A month ago, I started a post on Loi Krathong, hoping to get it up before tossing everything in the car and heading off to California. I obviously didn’t manage that, so here we are!
So now I’ll explain my absence.
Continue reading “Loi Krathong – Or, Float, Little Lotus Boat”
CW: Animal death, decomposition, grotesque imagery, grim humor
Sometime in the night, the tokay gecko had finished a battle mortally wounded, had climbed to one of the most out-of-the-way vertical surfaces in the parking structure, and had perished.
So it was that early Sunday morning, I spotted the mottled grey-and-orange corpse while walking with my family from our condo to our van. I was sixteen and living in Pakkret, just outside of Bangkok, Thailand. The tokay gecko clung to a cement support beam spanning the vast ceiling, on the face overlooking the cars, rather than the side facing the open air over the man-made Nichada Lake. He happened to be situated directly above our assigned spot.
We did not yet realize the lizard was dead—after all, dead things don’t cling to vertical surfaces on their own. We noticed him, figured he was hunting some morning insects, and forgot him in moments.
Continue reading “Memento Mori VI – Or, The Gecko on the Ceiling”
When my dear friend Hannelore arrived in Las Vegas last month on her 1988 Honda Africa Twin adventure bike, I asked what she and her boyfriend, Jasper wanted to see. Both wanted to experience the Strip, of course—there’s an unspoken rule that you really can’t visit Las Vegas without having at least seen the Strip, just to say you did. Beyond that, Hanne listed two specific sites: Seven Magic Mountains and the Neon Museum.
As you’ll recall from last week, I hadn’t heard of Seven Magic Mountains until Hanne requested it. But the Neon Museum?
Oh, I had definitely heard of the Neon Museum.
Continue reading “An American Goth and a Belgian Designer Walk into a Boneyard…”
Katrina and I stepped under the pale stucco archway. To our left, tucked between the eastern and southern arches, stood a tall statue of Sekhmet, ancient Egypt’s lion-headed goddess. To our right, between the eastern and northern entries, was an altar covered in small representations of the Divine Feminine: Quan Yin, the Venus of Willendorf, Parvati. The flagstone floor glistened with desert rocks, sand, and small glass pebbles.
Above us, open sky beckoned beyond a dome of intersecting copper circles.
Gazing up, I realized I’d made an error. The small, open temple wasn’t cut off from the Mojave Desert surrounding it, but the feel within its walls was different enough, and familiar enough. Sacred space.
“Hey,” I said, looking back at my sister. “I need to take off my shoes.”
Katrina stepped backwards several steps. “I was thinking the same thing.”
Continue reading “Temple of Goddess Spirituality – Cactus Springs, Nevada”
Of the many theoretical shenanigans made possible by time travel, towards the top of my list would be this:
Late 1933. American Prohibition has just ended. I walk into the beautiful, brand-new, Neo-classical Las Vegas courthouse and post office building, approach the nearest official, and smile winningly.
I inform them that in fewer than 100 years, their basement—yes, this very one—will be home to a government-endorsed functioning speakeasy, complete with in-house moonshine operations.
I just want to see how they’d react.
Communication did not become a problem until I moved towards the register. The woman behind the counter remained stationary, hands on either side of my donut box, giving me an urgent, confused look and gesturing with an open hand to the donut display before her.
I mimicked the gesture, my hand indicating the register. “Okay kha,” I said, nodding. “Finished.”
For my ninth birthday, just weeks before my family left Bangkok, my best friend gave me a sheer pink sash screen-printed with cranes in flight.
This friend was Japanese, but, like me, she’d spent her entire childhood in Thailand. When you’re small, you understand too little of the world to comprehend cultural provenance. You simply absorb. You exist where you exist. You believe you belong until given reason to believe you do not. Continue reading “The Cranes Were Not the Strangers Here”
In mid-February 2005, I was seventeen years old and headed home to Bangkok, Thailand after a ten-day school trip split between Finnish Lapland and Helsinki. Our party—roughly 25 international high school students and our two teacher-chaperones—had run afoul of the airline scheduling fates, and was stranded overnight midway between origin and destination. Continue reading “Uno Inherits the Earth”
Crystal Witnesses Wonders 