Lost one toenail gained three marbles

This past week Alice and I have been traveling on many sleeper cars and boats down to the south of Thailand and around the islands. We’ve been to a farm surrounded by white pillars of rubber trees and heavy, brick soil. We’ve been to the calm ocean and the dirty ocean and the restless ocean. We are figuring out this journey piece by piece, grateful for each step.

So many sleeping vessels. Like a canoe gliding aimlessly, silently, down a frost rimmed river. Or a humming train, smooth skinned as a spring snake freshly hatched. So many patient hands. Resting on abdomens slowly consuming and expelling air. Touching dry lips and eyelids as we stand in the easing river. So many to remember on this voyage.

Sometimes watching the golden yolk of the sun rise above the mountainous clouds across the ocean in blistering glory is enough. Sometimes to be moving at the speed of a crawl on a boat with a sleeping friend by your side to an island you will travel to only once in your life is enough. Sometimes smelling cigarettes reminds us that not only is this beautiful world slowly dying but so are we. Man standing sole culprit of both crimes.

If I was to swim to an island and build a house on stilts as my home you would be there right along with me. I can almost smell the drying fish with their exposed ribs open to the sun and sky. Their skin hardening out of water and in the salt air. If the nose of a baby touches my lips I know it would be yours and from afar I would be a second mother to the child. I would will the ocean into a lullaby with the moon as the night light. Both the hum and glow a constant comfort, a second heart beat of guidance.

contently, Clarissa

When we left for Thailand one week ago, my body and backpack boarded that plane, but my mind and spirit were left in the cabin, putting a pot on the stove for tea and hanging up my socks to dry. Stuck in the habitual patterns of everyday. In Wendell Berry’s essay, “Entrance to the Woods” he writes about how when he travels long distances at high speeds there is often a lag between when his body arrives at his destination and when his mind comes to join him, “the faster one goes, the more strain there is on the senses, the more they fail to take in, the more confusion they must tolerate or gloss over-and the longer it takes to bring the mind to a stop in the presence of anything”. Clarissa and I have been in so many planes, cars, buses, and trains that so much of Thailand is just a blur I catch through the window. A few days ago I sat in the back of a crowed pick up truck clutching two watermelons and my white mesh farmers hat as we zoomed through Khao Sok National park. Huge white limestone cliffs covered in lush greenery loomed over us like gods in the sky and I couldn’t catch my breath. I wanted more than anything to jump out and walk, to move at a pace slow enough to see the faces of the Thai people lounging in the shade in front of their homes and hear the calls of tropical birds. But I can’t see everything, just like I can’t write everything in this blog entry. So here are the highlights:

On Saturday, I stood at the head of a small island in the Sok River, like standing at the bow of a ship, watching the greenish brown water part at my feet. I stood tall, powerful, like a “Warrior who brings light” something a new friend recently called me. I was alone, keeping my eyes on the bright red, blue, and yellow dragonflies that fluttered around me. My impulse was to identify them, to assign them a name in English letters. But would I really enjoy them anymore knowing their scientific name? Or did I just want to feel a sense of ownership over the wild unfamiliar natural world. I sat down in the water and noticed that right where my right foot had been there was a small glass marble with a blue swirl inside, covered in brown river scum. It was then that I took a few deep breaths and felt that I had finally arrived in Thailand. Felt my mind rejoin my body and my racing thoughts slow to the gentle pace of the river water. I should have known that siting by a river would sooth my anxieties.

We have found two more marbles at two very lucky and memorable points of this trip. Each finding multiple days and many many miles apart. Maybe there are some bigger forces at work here…

Our week started at my Grandmothers second home in Din Daeng, the place she won’t let go of, my mother’s childhood home. A one room apartment with thick cement walls and floors. There is a balcony with a hot plate and a drain the corner to collect the water the pours from the disconnected pipe below the sink. A small door in the wall with a latch where you throw your trash down a shoot that goes who knows where. But even when the trash door is closed, the smell of trash and suage wafts through the screen door from the street three stories below. Clarissa and I sat on the small table in the hall, watching the kids play in the court yard below and the rats scurry from one hiding place to the next. In the heart of Bangkoks most impoverished parts, Clarissa and I stuck out like sore toes. Every time I watched Yai unlock the three separate locks on the front door and walk into this small apartment plastered with pictures of the king, myself, and baby Melissa, I thought of my mother and how she might have felt at seventeen.

Last Tuesday, we took a sleeper train from Bangkok to Surat Thani to work on an organic farm we found on Workaway. The farm is run by an Italian man who has lived in Thailand for fifteen years but barely speaks any Thai. Probably because the only Thai person who lives on the farm is the woman who does all the cooking and cleaning. I tried to speak with her everyday. Clarissa and I also happened to be the only Americans. It was really nice to work and share meals with people from all over the world. Also, there were two other sets of girls our age doing the exact same thing we were. Reminding me that gap years are almost part of the college curriculum these days. I felt a particular attachment to a wonderful family from France who were planning to start their own permaculture farm in Basque Country. I was kicking myself for not paying more attention in my 9th grade French class. But amazed by the types of communication that do not require words. The farm is in a valley between big mountains and they put me in charge of feeding the chickens!

At one point I was making a new garden bed, digging a coffin sized whole in the ground, surrounded by three shirtless men twice my age commenting on how they didn’t know a seventeen year old girl could work so hard. Of course, that made me only dig harder and wish to burry then all alive. But eventually, I remembered that this trip was not about proving myself, handed over the shovel and collapsed in exhaustion. Being on the farm reminded me of how much I appreciate community but also made me feel slightly uncomfortable in a lot of ways I can’t quite explain. So Clarissa and I left to do some island hopping and sleeping in hostels.

Last night we tried to party by the pool and this morning I borrowed someone’s goggles to see the rainbow fish and sea coral. We’re certainly learning!

I’ll end with an excerpt from my journal:

‘Today, I learned above all, not to stress about who I will become and spend more time learning about who I am now. I do not have to actively construct the story of my life, its happening for me’

Oh, and my toe nail came off! Hit it with a hoe. Heather was so right for making me wear shoes during all those hot days of landscaping.

Thailand is exciting and beautiful and difficult at times. But by far the best part is being here with Clarissa. Everyday she surprises me by being more strong and beautiful than the day before. She can be big or small but regardless is always herself.

Sending love,

Alice