#14 - Frustration

 Picture this, a scooter trolling through the off white smoke that floats down the still slick damp soi. The vendor on the curb stokes his flame and another burnt bit of air is left in its wake. The scooter leans across the orange center line of the street to pass rows of just stopped cars. The wheels roll up the pavement and onto the sidewalk where I, the man who hired this pigeon jockey, get off to go to work. At the steps of the train a legless woman waits with a cup for change from kind passersby. In a manner of speaking she sits, although it seems a cruel description of an even more cruel plight.

As I board the train waves of densely cool air fall out of the open doors and opposite my entrance, I see a mother and her nearly teenaged son cuddled closely. The son seems disengaged while the mother pets his head and runs her thumb along his cheek. Then she fusses with the yellow sash around his neck, a piece of uniform that seems better suited to a cowboy than a schoolboy. This constant fuss continues the duration of my thirty minute train ride. That it is a mother who does this is of no particular note except for the mental fact check of my brain. I've seen fathers similarly engaged. That it is a son is undeniably important. Inalienable truths, the power of a chromosome, the dissolution of the delicate shell of the ovum to yield that all important son.

I spoke with a woman once about what she was looking for in a husband. She wasted no time with her answer.

“Must love me.”

“Is that all?”

“Don't care anything else.”

“What if he drank all the time or was racist?”

“He drink or he racist he can't change, but if he love me, ok.”

I took her to mean that she didn't think someone could change themselves, and perhaps she is right. It could also be the Thai conception of love that brought her to this answer, however I don't think so. If a man is unloved he whores and parties and thought the family may not be happy with it he is still a son and a part of the family. If a woman is unwed, and thus unloved, she is a failure. If she were to exhibit similar behavior as I mentioned about a son, she would be dead to the family. Simply put, a man is more important. So important in fact that his love is valued highly enough to make or break a woman's life, even if it's the love of a racist alcoholic.

I arrive at the office and pull open my lesson plan, review the vocab, the language structure, introductions and name-tags. Then our first game, it is meant to take eight to ten minutes. The students walk around the room exchanging the question and answer pattern used in the lesson. After wards they play rock paper scissors and the loser must then hop around on one foot. I am desensitized to the children at this point, they are still cute and funny and little rascals and naughty but they don't evoke the same joy or frustration that they did when I started this job. So much of life is the search for new sensations because so much of life is the loss of sensation, the desensitization to the things that you see nearly every day. After the student loses their second game of rock paper scissors they then have to walk around on their knees. After the student loses their third game they have to walk up to the teacher and play the teacher in order to stand up again. The name of the game is legless, and today I don't want to play this game, today I remember the way it felt the first time I passed the woman at the steps of the train who, in a manner of speaking sits.   

A photo I took from a temple in Ang Thong and then did a little work on.