streaming consciousness…

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  hardie karges 9:56 am on October 24, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: life, love ( 49 )   

  Tang and I are getting along just swimmingly, 

  
  whatever that means (I hope it’s not like the salmon in Eagle Creek lying dead after the 1000-mile trip upriver just to drop trou and lay some eggs). The Food Fights (FFI & FFII) have nearly ended and an eerie peace settles over the land. Thank God for other people’s mothers. It was touch-and-go for a while. I knew when she called in her mother that the tide would soon turn in my favor. Mama don’t bite the hand that feeds. We almost split over irreconcilable similarities- selfishness, stubbornness, childish expectations, etc. It could have been another case for the epicanthic folder, file it away and try to forget. We now realize we’re made for each other, I the blue-eyed lightning to her brown-eyed earth. Understanding comes little by little, though theoretical physics would probably be easier. At least there’s no three-body problem here. She doesn’t even get jealous now unless I flirt with Death. That’s her turf (Forego the antibiotics until you need them. You can kiss a TB victim on the lips in her deathbed and still not get it if you play good defense). So finally we signed our own little Treaty of Tortillas of 2547 (Buddhist Era), based on Spain and Portugal. Basically, she gets Time and I get Space. I get to work on projects on four continents without a moment to spare. She gets a three-bedroom house in Chiang Rai with all the time in the world. Hell of a deal. She gets egg fritata in a tortilla a la Espanola; I get corn flour hydrochloride in tortillas a la Mexicana. Talk about papal bull… We meet at the crossroads in the hypothetical fourth spatial dimension of a flat universe curled up over itself in the shape of a torus, also known as the Krispy Kreme theory of the universe. I guess it’s better than an anniversary dinner at Stapleton airport in DEN while taking mutual stopovers on separate flights, like with one of my previous exes. People ask me how I can dabble in the UK while working in the US while staying in Mexico and living in Thailand; my only answer is, “practice.” Hopefully I can insinuate myself into a side-trip to Turkey and maybe dip down to Greece next year (hold the Macedonia) if I can play my frequent-flyer cards right. Hey, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. The combination of cheap flights and vanishing oil and lingering traction-era-phlebitis in my right foot (soon to be a major motion picture) sends a clear signal to me.

   

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  hardie karges 7:00 am on October 23, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: intelligence, life   

  Nonay the wonder dog was the original Buddhist, 

  not the elaborate ritual performed under the watchful eyes of golden graven images, but the real thing, giving much, taking little, thinking nothing of self. Nonay was living proof that dogs have feelings. Even though she wasn’t even mine, just the neighborhood rent-a-dog, she’d be at the door every morning, ready for another day of fellowship. She never even took food, until she got pregnant. Things changed when we got a cat, and instinct created an ugly scene. But she learned, actually learned, to subdue her instincts in deference to the public good. No matter how much she wanted to chase that cat, she’d detour to the other side of the room to avoid its gaze and any potential conflict. She could control herself, but she couldn’t control events. Her catholic eating habits lead her astray when she tasted the rat poison, the free dog’s hemlock, extra sweet to attract them. The last thing she saw in the emergency room was my face assuring her that this was simply the way it was, not cruel, but not forgiving, either.
   
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  hardie karges 1:57 am on October 22, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: life   

  My life is a countdown, to what, I don’t know. 

  I only know that it seems to be happening in reverse order. I was born an old man, grumpy and set in my ways. Then I entered school, even though I already knew everything. It was a mere formality. I retired at age 21 from a job I never had to live as a country gentleman in an estate that didn’t even exist. I hated cities with the zeal of a reformer and the intensity of a zealot. They were an obstruction in my pastoral lifestyle. Finally I resigned myself to go into business, the gravity too overwhelming to resist. When I finally broke free, my adolescence began and I was ready to truly learn. Now I’m a child, bald as a baby’s butt without all the powder, playing in the fields of the Lord and watching a sunset that never ends. My childhood was sketchy. Adolescence was a disaster. My twenties were good and bad. My thirties were my lost decade, lost to business. The forties were better, an intellectual revolution. The fifties are looking better and better. And I’m not even losing my memory; it’s just getting full.

   
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  hardie karges 6:48 am on October 21, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: life, love ( 49 ), Thailand ( 75 )   

  I love my wife, though I don’t mind being gone half the time. 

  That keeps it fresh. Hunger makes the food taste real good. If I’m there all the time then it degenerates into that husband-and-wife behind-the-scenes sort of fussing-and-fighting that they never showed on Ozzie and Harriet, tending to favor smiles and sighs and bedroom eyes, while the kids become rock stars in imitation of real life. In very few species does the dad actually hang around with the wife and kids after the consummation of the marriage, so I figure I’m way ahead of the curve. Thai women are more obsessed with security than they are with finding the ultimate soul mate anyway. So Thailand works for my sci-fi style of life. Stupid me, I had to learn the language. Big Mistake. Normal Farangs live with their Thai wives in a state of eternal bliss, speaking Pidgin Shit and drinking beer. Farangs are Westerners, white ones. The term is a Thai pronunciation of the name that started off as ‘Franks’ and dates back to the Crusades era, when all white men were known as ‘Franks’ in the Middle East and Byzantium. It seems we’re on a new crusade now, and Thailand is the Promised Land that needs rescuing. Older Western guys running short on erections get to spend their remaining days with a beautiful younger Thai woman, full of smiles and spice and everything nice. Japanese and other wealthy Asians opt for the same retirement plan, and more than a few Arabs, too. There’s something for everybody.

   
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  hardie karges 2:13 am on October 20, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: life, love ( 49 )   

  My dear is caught in the glare of her own headlights, 

  
  signals sent to an approaching hunter, too scared to flee approaching danger, too glad to be noticed in the passing crowd. Asian women are born to bear and bred to breed, the weight of centuries pinning them down to the bed of forgiveness. Tang is in way over her head with a husband trying to inspire her to self-fulfillment and professional achievement in a country where the highest goal of most women is to be a housewife. It’s a time warp, like ‘Pleasantville’ or something; wives stay at home and so do many of the men, too, if they’ve got activities they can do there. It’s not like there’s zoning or anything fancy like that. The cost of living is so low that middle-class Thais can hide behind their locking fences playing with their kids like fat cats playing with their chew toys. Their only problem is me, expecting life to have some meaning or something, a path to glory, or at least a life’s work, or something. Everybody’s scared to take initiative for fear of what everyone else will think, so everyone copies everyone else’s work rather than create something new. It’s almost like Tang doesn’t even see herself as an actor in her own life, as if she were watching a movie about herself. Conformity may save Asia a lot of Latino heartache, like protests in the street and revolutions per minute, but at what cost? Asia has cast its lot with business at the expense of politics, while Latin America wrestles with the decision, looking with alternate jealousy and disgust at Mexico, sleeping with the enemy US and the FTA Fresh Tits Agreement, to see who gets fucked and who gets sex.

   
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  hardie karges 5:32 am on October 19, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: life, Thailand ( 75 )   

  Tang makes supper in the kitchen, 

  mostly oblivious to my musings and misgivings, consciousness largely applied to a given task rather than set loose to run wild with imagination and self-reflection. Thailand is a womb warm welcome and waiting to soothe the frayed nerves of the semi-erect hominid westerner, ego bruised from the constant duals with self, reflected in an endless stream of strategically placed mirrors creating the illusion of reality for those in need of such. Thailand will survive where others fail because of her willingness to marry up, take the name of her new spouse, and enjoy the honeymoon of the future, should there indeed be one.

   
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  hardie karges 4:58 am on October 18, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: life, travel ( 14 )   

  Like my Indo-European ancestors, I travel a lot, forty-eight countries and counting, 

  slightly less than one a year, but I figure to rectify that soon. But who’s counting? No, I haven’t been to the Arctic Circle yet, but I’ve come close. I’ve watched the sun surf the Atlantic Ocean at Reykjavik in June, refusing to go down until the clock hits 2300 hours, like Michael Jordan finally laying the ball in after a twenty foot long jump and immeasurable hang time. Short of a season in Uranus (pronounced YOUR-anus), that’s the closest I’ll ever get to seeing the Sun wobble gently in the middle of the sky, going nowhere ultimately, at least not relative to my own position. These days I triangulate myself mostly between the US, Latin America, and Thailand. If I didn’t triangulate myself, then how would I know where I truly am? Right now Thailand wins on points, decimal points. The same house in the US would cost me at least ten times as much as what I pay in Thailand. Also, that’s where my wife is, so follow the pull of gravity. This is old-fashioned gravity, not the Einsteinian geometrical function. No, Tang’s there literally pulling. Tang’s my wife. She’s more than a breakfast drink. Thai women are beautiful, but they’re out of their minds; out of their minds and into their bodies. People ask me what Thailand’s like and I say it’s like Mexico, except that the food is good and the women are beautiful. Those are gross over-simplifications, of course, but that doesn’t stop me from saying it. If it did, I wouldn’t be writing this tractatus right now. Mexico beats Thailand hands down in arts, culture, and literature, though. Thailand is not an intellectual culture. Asia is a woman; Europe is a man. Thailand is the breeding ground, a Buddhist magnetic field of passive attraction, flowers waving gently in the wind. The middle path lies right between the legs.

   
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  hardie karges 5:17 am on October 17, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: friendship ( 4 ), life   

  The wages of sin is cash, cold and hard, 

  no longer disposable, already spent, no longer red, no longer hot. If you get caught with your dick out in public, then you gotta’ pay. If you stick it in my face, you get a second chance, if you’re a friend. The privilege of Christianity is to confess your sins and be born again. Don’t try this in Baghdad. The more you demand of friendship, the fewer friends you’ll have. The only thing I ask of my friends is keep your dick out of my face. I know it’s down there. I don’t need to see what it looks like. I don’t need to compare length. Don’t diminish me to exalt yourself. ‘Humble but not humiliated’ is not a bad approach to life. Humility is certainly a virtue, but you choose that for yourself as a gentle, yet effective, unpretentious approach to life. You don’t want it forced down your throat. People will stick their dicks in your face if you let them. That used to be called ‘eating humble pie’ I think. It tastes like rotten mushrooms. Do what you’ve got to do behind closed doors, do it for evolution, but don’t do it in my face. Say what you want about me behind my back, but don’t stick it in my face. Women will do the same, borrowing a virtual dick from the anals of history and legend to shadowbox the demons that haunt them. Why can’t they just stick their pussies in my face? I can usually take it from there. Anything is better than the all-too-frequent male ego stand-offs that pass for friendships, especially among many of the losers who wash up on the beach here in Thailand. Successful people don’t have to resort to such juvenile antics. It’s like Mississippi rednecks, with the Industrial Revolution leaving them behind, blaming all their problems on ‘niggers’, when they themselves can barely write a complete sentence. Most of their sentences occur in the state penitentiary at Parchman Farm. I’m from Mississippi, so I have a license to say things like this, my poetic license. You can download a copy from my web-site. Watch out for black widows.

   
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  hardie karges 11:52 am on October 15, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Family ( 6 ), friends, life   

  My friends are my family, 

  unfettered by ties of blood and other quirks of fate that can’t be undone. My friends are the family I choose, not the family that begat me. The family that begat me doesn’t always get me, yet they themselves are different aspects of me in the flesh, the same DNA spun up into three different forms, the same cards dealt three different ways. My true friends would do any thing in the world to help me, because they know I’d never ask it of them. My nuclear family is a time bomb waiting to blow, the tracks of blood mute testimony to the struggle for a happy family, just like the wall-hanging asks God for. False friends are the people who hold you back, wrapping you in a fuzzy pink shawl of comfort and mediocrity, village communism, the leveling influence of jealousy, all attempts to break ranks brought tumbling down by the jeers of the crowd screaming for blood. Any excess of income must be balanced by excess outgo to placate the judgments of the losers. Any excess of confidence must be subjected to the doubts of the naysayers. They wrap you up in all their expectations and smother you. They prick you gently in the softest point in your thick hide and proceed to castrate you, essential to proper domestication of the wild species. To get ahead, you gotta’ leave others behind. If you slow down to let them keep up, they’ll just slow down further until no one goes anywhere, village communism. Welcome to the third world.

   
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  hardie karges 11:38 am on October 14, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: life, love ( 49 )   

  Push-button people push buttons to get a response 

  even where no buttons exist. Familiarity breeds contempt in one world as surely as Asians breed rice in another. I think Europeans and their like thrive on individualism and discord, whereas Asians and their like thrive on conformity and order, the closer the better. Westerners like ‘their space’. Asians hate to be alone more than anything else in the world. For me the goal is to have a mobile phone that works anywhere in the world and never have to use it. For a Thai the goal is to travel with as many people as possible. Problems in Asia only arise when the pecking order is not clearly established. Marriage is a special case in both hemispheres. Offspring and their parents are typically closer than the spouses themselves in Asia, the blood connection speaking louder than promises that can be broken. In the end it’s no different in the West when things fall apart; the kids are the fruit that endures the uncertainties of transient attraction. Still, though blood is thicker than water, sperm is thicker than blood. The hand I play is more important than the hand I’m dealt. The people I choose are more important than the people I’m stuck with.