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”
Here’s my earliest memory of trick-or-treating: Mom gave me and my siblings each a large cardboard box to decorate with doors, windows, and all the necessary amenities for modern life. Then, dressed in our lovingly-handmade costumes, we each took turns circling the little cardboard neighborhood, carefully traversing the pale blue rug with our candy bags extended.
From within our cardboard houses, we gave each other cough drops and homemade donut holes – cough drops because, in early-90s Bangkok, there wasn’t much other hard candy to be had, and donut holes because my mother thought the cough drop situation was a bit too sad.
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”
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.”
Baking beneath the hazy Bangkok sun, my knobbly-kneed six-year-old self was busy slaying dragons. Continue reading “Memento Mori III – Or, The Gecko on the Sidewalk”
Crystal Witnesses Wonders 