Poetry is like a fireplace in the summer or a fan in the winter.
Issa
Some people are picky about what they want the public to know of them and their opinions. And then there are those sweet-natured beings who understand that a great work of art like this here thingy needs the freshness of open correspondence. My Thai pen pal, who initially seemed to blow a gasket over this issue, just sent me this:
My dear friend Tim,
I do appreciate your response with your Min Tull. Now you have cleared my mind. I am glad to hear your input with the messages in my last email. As you wrote, " My words reveal a loving heart and tender spirit which you believed you should share with the others to brighten their lives." That was good Tim, thank you.
Therefore, I wish to take this opportunity to share with you more about myself. As I have posted my message on facebook on New Year's Day of 2018, I wrote " People use the Internet to benefit them one way or another. That's why I am here to take a leap of faith. I am seeking for a humble and warm hearted individual. Who intend to choose a new chapter of life. To make the best of 2018 together with me."
I am an Asain woman who loves to be myself and to speak of my mind. My mission on earth is to help make this world a better place to live. I am blessed with several talents. My speacialty is cooking. I can cook different types of food. As someone have told me before that to get to a man's heart is to get through his stomach. I am sure I would get an A out of this. I grew up in English environment in my country, so I always love to use English to communicate with other English speakers. I love reading, writing and being a translator. I also enjoy philosophy of life. My education background was in music. Singing is my second favorite hobby. I love listening to all types of music. I am not scare to present myself in front of people. I love to tell jokes to make others laugh and to enjoy my company. I belive that laughing is the best medicine for everyone. I want to live in a happy home which I would create a romantic atmosphere. I am also interested to learn more of a new culture, way of thinking, living and etc. Well there are so much more to share but I would put a break here for now.
I wish to find someone who I would build a strong, solid foundation with him. A man who I would respect and honor to be his woman. I will always fix him with healthy meals. I will take good care of him when he is not well. Willing to scrub his back and gives him a Tradition Thai Massage to help release his tensions. We will help each other to achieve our short or long term goals. We will spend our quality time as needed. We will go for a walk, a movie, a swim, a picnic, a fishing or driving to visit some interesting and beautiful places. We will read our scriptures and go to chruch together.
As I belive that abundance is within us. He does not have to be rich. Because with our wisdom, we can create variety of things out of a few ingredients or elements. I have been living long enough to understand what and how to live so that we can fulfill our life's purpose. All of us looking for happiness and so do I !!! With this email, Tim, I would like you to help share it to other people. So my message will get across to someone out there as well.
I am working very hard to get myself as strong as I used to be. So I will start to do myown things and be independent once again. Tim, I hope you are feeling okay with the things I'm writing to you. I will keep following my dreams and desires. I do believe in if there's a will, there's will always be a way. I have been prayers and manifest my desires for more that one year now. And I'm a woman who will not give up easily. I would appreciate if you have any advise for me.
I still wish you good luck with what you're hoping for. An Asain woman who is 20 years younger than you. Keep looking okay. She's out there somewhere.
Please keep up the good work. May your novel writing will attract your readers attention. Please stay strong and keep smiling okay. I hope to hear fom you soon.
And my friend in the Pacific has decided to come out of the email closet and let me use his rambling recriminations, thus:
I'm trying to adhere to your requirement that if I write to you I can expect the possibility it may end up in your novel. I knew it when I wrote it, and I'm willing to face the scrutiny and rejection of any members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint I know now or have known in the past. It's time to stand up for what I think is fair and decent, and I no longer care what they may think. My quality friends would not reject me for such things, and that's one reason I feel I can write to you about them. The hearing is over today. I note there were at least 4 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint senators on the committee and they are all Republicans. Only one of all the Republicans on the committee who spoke said anything that was decent, and that was Jeff Flake, a The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint person. It's too bad he's leaving the Senate. I have no respect for the integrity or even the moral character of any of them, except Flake, if they feel justified in playing the games they have played. And the other three TCoJCoLdS members make me feel pretty uncomfortable with the idea of being in association with like minded members.
And I wonder if after you confess your sins to your religious leader that you can justify a complete denial of your past actions, as if "The Lord remembers them no more", so you should forget them too and even deny them. It is my belief that this is what Kavanaugh has done. I believe he feels justified in lying. He probably even thinks that his God approves of his lying. The ends justify the means, because we need to prepare for Jesus' return and the ultimate fight with the Democrats at Armageddon.
.
Now with that kind of cooperation I can give Charles Dickens a run for his money.
I went back to the SIlver Dish for lunch at 11 this morning, but the Thai woman was back in the kitchen, using a loud voice and rough language because their waiter was gone to the dentist for the day. I'm becoming less interested in her. I'll visit tomorrow to see if anything develops, and then drop the place. Eating out, for me, by myself, is unfulfilling and makes me feel superfluous.
ice cubs in my glass
plastic straw wrapped in paper
the red table tilts
Thai food doesn't taste as well in Provo, Utah, as it did in Ban Phe, Thailand. The prodigal luxuriousness of the tropics always gave me a voracious physical appetite. Too much so, sometimes. And my sense of wonder while living over there never became surfeited. One evening Alex Janney and I were walking towards his restaurant, Que Pasa, in Nonthaburi. A storm cloud towered above us, shooting up for miles. It was intermittently lit on the inside by vivid bursts of reddish green lightening, but there was no thunder. The majestic silence of the approaching storm held us both in place for several minutes. Alex called his Thai wife at the restaurant to tell her to go outside to enjoy the spectacle, but she didn't catch the urgent delight in his voice. She scorned his invitation in order to stay in a hot, greasy kitchen frying taco meat. We made it to the restaurant just as a sheet of rain fell down from the skies like a cloak flung from the back of a god.
Alex felt he owed his life to Bart Seliger, a mutual friend of ours. Bart was my first companion when I began my mission in Thailand. He helped Alex overcome a suicidal rage at his first wife divorcing him, and introduced him to his second wife -- a Thai. So when Bart asked Alex to look after me when I came back to Thailand after my divorce in 2000, he did so out of a sense of obligation to Bart, and not out of any respect or affection for me. We tried to work out a mutually respectful relationship together, going into a sales partnership with items I scouted out at the Chatuchak Weekend Market in Bangkok. I found a booth in that bustling oriental warren that sold orchids gilded with gold leaf. Alex and I pooled our resources to buy a dozen of them -- they seemed like a sure bet with the farang women we knew at Church. But we only sold two of 'em. The rest stayed on display at Que Pasa, and when I returned home I took one along for my mother.
There was a whole alley where they sold nothing but hand decorated postcards and holiday greeting cards. Using wisps of bamboo, tinsel, and bird feathers, dozens of patient, humpbacked women sat hour after hour in the steaming heat that rose from the cracked asphalt at their feet, carefully gluing these bits of fluff and chaff together into marvelous scenes of rural houses on stilts or elegant garudas baring their tusks and spreading their clawed wings. I talked Alex into purchasing a hundred postcards and fifty greeting cards with me for the upcoming Christmas season. We built a capacious display rack at his restaurant, then sat back to wait for the money to come rolling in. But in 2009 the internet had finally taken hold and everyone sent e-cards, not snail mail. All our beautiful hand-crafted cards sat gathering dust. After that debacle Alex didn't exactly turn on me, he just went back to buying and selling by and for himself. He did a brisk business with faux samurai swords and utensils made from heavy stainless steel rods twisted into spoons, forks, and knifes. Up until then he always let me have all the salsa and chips I wanted, on the cuff. But after the postcard incident his staff gave me a bill for 25 baht whenever I snacked there. His salsa was unique; it included a touch of tamarind and galangal, along with a generous helping of fermented shrimp paste.
Needing something to keep me going, I first tried giving private English lessons to university students in Bangkok. But my pupils kept stiffing me, promising payment next week, next week, khrab. Next week never seemed to come, though. Then I got on with a language school franchise called English Plus. They required me to wear a long sleeved white shirt and dark necktie -- and provided me with classrooms full of obstreperous children whose rich parents had spoiled them beyond the point of insolence. I walked into my first class the first day and greeted my pupils thus:
"Hello. My name is Mr. Torkildson. I am your teacher today."
To which one of the little nippers replied:
" Buzz off, big nose." His pronunciation and diction were flawless.
"Goodbye. You have just seen the last of your teacher, Mr. Torkildson" I said brightly as I stepped out of the room, down the hall, took off my tie, and told the receptionist my grandmother had just passed away and I would be gone for the next twenty years.
Up next was the Morinda Tahitian Noni Juice Company, where friends set me up as a publicity agent. Did you know that noni juice can cure things like cancer and clinical depression? Neither did I.
I wrote a passel of press releases, extolling the juice's superlative healing properties, hating myself every minute that I spent scribbling such humbug. One day I broke down weeping at my desk -- and that same day I looked up Dave Phelps to borrow the money to fly back to the United States.
6:46 p.m.
I don't want to narrate any more of my past tonight. The waning sun on the mountains outside my patio door casts no long shadows, so why should I?
The above photo, taken in my living room on the couch my son Stephen gave me 3 months ago, shows my very first can of Colman's Mustard -- bought this morning at Fresh Market for $4.99. I bought it out of curiosity, because I want to know why it is such a staple in grocery stores.I remember seeing it in exactly the same kind of container when my mother took me shopping with her to the Red Owl in New Brighton back in 1957. Just having it in my kitchen cabinet will have a calming effect on my frenzied cooking efforts. I'll swing open the cabinet door, looking for the anchovy paste or a bottle of capers, and there will be the little yellow tin of Colman's -- staid and immovable, reminding me that perhaps I don't need to mix in that full cup of balsamic vinegar after all. A steadying influence.
Never volunteer for a suicide mission unless you can take at least one lawyer with you.
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