Sleeping On A Beach In Chong Khae

I’ve had this feeling before of sleeping

on a beach while I am at a little car wash

in Chong Khae hours away from any ocean. 

Like most things up here this is a family

business.  There is Joe, the owner, his father,

and a couple of kids probably from Myanmar

or Laos.  My wife used to babysit Joe, but

now he is in his thirties, I’d guess.

While I wait I am stretched out on a broken

sofa under a hay roof.  The eaves come down

low and I have to stoop to enter this waiting room. 

There are no walls.  The room’s board floor is even

with the cement driveway but it’s on stilts

to the west. There is tattered green webbing above

the driveway to keep hot cars from spotting after

being washed.  The webbing gives a beech umbrella

cool tint to the outside world, but this is Thailand:

green is everywhere.

It’s beech-going weather.  The type of weather

you can feel in your bones.  Maybe that’s

where my feeling comes from whenever I am

here waiting for my car.  I close my eyes.

The thick hay roof muffles sound.  With your ears

close to the ground on  beach you hear differently.

I can hear traffic passing the car wash entrance and

a TV playing nearer my feet, but neither of these

sounds have anything to do with me.  The TV is

broadcasting in French.  I can almost follow it, 

but It’s like listening to conversation on another

blanket and I choose not to listen.

I feel a soft Thai breeze and smell the mist

from the power washer.  I feel more at peace

here than any place else I’ve ever been.  Eden

was a garden.  Why wasn’t it a beach?  In my

mind the horizon spreads as far as the ear can

hear.  It’s like the sea, beautiful, even, empty.

FG       11/5/2016

For those who have invested a lot in the Presidential campaign, a trip, if not an outright move, to Thailand to relax this winter may be just what the doctor ordered.

No students came today.  I am disappointed, but ever since my dog bit one, attendance has fallen off.   I have also been pretty sick this week, too.  Sigh