More Kowloon

Neon Kowloon

Reading Light

Yesterday in a remarkable burst of cooperation, both my bathroom and bedroom overhead lights expired in some sort of electrical suicide pact. I thought briefly of buying replacement bulbs and then remembered what I had seen when I removed the bottom of the light fixture in my bedroom to clean it. Beneath the bumpy protuberances of the frosted glass cover was a contorted ganglia of wiring that would have had Thomas Alva Edison reaching for a stiff drink while considering a career change. It was, I decided, time to investigate other lighting options, perhaps something with more candle-power than your average dining room taper, something under which I wouldn't find myself wishing that I could read Braille.

It wasn't until I left my house that I remembered that I don't know how to say "lamp" in Thai, but I consoled myself, I don't know how to say "sofa" in Thai either and I pulled off that purchase in my first week back in the Kingdom. Then I remembered that even in the states, it's difficult for me to find a lamp that I can bear the sight of and realized this could be a long afternoon.

Walking down the main road of my neighborhood, I passed stores selling food, cameras, auto parts, hardware, liquor, and beauty supplies but it was a long trudge before I saw lighting fixtures. They were all mounted on a wall of the shop, but there were dusty glass display cases and I went in to investigate what was inside them. A man came over to see what I wanted and gesturing eloquently in what I hoped was the shape of a reading lamp, I told him I wanted electricity for reading. He shook his head and went back to his dimly lit corner; for the sake of his eyesight I hoped he didn't intend to read.

The next spot was the British gift to Thailand, Tesco Lotus, a rather dreary version of Target. Up in the top floor, I found millions of rice cookers, big-screen TVs, refrigerators, and blenders. Off in a section that contained office supplies were desperately ugly desk lamps that looked like spiders that had most of their legs amputated. I moved on.

Central is Bangkok's leading department store chain, where over-priced merchandise of every description is purchased by people who are eager to show that they can afford to shop there. It has the pretensions of Nordstrom, the ambience of Macy's and the over-all warmth and customer service skills of a K-mart. There I found a small section of table lamps of different contorted shapes and sizes, none of which took a more powerful bulb than 40 watts.

At this point I began to think quite seriously of putting an armchair beside the open door of my refrigerator and reading under the illumination of its light, which had to be at least 40 watts. Trying not to sob audibly and cursing under my breath, realizing why the literacy rate in Thailand is reputed to be low, I walked through crowds of uniformed school children thronging the shopping mall where Central is enshrined. Every last one of them was enthusiastically buying mobile phones, pocket handkerchiefs,forged replicas of Hello Kitty and Doraemon. I was the only person for miles around who wasn't a happy shopper. Struggling to contain what threatened to become an attack of apoplexy, I fled to my last resort, Home Pro.

Yes, it is a clone of Home Depot. Yes, it is choking off the mom and pop neighborhood stores. And yes, here is where I found a multiplicity of table lamps, and although none seemed to have a wattage above the magic number of 40, I bought two. They look like the creatures in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and I have had to restrain myself from giving them names. They on the other hand provide enough light in tandem that last night for the first time in ages I read without pain.

If you want a dictatorship of the proletariat, I've decided, it's easy. Just make sure your country manufactures no bulb brighter than 40 watts.

Bursting the Bubble

I felt a tiny bit apprehensive when I climbed onto the three-baht boat (about a dime) to cross the river back to Bangkok. During my walk through a Thonburi market to reach the pier, the sky had become a deep bruised black with swollen clouds. Gambling that the storm would hold off until I got to shelter on the opposite bank, I sat on a wooden bench near the edge of the boat and watched the Chao Phrya turn into the River Styx, dark and ominous. I did my best to forget that I don't know how to swim and concentrated on the brisk wind that hit my face, better than any air-conditioning could ever be.

The storm struck when we were halfway across and every passenger was well-soaked before we reached the other side of the river. Too wet to be concerned about further dampness, most of us sloshed off into the rain, with that delightful wind now a dedicated umbrella-killer.

The bus that pulled up near the noodle cart where I had taken shelter had air-conditioning, and although I was no longer pelted with raindrops, hypothermia set in rapidly. Chilled and sodden, I got off near my favorite grilled chicken place and pleaded for soup. The waitress grinned at me when she brought me my beer and said, "You don't want ice, do you?"

I had gone to Thonburi on a quest for a new neighborhood, with the same instinctive feeling of lacking something essential that makes my cat eat grass. As I wandered through a few back streets and explored the main road of the area, I went back in time by fifteen years. This is what Bangkok used to look like, grimy and utilitarian and decidedly rugged around the edges. This is what I had fallen in love with in 1995, the energy that drives people to make good food and small shops and homes for their children in the midst of rampant ugliness. This is what Bangkok used to be before the arrival of Starbucks and Zara and the wild proliferation of the hygienic and overpriced branches of S&P restaurants.

I grew up in the flip side of beauty in ugliness. The Alaska of my childhood was ugliness in beauty--rusted 50-gallon oil drums and ramshackle cabins poised against the view of spruce groves and ocean and volcanoes. In this tarnished natural paradise I yearned for cities, and now I find that the cities I love are the ones with sharp contrasts and challenges that frequently take me beyond my comfort level.

Yesterday as I sat on a small, open boat, drenched to my innermost thoughts, knowing full well that I was only going to get even wetter, I felt a crazed and exhilarated sort of happiness that never comes from riding the Skytrain. There was a feeling of community on that boat that never exists on the subway, and for the first time in two years, I felt as though I had truly returned to Thailand.

Bangkok-Seattle-Bangkok

My sister just posted a whole history of our family in photographs and I spent most of yesterday morning looking at our past lives. For some wonderful and weird reason, my sisters were too and we conversed through Facebook comments in almost real time. It reminded me that nobody shares my history like those three women and that laughing with Chris, Holly, and Alison is something I all too rarely do now.

I just returned from a quick trip to the states where I spent as much time as was humanly possible with my two sons. While my sisters and I are bound by the same history, my sons allow me to inhabit theirs. That's a gift that I never take for granted, and as I write those words my throat tightens.

In a perfect world, they would live in this city. We'd explore and question and travel together, and separately, and introduce each other to what we discovered on our own. I try to think that's what we do now, and that my neighborhood is simply more farflung than it was when we all lived in Seattle. I tell myself that if we lived in different regions of the states, we'd see each other no more often than we do now. I remind myself that I never wanted to be the kind of parent who clings to her adult offspring, and that my mother lived a continent away from her own mother, and that my mother and I haven't lived in the same geographic area since I was twenty.

And yet--I truly like my sons. I would like them and would seek out their company even if I hadn't given birth to them. One of the greatest pleasures of my Seattle life was being able to call them and say let's eat sushi and have a beer this week. Going on Facebook to see what they're up to, like some sort of cyberstalker, just isn't the same.

My sisters and I share a past, and that's important. My sons and I--with them it's always been the present that matters, who they are at this moment, savoring the time that is now.

Yes, I love my life in this part of the world--it's what draws me back. But the pull exerted by two men on the other side of the globe never stops tugging at me. And in answer to a question about parenthood from one of my sisters--no, it doesn't come with an expiration date.