beyond words

Posted on June 19, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #211: Bangkok: The next day, after arriving here from the airport by way of taxi driven at startling speeds [link to as the crow flies], the recovery from that and… wake up in the morning. Time to go see the neurologist/ neurosurgeon to have the dreaded needle in the head, for the second time (by some means of bone conduction, you can hear the needle point scraping over the surface of the skull: kritch-krrrritchchch). The needle poised at X marks the spot inscribed in biro pen on my scalp (he tells me), the exact position on the occipital nerve (the nerve tree which has been causing the permanent headache since September last year). Now you will feel a little pressure here, doc says quietly, close to my ear, as if it were a secret. Needle goes in, pain-pain-pain, doc voids the syringe, withdraws needle. Thank you very much (I just want to get out of there), go home, sleep, wake up and the headache is gone!

The relief is beyond words

The headache is gone… hard to believe – really. Wow! it worked. How long will it last? (remembering “Awakenings’ by Oliver Sachs, made into a movie starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams). Well… even if it’s for a short time, I can enjoy life in this headache-free interval; just so good to be able to get around and do things without the billiard ball crashing around inside the skull – only these curious sparkling sharp feelings at the sides of the head. In the centre there’s a kind of blank space where the headache used to be, a soft comfy pillow-like feeling… the first headache-free time for eight months.

So the first thing I discover is there’s all this physical energy… I can go around and do things without the great burden of headache. Rushing around the house in a great burst of enthusiasm, I decide to wash some clothes and like most houses in Asia, the washing machine is outside the house, under an open sheltered area with stretched lines for hanging things out to dry in the fresh air. So I put clothes in the machine, select ‘Quick Wash’ and start the cycle.

Go back inside, forget completely they’re there and start cooking a soup with all kinds of vegetables. It’s a bit late in the day when I remember and go out there again, (it’s the rainy season in Thailand) and the rain started to come on, then very quickly it’s a colossal downpour and I have to hang clothes any-which-way in dry corners; on hooks and the back of chairs in places sheltered from this incredible rain like what I suddenly remember as, both bath taps full on.

Back indoors from time to time to stir the soup, plip plop plip like a frog, barefoot on kitchen floor now wet with in-and-out traffic and scraps of vegetable peelings. The great smell of soup starts to come to me as I’m looking for more places to hang wet clothes. Deafening sound of rain on perspex rooftops, and gusts of rainy wind in through the open door nearly blows out the gas flame. But it doesn’t, and everything seems to be just right as-it-is in this wet, green place.
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Photo: Bangkok Post [link] worshippers at the Erawan shrine despite the rain

as the crow flies

Posted on June 15, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #210: Delhi/Bangkok flight: I arrived at the place and couldn’t remember how exactly I came to be there except for the journey returning to me in flashes; scanned by X-ray machines, identified, processed, held in aircraft cabin pressure for 4 hours… then look out the window and see small green rice fields with water everywhere; 1800 miles southeast on the Asia map as the crow flies.

Placed on the ground and I have to get my things quickly, put together the parts of who I think I am in this new context of a day I missed the beginning of, and things out there are just happening anyway. Extraordinary, even so – catching up on the rebound, the momentum of the journey, the sense of something recharged, action endowed with purpose because I’ve arrived in what remains of a day that belongs to other people, those who have been here since early morning… Sorry I’m late, dropped out of the sky unnoticed – the Fall of Icarus in a painting by Pieter Bruegel.

Look at the camera please, click, passport page, thump, you have entered the Kingdom… exotic creatures made of gold. The world seen in flashes from an airport taxi in the fast lane, everything designed to get us there with the urgency of speed. It feels like the whole outside is entering the inside in large jigsaw pieces of landscape partly remembered, connected familiarity, but no time to think where, when, or who with. Glimpses of other people’s traffic congestion at the paytolls, shadowy drivers and their tinted glass and steel glint, chromium shine of new cars in pastel shades sliding slowly along in the golden light of their early-evening lives.

In here everything is locked down tight, attention captivated by the directionality of the journey I see through the front windscreen how we’re hurtling into a wormhole in space/time, plunging towards a vanishing point that never arrives. The outer world becomes neutral, non-intrusive random thought mechanisms that function at the edge of a dream pull me into the gentle whirr and flicker of thinking-about-things, and it seems like what’s happening here just could not be any more ordinary.

I find relief in that… can unwind in the Thai sense of normality, thammada, ธรรมดา, mind still buzzing as it is with the energy, the immediacy of the experience. Just fall into focus on the neutrality of no-thinking, looking for the space that’s between things. Deep in-breath and extended outbreath; the long and forever road extending deep into the horizon with great dome of sky above. Everything looks like a picture of what it is, a composition, a story told by a storyteller long since disappeared and I can’t remember how I came to be here, only parts of the journey now coming back to me in flashes, shining in my darkness at the edge of sleep in a different time zone.

“You are not in the universe, you are the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately, you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself.” [Eckhart Tolle]

Photo: Departures walkway at Delhi. New… pls chk out the latest art page post

passing through 2

Posted on May 31, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #209: Delhi, North India: There are times when the whole thing just gets stuck in the traffic jam of Mind – objects in movement screech to a halt, metallic creaks stretch out the momentum, jerk back and come to a standstill. Eyes blink in the silence and falling specks of dust, the world is seen as if it were a screenshot of the present moment. I focus on the long deep in-breath, the forever long out-breath… it is as it is in this instant, a fusion of everything seen, heard, touched, the taste, the smell, and all this held in thought, in words unspoken.

I’m falling into this familiarity again, having been far away from here, the first time in four years. Returning now and I’ve forgotten how to write, how to shape it so it fits, how to allow it to take form of its own accord. Surprised to discover that when I engage with it, that action seems to trigger remembering, opening up a gallery of recollections unfolding and integrated pieces of imagery like massive Lego constructs of long-term memory files (patisandha, if we can call it rebirth), fit together as in a 3D jigsaw, and the whole thing gathers speed like a long straight highway cuts through the landscape, large chunks of it seen rising up and falling away on either side, then the engine noise, a rolling and a tumbling along.

Many thanks for the Voice from blogging friends that reminds me of the connection that’s out there. I’ve got more of an understanding of Indie Publishing now than I had a few months ago, the first section of the book is completed as preliminary draft and the wind in its hair. I know at some point it’ll shout out that it’s complete. Nothing else to say at this time, everything that relates to this swept away in the doppler effect, sounds flatten off and it’s gone….

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Photo: autorickshaws in Mumbai

parts of a whole

Posted on May 11, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #208: CHIANG MAI: Sorry we’re closed for renovations, editorial work and improvements; facilitated and inspired by friends I’ve met here in the blogosphere. I wanted to take things a step further, turn the energy of the posts into a completeness; thinking of a book. I’m trying to see how all the posts could simply become that. I’m happy to go on writing and engaging in dialogue with friends in the comments box, but I’m wondering where does it go from here; just more posts, adding to an ever increasing number of posts, and no objective other than taking things to pieces to see how they fit together as parts of a whole.

WordPress admin page tells me there are 368 posts 815 followers and 4,878 comments. Unbelievable, it just goes on and on, and I’m so grateful to all the friends out there in the blogging world who are reading this, and those who have contributed in the comments box. I’ve been posting since December 2011 and twice a week from then until now, May 2016 – with only one other break when I got ill. A turning point if ever there was one; next thing was the PHN condition; learning to live with a headache that doesn’t go away… but enough said about that.

So having decided to stop blogging for a while, the first thing I notice is it’s hard to do that… hard to stop blogging. I haven’t properly figured it out yet, but I can see there’s an attachment to it, the blogger is driven, every few days, to get that post out. Same as how the potter flings a lump of slithery clay on to the wheel and holds it spinning there with hands and fingers moulding, shaping, forming it into a beautiful hollow object with mouth so open it feels like the whole outside is inside. Like the sculptor hacks and cuts and chips at the block of stone to release the form that got trapped inside there.

That’s the creative itch identified, and I will be adding more posts to the art page, otherwise not blogging for a while and I’m hoping this means I can turn my whole attention to the pain in my head. Why’d I want to do that? Just to be with it, understand it, see why it’s there – why there is a pain in my life, not as a question… more like a statement of fact and it becomes an object of contemplation. Is there a no-self space beyond the pain? (as Karin has said?) Some people would pray and ask a higher power to help them remove the pain or at least help them to see it differently and to guide them. Do I do that? Do Buddhists pray? Or is it all about just noticing sense perceptions with compassion and detachment?

I’m hoping to make some progress into this and find the energy to work on the book project motivated by the transformation, piece by piece, of the whole blog/book project – working title: ‘Postcards From the Present Moment’. Various people have suggested I should do this, I’m grateful to Ellen of stockdalewolfe.com and Karin at karinfinger.com, this is not an ending, I’ll be back with updates from time to time. As we get near to completion, there’ll be pre-publication news and a new beginning…

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UPPER AND LOWER PHOTOS: CABLES & SINGAGE, CHIANG MAI

the desire to believe in

Posted on May 6, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #207: CHIANG MAI: Before my Thai niece M runs out the door to spend the day with her friends, she comes over to where I’m sitting and says: Toong Ting? I am going now. Bye bye! And she’s gone. I sit there for a while being Toong Ting, her pet name for me, part of her baby talk that remains because it’s thought to be cute when applied in a grandfatherly way. I feel like I don’t deserve it… the Judeo-Christian sense of guilt that doesn’t fit in this Buddhist country (I need to remind myself always). M is courteous and respectful as she’s been taught, a learned thing which reinforces the natural world-view children have. But I wonder if I’m worthy of it – am I simply taking advantage of people’s natural desire to believe in, to trust?

More than thirty years of living with other people’s preferences, adopting them as my own… how it is for the migrant in his/her host country. North Americans must have a deep familiarity with this. There’s a slight doubt that enters sometimes, it’s as if everything that’s done or said is a form of compliance, has the quality of procurement – how can I be as committed to being here as everyone else is when I know I could get on a plane any time and disappear? Moving from one ‘safe house’ to the next, the leave-taking between is sudden and children may forget me completely, or think about it for a lifetime and never understand why I went away. It’s something unknown, unthought in the Thai world. They’re so kind here. I feel I don’t deserve it.

The silence of the room comes as a surprise, birdsong in the trees opposite the window, and I wake up from this prolonged moment in search of the memory of who I am. The same as it always is; I’ve arrived here by the same route I’m accustomed to when reviewing the image of who I want to be and who I think I am. It happens in a tiny fraction of a second, so fast it feels like the process of trying to figure it out is in slow motion.

Objects scattered on the desk in the position they were in, unmoved, a pen, papers – a cup with a curious handle that appears to stick out further and wider than it should, waiting for my fingers to come and hold it… I’d be that person I think I am if I were to I reach for the cup. Alice in Wonderland, Drink Me says the label on the bottle… but I don’t and it doesn’t happen. Everything on the desk and the sofa and the floor remains as a quiet presence of M, these are her unclaimed, unidentified objects that come alive when she’s here. Maybe it’s easier for me than for the native inhabitant to choose to stay with the emptiness and silence of inanimate things, the motionless space where everything is situated, aware of context and content, and seeing that which normally passes unseen.

It’s a perception, and only seems real by comparison with other things that are thought to be not real… falling into the delusion it’s not delusion, or knowing it’s reality – we do it knowingly, we go with the illusion. For a moment it’s seen and this is how we escape from it. Sometimes it’s a familiarity displaced and we’re tricked into staying there believing it’s really real but we’ve only convinced ourselves that it is, and it can take years, a lifetime. A pattern found in the itinerary of former lives, all these journeys connected end-to-end, divided and subdivided into periods of looking out the twin windows of the upper front face of the skull as if it were a moving vehicle, and looking out and thinking: ‘are we there yet?’ Then back to the conundrum of being busy with thought, and never arriving.

Later in the day a message on my phone goes ding! A picture of somebody’s lunch. It’s from M they’re all in a restaurant I’ve been in before and I can imagine how that is right now…

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Photo: a carefully created pavement repair in Chiang Mai.

ever-present

Posted on May 3, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #206: CHIANG MAI: Sitting in a taxi stuck at the red light in Nimmanhaemin, Chiang Mai town. The nearness to Southern China is obvious these days with the occasional Chinese number plate seen in Thai traffic and streets full of Chinese tourists, women in curious long white costumes and wide brimmed hats in the tremendous luminosity of sunshine. The border is do-able now the roads have improved; road 3Asia (R3A), part of the GMS North-South Economic Corridor. The total distance is 350 miles from Chiang Rai across the Mekong River into Laos, then on to the border town of Boten, and China’s Yunnan Region at Mohan.

I’d prefer it to be darknight, but instead it’s brightday, step outside and it feels like I’m in a television studio. Inside the car, cold air blasting through our enclosed metal bubble; this could be an ice-cream headache… then I remember this one is the one that’s always with me, ‘my’ headache is part of my life; ‘my’ arm, ‘my’ leg. Part of everything and right now, undeniably out there too, exposed in high resolution Photoshop enhancement. Light penetrates everything; the orange color of papaya fruit blinds me, street vendors’ cut pineapple painfully vivid. I feel I’m really a nocturnal owl-like creature, squinting in the daylight through slit eyes; a quiet presence behind sunglasses vibhava tanha, (buddhist term for the desire to not exist)… I am not here.

I’ve been away for only 2 weeks and now I’m back, all recollection of where I went and what I did when I was away are suddenly gone. There’s this feeling it never happened, I’ve been here all the time, only imagined I went. Somebody asks: where did you go? I went to Delhi, North India 2,300 miles away. Sixty-eight hours driving time on NH 28 through Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and India to Delhi… but I went by plane of course, so fast, and it’s as if I went there in my mind, gone from here for only a moment. A pause in mid sentence in the timeless ever-present…

My niece M, aged 12, is taller since I saw her 2 weeks ago; taller, longer and elongating as we speak, like a plant in the darkness searching for the light, sprawled on the back seat in an adolescent bundle of legs and arms, wearing a diver’s watch, colorful T-shirt; long black hair curtains a small oriental face, sometimes seen, when adjusting the thread of earphones cable, then disappears again. Sorry, she’s unavailable at the moment, plugged into the tablet device and YouTube videos while checking for messages at the same time on her phone device. Questions addressed to her remain unanswered.

It’s all one extended ever-present time, no seasons, nothing to say where we are in the year. Summer every day. Night comes at 6pm, instant darkness, then at 6am, instant daylight and each day is like the one before, and it all runs together, days become weeks, weeks become months, months become years. The whole thing is just one very long, continuous day.

Time disappears, I’m startled to discover I’m now an old person – lifetime is running out. Rip Van Winkle fell asleep and woke up with a very long beard. He discovers fifty years have passed since he fell asleep; people have died, his daughter is middle-aged, her children are grown up. There’s an awakening to this reality, unasked-for, it just falls into place…

Note: excerpts from an earlier post titled: ‘constructed reality’. Upper image: scene from the taxi window. Lower image: Chinese car number plate in Chiang mai

darkness and light

Posted on April 22, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #203: DELHI: I’m sitting on the meditation cushion in the darkness of a very long power cut. What else is there to do? The back-up system keeps one fan working at slow speed creaking around, then it goes out too and we fall into a quietness of no fans at all, no air con. Look out the window and no street lights either. It’s fortunate there’s still some cool air here, upstairs in the bedroom as I get settled down on top of a short pillar of cushions that sink into the soft bed and the top is just the right position for me and my folded legs. So, here we are, just the two of us, corpus et mente. The agility of Mind senses body mass, tubed liquid of intestinal gurgling, body heat and wind of breath gusting around. Mind sweeps around the limbs up to the head in a high acrobatic somersault then down to the lowest point as if called to do so, and loosens leg muscles consciously. Ease and empty space creep in; the facility of it pervades everything, enters, becomes, or seems to be already here… it was always here.

It’s as if I’m part the way through something not experienced yet. Access at some middle point with nothing to indicate what has gone before, nor what it is now, only the empty space of what it could be… but not going there; held somehow in the neutrality of the pause before anything or everything arrives. There is only this surging through, it seems, an on-going movement, then a flicker of physical sensation somewhere sends Mind off to that location to be there with that small consciousness. Then another sensation and Mind seems to be able to travel around and through the cavern of body, front to back, no barriers, rushing through the invisibility of body structure, into the elbows, up to the base of the skull, everywhere.

Attention is drawn to a zizzle-zizzle sound and I’m fully aware of what it is; the ever-present, insistent mosquito, whizzing past my ear, then back again: zizzle-zizzle. I can picture it in its slight weight, tiny wings-blur of movement hovering for one brief second near to the ear… in proportion, a canyon swirl leading deep inside the brain with hot cloud of air all around that mossies like; that inner ear smell, blood capillaries and aspects of the vast organism it feeds on, the great mountain that is the human head. I twitch in response and it changes course: zeeet. It returns again and I do the head twitch, then it stops zzt… we know it has chosen an unseen piece of skin to land upon, unfelt, and getting the needle-sharp proboscis ready, positions it at the chosen point of entry: Em… now you may feel a very small prick here… please don’t move, it won’t hurt at all…. Mosquito arches her small abdomen (yes only females do this); the treasured insertion tool pierces the skin and plunges down deeper and deeper searching for a blood vessel further into the redness…

I try generosity; okay, go ahead! Giving it away free like this, letting go of the intensity, but it’s not working. Fall sideways off the cushion, defeated by a mosquito. All the other cushions that were underneath me spring up immediately and I’m flat on the bed surrounded by cushions; vigorous face and body slapping, fingers ruffle through hair on head for a moment then it seems it’s gone away.

Eyes closed and there’s that wonderful light coming in at the edge of vision that I haven’t seen for a long time – a kind of unreal ‘heavenly’ warm creamy white moonlight light. Open my eyes again… where’s it coming from… any light on in here? Nope total black out conditions. Close my eyes again and lying flat, waiting… in a moment it returns. Not seen, indirect, it illuminates the space as if it were just about to appear. So it’s okay to be here lying on the bed, coping better in this position with the mossies circulating around breath exhale, and the mystery of the light that has returned, light in the darkness – darkness and light.

‘What’s happening now is the position that I’ve always wanted to be in, I was just trying to get here.’ [Prince, 2014]

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photo above: wave on the beach at Hua Hin collecting shells with M

time-lapse

Posted on April 17, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #202: CHIANG MAI/DELHI: It looks like this tuk-tuk is moving but it’s not. Shadows of overhead cables create the effect. It feels like this present moment is just one screenshot taken in the making of a video about my whole life… well, I suppose it is, but if I hold everything on the pause button and examine my surroundings in detail, I find they’re not held in the moment I’m in. I’m distracted by two large birds zooming past my window, one bird chasing the other. If the whole thing was tracked by time-lapse photography, the trees could be seen growing up, extending their branches, leaves, closer to my window and blocking the daylight. The flight of birds would be like bees buzzing around in a cloud, and my movements in the apartment, a flash of shadowy comings and goings. Then stillness for the times I’m not there, only the sunrise and sunset light illuminating and darkening the empty living space.

The mind was in this time-lapse mode and I allowed a whole day to pack and tidy up the apartment. More than enough time, it was a night flight, so I’m moving in slo-mo action and at the same time watching a video posted by a Buddhist blogger friend. The packing was uncomplicated because it was all clothes for laundry – my washing machine stopped working the other day and the repairman will come after I leave (somebody will take care of it). So packing your bag is easy if it’s all stuff headed for the washing machine. Mostly it’s just getting it all in, squeezed into all the corners and close the bag with one all-round zip-zip-zip. Carrying 20 kilos of laundry across international borders and through X-ray machines and the officer stops me at the Nothing To Declare exit: ‘may I see inside your bag sir?’ “Carrying clothes for laundry into the country, are we then sir? [Aha, a likely story…]”

That didn’t take place, just a story inside my head with different versions of the same thing played out again and again. I got to the house, said hello to everyone and excuse me for a moment, into the laundry area and put the entire contents of my bag into the washing machine in one swift unpacking movement. Add detergent, select the program button, and close the door click! That’s it, done. The whole point of the journey was to get to the washing machine, you could say.

But, before that happened, M and her mom turned up to say good-bye. They brought with them a friend who is a masseuse, so I’m saying how about this pain in my head and neck? (PHN) and in seconds she had me face down on the bed, embarked on a full body massage, she’s on my back, twanging ligaments and tendons like guitar strings. I was in a daze, just enough time to shower and put on the only remaining set of wearable clothes, into a tuk-tuk for the airport – and there was no pain as such, just an easing because the ligaments and tendons’ twanging had stopped.

All the way through this, there were pictures in my mind of getting to the destination but having to correct these images because what I see is the old house, not the present house. I’ve spent more time since last November away from the place than living there. So I have to consciously delete these old remembered places and try to bring the present house to mind. Strange how you have to think things back to how they are right now rather than how they used to be. But the actual destination doesn’t show on the mind’s screen, hasn’t been updated yet… and sleep sweeps me away. Hardly noticed the arrival at 2.30 am, time brought forward by one hour and a half. I’m shoveled into the car by circumstances prevailing, and everything pushing me along in that direction. I get to the house, into the laundry area and put the entire contents of my bag into the washing machine in one swift unpacking movement. Add detergent, select the program button, and close the door click! And there’s this déjà vu thing about it.

“The timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.” [Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet]

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songkran สงกรานต์, संक्रांति

Posted on April 13, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #201: CHIANG MAI: Impossible to not notice Songkran here, Thailand’s New Year festival, “sawat deepee mai”, Songkran begins today, 13 April 2016, in the Buddhist/ Hindu solar calendar. It’s also New Years day in many calendars of South and South East Asia. Songkran is the water festival, the act of pouring water is a blessing and good wishes. Before the festival begins, everything old is got rid of or it will bring the owner bad luck. Time to let go of bad stuff, ‘should auld acquaintance be forgot for the sake of auld lang syne.’ Wash away misfortunes in the past year, and welcome in the new year and a fresh start.

Thai people usually try to go back home and see their parents or their old relatives at Songkran. A tradition of bathing elders and asking for their blessing is part of the festival. Now I’m seen as a harmless old guy so I don’t get water thrown at me; a very small amount of blessed water is gently poured on my shoulder, or I sometimes get to sprinkle jasmine flower soaked water on the youngers who kneel and pray for fortunate circumstances in the coming year. All Thais go to temple in the morning and make merit by either giving alms to the monks or releasing birds, fishes or turtles from captivity – good deeds and the karma of it all.

But it’s mostly about water and the release from hot summer days. For young Thais and foreign tourists visiting here it’s a joyful water-throwing free-for-all. The streets are running with water to the extent that the Chiang Mai Government this year have started a small campaign to persuade the public it’s necessary to save on water. But not taken too seriously.

It’s also a time when people get reckless, accidents on the road the Bangkok Post today reports that so far, police arrested 20,094 people for drink-driving and 549 vehicles were impounded at checkpoints from 9 – 12 April. Owners of the impounded vehicles, 439 motorcycles and 110 cars, will be allowed to pick up their vehicles at police stations after April 17 when Songkran ends.

the elusive moment

Posted on March 28, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #198: THAILAND: In only a few days we’ve been to Bangkok, Hua Hin, and Chiang Mai , where I am now, alone with my headache that’s always here requiring attention, so I can’t do much else. Looking through the photos taken by my Thai niece M that come to my computer through our shared network. Images of the beach that carried so much meaning at the time, seem commonplace now… sadly not interesting anymore. It’s the experience of the moment; that great rush to take a photo, to capture that elusive quality of the moment. Later we see it as a record of the event, and the actual subject matter we were attracted to is caught in too wide a lens, overwhelmed in a landscape of other things.

Reminds me of the time I had to meet the Air France flight, arriving Bangkok 06.15 hrs. I got there in time, but the flight was delayed by one hour so there was time to sit in the seats at the tour group end of Arrivals, near Gate 10 and have a cup of coffee. Gate 10 is a lonely place where diplomatic vehicles park and tour groups gather, bleary-eyed and sleepless, having just got off the plane from some distant part of the world. The people around me were speaking Russian and I could see from the Arrivals board it must be the flight from Novobirisk. I googled the name on my phone and found that Novobirisk is a large industrial city in Asian Russia.

So I start to watch these Russians who are caucasians, like Europeans, and look like they’ve probably never left the area around their home in a lifetime. Stepped out of a time warp. They gather around their Thai tour-guide and have their names ticked off the list. Half an hour is allowed to have a cup of coffee; children run around, go to the toilets most of them are getting ready to get on the coach. Those who arrived first are now busy taking photos with old fashioned digital cameras, intensely absorbing everything around them. Taking photos with arms around the tour guides and taking pictures of everything; roof structure, walls, illuminated adverts, airport signage. Photos of each other posing in front of vases of purple orchids, dressed up in their best summer frocks and smiling for the camera. It’s as if they’ve emerged from black and white, greying photos of the 1950s, remote from anything I know of and yet there’s a familiarity; they could be people I knew in my childhood in the North of Scotland.

There are so many photos being taken, it’s like a small press event; digital camera lights flashing like strobe lights in a disco. I’m dazzled by it, blinded for a moment and have to look at the floor to allow normal vision to recover. Look up again and they’re leaving, the whole place captured in pixels and taken away back to Novobirsk, at the end of the holiday, where all the views of it are reassembled to form one composite image of the waiting area at Gate 10. ‘… and here is Aleksandra and Nikolai at Bangkok airport don’t they look so bright and lively?’

The tour leader has everyone present and accounted for and shouted commands gathers them together. Off they go, cameras flashing and blue lights twinkling at everything, on through the wide passageways and happily shuffling along with their luggage and running children. The mass exodus of the group is dynamic, all following the leader in front who’s holding a coloured flag high in the air so they can see it, moving as one great lake of beings in the direction of the coaches somewhere in another part of the airport.

And it’s suddenly quiet here at Gate 10, all the seats are empty and I still have time to wait for the Air France flight. This high-ceilinged place looks different, light slowly coming up and suddenly it’s daylight same as it always is. People again start to assemble in the seating area again; trickling in like water fills a pool. I see from the arrivals board It’s a group from Beijing, same as last time but the conversations are in Chinese.

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time. [Leonardo da Vinci]

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