Time Travel on Soi Sitiwhongse

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The rains crash. It wanes, dripping. Then, again, it, ah, ah, itchy clouds wriggle, tree trunks brace , ah, ah, another brilliant, choo. Idea. Words are like the last waves of monsoon … the random, thoughtless and sporadic. Always on the verge of threatening floods, yet, never, quite … empty threats. My writing is an empty threat. A novel who will never be. A sterile woman perusing shelves of baby names, lost in a book store on a windy day.

Bodle used to say I wrote sentences like runaway trains. Now it feels more like window shopping.

That's part of my excuse for not writing properly to you people. In my last entry I sent out a call for hellos and then responded to, well, none. It's totally personal.

Part of the joy in running around to the other side of the planet and crouching, toes dug desperately into anemic jungle soil, is the escape of course. Part is the exhilaration in letting curries and octogenarian rickshaw drivers and funny typos on menus coarsely conceal my peripheral woes; cultural blinders to premeditated failures like curing heartbreak and gluing back together again the crushed shell of "potential" (both imposed and self-created). Part is the pretentious gloating and persona-accessorizing of having lived somewhere you haven't.

Don't get me wrong; none of these things should be underrated in the slightest. I can't wait to use my exotic travels as a pick-up line. And I quite enjoy the balance of escape and the forced self-confrontation that occurs when upside down and clinging to the other side of the planet. But it makes for awkward correspondence with the people who bring you back and remind you that, well, there's this thing called gravity for one. I'm standing right side-up like everyone else and so all this shaken, not stirred, philosophizing -- rather, noir cartooning -- of things past is quite uncalled for. And alongside gravity, there's this other thing called globalization. And as much as I'd like to thing I'm hiding in my hidden corner of the world, the world is quite round and quite cornerless. Hence my lounging in a beautiful little air-conditioned flat typing away at, what I'm not even sure can be called a letter anymore, that you will receive instantly. Like I dropped it on your front stoop.

It's all quite unfortunate really. (and, yes, for the record, I get the irony of turning up my nose at globalization while I'm here promoting it with my English and my general westerness)

I wish it took months of rocky sea-travel; an envelope passed through so many salt-crusted hands, the paper was beyond wrinkled, but soft by the time it arrived into yours.

And so that's my real reason.

For not writing too often.

I'm allowing for time travel.

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