an expat living in bangkok for the holidays

Stories as containers

She lives with unusual stories. Eclectic fantastic interesting intelligent fucked up virulent sarcastic sweet loving thieving sexy ridiculous argumentative creative musical Chinese, Indian, Thai, Japanese, Irish, Polish, German, American, Iranian, Pilipino, Norwegian, Swedish, English, French, Scottish, straight, bisexual, Ladyboy … transience.

They live in a humid, tucked back narrow winding Bangkok Soi. The narrows hug a Buddhist temple, a Hindu temple, and a Mosque whose prayers echo in a weave through the cracked cement. Stray dogs and kittens play on the tin and tile rooftops. Some yell at the public prayers over the intercom, some giggle at the finale which undoubtedly says, white bum.  Let us not forget how they are cupped between their respective cemeteries.

This home is a serviced apartment. They get visitors, get yelled at, and smile at rumoring questions from the neighbors. They have dance parties with portable speakers and smart phones, and Miss Universe pageants in drag for Christmas. They achieve, joke, fail, fall in love, cry, and confide. They have concerts sitting on the burgundy front porch tiles and place fallen magnolia blossoms from the trees in their hair.

Some arrive and cannot wait to leave. Some stay for the night, some for internships, some have lived there for years. Some sew and sell hot pants internationally. Some teach and some work in hair salons. Some are bank tellers, some students, some cook, some play music, some audit, some work with jewels, some write, and some design type. The rooms are as diverse as their verse. Some have posh decorations, some do not clean their apartments for weeks. Some have fish tanks, and some take care of flying monkeys secretly as their pets. The rumors are true. Some of the rooms do not have windows.

The kaleidoscopes of these stories confront and address the insecure nostalgia and hyper aware exquisiteness of experience. Their families are equally as diverse. Some have had incredibly nurturing pasts and others have dealt with abuse. They are over and under achievers. They work together, sleep together, move away, we move in. They laugh too much and little, drink too much and little, sing, smoke, and eat too much and too little. They have yoga and aerobics on the roof and guacamole potlucks. They scissor and gel and dye their hair. They fall into canals, ditches, and the front entrance steps. They Skype for hours, converse for hours; express and share themselves in all respects.

Their stories structuralize who they are in addition to what they define as home. Home is anywhere they have this feeling. Of acceptance, of community, of the strangeness that grows the perspective of what is considered to be both love and working together.  Their home could be considered as temporary, but what are homes, but ones that cultivate and then change as we grow. Home necessitates growth. This is a moment to build, to cultivate, to acknowledge in both the gorgeousness of its temporality and the strength and power in the honesty of the encounter; to come home either today or someday.

Time is limited and they are forced to face, encounter, express, and heal. They further home, and community, and acceptance, as they cultivate love and empathy. This expression reveals a spectrum of world community; in a bend of light honest in both its failure and accomplishment.

12.27 062

when transience considered bliss

I’m fucking cold and it’s fucking a tropical country what the fucking fuck

festive peanuts

xmas pics of funny looking kids with hot parents are enjoyable

I’m such a stellar awesome morning I really can’t even stand it

like parents with babies that look like grannies

 

my neighbor needs to close his

xmas pics of funny looking kids with hot parents are enjoyable

at least some of us are listening to music

I wonder what he erased

fuck me hard sex

totally sex

and later sex

as I mentioned before I have to make somtam

 

I tried to masterbate before class but I ran out of time

I have. God. clean sheets

with love without any of it

and chorus bells sex

 

every encounter is one that we learn to encounter ourselves

1004 days ago is either extremely specific or incredibly random

the bus is making me sappy

actual christmas will be great with hard core paintings of music & friends

holy fuck rumination is complete ruin

acid, we really care

 

I really wish that I had a family for my life. I can’t stop masturbating

pull out the sweater vests

love notes weighted in cement to

I have had just the most fucked up day and at the same time lots of clarity

but I really love to love

I don’t like to love anybody

so we lived & loved more

and we understood the past

selfie revolutions

the found said christmas in bangkok is growing

seven hours later I found some flowers

 

1.27 001

on the bright side I recycled

& appear to be listening to music though there’s really no sound

this slowing down

it’s really getting to my feeling of kids

& their messes

& moving away

& just being crazy freaking tired at the cafeteria

 

this has got to be like the longest eternally damned wait for a day to end ever isn’t it

so unbelievably fucking tired

my air conditioning sounds like a church

burning down

and my prize is tupper wear

& a cat chalk board

it’s a beautiful poem

& it is my life

 

I’m going to lose it shit

the first christmas

won anyways

& they yelled yeah that’s my teacher

before I saw the boy who raped me today

before the competition

he said how are

& I did didn’t mean it

fucker

 

strange very strange day

hey what do u know we won

& that made me ill

& depressed

now apparently apart of this festive papaya salad competition

religion makes me want to vomit

windy amelie

 

12.27 054

sometimes they look at u like a creature

sometimes I totally realize if I lived here I could be home by now

the intercom      ya peace

just unbuckled

handless with my purse on the subway

 

sometimes I think she says pussy over

super old women checking me out on the mrt

I’m a very hot      three hour record

selfie

 

sometimes I think she says pussy over the intercom

punk slippers taking pics of graffiti

just so close       maybe I’m starving

glitter pics be gross yo

 

sometimes I totally realize if I lived here I could be home by now

to be trapped similar to

knowledge is a filming of your friends shake their ass on christmas

as you take a picture of their first public kiss

 

12.27 063 12.27 004

having one of those turn up the music types of days

I was captured by a drug dealer

with an office that kept moving

around bangkok. he captured me and had sex with me and his other girl, willingly

with many different tools

contagious bracelet

 

you were a teacher and I taught

a secret program that was trying to reprogram my soul

I didnt think that it was possible, there were

a group of friends that thought that they could help. I told them it would never happen.

 

they told me they thought the secret organization would never let me live it down.

the secret org told me congrats they are no longer after your money.

I woke up and wondered about the definition of money.

 

all of this holiday stuff means my father is really bummng me out.

like part of her humanity is missing.

a friend

 

clinics are not doctors.

like beautifully weird

masturbation dream day

doctors

sleep and pink meat

x stick glow sticks

 

12.12 072

this lady is so fucked,

up. stop staring                                 at the dwarves pulling amazing christian stunts

its not special or interesting if

the old lady holds her phone like a jacked poker hand staring

at what you are writing

i think she got another nose job

fantastic

so apparently all i needed was some fast food in my hospital

 

I left my laptop at work. who does that to their child

maybe sad . my greatest no . work of art

has given birth to rabbits

in a van that smells like bad breath

his fragile ego around masculinity. IS a bullshit

hierarchy of assault

omg hit that man in the forehead like KFC

 

the pretenders snoring and I’m reading stories about rape. yay school fuck the wild

full of crap

I really hate snoring

she didn’t get it Im going to ask her again

Im in such an excellent mood today

violence is bullshit

teaching structural racism is an ad about white santa, awesome

there are a lot of white people full of crap. assholes

I didnt read him the whole dream

 

it would just be the same without love

lots of them cos

hiking in colors

happy like old wheat

tell me I’m what you want

a no would stop

the aesthetic you wanna like

the photo you wanna judge

not prego, test confirmed

the evolution of violence seems more to do with our opposable thumbs than our intelligence

 

12.12 046

laughing color

I don’t understand quite, at least there’s no line

pretty satisfyingly vague as yo:

take it out on the clouds instead of blaming the blue world for the angst of a whatever

 

how like olives

remove the blood shot in my eyes

on the range the bluebirds singing: I have a talent in

 

they say it’s how to use the infection as a driving force

there in the nightclub

was the voice of a girl, eating popcorn, dancing to all screwed up

 

everyone forgets that it all gets grey and I think loves all about the color

the evil angel, in oh my buddha

I don’t understand the sweet bean phenomenon

 

that gorgeous song spread

that icarus flew

laughing, not even when the darkness came listening to mutual, laughing

 

5.20 021

fancy shit

anytime I see the lord I want to fuck, with lords

having the sunrise over dessert

& death … celebrities … smell

 

a little delirious she was fancy and pissed off

the woman who told me her orange shirt story & what it means

 

& then we talked students: have knighted the last lady gaga to be the next woman president, of the world

two days in a row does not feel like thanksgiving

clipping nails priority

 

like christmas, I found it

I don’t know how I feel about this: I ate too much tofu

 

construction in thailand is so air, creative air, conditioning

someone else, to read my poems lost in my seat like my body

to say word . up

 

busking random on the day I say cocks

I see them everywhere, bling bling

 

Estes April 2009 042