“Looks like we got another serial killer tomorrow,” groaned Dr. William Wallace loudly as his colleague, Dr. Gustav Scoville, walked past William’s open door toward the exit down the hall.

Gustav stopped. His thick black eyebrows sunk in, and the deep lines in his face hardened as he slowly peeked his head into the office. “Another one?” he asked in a tired monotone, annoyed at both the message and the messenger.

            “The penitentiary is dropping it off at 10:00 after they’re done. I think he’s getting a lethal injection. They wouldn’t send one if they were going to fry his ass. No good in giving us burnt brains.” William raised his voice with these last two words, and they echoed faintly past Gustav down the spotted yellow halls of St. Vincent Hospital’s Neuropsychology Ward.

William roared proudly with laughter in his swivel chair. After his teenage daughter committed suicide six years ago, William took on rowdy humor in his newly rebuilt personality, which fit well with his booming voice and round belly (also a new addition after mourning). After years of violent tantrums and suddenly bursting into tears, William now showed few signs of sadness and loss. He used to visit the Psychology Ward in the hospital for counseling, but with his gradual yet significant recovery, neither William nor his psychiatrist saw any further need.

Excited by his own joke, he continued shouting. “Did you finish analyzing poor Miss Trumble yet?”

            Gustav stepped impatiently into the doorway—the fastened buttons of his long, black coat flashing with the office’s white fluorescent lights. He was eager to return home and rest. His raw throat hinted at the onset of sickness, and Gustav never allowed his body to submit to any condition that would impede his research. But once he felt the dry heat of the office, and the sterile smell of cheap wood polish reached his nose, he began with distinct confidence: “I’ve found some very interesting axonal decay in some dopaminergic pathways. It could indicate that the pleasure system’s functioning was compromised, which would explain her depression.”

            “Sounds like a good article you could submit to the journal,” interrupted William.

            Gustav responded before William finished, “Well, the only problem is that the damage could’ve been caused by something else, probably oxygen deprivation to the middle cerebral artery.” He gave a theatric pause. “I mean, she did hang herself.” The words hung in the air, clinging to the white walls. Gustav glared victoriously at the man sitting still in his chair—leaving him with a solemn conclusion that even the boisterous man could not make a joke out of.

Gustav believed that all motivated behavior could be explained and predicted with the simple concept of causation: one event causes another. It was just a matter of knowing what causes what. All he had to do in order to rest at home was to get to the front doors. To get to the front doors, he had to silence his loudmouthed colleague. And to do that, he must say something to which the large man could not give any significant response. Cause and effect.

He took this philosophy seriously, and applied it to his research. The criminal mind is easy to detect, with the right kind of eyes and a little slice down the brain’s longitudinal fissure. After receiving so many case studies over the past few months, he could tell whether incoming patients were criminals just by looking at sagittal slices of their brains or glancing at their MRI charts. Sometimes he thought he could tell what kinds of crimes they committed. This one stole food from a gas station. This one murdered his cheating wife. Just by the organization of their brain cells. Gustav didn’t think about why someone would want to steal a greasy, stale hot dog from a gas station, or what a husband would feel when he listens to his wife moaning in ecstasy with another man upstairs. Why should he deal with such difficult, painful questions? Those feelings and desires could be mapped out and charted. Desperation and vengeance, along with any other human emotion, were merely blue, red, and yellow pixels in unique configurations plotted on a transparent diagram of a brain. This saved Gustav all the needless suffering cherished so dearly by poets, artists, and devastated ex-fathers.

After staring intently at the blank expression of William for a long minute, Gustav turned around with a half-hearted wave. Taking his colleague’s silence as a trophy, he walked toward the golden twilight slanted across the granite tile at end of the hall. He shouldered his way through the revolving door while slipping his gloves on, and walked slowly into the gloaming.

 

* * *

 

            Wild dreams tormented Gustav Scoville that night. His homunculus body had thrown aside the warm blankets, and now the cold penetrated his nightmares. A mountain of thin hairy fingers reached to the sky. Malice and homicidal rage dripped from the peaks of red claws, and the vapor around Gustav’s nose and mouth swelled with each hissing drop. The claws swung relentlessly and with immeasurable strength at the two-lane street on which he stood. Continents seemed to crumble beneath him, and suddenly he found the very foundation of the earth stripped away from his feet. He fell into an oblivion that was less than nothing—an infinite, inescapable canyon of the universe where he could do nothing but fall.

            With a sharp, horrified yelp, Gustav’s neck convulsed—the falling sensation still resounding down his spine—and with the force of his arched back violently pushing the mattress away, he launched into an upright position standing on his bed; his head nearly grazing the ceiling. Frantic confusion roared in his ears as the blood rushed through his head and spread to the rest of his body. Staring forward at the faint lines of the door across the bedroom, he did not know what had woken him, whether it was the dream or his own tortured wail—still writhing painfully in the back of his raw, dry throat.

Forcing his eyes tightly shut, he clutched at his head with the ends of his tense fingers, their dark veins trailing along his savage black hair. His head ached terribly, but felt much lighter than usual, despite the peculiar sound ringing in his ears and the stiff pains penetrating deeper than any migraine he’d had before. Standing on the starched white sheets of his bed, he instinctively tried to shake off the sleepy smell of his own hair like a dog; his nightmares now infused the once-satisfying earthy odor. As his nimble head shook a chaotic mass of thousands of black hairs, he teetered in a drunken daze and fell to the floor with a heavy thud. For a moment Gustav could not remember where he was, and the ringing in his head steadily gained momentum to a visceral storm that shook his vision in waves so ravenous that his eyes could not help but blink furiously—as if something aiming for his face moved too fast for any other reflex—with eyelashes frantically scraping his pressed cheek as he lay facedown on the floor. With great effort, he calmed his throbbing head, trying to stop the rumbling within it, still lying face-down on the floor next to his scattered blankets with his knees hanging off the white sheets.

            But the echo would not stop. It steadily vibrated Gustav’s light skull like a hollow tomb, and as he tried with great difficulty to speculate what was happening, a dim notion crept through the hazy border of his consciousness that something was very wrong. The sound was salient but indescribable. He had never heard it before and, if asked, could not compare its volume or pitch to any physical phenomenon. As he began to realize that the cause of his torment would not reveal itself as perhaps a harmless sleep-induced delirium and twitch of the cheek, his consternation turned to frustration, and then to horror.

Now inspired by the fear of losing sanity, he rallied his last reserves of calm concentration to focus on the sound—realizing the sound’s origin was his own buoyant head. It permeated out from his skull, reached his ears, and gained entry again, in sequence, over and over. Within a couple maddening minutes, the sound became so intensely distorted in this endless loop that he thought he heard its beginning and ending a thousand times at once. Gustav had awoken to a nightmare far worse than the one he had dreamed. He clenched his teeth in desperate hunger for relief. None came. With the pressure of a booming subwoofer, Gustav’s clamorous head rolled his introspective eyes outward, and soon he was completely unaware of any sound or thought—left only with the skeleton of that bleary but compelling appetite for satisfaction.

            He clawed fiercely at the blankets around him to pull his body completely onto the floor and grabbed hold of the end of a quilt just within reach of both hands. He crawled forward on his arms in such a frenzy that the quilt ripped between his fists, and soon he pulled himself up, stumbling to his feet. With a lumbering step forward, his craving led him to the door. He kicked it open violently, a motion that strengthened his wobbly legs and stabilized his balance. Finding himself at one end of the living room, something drew him through it toward the kitchen. Under brown cabinets, sitting at the end of a countertop separating the living room from the kitchen, the green light of the microwave’s clock attracted him. Soon an impulse drove him to the refrigerator in the nearby corner. This is where he could find food. Dead flesh wrapped in tin foil. A bloody bag of meat.

            With drool pooling at the corners of his mouth, he walked around the counter, eagerly grabbed the fridge handle, and light burst forth from behind the door as he ripped it away from the white tower. He did not notice the crashes of beer bottles and a mayonnaise jar when they fell from the shelves on the door. He was far too fascinated by something unexpected in the corner of the top shelf in the fridge. There, to the left of a white carton of leftover Chinese food and behind a half gallon of milk, sat a thick glass box filled with a clear, gluey liquid; submerged in it was a heaping putrid mound of faded brown-yellow flesh. From the moment he threw aside the fridge door, Gustav knew this was his brain.

The cold glow of the fridge dimly lit his face as he stared at the two infused ovals, their oblong surfaces inscribed with dark squiggles like hieroglyphics. Then came the smell. When it reached him, the curious smell was dominated by a sterile sting of formaldehyde and vinegar, but as the refrigerated air shifted silently, the rank odor of rotting, sour meat began to saturate the antiseptic tinge. He could not help but gaze in awe, while a thick stream of hot drool dripped to his feet. His wide eyes were red from not blinking as he held his arms tensely at his sides—his yearning wrists bent up, as if ready to reach out at any second. At last he smiled, knocked over the half-empty milk, and lifted the sides of the cube firmly with both hands.

Calmly and steadily he walked to the counter and set the heavy cube down next to a stool. No door or opening could be found on the box’s surface. The glass seemed completely sealed. He tapped the hard surface firmly with just a finger, then his whole hand. The cube gave a heavy thunk thunk with each tap, but nothing more. Soon he was furiously beating the dense cube against the edge of the counter, chipping away white paint while the glass suffered not a single crack, dent, or scratch. Panting heavily, he sat on the stool, enraged by the futility of his frantic effort, all the while staring at the object of his obsession floating inside the monolith.

Blood raged through the veins of his hands as his wild, passionate fury devoured him. He gave a vicious yell as he began pounding down on the cube’s top with his own clenched fists. He needed to have it. He needed to feel it against his skin.

Pain and fatigue lost all meaning, like a word repeated over and over beyond the edge of abstraction. The bottoms of his fists were already darkly bruised, but he felt no physical pain—there was no need. The insatiable hunger was more than enough. His fists crashed down steadily like steel pistons, never slowing. With each numb impact of bone on glass, his frustration boiled out his mouth and pores hotter. Finally, he cocked his head back with a jolt—leaning so far back that the front legs of his stool lifted off the tile for a split second—and with desperately furious instinct, he propelled his body forward with monstrous strength, dealing a vicious blow to the corner of the cube’s top. The cube slid across the counter and fell to the living room’s carpet on the other side.

His hands now useless bloody stumps and his head leaking bright, cloudy red from a deep gash on his forehead, he slumped off the stool. As he slid unconsciously to the floor head-first, Dr. Gustav Scoville’s weightless head bounced on the kitchen tile opposite the cube, which now, on a corner of its glass, flashed the dark glimmer of a shallow dent.

Standing on a bridge this afternoon over a small creek in the quietest corner of campus, I thought of the perfect metaphor for my common day-to-day state of consciousness. I had finished all my obligations for the day and, on a whim, decided to take a walk to clear my mind, perhaps through vicariously bathing myself in the perfectly blue sky and the invigorating sun. At a comfortable 50 degrees, the still outside world welcomed my existence (as opposed to the selfishly barren days that have forced us to push through torrential wind and bitter cold that we've been experiencing for the past few months), and I made the all-too-rare gesture of returning the favor. I planted my feet between the black bars of the cement bridge while smoking an unfiltered Camel and, looking over the budding fingers of trees hanging over the brown water where geese floated and dove in, I fell into quiet meditation.

You see, I had lit my cigarette by asking to borrow a lighter from two chatty girls walking by, and suddenly felt ashamed. They had a camera and were walking quickly and gossiping, while here I was standing quietly alone in the middle of a bridge staring down (an activity that would probably bore them, and most people). After I had politely thanked them they walked on, continuing with their giggly chatter. Then I realized the sacredness with which I viewed this solitary activity of mine. If I were the one walking and chatting with a friend, and a guy standing alone on a bridge staring into nothingness asked me for a lighter, I would offer it up like a novice monk offers his master a cup of tea--with two steady hands and a reverence that only solemn silence can express.

Initially I tried to reject that irrational significance I give to this practice of mine. But it's true that people pay homage to the things that mean the most to them, even if those things may not mean much to everyone else. So I shouldn't be ashamed that I have such a strange view of a seemingly arbitrary action, but instead accept its meaningfulness to me and try to understand why I feel that way. But there's a problem. An alcoholic may worship the bottle while others condone his piety as sickness and disease. Therefore, a just understanding of my own pleasure should be analyzed so that I don't make the same mistake as the idolator of Miller Lite. I contemplated while a short, pretty girl with straight black hair walked past my bent back leaning forward over the water, and as she did the bridge vibrated under my feet with each of her steps. Distracted, I tried to collect my train of thought. "Is it harmful for me to act this way?"

That brings me to the metaphor I alluded to at the beginning of this little rant. I am a man who constructed his own bridge over a picturesque landscape in order to observe its beauty alone. This is my sanctuary, my tower that overlooks the trees and the geese and the people in the distance. And while I stand, settled in the black metal bars of my home, I'm comfortable and out of reach. But the muffled steps of others shake this certainty and solitary bliss, so that my thoughts and actions become startled reactions to the motions of others--they're not my own.

This leaves me with a dilemma. No, it's THE dilemma. Do I ignore the disturbing steps of others and stay focused on my own thoughts and actions? Do I leave my bridge to engage others, shaking their bridges, asserting my own thoughts and actions instead of merely reacting to the motions of others? Or should I just construct my bridge to be stronger, so that it can absorb the steps of others more effectively until I can't even feel them anymore? That way I might be able to ignore those passing by and stay in my sanctuary forever.

Maybe next time I should just turn around and say hi to the thing moving me, instead of whistling at geese swimming by.

May 21, 2007
Dear Universe,
        Last night I arrived in Thailand. It was very late on that hot, rainy night when Uncle Anan picked me and my mom up from the airport in his gray truck, and I had to get used to cars driving on the left again. It's been seven years since the last time I came to visit my mother's homeland, and I can't adequately describe how it feels to be back. Imagine going to a strange place as a child, immersed in an exotic world that jolts your mind and pushes it down swift steamy currents that you could never have imagined before, until you drown in baffling bliss. Then the ride is over; you're thrown back to the mundane and common until the memory of that spectacular maelstrom fades. Now that I'm back in mystifying paradise, I've realized that all of my dreams since that childhood summer have been about Thailand. And so, my experience here feels layered and multiplied: the feeling of being immersed in the thickness of Eastern culture—the tropical heat, the shrines with golden teakwood statues of Shiva and Buddha outside fifty-story malls, the wreaths of flowers hanging from rear-view mirrors of taxis that smell of jasmine, the toothless roadside vendors selling chickens, hairy purple fruits, and fake gold teeth—multiplied by the combined emotion of all my dreams from the last seven years. I feel Thailand².
        A time capsule has opened in my mind. I’m flung back into childhood, having no worries, unable to imagine tomorrow's adventure. If the constant ninety-degree heat didn't remind me I was in Thailand, the incomparable smell would. It smells like sewage, jasmine, sweat, and incense. I’m staying for three months, but I seriously want to live here one day (if not after I graduate, then at least after I retire). My personality is definitely much more Thai than American. In the States I’m a shy, boring, wiry short kid whose true nature no one can quite grasp; but in Thailand I’m seen as polite, physically average (maybe even slightly muscular), and exotic. And even though I can't speak much Thai, I know enough to get by on my own in the bustling metropolis of Bangkok, and I'm sure to learn much more as I go out and take rides on the roaring white “sky train” that snakes over Sukhumvit Road, watch Thai television, and hopefully make some friends. I really want to learn to speak Thai fluently, but when I first arrived and tried following a conversation, I realized that I don't know shit.
        I had trouble entering paradise. First, I had to wait in line at Customs among hundreds of people. When it was finally my turn to see the middle-aged brown man at the desk, he asked to see my Immigration Card through flat glasses filled with a demanding glare. I hadn't filled it out to be honest, I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. Standing with my back to the line of soon-to-be tourists, I quickly learned that the pace of time's progression is proportionate to the number of people waiting on you. I scribbled my information on it for what seemed like twenty minutes, and when I finished, the man told me to turn it over. There was another side. At that, he told me to step aside, and I was left to walk back to finish the card while waiting in line once more. When I finally arrived to the front again, the man noticed that I didn't fill out my Thai address. I told him I didn't know where my family lived, and he pointed to a small room in the corner. There I was met by a wrinkled man, and followed him to a faded, torn paper hanging by a piece of tape on the wall, listing the names of dozens of hotels in Bangkok.
        “Where are you staying?” he asked, looking at the paper.
        Confused, I explained that I didn't know, trying my clunky Thai, and even pulling out my cell phone offering to call my mom (who took a different flight), if I had service (I didn't). He calmly and reassuringly said that I didn't need to call her.
        “Pick one,” he said.
        After a moment of confusion, I stuttered, “A-Amari Hotel.”
        “That's fine, now go.” I went.
        I've decided that my Thai name is Singto. It's a common Thai name that means “Lion,” which has been my nickname in the U.S. among some circles. So, I'm signing off as a young Thai guy living in Bangkok. For once, I really feel my Thai half shining.

Sincerely,
Singto


May 25, 2007
Dear Humanity,
        I believe that you began as one mind. There was only thought and emotion. But the mind split into two, and then the branches continued to grow. Here came the need for an absurd activity, insufficient by nature--to express the mental and universal with the physical. That is, using a word to represent a concept. In this inherent subjugation of the infinite to the finite, thoughts and conceptions had to be neatly bound and packaged into syllables for the reception of other minds. But this diverging was inevitable because everything follows that pattern of splitting, separation, and development into separate things. Thus, different planets form, different species evolve, different languages develop, different civilizations rise and conflict, a boy asks his mother what a word means, a bird in Montgomery sings the same song as his cousin in Tiananmen in a different dialect, and ultimately each mind sprouts a different perception. We're happy with the things that bring us back to singleness: the glimpses of universality. Music, art, literature, the supernatural--they all unify us by breaking down boundaries between ideas, digging back to the roots of a whole that is far greater than the sum of its individual parts.
        I will do that very digging. I will find my algorithm to the universe, the common denominator between all things, the uniform ocean that connects every remote emerald island. It probably won't all happen in the next three months. But this is the definitive start, the "bon voyage," the broken champagne bottle. This is the beginning of my adventure in Thailand, my exploration of heritage, my journey of self, my safari of humanity, my expedition of existence. This is my postcard.
        Every day feels like a dream. It makes dreaming at night a thousand times more powerful; my dreams have become wildly vivid, as if I’m dreaming in a dream. I really don't want to ever leave. Everyone is ridiculously hospitable here. I have absolutely no worries—a maid does most of the housework for my three aunts, two uncles, my cousin, my mom, and me, all living in this seven-story house in a long alley off busy Sukhumvit Road—and my family takes me all over the city to see the sites, eat delicious food, and shop (my least favorite, but I don't tell them that). I especially like my cousin Jasmin. She's a very pretty woman of twenty-eight years--tall, frail, pale and a little too lean, like a shiny silk thread that can tear at any moment. Her English is nearly perfect, since she has lived in the U.S. for several years and received her master’s degree at the University of Minnesota in English education, now teaching at a renowned international Catholic university called Assumption. Jas has taken me to lots of places, my favorite being a night club called “Yes, Indeed” where a live band plays requests ranging from Thai pop songs, to “I Will Survive,” to “My Humps,” on a stage adorned with hanging strobe lights and girls wearing tight clothes dancing in unison. She's by far my best friend here (alright, my only friend).
        A couple nights ago Jas took me out to eat with her friends. Friendship is sacred in Thailand. The first time I saw two girls holding hands crossing a busy street caught me off guard. But when I began seeing it frequently, I realized that friendship is an intimate bond—a mother will refer to her daughter's friend as “daughter” (the same goes for "sons") and men walk around with their arms hanging heavily over each others' shoulders, like brothers. Jas took us to my favorite restaurant, Fuji, a Japanese place with high, blue glass walls embedded with streams of black and neon red; we took off our shoes before sliding into the soft cushions of the black marble booth that reflected white lights above. Jasmin and her friends buzzed and radiated the way Thai people do when they're with loved ones. I sat on the same side of the table as my cousin, at the far end next to the wall. Leaning on my elbow, I picked at my spicy papaya salad with chopsticks while thinking about my friends back home, having already given up on trying to keep up with the relentless Thai conversation firing across the table. The papaya salad was good.
        Thai fruits are fantastic. And it's the rainy season so there are plenty of them. My favorite one is mankute, which foreigners call mangosteen--a small purple ball with green leaves that feel like plastic, and soft white wedges inside like an orange. There's a funny story that native Thais tell each other about the name that foreigners call it. Supposedly, one day an explorer came here and happened upon this fruit. He asked a native what it was called, and the Thai answered, "Mankute."
        "What, mango?" inquired the explorer.
        "Mankute."
        "Mango?"
        "MANKUTE."
        "Uhhh, mango?"
        "Mango? Sahteen!" answered the Thai angrily.
        And so this swear "sahteen," which means something to the effect of "I'll kick your fucking ass,” was dutifully recorded by the white man.
        I feel guilty laughing at this story, though. It’s true that the more insider information I get, the more I feel like a true native Thai. But I find myself sympathizing with that oblivious foreigner on his conquest for the exclusive truths of Thailand.

Until the Future,
Singto


June 9, 2007
Dear America,
    After eating some ridiculously spicy food last night, and foolishly trying to eat the leftovers for breakfast this morning, I feel obligated to keep you from making the same mistakes. As such, here is my Comprehensive In-Depth Study on the Consumption of Thai Food:

Water – will temporarily relieve both tongue and stomach
Plain White Rice – will relieve more permanently, but require copious amounts
Sweets (custards, pastes, sticky rice) – will preserve the burning (note: avoid until meal
       completed; do NOT resume meal after consumption)
Milk – will relieve tongue but kill stomach
Coffee – will kill both tongue and stomach
Alcohol – will kill you

This scientific study was conducted by the method of trial and error.
        A couple weeks ago I met a friend of Jas, her name is Poy. She’s a rather glamorous girl, wearing black high heels and the latest designer purses to match them. They compliment her straight black hair and fierce bat eyes that point sharply down toward her nose and expand outward and up toward her ears, like a hawk's outspread wings. When the three of us had lunch together, she looked at me and frequently made giggly comments in Thai that forced my cousin into fits of food-spitting laughter. Apparently she's a very dirty girl. One of those outgoing types whose bouncy personality seems to fit nimbly in her small body. But the only way we could communicate effectively was through my cousin, who stared at the two of us from across the table with the same wide anxious eyes as a housewife watching the latest episode of Days of our Lives (or whatever the Thai equivalent is). And as you know, I speak the international language of Body almost as badly as I speak Thai. But maybe it's better that way, Jasmin tells me that she's “dangerous” when it comes to men, whatever that means.
        Jas introduced me to another pretty friend, Nida, who I’ve become quite close to after many trips and dinners together. But her charm, under-appreciated by Thais, lies not in glitter and glamour, but in the rare consummation of dusk's opaque grace--her mass of black wavy hair, roasted-cocoa skin, thick black eyelashes, and the softness of her face. As a reporter for a popular English newspaper called The Nation, her English is quite good, and she’s very friendly. In her dark, exotic accent that resonates in a minor key, she offered to help when my attempts to open a bank account proved too difficult with my inability to speak Thai.
        A few days ago I took the bus to a temple called Wat Mahatat to study meditation under the only English-speaking Thai monk in the city. The buses here are almost dilapidated—they’re rusty blue and grey school buses that spew enough thick black exhaust to force those who ride them to hold their breath at longest intervals possible (but they only cost ten baht, about thirty cents). People stared at me as I boarded the number sixty bus to Ta Chang, but I don’t blame them. A foreigner riding one of these local buses, not taking a taxi, the subway, or the sky train? It’s admirable, I think. But I can’t ignore them when they stare in malls and restaurants too.
        I've been spending an awful lot of time in my room lately. It seems like there's nothing to do. I know, it sounds absurd, but my motivation to go out and explore on my own is dwindling. Everyone’s busy with work every day. Where would I go? To another shopping mall? Those are the only kinds of places I can go without family or friends when I can't speak Thai. I have no idea how to get to the Royal Theater, the National Museum, or Suan Pakkad Palace. Not to mention, they'd charge me the foreigners' fee to get in (which is about four times the admission price for natives) if I didn't go with family who could convince security that I'm Thai. I mostly just play chess on my laptop and watch British soccer games on television.
        When I was with you, I oftentimes chose to spend nights alone in my room smoking cigarettes and playing a computer game that I had already beaten at least fifteen times. There’s a strange sense of peace that washes over me when I lose that last shred of dignity. It’s nice. But here, a night alone in my fifth-floor bedroom on my laptop feels like dying. Loneliness in paradise is a thousand times worse than loneliness in hell.

Until the Future,
Singto


July 23, 2007
Dear Home,
        A few days ago, my uncle took me to the ancient capital, Ayuttaya. I went to three temples, bright with that gleam of fascinating culture, the aura you see in postcards of statues and pyramids. I also road an elephant, which was not only fun, but gave me a great view of roadside ruins (many busy roads are literally built around ancient ruins). I saw the reclining Buddha, a hundred-foot horizontal statue of white marble lying on its side, caged in brown, chipped rubble. I had seen it as a kid, so seeing it again was an experience shaded with mystical nostalgia. I climbed the mountain stairs in a Buddhist monument built hundreds of years ago to commemorate a victory in battle against the Burmese, which gave Thailand its freedom. Hundreds of identical weary gray Buddha statues draped in yellow robes lined the outer courtyard, and at the top of the worn stairs was a dark room with the same Buddha statues sitting in a small circle. In the middle was a mystifying cage-like structure the size of a fax machine with crossed white bars composed of some material I could not identify, which represented the bones of Buddha.
        I think there's a certain edifying effect that ancient places have on the mind, no matter where they are. This city has been internationally recognized as a monument to “world culture,” but what does that mean? It means more than simply "This place exemplifies an old civilization." World culture. It sounds unifying, as if hinting that, although there are many cultures, there’s perhaps human culture—that is, the culture of being human. Going to the roots of Thailand, I feel a harmony with humanity. It's a reminder that everything has a single origin and branches out. And looking back in towards the trunk from those branches, we see something strangely beautiful, a part of ourselves and a part of everything. I felt like I could see humanity, or the soul, or God. I think that's what this entire trip is all about. Does that make any sense? Maybe not.

Sincerely,
Singto


July 28, 2007
Dear Friend,
        Last night I went out for a night on the town by myself. In the early evening I left my house, slid the metal gate shut behind me, and walked down the alley toward Sukhumvit Road past the dark-skinned taxi drivers watching a small television outside by their parked taxis, the group of five or six young women standing outside a massage parlor beckoning people passing by, and the dirty outdoor restaurant where I once saw a brown baby elephant giving rides. After walking up the cement stairs on the sidewalk to the elevated train station, I paid for my ticket and boarded the sky train to Siam Square.
        Siam Square is a monument to the boom in Southeast Asia. Shopping monstrosities tower over both sides of noisy streets, countless people walk along littered sidewalks holding handkerchiefs to their faces with one hand and cell phones in the other, homeless mothers huddle with their children at the ends of overpasses where smog from the streets huddles with them, trapped under the brown cement of the sky train above. I walked past a couple sitting on the edge of a fountain watching a screen the size of a scoreboard showing the latest pop music videos, and made my way to one of the skyscraper malls called Siam Paragon.
        The top floor is a luxurious movie theater with dim red and white lights spotlighting a lounge for couples and friends to eat and talk. I saw many foreigners like me with their families there, chatting and waiting by the bathrooms. I walked to the counter to buy my ticket for Transformers, and was surprised to be greeted by a man who spoke nearly perfect English. He showed me a computer chart of all the available seats in the theater; there were still many available, so I chose one directly in the middle. My ticket was only two hundred baht (about five dollars). I bought a big bag of popcorn and a large Coke from another friendly English-speaking cashier, and made my way to the theater.
        Transformers was surprisingly entertaining, and afterwards I took an escalator down to the food court. After wandering for thirty minutes around the massive complex of Japanese restaurants, Italian joints, and traditional Thai places with orange-spotted soups and headless, brown bodies of chickens hanging behind windows, I decided on pizza--seafood pizza with tempura, shrimp, and pineapples. I also ordered the Thai staple beer, Singha (it also means “lion”), which I decided I liked. So after my meal I stopped at a 7-11, bought a pack of Marlboro Reds, a lighter, and a four-pack of Singha, all for less than five dollars.
        The night had bloomed beautifully. Black rain washed over the streets that shimmered against the pulsating string of headlights and streetlights. Cars on the illuminated streets flickered and dazzled in every corner of my eye with the flashing yellow and red lights outside shops and night clubs a couple blocks down. I wandered around sipping my cans quickly until I found a quiet side-street by the empty fountain, where I sat under a thick tree that the drizzle couldn’t penetrate. Aside from the occasional barks of stray dogs and the soothing rush of cars on wet pavement in the distance, no noise disturbed my solitary bliss. At that moment, I loved this place more than ever before.

Truly yours,
Singto

Today is my last day in this hemisphere for three months since I'm going to Thailand, so I suppose it warrants some sort of expression. In all honesty, these past two weeks have been some of the best days of my life, which actually brings me down. Since school ended, I have spent more time with friends and bonding with new ones. Strangely, I find that bonding with those newer friends, from NIU, is much more natural and comfortable than spending time with my old buddies. The select people at NIU to whom I have had the pleasure of getting close seem to resonate with me in unprecedented depth; it has made for the deepest philosophical conversations and the most fun, witty conversations I have ever had (you know who you are). And I feel better for it, inflated with new experiences and ideas, and becoming able to intimately share my own thought and repartee. And I've left them all, coming home from DeKalb -- that's what makes all of this bonding painful. And not only have I left them for home, but I'm taking an even more substantial leave, deserting all my friends from home and DeKalb even further by leaving for a faraway land for three months. I won't see anyone over the summer, the time for solidifying relationships and catching up with old faces. But I'm drawn to that little civilization on the opposite side of the world.

So I guess this is a tribute to all of you who have made these last couple weeks the best they could be. It feels like I'm leaving forever. And who knows, maybe a part of me will be gone forever, maybe you won't recognize me when I come back, maybe this experience of digging back down to my roots and living a new way of life will change me forever, into a person who does not have the same name as the one who left. I feel like I'm about to embark on a life-altering journey (or maybe continuing on one that I had started before), a spiritual, intellectual, and cultural one that will give me new perspectives and thus new identities.

The other night I explained my fluid-solid brain theory to Stacie. Young children are incredibly adept at learning new concepts before the age of six, which is referred to as the critical age theory. Speak a foreign language to him, and he can imitate as perfectly as a native. Soon he will be bilingual, in a small fraction of the time it would take an adult to learn a new language. Words are labels, they are boxes we bound concepts and ideas into, in order to convey them to others. Small children aren't stuck in the practice of bounding thoughts into the inadequate portable parcel of words. But they still have thoughts themselves. Their thoughts are free from those boundaries we put around concepts, and they can move nimbly throughout their minds without stumbling over some labels to give to their brain activity. When we are placed in a new environment, there is a sort of mystical, wondrous intrigue that takes hold of us. Whether you are displaced by five towns or five countries, you are separated from the dull comfort of familiarity.

And there is no label for your new world. You become aware of your refreshing curiosity, the feeling that, for once, you do not know every sight, sound, and smell, and for once there is no name for them -- a welcomed change from your familiar surroundings where you have subconsciously studied every detail, abstract or concrete, and given it a name. And so, when people ask you how your trip was, you never say "the green grass rolling and waving in the wind was boring," or "being in a new place was scary and I don't want to do it again." A journey is an experience, It's always an escape and a project, the yearning to familiarize and become comfortable and, in so doing, to break out of your habitual sealed cardboard box of the usual in order to define your new environment and yourself. It takes you back to your childhood, when things were simpler and fluid, not so rigid and defined with harsh, unrelenting lines between everyone and everything and everythought. There were only concepts, only ideas, only feelings, the things that dreams are made of and memories saturated, and all things natural reflect them. Words escape you because words are dumbed down, oversimplified, expressionless expressions of the world.

Not to digress, but my theory of the single mind goes along with this. I think that mankind started out as one mind. There was only thought and emotion. But the mind split into two, and the branches grew. Here came the need for an absurd activity, insufficient by nature -- to express the mental and universal with the physical. That is, using a sound to represent a concept. But this diverging was inevitable because everything follows that pattern of splitting, separation, and development into separate things. Thus, different planets form, different species evolve, different languages develop from the same source, different civilizations rise and conflict, a bird in East Asia sings the same song as his cousin in Vermont but in a new dialect, a boy asks his mother what a word means, and ultimately, minds each sprout different perceptions. We're happy with the things that bring us back to that singleness, the notions of our universality. Music, art, literature, travelling, the supernatural (psychics, ghosts, heaven), they all unify us by breaking down barriers and boundaries between ideas, digging back to our roots.

I will do that very digging. I will find my algorithm to the universe, the common denominator between all things, the beautiful uniform ocean of our world that connects every remote emerald island, and where my blue drop is. It probably won't all happen in the next three months. But this is the definitive start, the signal of beginning, the "bon voyage, adieu, Godspeed, farewell, ้โชคด, good bye," the broken champaign bottle. Yes, tomorrow in the airport will be the christening of the S.S. Axiom Anchor (lame? Yeah probably, I should think about my ship's name more often). This is the last day before my adventure of Thailand, my exploration of my heritage, my journey of myself, my safari of humanity, my expedition of existence. I'll send a postcard.

I apologize for the lack of updates (if anyone cares). A lot has been happening, but I don't feel the need to externalize it, to channel all these internally understood events, feelings, and thoughts into some medium for others. I'm content. There's no buildup of angst or inexpressible emotion that needs to burst through my feely fingertips, to a clicking keyboard, onto a digital screen. I will, however, grace you (and myself) with an account of one of the best nights I've experienced here in Dekalb -- last night with Steph.

Steph and I prayed to the jade Buddha, and walked around campus with our heightened minds, amongst the cheerful birds and warm sun. We walked through a couple old academic buildings that reminded me of my junior high, but much larger and old, like a scene out of Old School by Tobias Wolff, with its dark, creaking wooden walls and victorian chandeliers. We spent a lot of time outside smoking atop vantage points (and most other places), observing bizzare, animated scenes of a distant world from our turrets above, a bridge between buildings, and a booth at Eduardos where we ate dinner. Such a nice place Eduardos is -- almost fancy, upscale in a Dekalb sort of way. When we waited for our food in the dim light, surrounded by seemingly ancient weavings on walls (the type you see at anthropological museums when you're a kid learning about Native Americans), a magician came to our table. He pulled out a deck of cards, and mystified our minds with card tricks that, somehow, did not seem cheesy.

On that night I perceived the most tender sight that I have ever experienced. While exploring campus, Steph was suddenly reminded of something I should see, but kept it a surprise. So I blindly followed her with dire curiosity that nearly drove me mad (I have discovered that my tendencies for interpretation and analysis stretch the unknown and uncertain into tense, suppressible frustration). We came to the side of Zulauf Hall where a fuzzy, pulsating object rested on top of a cement ash tray column by a bench. As we drew nearer, it looked at us with sidelong eyes bedded on dark spotted feathers. A duck had made its nursing nest in the sandy ash. Its home seemed to be endorsed by the community, the column of cement tagged with papers saying, "DO NOT DISTURB, DUCK NURSING." The forces of the universe, by some chance, had saw fit to leave a piece of hard, crummy bread not twenty feet away. Steph picked up the bread and sat at the end of the bench next to the calm, staring mound of feathers. Silently and gracefully, she broke apart the bread and reached her hand to the edge of the column in such a smooth, cautious motion that seemed fit for a zookeeper feeding a lion cub. As the sun set, the birds still lightly singing sweet incantations, I watched the most loving girl I know carefully place crumbs of bread on the edge of a cement column of ash inhabited by a confused, immovable ball of feathers.

We talked, we bonded, we explored, we connected in ways that I have not experienced in some time, if ever. I'll miss that.

I wrote an essay on the role of interpretation for American Lit. (specifically the role of interpretation in Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance). I feel that my struggling with the subject of analysis and interpretation for much of my life, and especially after reading Hawthorne, has enhanced my understanding of the way I, and others, look at the world. I feel it's relevant, so here are some edited snippets:

One’s interpretations reflect the inner workings of his mind. His view from behind a peephole -- by which he selectively observes and invites certain aspects of reality through its door to entertain as guests to his thoughts -- allows him to interpret events in his own subjective fashion. Thus, interpretation of reality “like a magician’s glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self.” Close readings are only concerned with parts of the whole, and the mind is too unreliable, with its exaggeration, imagination, and weariness towards reality, to combine them into a realistic sum. So if reality falls under subjugation to the mind, it becomes open to willful manipulation – a canvass colored and framed by one particular mindset, a culmination of hopes, fears, and daydreams.

How much imagination goes into our interpretation? Where is the line that marks excessive imagination? Interpretation itself, no doubt, reflects the mind of the interpreter. Perhaps life itself is dull, meaningless existence to which we project our own subconscious neurological connections, fabricating subtle connections between outside events. It remains that each person sees different frames and shades based on his or her own network of mental connections. The mind’s eye perceives but from one uniquely chiseled keyhole to which only the perceiver holds the key.

It is learning to post.

Current Mood: exhausted