Beyond The Border Of The Real

*

A man can stand almost anything except a succession of ordinary days.
Goethe.

Sick blocks of yellow and green floated before him. He couldn't stand the crowds. He couldn't stand the claustrophobia. He couldn't stand the Americans. And then the kids started coming, Chuck said loudly, they were always called Chuck. And this 15-year-old delivered the most death squad hard core AA speech I had ever heard, and he finished: if you have a substance abuse problem, and you don't go to meetings and you don't get yourself a sponsor, God have mercy on your soul. Everyone laughed, even he to some degree, as whole patches of the room disappeared beyond the real.

There isn't anyway, in the middle of the biggest open air brothel on the planet, that he could feel comfortable. There were too many ghosts haunting the belfry, he was simply too old to do it all again, or even to take it seriously. Wars were fought far off. Young men died for no good reason. Injustice stalked the earth. As an ancient, web-footed creature, his natural instinct was to hide. Whatever the environments had been in his past lives; some had been extremely hostile indeed. They walked. They watched the sun rise over Pattaya Bay. The luke warm water sapped at his feet.

The working girls, hoping to catch a falang even now spilling out of one of the bars, pissed, horny, ready to spend on her. Their hard black eyes hit him as he walked. Some transformed hard old faces - well 30 is old in Thai prostitute years - into dimpling smiles of the pretty young girls they had once been. There was no connection and he kept on walking. If anyone approached he waved them away. Where you go? Walking, he would say; but perhaps they would confuse it with the famous Walking Street where the katoys, the lady boys, flogged their many wares. He was dimpled in a smile and waves of sickness came upon him, even now, all these days later. He would not survive. He had made too many mistakes.

The speed boats have pulled up along the thin strip of sand, ready for the tourist day to begin. Workers put up the umbrellas, waiting for the rich to past their day in the shade, watching the bay, being fed upon. His own gross flapping of wings, the strange creatures that lived up there, the haunting, the very severe haunting, would probably never leave him now. Once diseased always diseased. Once a junkie always a junkie. He knew it wasn't true, but struggled down the ages with his own instinct for flight. If there was any way out of the cycle he did not know it.

Oh collapse me, oh grasp me, God have mercy on your soul, your ancient souls - for there was always more than one visitor. There had been the grim faced days when he had shown up for work, when the hallucinations were effectively suppressed, or partially suppressed, and he could function like an ordinary person in an ordinary working world; but everything was different now. Oversea Call All Over The World, the sign declares on what purports to be a 24-hour internet cafe on Beach Road, Pattaya. But it wasn't open at 5am. He saw the old men walking their little dogs. He saw the working girls in odd little knots, watching him in vain hope.

And he cried out: don't leave me now. I didn't mean to be so indifferent. I will surrender. I will become a pack animal. I will never have another original thought. Whatever it takes. I will become a drone like the rest of you, preaching to the converted and the unconverted alike. I've been very successful, as you can tell, the American said; and no, he couldn't tell. He looked like just another honky to him. The girls have almost all gone now. The bars have fallen quiet, briefly. By ten am the hard core drinkers will be back, reliving the best times, having the best time. He saw an old soul in a young man's body standing in a desolate doorway, perhaps the entrance to cheap lodgings, drug dens, iniquity and despair. And he shuddered. For beyond the border of the real lay many mysteries; and in particular this door, this young man, these people he may once very well have been, lay the chaos.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j3NbzvMmUDvfcUVYJxn3bTV7wZRA

BANGKOK — Thousands of protesters forced Thailand's biggest bank to close its headquarters Friday, raising tensions one week before a court ruling on the fortune of ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

Bangkok Bank shut its head office for the day and sent 3,000 staff home because of the rally by Thaksin's supporters, who say the bank has links to a royal aide whom they blame for the 2006 coup that toppled their idol.

Police said around 1,500 demonstrators had gathered in Bangkok's Silom business district. The protest movement, known as the "Red Shirts" because of their signature clothing, said 10,000 attended.

"Bangkok Bank is a capitalist institution which has destroyed our democracy," Red Shirt speaker Worawuth Wichaidit told the crowd from a stage.

The Red Shirts said former prime minister Prem Tinsulanonda, who is now the chief adviser to Thailand's revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, used to be Bangkok Bank's chief adviser and continues to have ties to it.

They accuse Prem of masterminding the September 2006 putsch. Telecoms tycoon Thaksin is now living abroad to avoid a two-year jail term imposed in absentia in 2008 for corruption relating to a land deal.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gZ4HaJhGZVjzdJHEy6N3FQOWkhMQ

BANGKOK — Thailand's army chief vowed Thursday that troops would continue using a British-made bomb scanner that failed a series of tests, as a fresh blast in the troubled south wounded 13 people.

The government and army have both faced criticism since Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said Tuesday that tests showed the scanners, on which Thailand has spent 21 million dollars, performed worse than sniffer dogs.

Human Rights Watch issued a statement Thursday calling on the government to stop arresting people based on evidence gathered using the GT200 wand, made by British firm ATSC.

But army chief General Anupong Paojinda told reporters that the machines, which are widely used in the insurgency-hit, Muslim-majority south, would stay in use and had proved successful on 300 occasions.

"What the army is trying to tell the public as well as the media is that low-ranking soldiers in the south have used it and have had success in protecting people's lives," Aung he told press conference.

"I respect the scientific tests but at this stage there is no banning order by the government so the army will continue to use it," he said.

The detectors have already been sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.