84th floor. bangkok. we fancy now..

beautiful...

Explosions

We used to sit in the flowery dusk
contemplating the smeared pastels
until the stars materialized.
Then we contemplated them.
Our words filled the spaces between stars,
our bodies, the silence.

roadside..

Bangkok and whatnot...

What a trip so far... already learned a lot. Still have a lot to learn.

Among things:

• There is nothing free in Bangkok and if it's really cheap there is some sort of catch like the driver will take you to his friends tux shop and try and fit you for a "chep chep soot." The driver then gets 10 baht (approximately 30 cents) for this favor. How nice.
• You can buy pretty much anything in Bangkok for a fraction of the price in the US, thing is in the tourist area you're still getting over charged even though for you it's a good price.
• The toilets are called squatters. Self explanatory. The bathrooms are also paperless except in the tourist areas. I have managed to find my kind of "regular" bathrooms thus far, but I imagine soon in the more rural areas Ill have to make do with the hole in the ground and the bucket of water for "flushing." More to come on that... or maybe not. (If you don't hear from me assume I figured it out).
• Driving. Scooters (and these scooters move), tuk-tuks (Oh and Wells, pronounced toook-toook, not tuck-tuck, which is what you wnat a lady boy to do to you... so I hope you didnt get a lot of use out of that) and windowless busses so that the passengers can get a face full of grim. Different from driving in the US though... the general rule of thumb is haul ass and only worry about whats infront of you.
• Lady boys. There are a ton of attractive women in Thailand... only they're not women. You can take one home for only 8 baht....
• You can drink beer and smoke butts anywhere ... and pretty much in general do whatever you want. Hey-o!

Showing up in Bangkok and dealing with the city, the jet lag, all of the "salesmen," the diesel smoke, all the people, the total change in diet and whatever it is that's different in the beer that makes you feel like ass the next day, can make you pretty sick of Bangkok, so we went to the beach.

Down in Phuket now... gorgeous. We have been giving ourselves self-guided tours/getting very very lost via scooter. Dope.

More later...

To A Traveling Friend
W.S. Merwin

a harsh cry or partridge
echoes along the valley
through a misty rain
two months after you left
you would recognize it
though you no longer noticed the sound
except in your dreams

once again i do not know
where you may be
how to send you anything
whether you need it or not




you may be far away by now
yet i keep hearing your footsteps
all day in the house
in another room
this is like one of those letters
written on a mountain in China
over a thousand years ago

by someone staring
at miles of white clouds
after a friends departure
there were so many of those
unsigned and never sent
as far as we know

thanks dev. much love.