Orange through the curtains broke like birdsong from the back, and my eyes cracked open. Another night of restless sleep and the strangeness of my dream spilled over the sheets in this humid heat. Feet touched the floor, the same morning routine, face, nose, hair, teeth, eyes, then stepped outside to greet the day. Three little birds were actually by my doorstep, but they weren't singing sweet songs... I was.
No classes today, no focus to learn from students who yearn to structure some art, to craft the delicate flowers and banana leaves and carved watermelons that charm their way into a teacher's heart. Tomorrow is Teacher Appreciation Day, and the teenagers swarmed the gym in little circles bent on one meticulous mission: make the best and most beautiful gift. I let them go, I came to see, they taught me how to wrap and roll banana leaves that would be wired together to look like, get this, another leaf, though as for the kind I couldn't tell.
My roommate and I team taught the next batch of rowdy kids and let them take free reign of the place. Claire was sitting in the chair pretending to be a student, though I might say her enthusiasm is about the same at home :) She has a vivaciousness that rivals any teenager's, a contagious energy that revitalizes anything it touches.
I walked from the office to the cafeteria in the heat of the noonday sun remembering those cold days in wintery Colorado when I couldn't wait to be in Thailand so I would never have to be cold again. I convinced my body not to sweat, or at least, not to smell of sweat. I dined on fried rice with bits of chicken and egg, spicy red pepper and fish sauce. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate - two cups of coffee, some lesson planning, and yes, reading for pleasure.
I am currently in the smoky, sex-scented hazes of pages upon pages of Tom Robbins' Jitterbug Perfume. That man is a loom weaving the threads that doom me to my bed, entombs his echoes in my head with the sultry descriptions I have read. That man is like a mirror to my muted soul, singing life from the silver bowl and laughing in its dripping roll. Like Frost, like Nietzsche, Calvino and Williams, his words shine upon me in some distilled brilliance. A drop of pure essence, oil from God, some mysterious knowledge I wish I could rob - shove it down into empty pockets and leave the ground on enlightened rockets. These men know my heart better than I ever will, and I will read them still until I am old and dying in bed, their echoes racing the rings in my head, embracing the ones I leave when I'm dead.
School's out, back home, a short workout to a John Lennon tribute concert DVD, and then dinner with friends at a beautiful restaurant just up the path of the second canal, next to the lily covered river. Large, carved wooden tables, pink and silver chimes, soft lanterns. Soups and noodles and spiced up meats, rice, and beer, and water to drink. Then back home again, for some late night T.V., and then my friends, it's off to bed for me, to wait for those echoes to soften and cease, so dreams may come and put me to sleep. Let whatever strangeness that creeps in the night be silent, still, maybe even polite, and let me get some rest tonight.
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