Dawn and Twilight. Part 1.

Part 1 - Dawn.

(1)

She looks out the window. Just like me.

Traveling is such a lonely endeavor. Those security checks stand for far more than just a long line up and an early arrival time. They are the markers of a man-made limbo. It hangs thick in the air, this incorporeal thing, between the wayward and the rest of civilization. Airports are full of people coming or going: farewell hugs from the jet setter, smiles from the homeward bound. Then the gates line up, one after another after another. The gentle conveyor belts sterilize the process. The consistent hum of suitcase wheels replace elevator music. And slowly, somewhere between Gates C8 and D54, you're alone.

He's alone. That guy over there by the washrooms is alone. That girl is alone while her partner naps across the plastic benches. The grandfather is alone, asleep in that chair that looks out across the runways, while the children play in the playpen.

Even she is alone, looking out the plane's emergency door window. She only glances for a minute. She only has a minute to think, before the plane lands and there are too many things to do again. Her hair is done up with a dozen pins and clips. She has a skirt that is an appropriate length, and its green matches all of the others. Her name is translated on a shiny gold name-tag for English speakers.

I look too. It's dark and raining outside. It feels like it's always dark and raining when I land. I wonder if she feels that way too. In a moment, we're all going to get up, and file out. Not her, of course: she'll have to wait and politely smile and say in 3 different languages “goodbye and thank-you.” Her smile will welcome us home or her eyes will encourage us on our jet-setting adventure. But inside, it always feels like it's raining.

~~

(2)

For every trip there is a destination. To every trip there is a dawn.

Our own purgatories are not readily forgotten. They linger like comfortable and terrible lovers. Far after they have has been left behind, they can be remembered, mourned upon, chewed and distilled. They can be broken down, analyzed and perspectivized. They can always be called upon and built onto a pedestal. And in those memories, like in their time, they stretch for all eternity.

But light, for all its temporary nature, is inevitable.

It has arrived. I have arrived. And there are people here. An entire world sings and dances and goes to work oblivious to the nuances of my kind. Next to it, the charms of my other life are revealed for what they are: charms. Dangling pieces of distraction or decoration.

For every woman there who takes to the tanning booth to ensure her beauty, there is a woman here putting on whitening cream to do the same. For every carton of organic, with the pulp, Simply Orange(tm) that is shipped to the supermarket there, here there is a juice stand on the corner with a juicer and a bag of oranges and a willingness to be squeezed. For every animal saved by the SPCA there, here there is a cock-fight to the death for cash prizes.

How can the simple pleasures of home seem like anything more than happy contrivances next to these realities? How can we ever again feel trapped in our own culture's skin, when presented with such obvious proof that it is both relative and insignificant?

The British had it almost correct: The sun never sets on the Human empire.

~

(3)

The mornings are so much more subtle here.

The morning chill is a gentle thing, polite and unassuming. It is the welcome mat that politely awaits the day's heat, hours away. Birds chime in with roosters to beckon the day's light. And even with the morning stirring of cars on the road and trucks idling in the driveway, they do not stop. Their song will last until the faint hues of blue and grey are completely replaced with the brightness of the rising sun.

Tiles soothe freshly woken, naked feet. The breeze still flows into the house from the windows. The water flickers on, splashing to the floor below and slowly heating up to a mild temperature. No one sweats in the shower. As the water makes contact with bare skin, it explodes in a cascade of shivers – the first and only of the day. Toweling off is an imperfect exercise: everything dries here.

Breakfast tastes like the morning dew was stolen up from the grass itself. Fruit is fresh and readily available. Everything left the earth merely days ago. Taste buds celebrate. The warmth of tea and coffee lingers in the cups.

The day does not start, it begins. It does hit the ground running, it saunters that old familiar trail.

~

(4)

“Ya never fall in love with your business – that's the key, iddn't it?”

The British sounding words came from a man wearing an Australian hat, a breezy open shirt, gold around his neck and old green tattoos. A self made man. His frame was strong, built from labour, and his face showed the wrinkles of his successful age. He was apparently the very symbol of success: acquiring rice fields, building new buildings, living in Thailand and expanding his own personal empire.

And those were the words of advice he provided me. Sitting on a bench in the marketplace, drinking coffee, watching all the beautiful women 20-40 years his junior walk by, and rolling his own cigarettes. His laugh was genuine, as was his statement, and as was his life.

Nothing went against the grain more, though I'll tell you he is a very likable man. But the very nature of my understanding of new business is that one has to love their job. Indeed, that is what we are now taught, in North America, about our life's path: find a job that you love doing. Getting paid for your heart's enjoyment is the neo-American dream.

And it is certainly that we find two things ultimately attractive of other people: success and genuine passion. Both are relative – both to the beholder and the beholdee.

When you love what you are doing, you are happier. And, for the businessman, when you are happier, you work harder. Nothing has ever been more successful than the business of religion (and it's recent name-change “spirituality”). Nothing is more infectious than evidence that we are, in fact, having an impact. Families toil day in and day out, remembering fondly all of the good times, all in the name of that four letter holy word. I've seen all 3 first hand.

And so, to hear that these two things ought to be divided – that success necessitates a distance from genuine passion – sounded rough against my ears. It sounded incorrect. And yet, much like I cannot argue the reality of what I have seen, I cannot argue that the man is, in very point of the fact, successful.

Strangely Plato agreed with him to some extent – that money making should be considered a separate art from that of shoe building or street cleaning. But it is Plato's division that also reconciles this seeming paradox for me.

It is the advice of an employer, not an employee. The advice of a man who does not love his business(es), but loves business.

We all answer to something.

~

(5)

When I was in university, I was provided with an interesting sociological insight to my generation. We have lived isolated from palpable change on a global level. We have not ever experienced a world war, or a revolution in our own country. We have seen nothing but upward progression with the ideologies that are current. Democracy, capitalism, human rights.

The insight was this: without experiencing radical change, the progression of current modes of thinking and being seem inevitable. To put it another way, we forget that we can have an influence on the world, as much as the world has an influence on us. Big brother and big business are a result of our continued support or complacency, not in spite of them.

Heightening of conspiracy theories at parties confirm this. We dream up realities that must be, confirming the ineffect that our lives could have against such well oiled machines of subtle deceit and control.

Instead, healthy inquiry into the secretive nature of government should be couched in terms of contingency, not necessity. These systems of control, like every other system, is dependent on people. People are not well oiled machines. And systems built by people can be changed.

Here in Thailand, I witness a revolution that disconcerts me. It is, like everything else in this place, subtle. Nevermind the near constant, first-world discussion of political revolutions, red-shirts, or poverty. I'm talking about a revolution that is having an impact on daily life. A sustainable impact on our generation, brought on by genuine revolutionaries of our generation.
Giant Budda statues line streets, and sit atop wild mountains. Monks are a common sight in the streets of every city, village and town. Temples are tourist attractions as well as national places of worship. It was this way the last time I was here, just under four years ago, and it is the same now.

But this time, when the locals look at me with big smiles and genuine interest, we struggle across the language barrier using fundamentally different questions than before. This time, instead of asking where I am from, they ask me what I believe in – Budda or Christianity. This time, I have heard Thai people, my age and younger, sound out the English word “Protestant” in an attempt to describe themselves. They recognize the word “Catholic.” I drank tea beside a man who claimed to be a pastor. A lady working in the market was excused on Sunday for a few hours so that she could go to church.

Prior to this, I had heard of missionaries, and missionary trips. I had heard about the dangers of sneaking the bible into China, and of ambitious and well meaning people going to spread the Good Word. But never had it been met with such a tangible reality as this. This was evidently taking hold. This was change, perhaps not born but certainly bred in a time period that I had lived.

I am disinterested with the political or social facts of which religion is better for them – that is a different forum. What is to be noted here is that we can and are carving what the next statue on the hill will be.