It is interesting to see how, as a rule, our dreams are eclectic, and memories are selective.
Yesterday I thought about chains of days wasted and forgotten. My life reminded me an empty beer can I use as an ash-tray on the balcony. As I smoke, it is steadily fills up with cigarette butts; and so are my days being filled up with spent minutes and wasted hours. Once a cigarette or a day is finished, it’s finished for good and out of my mind. Wasted days and smoked cigarettes also bring me closer to my death. I have read somewhere that every cigarette smoked shortens life for 4 minutes. I guess a day wasted in mundane business and boredom can worth weeks or months.
So I sat on my balcony yesterday in the evening, smoked a cigarette and thought of what can be remembered of the day. I decided to put aside everything what I thought and said, or wanted to say. I wanted just to see what happened. Facts, things, events. What did fill this particular day in my life, one of many? What attracted my attention? So here it is, as the proof of the opening line.
Memories of yesterday:
1. though I live in Thailand for over a year and half now, it still surprises me. On my way to work I witnessed again what I call “a patriotic freeze exercise”. I’m getting off the sky-train and have to run down escalators to take a taxi to work. It’s 8 am, so they start to play Thai national anthem, as they do all around the country. Everybody stops. Now imagine the picture: downtown of a busy megalopolis. Morning rush, just few seconds ago people were running, fighting for being first (there?). A picture similar to that of the start of a popular marathon; many people, everybody runs. Few seconds later, like in a fairy tale about some evil wizard putting on his/her spell, in our case on the whole country, everybody is “frozen’. I really enjoy being in this moment, so I continue to move. I know I’m considered being extremely rude by locals, and my behaviour is offensive…but I can’t resist the little pleasure of being the only one who resisted this minute spell and I make my way between humans transformed into mannequins.. Who cares anyway? I despise to follow any patriotic or national paraphernalia. Spare me from brainwashing, I had enough of it growing up in a country once called USSR in the years before it collapsed.
2. crocodiles loose. As soon as I arrive to work, I have a coffee, my morning cigarette and newspaper to start my day. In the paper I read about 38 crocodiles escaped from one of the crocodile farms with floods. They are massive, aggressive and hungry. Police shot dead 10 of them so far, 28 are still on loose in a densely populated area. Residents were alerted. So far there are no victims yet. “Bangkok Post” will follow up the story.
Continue reading ‘Time is the stream, or 38 crocodiles loose’
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