, cutting boards , serving plates and platters. It looked like a wedding was about to happen, but this was not a wedding. I don't know what to call it. A celebration, a tamboon. Grandfather and grandmother , and great grandfather, all dead and cremated. But their bones were collected, and years later, on this auspicious day, November 8, their bones were to be walked to the temple.
By midday there was so much food I could barely eat. Two pigs were slaughtered, one cow. There were twenty tables under two canopies outside, each a table for 12. A truck arrived with a sound system, and “morlam” (traditional Lao/northeastern Thai music) was suddenly in the air, everywhere. Another bigger truck arrived, and men and boys started to assemble an enormous stage, and lighting, and sound system, all in a tiny village just north of the Cambodian border.
Koon Pa has seven daughters, no sons. Six daughters arrived. Koon Ma has twelve brothers and sisters, all with families. The number of guests multiplied, and multiplied: old people, barely standing, and children, many many children. And everyone sat on the floor, or at the tables, eating, cooking, drinking, cleaning. Everyone knew to do their part.
At six in the evening the morlam began. Three singers, ten dancers, six musicians, a dozen techs. Under the stage there was constant changing of clothes, and there were three people doing make-up, constant make-up. Food and beer arrived non-stop from the kitchen, keeping the performers going. Morlam doesn't take a break. The performers go seven hours without stopping. Incredible. And the intensity grows.
I started dancing along with a dozen other people. I love dancing, and I love morlam. I would rather dance to morlam than anything I know, and best of all is to dance with other people who are dancing to morlam. Every bit of energy is left on the floor, only here we were on a soft dirt surface. Soon there were a hundred people dancing, and then more. My shirt was soaked with sweat, my hair plastered to my head. It was the same for everyone in the heavy tropical evening air.
At three a.m. I wandered throught the kitchen hoping to find flloor space to sleep, but the kitchen was already preparing for morning, the four or five charcoal stoves already in constant use. I found a place to sleep in a small store room, but by seven it was impossible to remain asleep. Happy voices, screaming children, the sound of people in motion. A dozen monks arrived, and loudspeakers blasted the monks' prayers. My head pounded with too much lao khao, homemade lao whiskey, and when I got up, my feet and calves, from all the dancing, were as tight as bow strings. I went outside and poured cold water over my head. Morning was painful, but the memories were well worth the pain.
I was told to sit down at a table. It was already filled with food. Koon Pa was there, and other older men. I was happy to be included. Around the table people were speaking a mixture of Thai, Lao, or Khmer. I tried my best to understand, but my head was still pounding.
"Kin lao?" someone asked, but not needing an answer. A glass of whiskey ad ice was put down in front of me, and I realized I wasn’t alone. it was starting all over again!
A different group of musicians arrived: ten tall drums, two guitars. The group had a sound-system on wheels, a pushcart, complete with a battery for the amplifier. Again the morlam started. We all ate, knowing we had to eat to keep up our strength: rice and several kinds of tom yam and laab, everything wonderfully hot as hell, nothing without big flavor.
Soon everyone was again dancing, happy to be dancing, all ages, all smiles. The band set out and we followed. No one moved quickly; there was no hurry.
Out on the small quiet dirt road we made our way towards the temple, four kilometers away. People joined in from farms that we passed along the way. it started to rain, and the dirt turned to mud, but it didn’t matter... People were dancing with buckets filled with whiskey and Coke, a communal glass insde that made its way from dancer to dancer. At one point a friend signaled to dance faster, and we quickly danced our way apart from the pack. We danced ahead, almost running, until we arrived at a tiny roadside noodle shop. We ordered bowls and bowls of hot soup, and when the pack arrived, people danced their way in, stopping but still dancing, putting back a few mouthfuls of nourishment. Everyone was soaked, shirts clinging to bodies.
And everyone then danced onward. A wonderful wet muddy beautiful tropical mess. Delirium.
Chiu Gompa and Mount Kailash, at dawn; western Tibet
Normally I only drink one cup of coffee a day, a big cup in the morning, but today I’m having another. This morning we had to do a cooking demonstration, so I had to wake up earlier than I usually do, and I hate having to wake up. I hate waking up, and I especially hate having to wake up. I had my alarm set, and then of course I woke up well before the alarm. The whole thing was awful. Lousy night’s sleep, and a long morning. So I took a nap, and here I am drinking another coffee.
I’m totally spoiled when it comes to sleeping late. For years when our kids were younger I’d wake up early to help get them to school, but Naomi knew how much I hated it and a few years back she said go ahead, sleep in. I couldn’t believe it. It was like having my birthday every day, as my father used to say.
But even given that, I am still so greedy. I hate having to wake up at a certain time, hate it hate it. I’ll do it reluctantly to catch a plane, but I’ve hated it as long as I can remember, and especially (like most people I think) in the winter, when it is still dark outside.
We’ve been freelancing for twenty years now, working from home. For many years we would’ve given anything to have a real job at a magazine or something, but it never came our way. So we kept plugging away from home, and after a while it became its own version of a “real” job. And now I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But there is a drawback to working so much from home, and it’s something I would never have imagined. Sometimes, bottom line, I get lonely!
Last year, in trying to figure the lonely-problem, I started to leave the house first thing in the morning to get my coffee at the end of the street, instead of, as we have done for years, making coffee at home. There is a Starbucks around the corner, and not that I am that particular about my coffee, but this Starbucks has nice big windows and is just across the street from a major university, so it’s always lively. I go there and order the large one that they call “vente”, and then I find a place to sit (hopefully). I don’t like overhearing people’s conversations, so I put on my ipod and turn on music. The first week or so I would use the time to write in my journal, but then I took to working on a writing project (which had been going nowhere).
Within a few weeks I came to recognize many of the faces of the staff, and then I came to recognize a few other customers, like me, who came routinely. Before I knew it my writing project (which morphed from non-fiction into fiction) started to take off, and I found myself writing five hundred words a day, and then more. I felt like a comical cliché, writing at the coffee shop. But it worked for me. And it wasn’t just the writing project, but maybe even more, it helped in feeling not so lonely.
At some point I finished my novel (though it's not yet edited), and for a while I felt very much at a loose end, almost wanting to start another so that I could have the same feeling. But I knew it was wrong to start something before finishing the last, and so instead I started practising Thai. I mean not speaking Thai (though sometimes, facing down and under my breath, I do).
What I am learning is to read and to write, something I stupidly hadn't done before. And just like the novel, it’s working! I write, I read, I memorize. The coffee enters my system, my brain starts to turn like the sprockets on a bicycle. My day begins. And I’m sitting there with other human beings, some happy and laughing with friends, some staring into space. Everyone immersed.
