The Reasons Why

This is what good luck is, finally we have some. This is why we do it. This is why we drag ourselves on through culture shock and feelings of "I can't do this, I wasn't cut out for this...why did I leave everything dear behind?" This is why we squat in dank holes, endure horrendous bowel movements and share showers with cockroaches, spiders, mosquitoes and blood suckers. This is why we came here. This is Thailand and this is our year.

We hefted a year's worth of our lives onto our backs and shuffled through Chiang Mai: Song Thaw, walking, bus station, floor, bus, Chiang Rai, Song Thaw, guest house, floor, beds. Heft, drag, collapse, that's the key. Chiang Rai held little promise, save for the White Temple, a gleaming reminder of the morbidity of Religion, it blinds in sunlight. Once again we hefted, dragged, sagged, squashed ourselves into a minivan which seemed too clean for our grubby feet. Everything is too clean for our grubby feet. There we stayed, huddled and contorted, laughing at ourselves as we wound up dizzily through the mountainside, up, up, up towards the heaven of Pai. It is a heaven, if one believes in such a thing, this is it. Pai is beautiful, it's views are the pictures you see in your mind when you think of Thailand, and there those pictures were, right outside our window and we were weaving in and out of them, incorporating into it, tiny ants in a vast sphere of awe.

9:00am and we hired scooters (stop laughing) to zip through and around Pai. If there's one way to really appreciate where you are, in this haze of rolling green and blue power, hurtling through it, feeling its stinging breath pelt you in the face and freeze your grinning teeth is certainly the way to go about it. Euphoria. There's a freedom comes from it, from being in control and being on your own two feet, it was so good to feel that.

Speeding on, we stumbled on these sights. Stumbled upon them! Only in Thailand could you unexpectedly crest a hill and be confronted with all this...breathtaking. That's the realisation we all need, being able to think "okay, THIS is why I'm here" is a great, great thing. Left, right, loop, return, up, down, this way, that way? We picked a direction and gunned it down, only two minutes in and we stopped to pet the elephants who loitered right next to the road. Another beautiful surprise, just there. Right there, in front of us. Just elephants. HA!

On we went for the day, on and on, never letting up on the accelerator, never letting up on our grins. Pure, sweet, tangy life. Best day.

And then I just CHUNDERED EVERYWHAR...

Baptized By Fire

                                                            "So I'll be sailing on
                                                           Out into bermuda blue
                                                         Compass needle breaks
                                                        Like the heart I gave to you
                                                 I've been laying down in the devils lair
                                               Sailing into the sun I'll be baptized there"


Over a month has passed since I moved here, within that month I have been jerked and jived into a brutal tango, my flesh and bones clawed at by six inch talons, ripping away, exposing every sensitive, raw part of my being and watching with pleasure as I collapse in exhaustion from the constant pirouette. Sounds harrowing, don't it? Let me indulge you in woe.

I don't know if I expected to be gathered up and thrown into the pool of fire, or if I expected to be eased gently into it, either way it would've still felt like the baptism of fire it has been. And what a fire has burned, I've felt thrown about by change, music I don't want to dance to keeps forcing me up and around the room. I seem to be having to make peace with the fact that nothing here is ever going to be completely fine and I'm not sure if that is something that I should be making peace with...I'll try my best to change it, make things okay, but god damn everything makes that so hard. We came to Chiang Mai looking to forget the intensity, instead we got the opposite; frequenting hospitals, negativity and arguments heightened by lack of sleep, complications and being away from home. It's all on us here, some of us can't handle that fact. Me included, sometimes.

Don't get ill in a foreign country, just look after yourself and watch what you eat when travelling, its not worth the needles and pills and drips and long, long waiting hours filled with not knowing what the hell is going on or what the hell is wrong with you. I spent several hours on Friday with my head in a toilet - everything I've ever consumed in my life making an unwelcome reappearance for that entire time - my head and every pore of my body screaming for home. Take me home, where things are easy, why can't things just be easy? Why does everything have to be difficult? Being ill makes you seriously reconsider everything, particularly when you're so far from everything you know, so the whole "nothing worth having comes easy" attitude...not so easy to adopt when you're genuinely not sure if this is worth having. Like I say...you reconsider everything. 

Sometimes life enjoys buffeting and battering you around until you feel rung out, bruised and broken. I am utterly crumpled, this morning I could barely support what little weight I've managed to keep on me from being so sick, physically I probably could but to hell if I want to. To hell with telling myself tomorrow will be a better day; "yeah that's what you said yesterday..."

This country and the situations I've been thrown into are hellbent on stretching me, contorting my body and making me scream for escape, and damn if I haven't fallen into a heap and cried for home. But I will not let it beat me, I will not let it crush me into submission; it has hit me hard...and I will hit it back harder, its about time I started getting tough. I will find armour and I'll use it to carry on, through the storm, through the spinning. I will beat it. Because this is my dream, this is me and I will stay true to myself.

"So we beat on. Boats against the current..."

Artists seeing me through just now: Daughter, Spinnerette and Rae Morris