Finally my day is ending. I grab a Dark Beer Lao and relish the hiss of the murky larger as I open it. Free beer, a perk of the job. I flop down heavily onto our tribal style reclining cushions that the tourists love so much. These same cushions I patrol during the day collecting empty drinks and uneaten food. Now I have time. I let out a luxurious sigh and roll my head back, looking up at the weaving of the bamboo roof. The discolored buff of the structure already looks old. I recall teasing the lithe green strips into place during repairs at the end of the last rainy season. The tension and danger of fresh bamboo is still a source of joy to me, its strength and simplicity remind me of home. Of cutting myself on its sharp fibers as a child, wielding a machete and feeling like father. I’ve not been back now for many years. I try to remember the smells of home. Slowly I wind down and begin to enjoy the position of the platform, it’s a good bar and it has been my work for years now. After a brief, but free, schooling at the monastery I had intended to pay my way through higher education but things aren’t always so simple. I linger for a while in lost dreams whilst feeling the hot wind build for a storm. Where have those political aspirations gone? No longer does the restless fiery rage of my motivation toss and thunder or drive me on. Still, I am happy.
The Me Kong winds beneath me, Mother Water it’s called here. My feet stretched out point to an open vision of the lazy bulging current. She speaks to me of permanence and a lasting origin. Long before human imagination named her, there she was behaving as she does. Yet, it is illusion, she too will cease. My life flickers before me, wrapped up in the impermanence of all things. Down on the muddy banks children play and their parents wash. It is the same view which draws the western crowds in their droves. They come for our lighting and the menu. I watch each day as they grease their lips with burgers and toy with their phones, letting everyone back home know what Laos is like. There not all like that of course. My ex – she was different, more wide eyed, more lost, far kinder. I put my bare feet up on the table. Eyes wandering aimlessly I notice someone’s iPod in an ash tray, lost property is not uncommon at closing. Eager for a good one I pick it up and scroll. Her greatest import was music, it’s all she left, that and me wondering where she is now and what happened. She’ll be in her own country of course, finally obedient to the allure of normalcy. It was inevitable we would be crushed by the centrifugal force of her roots. Anyway, I am grateful to her for exposing me to the wide universe of music out there. I settle back into the immediacy of the moment. Rhythms unfold. Driving, tumbling beats from another shore. Malutu Astakae calls to me from Ethiopia. Its vitality is primal and has me rising to new planes. Leaning into the adventure I am spurred on and cradled by deep tones of exotic tongue. I journey with no intention. I try to be still and absorb the bat bat stabs of the screaming groove. I lift the beer to my mouth, breathing deeply through my nose I fill my lungs, I tip then swallow, and pause, holding the moment, then releasing air hard I let out a harmonized smack of my lips. There is only sweeping bliss.
Before me the cobalt sky drains into a violet scowl, contorting constantly in color and shape the sky sets for me. I watch the crimson violence of day’s final breath. It fills me with the anticipation of loss. Music unhurried and euphonic now I am elsewhere. I am holding the dying hand of my Father. His ragged breath is joined by the sound of the jungle, me fighting back the tears, hearing everything. We are nestled amongst the hills of our Northern Farm, the water singing by us rushes to meet Mother another life away. He had hardly left the area, nor had his Grandfather before him. He had watched his way of life decay around him before he had breathed his last breath. Both of us knew I would leave as soon as I had delivered him back to the cradled scent of his soil. I exhale and say my only prayer – ‘Thank you Father’ - my way of keeping him with me and fighting his gradual fading. With twilight comes the building thunder of that future storm, dark clouds tumble in from distant seas, the calm of the sky gracefully exits. I wonder if time exists without change, and nobody to even watch it.
As dusk takes hold, saxophone diffuses into my consciousness; it is raw, ragged and streaming. The solo continues with a confidence and energy I can't contain, it is both a straining and arrival. I am going, go, go. I am hit with a jolt into now. Pleasure in presence reigns. I am floating in folds of bliss and nothingness. There is infinite space. For me it is the head back embrace of the 'I' that exists between my thoughts.
Music stops, I pocket the pod and grab the mop.
