At the Chiang Mai Market

May 3, 2015 //
0

Sometimes our senses are on high alert, taking in an abundance of sight, sound, smell, taste. The market where my aunties shop in Chiang Mai is this kind of place, so rich in everything that I wonder how I can take it all in. Yet it is all stored somewhere inside me, each sense absorbing a piece of the story. Brush away just part of the dust covering a memory and soon the whole picture emerges again. Try it. Close your eyes.

 

If I were to close my eyes,

the sounds and smells would

be the same as I remembered.

Smoky sweetness of small

bananas on a grill, high

Northern dialect voices of

women selling food,

clank of coins, shuffle

of feet. Eyes open,

and everything is true.

The grills line up on the

ground, forming a room

of smoke. The women sit

on high stools, food they

made – steaming curries,

vegetables, pastries –

spread out like skirts before

them. People move between

stands, reaching, buying,

bags bulging. I search for

the source of the clanking

coins, and then memory

clicks into place. There,

at the bottom of the still

broken escalator, she is

standing, still standing

after all these years. Neat

clothes, short hair, pale

skin, and eyes open, but

her gaze empty, blind.

Standing there, shaking the

tin can of clanking coins.

 

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Categories Amphibious, Waking

Salty Sweet

March 4, 2015 //
1

My first language was Thai, simply the result of absorbing what I heard at home as the first child of Thai immigrants in Omaha, Nebraska. The world I lived in then as a toddler was small and safe and full of language. But then school became necessary and the teacher let my parents know that I really did not speak English. So the world grew larger, but a little less secure. Although I have lost my first language, I have not forgotten it. Still, listening to my family talk, I understand. I have held on and kept at least an ear and maybe more of myself in both worlds.

We squeezed around the table –

aunties, uncles, cousins, all –

perched on edges of chairs,

stools, some sharing, together

in the dining room above Aunty’s

shop and the busy market.

Food purchased from the market –

sticky rice, grilled pork, steamed

greens, sweet mangoes –

filled our plates. The talk blurred

by, Thai and English and laughter.

Words ran through my fingers

as I ate, but then, all at once,

something caught. Meaning

clung on, a word, and then another,

and whole phrases, and even

the back and forth. Language

washed over me and I remembered.

I remembered that I knew this

world, that I knew both. One

held me so firmly that I

thought and dreamt its

language. But the other

refused to let go, pulling

me under the currents of

language and smell and tastes –

salty sweet salty sweet –

so that I could not easily come

out. I was amphibious, able to

live in both air and water,

and needing both.

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Categories Amphibious, Waking

Luck

January 16, 2015 //
0

With so many ways of acquiring luck — through charms, rituals, even cash — you would think all would be right with the world. But luck, as we truly know, has nothing to do with any of this. Some part living well, some part practicing integrity, a large part pure chance, good fortune has no formula. It comes down to how we measure it. I count it as luck that I had this lively, colorful moment with my family. And what good fortune to remember Setting Birds Free with my cousin years before, and to see that this is where it got me.

 

We must have looked like we needed it,

the way the hill tribe woman came

at us, determined, her fingers hooked

around small woven cages, each with

a desperately chattering bird inside.

She lifted her arm and waved the cages

in the air, jangling from the many

silver beads sewn onto her

colorfully embroidered clothes.

Aunty bought one – for fun, she said –

letting the birds go would bring us

good luck.

 

So that was it: a long ago

sun-filled room, burned into memory,

releasing bird after bird out the window.

Dust and sun and cheeping birds.

And luck, too, I learn now, so many years later.

 

One was fun, but we needed more,

and I knew the woman was telling us so.

Aunty bought another, and another.

Soon we had released every one

of the birds back into the world.

The old woman grinned a toothless smile:

so much luck now, how lucky you are.

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Categories Amphibious, Waking

At the Temple in Chiang Mai

October 23, 2014 //
0

While in Chiang Mai, we visited the Buddhist temple where my family worshipped. We brought food and an offering of money to the monk, and in return asked for the blessing we so needed. “Pour the water,” the monk said, and as we poured, he chanted, the words running with the water. I recognized words and phrases and our family name: Koslaphirom. “America,” he said. The words flowed and flowed until the water ran out. He stopped and bowed. We thanked him, then stepped out into the physical world again.

Blessings tumbled down on us

as water filled a bowl,

the monk chanting words,

rhythm of flowing water.

Outside, cars sped by,

people hung laundry over

balcony railings.

Cats walked languidly

across the courtyard and

fish darted about in their

watery kingdom – an urn

on the stone steps.

Inside the temple, the

blessings flowed onto

my pink-cheeked son, plump

with young blood, and

my mother, cancer cells

coursing through her veins.

And blessing reached across town,

to where my father was wheezing

in his hotel bed, hooked up

to an oxygen tank, tethered

still to our world.

Blessings poured over memory –

of Grandfather, long gone,

though we reached for him.

Grandmother, too, and my

oldest aunty, and others I

have never known. Blessings

flowed, chant like, waking

us with a splash of water

and the presence of

each other, everywhere.

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Return

October 19, 2014 //
0

In my everyday life, I am so used to not looking like most people, that it is startling at first when I am with people who do look like me. But arriving in Thailand is such a shock of welcome and familiarity, that it quickly becomes comfortable, easy. The faces greeting us at the airport really do look like mine. The words I hear rush to find me, name me, claim me as one of theirs. “Fon” is my Thai name, meaning rain — for my rainy birthday. It meets me when I return.

We walked off the plane

into a tangle of arms,

brown, stretched towards us,

a rush of sound, the

voices naming us,

again and again,

until I became the girl

I was 25 years before.

“Fon,” they said.

The name traveled through

body and memory,

waking long sleeping cells,

so that I knew it as mine.

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Categories Amphibious, Waking

The Last Trip Home

October 5, 2014 //
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When my parents invited me and my family to join them on what they claimed would be their last trip home to Thailand, I knew they were telling me more than they said. They were not so much old as sick — and feeling vulnerable to time. Despite the stress of uncertainty and the sadness of imminent loss, that awareness of time, place, and all experiences was a gift. My senses were on high alert, paying attention to taste, sound, smell, and the many voices that I knew not to take for granted. 

The last trip home

would travel along

the edge of change.

The change comes,

as it always does:

a slow folding in,

then increasing urgency

as the end draws near.

But before that,

would be the last trip home:

the chance to touch gold,

taste salty water,

feel warm breath

on tea-colored skin,

sing the song of language,

touch the ground

of home again.

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Categories Amphibious, Waking

Waking

January 12, 2014 //
0

My collection of childhood memories are connected to deep sensorial experiences — true for all of us, I suppose. A familiar taste or smell that, like a time machine, takes us back  to a long ago life. These memories live so much more vividly than the present-day list of things we need to do. Why? Maybe because our childhood selves were so present in those experiences. As a child I had little control over where I was or what I was doing. Nor did I have a context for the images, tastes, smells, and sounds I was experiencing. So these memories live as pure sensation and now, when I remember, I wake into them fully.

 

I opened my eyes on the other side of the world.

Was this a dream?  Or my life now that I had woken?

The day was bright, hot, busy with traffic and people.

A flash of light:  shiny scissors ripping fabric.

The cloth snapped free, blurred in air,

then quickly collapsed into neat folds.

 

Voices:  high, loud, singing a language, woven together by sound.

 

Warmth:  on my lap a small green package.

It was the ridged leaf of a banana tree,

folded into a tight square,

secured with a tiny toothpick.

I opened it up and smelled:

smoky chicken, steamy sticky rice.

I made balls of rice with a treasure of chicken inside,

and popped them in my mouth,

one by one, tasting and tasting.

 

I taste it now, my lap feels warm, the voices sing, the fabric snaps –

I wake into this life.

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Your Sweater

October 7, 2013 //
0

I favor second-hand and consignment shops, partly for the bargains, but also for the little bit of extra history clothing that has been worn by another human being holds. Even if I do not know the people or the stories, I like how clothes that others have lived in now fit me just right. I have some things of my father’s that still smell a little like him, even seven years later. And because of those leather jackets and wool sweaters, he is not quite gone. The grandfather I hardly knew becomes a little bit known to me when I slip on his old gray sweater. Just clothes, we might say, easily acquired and easily passed on. Or we appreciate the comfort of an old sweater on a chilly morning all the more.

 

I reach for it in the dark closet and imagine

you wore it on cool evenings, taking the dogs

out, and maybe mornings on your walks

to the temple.  You held the children, my

mother, wearing this, walking back and forth

in front of the house until she slept.

 

It holds these things now – the knit

stitches moved with you, expanding

with your presence, resting with you, too.

The fibers – might they hold bits of you,

skin cells, strands of hair, a scent I would

not recognize?  I slip it on, and step into

the cool morning.

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Categories Amphibious, Motiram

The End of an Ordinary Day

September 4, 2013 //
0

So much of what I know of my family in Thailand has been told to me in stories. Every so often, a story is more alive with sounds and smells that I can imagine. In this story of my grandfather heading home at the end of his workday, it is the smell of jasmine rice (a scent I know well) and the plunk of a watermelon (imagine a heavy stone landing in water). And we all know the sight and taste of a perfectly sweet watermelon. These small sensory windows into a long ago time and a home I hardly know, connect me in the best possible way to my grandfather. Even now, 35 years after his death, we can share an experience across generations and place.

 

It was the end of an ordinary day,

the close announced with metal clacking

of the gate along its tracks, the click

of a key, pedaling away from the dark

shop.  First, a stop at the market to pick

up a watermelon for his family at home.

It was easy for him.  Long ago, he had

worked at a watermelon farm and

knew the color and heft of one that

was just right.  He pedaled home,

the melon in the basket in front,

moving through the traffic and

crowds of people also going home.

He spun into the next part

of the day, maybe thinking about

the work day behind, the home

life in front, or the places off to

the side that pulled at him, too –

his temple, the hill tribe people

he had come to know, the poor

to whom he offered food on

Tuesdays.  On those days, he

was sure to offer sweets, which

gave such pleasure, and he knew

fed the place in our spirits

that needed beauty.  He was

close to home now.  First, the dogs

knew, waking from naps, stretching,

ready to play.  The noises the

children made grew louder,

some laughter, and some arguing,

too.  Even the jasmine rice on

the stove knew it was time to be

ready, releasing its fragrance

into the air.  And how do I

know, so many years later,

imagining this ordinary day?

I hear the plunk of the

watermelon he dropped into

the cool depth of the well in

back.  His youngest boy would

fish it out with a bucket after dinner.

It would be cut wide open on the table.

It would not be disappointing.

It would be red, glowing,

its juices spilling out, its

black seeds punctuating the

flesh in a steady line.

“Plunk!” went the melon.

The noise from the house

stopped for a moment.  His

family knew, with that familiar

sound, that their father was home.

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Categories Amphibious, Motiram

The Glowing Man

August 18, 2013 //
0

The story I heard was of my uncle’s wedding day. My mother, then a little girl, was excited to be going, riding the train to the nearby town, wearing her white dress. When she dropped a heavy pail of water on her foot, and cried in pain, my grandfather came to help her. Her foot was red and swollen, threatening to ruin her day. She was too slow to walk, so Grandfather put her on his bicycle handlebars and rode to the train station, just in time. I was not there, of course, but the stories my mother and others tell of Grandfather have a mythical feeling to them. His otherness in the world comes through in so many ways — his dark Indian skin in a light brown country, his kindness to fellow outsiders, his small but significant heroics. I did not know him long enough or well enough to say I loved my grandfather. But I can say I love who he has become to me and my family.

At the train station, it was just another morning:

the sunlight cut through the cool air,

swirling into a glowing haze.

A train was preparing to depart –

inside, people were finding seats and

stowing bags.  A few stragglers were

hurrying to board.  Then, out of

a warm beam of sunlight, a man

appeared, running the length

of the platform.  He was darker than

most others, and he wore a white

suit that glowed in the light.  In

his arms, he carried a little girl,

also dressed in white.  As the train

began to move – the sound of metal

on metal tracks, the smell of oil –

the man ran faster, so that he

was a blur of brilliant white,

and reached one hand for the

handle on the side of an open door.

He jumped on board, one foot, one hand,

and “thump!” both feet

landed inside the train car.

The passengers looked up, unable

to keep from noticing the glowing

man and the girl who had arrived.

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Categories Amphibious, Motiram
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