Potential

To accept the heroic
and individual
in oneself.

To express
and experience the uniqueness
of this imagination to the edges
of its own possibility.

And to feel
the struggle and the strain
and the doubt.

Because I bring it on myself.

I bring it on myself.

How else can I own it?
How else can it belong to me?

The crimson seeds sown upon battlefields,
or trees now palisades
to keep the planters alive
were not sacrifices I needed to bear, to understand
How much a burden...
How much a strain...

Did you fight for freedom?

That there more kindness in the youth
who embraces sight
that the old can
no longer see

What a mess....

White clouds riding upon the winds,
may only give shape,
to the one that can see through
these voices that sing mimicry,
and be precious only to those that can paint
against blank skies.

I look upon the eyes of those that aren't my enemy
And quiet respect for the struggle they endure
I wish I could free them from the hands that have them chasing,
laurel leaves they already hold.

Though criminal as that may be,
the worse crime is to deny
thee, thee

I will make them see
I will make them see

There's nothing more precious
than the dying light that is
thee

City-Drift, Bangkok (Raw)

Here's a city-drift I did of Bangkok walking home drunk one night. I typed it in a raw text file, to be edited later. Enjoys.

Some people would call this city, the city of Angels. I would call it the city of lies; but then all cities lie. Underneath all the bill boards, LCD screens, and facades, it's a mess of congrete, swet and exploitation. There hasn't been a major city I've been to that isn't built on the backs of provincial indentured servants. Attracted by the lure, the glitter and glamor from the electrotube they come in trains, buses, even sometimes planes. In beat up cars they come, walking in on the mass transits. They walk the street brown skin, and stinking, or sell trinkets on the walk ways in front of department stores.

They are my companions in the night.

Some people try to make it in the city. They say there's more opportunity. This is a city where people who fail come. In Isaan where havest season comes only a year, people move to the city to drive taxis. People will always need a taxi, as they say. Because walking is so passe.

People think it's dangerous to walk at night there. Watching the news, they spread the fear. Yet as cities go this one is quite safe. Of course, that usually a function of how you dress. Black supermarket Tees and my mom's hand me down jeans, a chain for the wallet and a fist full of change. And only fools joj down dark dead-end alleys. It's safe until you meet a police man. After all, you know that one has a gun. There's usually a problem when one man has a gun, and not the other one.

Most of all it's important to smile. Especially to the waiter boys, the flower merchants, to give them a small time, don't wince, but smile. Smile don't say a word. Let the smile say that I know the struggle brother.

But I stand apart.

People have confused selling themselves to art. Its all self-promotion, the propaganda people say. You've got to sell, make money, slave. You don't need that much money to live, you probably need more to die and expect to be burried.

Those that never wrote, and tire of their souls wouldn't know. They wouldn't know, nor taste the bitterness in this, the sweetness in that. Each line a hit of acid, searing away memory, rewriting history. I'm uncovering the secret... my secrets. Those that I hold so dear that I won't let myself know.

You can look at a mirror for your own reflection; but the mirror lies those aren't my eyes. Faded innocence.

Encarta used to call it the city of whores, until the government had it removed. Many things are removed. Like rotting waste food on city streets, or glue bags, child prostitutes. It's all the same really.

I stay up and watch the street clearers wait for the sunrise. They recycle the plastic, the glass. Rubber gloves, and face masks, the brooms, the sweeps. A water truck and gardeners.

The trees can't water themselves, someone has to do it. That someone also had to sleep with another or not get shelter?

But it is a city. For one that barely sleeps, to walk a city that never does, we know the expression is a lie. You and I. It's always you and I. Do we dance to regret?

I dance under the city light post, tracing the shadows with my arms. You could learn to love the spots in the shadows of the canopy.

It's a drug hallucination; charm.

We were built as a fortress.

I refused to work. I don't want exploitation. I come from a cross the river and the cannals. I say. A place far and far away.

I couch surf, and I lie still for days, looking out at parking lots; nursing the drug. The drug that shafts my hands, and burn my eyes.

Some would call it sleep. I call it a compromise.

I'm fighting for this existence, every minute, every hour, ever day. I'm fighting to keep these eyes from shutting. From the dream of being dead and gone, from the dream of being forgotten.

Recycling

            Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos. From the beginning it was never anything but chaos: it was a fluid which enveloped me, which I breathed in through the gills. In the substrata, where the moon shone steady and opaque, it was smooth and fecundating; above it was a jangle and a discord. In everything I quickly saw the opposite, the contradiction, and between the real and the unreal the irony, the paradox.

            Henry Miller, The Tropic of Capricorn

            Once you give up the ghost everything else naturally follows...

            In this natural season of the monsoon,

            where mists block out the horizons.

            Seeing in the distance more rain clouds,

            like an entity that never rests.

            For once in the city,

            the streets feel cleaned out.

            No gawking.

            No loitering on the streets.

            No people standing outside with no place to go

            In these rows of bars

            massage parlors

            art galleries

            where everything is a deja vu

            Of cheap imitation

            Of Cheap furniture

            cheap whores

            with their cheap make-up,

            Cheap lipstick

            Cheap alcohol

            cheap blood

            cheap sex

            cheap clothes

            and their cheap thrills.

            The rain forces them into these holes.

            Off the streets.

            Keeps away the street vendors,

            the stray dogs

            the stray street children.

            Turning corners,

            you meet the ubiquitous presence of muted television sets,

            sport channels

            game channels

            With the same music playing in all the red neon [bars]

            each corner punctuated by a 7-11

            Family Mart

            and Local marts

            Selling the same beer

            the same cigarettes

            the same condoms

            the same potato chips

            Ventilated solely by air conditioning

            With their heaving hum

            metallic resonances

            Everything is wrapped in plastic,

            Sold on a shelf

            Pictured in posters and displays

            The only thing left to do is gather around pool tables,

            lounge around television sets,

            Chat

            Play Darts

            Around the exchange of business smiles with

            Broken English

            German Splatter

            our fake smiles

            drunk smiles

            lustful smiles

            And in between lighting up cigarettes

            bored smiles

            Yawns on tables with candle and liquor

            Overflowing ashtrays.

            With everyone gone, I

            walk down to the beach

            where the water drains with sewage

            Condoms, Cigarettes, beer-bottles, pads, plastic,

            the insignificant dead

            floating out into the ocean

            Consumed by sea-animals

            Recycled back into human-bodies

            In the sea-food restaurants

            that line the pier

            Back into town

            Humans consuming their own shit

            High-heels and sneakers

            Hip-hop clothes

            Football jerseys

            The drainage pipes never stop flowing

            Black is everyone's favorite color

            As their dragging them around the bars

            Always waiting, legs crossed

            All I am able to do is write back drops

            Chasing my story to a close

            Perhaps these metaphors mean nothing

            Like words

            Like life-style

            Like impositions

            A system caught onto itself

            Like Telephones & Televisions
            [ Sealed and wrapped
             In ac(c)ord ]

Copyright 2010, Saranit Vongkiatkajorn

The Pianno Girl

“This is a failed experiment.” I’m p[l]aying for the Girl in Blue. I’m writing pages in a manuscript for a diary in a journal. Am I pretending to be somebody else?

Everything you’re hearing right now does not necessarily have to be true. When reality is too solid it weighs you down. This is not a “chill out, man” kind of saying that’s aimed at avoiding the problem—or really showing {how you don’t care}. I’m saying that, everything you’re going through right now is not what’s necessarily happening—and even if it is, how important is it really? What’s the use of thinking that everything has to go a certain way; to be harsh about it; to force it to happen as you imagine it. You make reality with your thoughts and your worries; and how much it can weigh on you is really up to you. It is not what is happening.

All this started because my first girl-friend was great at inventing codes. Codes, you used to think that the whole world can be understood if you could read the codes, read the signs. {You’re getting closer to me.} The mystery can be solved; and code is the process. Codes also means there is something to hide. Someone, or something is being hidden, being secretive. What is it that they don’t want us to know, or want us to know, what do they mean, by trying to keep it secret?

So now here I am, playing Piano for the girl in blue playing in the corner… and she’s signing on the counter leaning against the TV. BBC on mute. Me right here across writing, watching, smoking. Still trying to solve this mystery.

Music is also a communication system, and those that can express themselves purely through sound are artists. But what distinguishes writers from other categories of writers? Perhaps, it is which part of you that you allow to write.

For the lover of music. The keyboards are a powerful instrument.

[Such] Intensity of description.

Acoustic.

The image; the word.

The humidity of the streets. The crowds you’re against. Facing it; a wall of indifference, a wall of hate.

You’re right. You’re a whole different person when you write. People choose which parts of themselves to choose to write. It’s because I know you in real life—in living with you, being with you, in reflecting off you. I sometimes can’t reconcile the difference between the two. I think of something to say, to reply to the you I know in this written universe, but then I think of the you I know of experience, from memory, from real life—and I don’t know how best to reply. Who you can be, and how you can reply, in this written universe is also so much different, vaster in some ways than in real-life. I can’t see your reply, as I do when I’m talking to you face to face—to see what your face says, to reflect what my being is changing or not changing in you right then and there. All I can do is reaching out to you, through writing. What we all do in real-life—minus reflecting on a faster reply. Such trying to reach you… a way of being with you.

I can’t say sometimes; just sending and receiving. If anything is happening. I’m more worried about what the response would be—if I’m going to send this to you. What should I do to best get through to you? What should I say, and what can’t I say?

Some people get lost in this world. In this separation… not wanting to get lost in life, in the crowd, the masses.

Starts serenading from the computer, in one palm, silent with the other.

[Such] Intensity of description.

Acoustic.

The image; the word.

Memory is different here. All the words written… [become a trail]. Clues to this self… clues leaving closer to that self--that self that writes. On this journey into the self… Retreating….

Some people get lost in this world. In this separation… not wanting to get lost in life, in the crowd, the masses.

Just ignore it.

TV is like medication. You want to be happy, and this is a distraction, it is never as good as the real thing. Because you don’t create. Something is missing. And, when you create. When you invest your psychic energy. That is when you can be in love. In love, and joy. Perhaps that is the feeling from first love… you create something, in your mind, that you’ve never loved before, and love it. I remember, one of the first girls I’ve ever loved, I puzzled her. It is the greatest sense, and source of curiosity to get to understand her weird and erratic pattern. To bring order to her system. And perhaps, this is the most beautiful way two people can get to know each other. When I really want to understand, with all my curiosity and passion, how this person is. To find joy in such true communication, to such understanding.

Music

Never try to write a memory; memory is passing; and this moment is a rememorizes the next. Where would we be if we stopped trying to remember? In oceans is not about being blameless; it Is not about being guilty. When we smoke we sometimes become more blameless; we might feel like it. But we also become more easily influenced; we are not on longer responsible for what happens or is happening; we might feel no guilt for things; but that never means we’re not blameless; everything we do is imprinted;

The reasons are sometimes too easy… or weak, the child not yet learning to be a man in male rock. The way we were as children, this beautiful word becoming not what we thought it was. Growing up becomes a process of taking this essential ignorance; this essential goodness; and not losing it. These changes; polar opposition; logic; turns people’s natures upside down.

Pop culture: taking everything in; leaving your eyes wide-open without judging folly for sin. Guiltless enjoyment. Uncensored.


Copyright 2010, Saranit Vongkiatkajorn