The Gift Of Hope

*

There, there, in the heart of darkness, whispy trees, such pretty flesh, doomed as we all were, forsaken and lost, yet so charming in drunken intimacies and crawling, crawling across the bottoms of broken buildings, just to make love to people we could never remember, to sacrifice what then seemed impenetrable flesh; all for a few dollars, all to keep some old man company. And oh how they needed a tender touch. As if always, the years had settled around them and the deeply disturbed, the poverty stricken, the denizens of that tiny web of bars, their flesh thickening and their breath smelling of cigarettes and alcohol, and loneliness settling upon them like a coating ghost, visible on the flesh, entwined in their souls; and so to be young in this sea of desperate souls was something he thought would never end. The flash cars, he had the flashest car of them all, the apartments with views across Sydney, that pretty, heartless city; and the interludes, when he bummed off one and abandoned himself to the speed fogged streets. He always rose again. Many didn't.

I've never known anyone who knows so many dead people, someone said; and it was true enough. Almost no one survived. Almost all of those who did remained alone in their final years; aging badly. There had been so much triumph and so much joy. But there was always a price to pay. Not just here and now but across the years; in crumbling reputations and sideway glances, in gathered reputations as an eccentric or dissolute, in the shuffling decks of subsiding fates and plummetting story lines; trusted with nothing, ridiculed by all, his old, unfashionable clothes hanging dank of sagging flesh. He had become a sad sack. Despair became a waking companion, distorting everything he touched, changing the fabric of things into an all powerful malignancy he could barely survive on a daily basis. This world, the world he inhabited for so many years and knew of no other, attempted to crush him on a daily basis. And when people talked of hope he just laughed at them; except he wasn't capable of laughter anymore and all that came out was the creaking gap toothed saws of a fetid breath; the beauty of a muffled, dying fall all that was left; and even the beauty of ruins provided no comfort whatsoever.

In this climate, in these dreadful ravages, there hadn't been any way out for one simple reason: he hadn't been looking. He didn't know there was any other world. He didn't realise the psychosis had settled so firmly into his soul and psyche; that this wasn't real. Here in the blessed north of Thailand, where the days are happy in the land of smiles and he could find someone to sleep with for a simple price, the shoe on the other foot now, so to speak, and the doves flying overhead and the heat of the day rising early through the old wooden houses, the sound of development, building, for all of Asia was a boom town now, cutting muffled through the muggy air, the raucous but melodic sound of Thai all around, where the comfort of a sleeping body gave him a peace he had long forgotten, there wasn't any reason to fear the past or dread the future; these days were a blessing to be consumed in gratitude and observed with astonishment; even the poeple he met. He heard so many astonishing stories.

One girl, Najid, spoke movingly of the barbarism displayed towards her; the repeated electric shock treatments when she presented at hospital, drunk, stoned, fighting off the straps. And he thought; having heard this horrific story, of the sons pleading with her to stay in Chiang Mai, not to go back to party town Pai even futher north, when she offered him a lift later, oh, this is going to be interesting. It was a modern car, not cheap, in a land where cars are expensive, and she poked through the old streets and gathered crumpled stories into a single symposium, and they ranged quickly across common experiences from very different places; and she told of her shock at her scheming sister who was trying to get her back into electric shock treatment, who was ringing her doctor telling him she was manic. Evil families, Thai families, always circling for money. I have to live on my investments, I have to be smart, she said. And he said: yes, it's a common experience. Those we think will be our greatest supporters often turn on us. When we were drunk and stoned we were easy to manipulate. Now we are our own people again. They don't like it one little bit.

It was just a fragment in a crowded day; which had taken in yet another Mad Dogs and Englishmen Go Out In The Midday Sun experience with American Gary, who always liked to stomp around in the ludicrous heat of noon; this time at the Chiang Mai zoo with Meg, the 70-year-old Australian mother of five they had befriended at breakfast. For moments they were tourists and then everything would morph back into local knowledge; in the song tows, the trundling red taxis, picking their way through the crowded Sunday markets around the Thapae Gate, the traffic briefly inpenetrable and the air choking; and all of time visited upon us; not just tragic histories and brilliant futures and unrealised dreams; but everything in the present chaos; for talk was easy and the flesh cheap; the startling, funny, charming personalities of the sex workers gifts of grace to an ancient soul. Already he dreaded the flight back to Cambodia, back to the Heart of Darkness. But maybe, already, he had been given the gifts of strength and resilence and those morbid, life threatening binges were a thing of the past. One could only hope.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/world/asia/05iht-thai.html

BANGKOK — Dancing jubilantly in the streets to the beats of blaring pop and country music, anti-government demonstrators on Sunday defied calls by the government to disperse from Bangkok’s affluent commercial hub in a major escalation of three weeks of mass demonstrations.

“There’s not a jail big enough to fit us all,” said Nitipong, a protester who stood beside one of hundreds of pickup trucks blocking one of the country’s busiest intersections.

On Saturday, the protesters surrounded the national police headquarters, the Four Seasons, Hyatt, Intercontinental and other hotels and six major shopping malls, which are connected by an elevated “skywalk” and together have five times the floor space of the Mall of America, the famed shopping center outside of Minneapolis.

The provocative move to shut down the area infuriated many Bangkok residents and elevated what was major annoyance for the Thai government to a full-blown national crisis.

The protesters, known as the red shirts, are demanding that the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva call new elections.

But some of the protesters, who are largely from Thailand’s rural hinterland, also said they were trying to prove a point by blocking such an economically important part of Bangkok: 15 months ago, their archrivals, the generally more well-heeled protesters known as the yellow shirts, blockaded Bangkok’s two international airports for a week, stranding hundreds of thousands of travelers. None of the yellow shirts have been convicted for shutting down the airport, including Kasit Piromya, the current foreign minister who took part and reportedly said the protest was “a lot of fun.”

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Thailand-Thousands-Of-Protesters-Refuse-To-Leave-Streets-Of-Bangkok-Until-Elections-Are-Called/Article/201004115593308?lpos=World_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_3&lid=ARTICLE_15593308_Thailand%3A_Thousands_Of_Protesters_Refuse_To_Leave_Streets_Of_Bangkok_Until_Elections_Are_Called

Thousands of anti-government protesters have refused to leave the commercial heart of Thailand's capital for a second day.

Anti-government protesters gather in the main shopping district of Bangkok

The Red Shirts are supporters of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra

They are defying threats of arrest and pledging to continue until new elections are called.

Office buildings and more than half a dozen shopping malls, normally packed with weekend shoppers, were closed for security reasons for the second day.

Businesses say the economic losses could reach £10m a day.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva appealed on TV urging the protesters to return to the area where they have been staying in recent weeks, saying that the government and protest leaders were close to reaching a compromise.

But protesters - known as the Red Shirts - at the rally site in Bangkok tore up police leaflets and showed no signs of leaving.

Thailand Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva (L) and former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra

Thai PM Abhisit Vejjajiva (L) with ex PM Thaksin Shinawatra

The Red Shirt movement - known formally as the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship - consists largely of supporters of ex-PM Thaksin Shinawatra and pro-democracy activists who opposed a 2006 military coup that ousted him.

http://www.photosfan.com/images/panoramic-high-definition-picture-of-london-after-1.jpg