Une blog vague
“Go, yellow man!” said Simeon, as we sat watching Chinese opera at an outdoor theater. I – being the eminantly mature creature I am – giggled at the double entendre. What he meant, of course, was the character dressed in the yellow silk robe.
Julian describes Chinese opera as sounding like cats being strangled while dustbin lids are crashed together. That is an accurate description. It also sounds a little bit like death metal. Wait, hear me out…there’s this gutteral angry vocal thing they do that I guess is meant to balance the whiny, for-dogs-ears-only stuff. If you just listen to the emotional high points of this yelling you wouldn’t expect to look up and see a guy in pink and white makeup wearing a bright silk robe dripping in costume jewels. The juxtaposition is not unpleasant.
Simeon and I were sitting at the performance after running across the Chinese Dragon Festival on our walk home from dinner. The festival is pretty much your standard fun fair, complete with ferris wheel, but also with thick clouds of incense smoke and snack booths stocked with big piles of crickets and larvae. I would have tried some, thank you, but I was so full after our pizza dinner.
It was nice to get away for dinner and a chat. So much…well, just shit has happened since I last posted a blog. Thanksgiving was a debaucle. Apparently you can take the expats out of America but you can’t take America out of the expats. And it’s not a proper American family holiday unless something horribly awkward happens, someone abruptly leaves the table, and it all ends in tears for at least one person. Predictably, that person was me.
Things then proceeded, over the next 36 hours or so, to go from bad to much, much worse. I know I’m being vague and I apologize for that but I honestly can’t think of a way to openly talk about it. So let’s just say that by Saturday morning I’d realized that something has got to change in my life. That I have to start taking some responsibility for the shitty choices I make. That maybe I don’t actually want the things I think I want and I’d better start sorting that out before I go any further along the path I’m on.
Vague still. I know, I know. But I’ll be talking more about this later I’m sure. I’m still a little bit in shock from the intensity of how stupid everything got on Thursday & Friday.
The good news – and it is so nice to leave it on a high note, isn’t it? – is that I finished a short story yesterday that had been languishing for a few weeks. So I’m on track with my work if nothing else. The end. Love, Sandy
Tags: Nong Khai, Thailand
sandra_101
More detailed food descriptions please.
Who does a girl have to know to get a photo or two? Yeesh.
“I – being the eminantly mature creature I am – giggled at the double entendre.”
Is this another crack about how gay I supposedly seem? :p
Ask Daniel to forward you the email I sent to him about dissonance in black metal and Chinese music when he questioned me about monotones and dynamic variation… I catch your drift. Somehow, I can only imagine that your Thailand house is kind of exactly the same as your Los Angeles house, even without the list of things you miss. That says something either about my lack of imagination or our common experience as only children, always arranging things to approximate familiarity… xo, C.