Next Life in the Afternoon

One of the ascetic practices some monks undertake is that of observing death in its many forms, from the ever-frightening threat of death to the ghastly specter of what remains after death. This is a practice designed to help them let go of attachments to the physical world and come to know in a very deep way that we are all subject to the same certain eventuality of pushing up daisies. Or tamarind trees, as the case may be.

I never intended to have this type of practice during the trip I made to Thailand three years ago but for most people it’s not something they plan for. When the threat of death comes, that horrid vision and realization of our own mortality, what do we do? Running toward danger is not a very smart action but running away from what we perceive to be dangerous may lead us to other dangers.

Here is a taste of what I did while in Old Sukhothai and finding myself among dangers I had not anticipated:

At other ruin sites the paths and lawns were clear, but at this one the paths I trod had me wading through ankle-deep leaves. The clearing where grass could conceivably grow was so covered that nary a blade showed itself if any were there at all.

I had recently stopped at a temple whose very large fire ant population kept me from staying long, so I was delighted to be among tall-growing hardwoods without obvious fruit that might support a healthy colony of little stinging creatures. Yelping and dancing a jig to get the fire ants off me was not a reflection of my best self.

The idea of encountering the dreaded king cobra or other death-giving creature had not crossed my mind when I noticed the leaves around my feet rustle with such vigor that my neck hairs stood erect in the still air.

I looked and could see the leaves moving among the fallen pillars and overgrown weeds at the edge of the clearing. Something was crawling in the underbrush. I didn’t know what type of creature it was and did not care to find out. My first thought was to leave at once, bidding adieu to my ground-dwelling companions. At some point, though, you have to figure that if you are halfway through the woods, you still have halfway to travel. That is, trying to extricate myself hastily would not prove any more effective if the same distance would be traversed regardless of speed. Any snakes that might be in the leaves and ready to strike would be there whether I ran or strolled.

Then comes the matter of strategy in walking. Do I walk noisily and hope to scare the snakes into slithering away ahead of my feet, or will that simply anger the gutsier of them into staying and attacking? Would a stroll, feet padding along silent and catlike, be more effective in trying not to scare the snakes, or would that ensure their complacency instead of their flight? Such are the thoughts of a man who would prefer to avoid certain death but knows that the number of fangs will likely remain unseen and unknown, and unknown even if seen.

So how did I walk? Slowly and noisily. Did I get bitten? No. By not running from danger and instead having a walk in the woods, I was able to enjoy what could have easily been my last minutes.

In the end, it is not avoiding death that matters. The quality of a life is not measured in time but in substance. If I were to get bitten and die there, I think I could have called my life and experiences quite full. Or someone could have, on my behalf. All the same, I am glad for the opportunity for future richness.

Technorati Tags: ascetic, monks, death, Thailand, mortality, danger, Sukhothai, ruin, snake

This may be one of the most accurate statements ever made. Don’t get me wrong – I am not making that statement as a blanket claim, only to say that if it is true, it is also true that sleeping on concrete is one of the least pleasant things I have ever done.

Here is a brief paragraph taken from the section of my book about staying in Prachinburi. Read on:

So there I was, trying to sleep on one of the hardest surfaces ever discovered. Unlike a traditional western bed, marble does nothing to hug the curves of your body or provide crucial back support. Although I have never been so ill as to experience bedsores, I could certainly imagine the feeling as my skin got pressed against the floor under the weight of my body.

What? You have never slept on concrete or it’s harder cousin, marble? Well, bless you for that! Don’t start now just because that’s what I did. I am here to tell you, friends, that I describe in detail just how pleasant and comfortable concrete can be.

Phramaha Nattapong and I had stopped once in Khon Kaen and I tried to take a nap on a wooden platform porch. No luck. It was hard, lumpy and just plain uncomfortable. That night, and for about a week after, I slept on a concrete slab in Udon Thani. While the concrete never got to feel comfortable by any means, I got used to it after a couple nights.

On the way back south, we stopped at the same place in Khon Kaen. This time, I was shocked that the wooden deck felt absolutely luxurious. I knew intellectually that there was a hardness difference between wood and concrete but I had never expected to experience it so vividly.

So is sleeping on concrete good for the soul? I couldn’t tell you with any certainty but it does give a person an appreciation for other sleeping surfaces. And that, as a lesson, is good for the soul, without a doubt. Thanks, Thailand!

Technorati Tags: sleeping, concrete, Prachinburi, bedsores, Phramaha Nattapong, Khon Kaen, Udon Thani, Thailand

I like to tell people that I am writing a book – partly because I am trying to market it and let as many folks here about it as possible, but also because of the mystery involved in being a writer. It’s like I am a modern-day Rob Petri, who was also a writer, or maybe a Major Nelson or Mike Brady. Except I really dislike Mike Brady and his bunch. I honestly can’t tell you how delighted I am to not hear that theme music or hear references to the show.

The fact remains that nobody really knows what writers, astronauts or architects do. There are few enough of them that not everybody has one in their neighborhood or circle of friends. This is why they made for such great careers for sitcom characters. Not many people would say Rob Petri was not a realistic or believable writer. Nobody knows what writers do.

For me this is great because I don’t want people to know what I do on a day-to-day basis. The solitary life of writing is a double-edged sword of loneliness and productivity and the lack of excitement in such a life is anticlimactic after you have been built up with such a mysterious title as “writer” or “author.”

All mystery aside, I still need to learn how to talk about my project. I need to make an elevator speech so I can quickly bring people up to speed with what I am doing. I am thinking of adopting text I just rewrote for my “about” page:

Next Life in the Afternoon is a book I am writing about a trip I took to Thailand in February 2004. My friend Phramaha Nattapong, a Buddhist monk I had met in North Carolina, asked me if I wanted to come home with him and become a monk for a short period. How could I say no? When would I have that type of opportunity again?

Traveling is used as a vehicle for this story of spiritual seeking, personal growth, adoption and rejection of culture, intrapersonal investigation, doubt and reaffirmation of strength. The book challenges popular concepts of home, strength, travel and cultural interchange.

The story surrounds the various people I encountered and experiences I had while in Thailand and what happened when I was told that I could not be ordained, after having traveled 28 hours by plane to get there.

So what do you think, fellow netizens, who still think a writer’s life is one of mystery and passion and all manner of excitement? How would you craft this piece of prose into a 20-second spiel I could deliver to people when they ask what I am writing?

Technorati Tags: writing, Rob Petri, writer, Major Nelson, Mike Brady, solitary life, double-edged sword, mysterious, author, mystery, elevator speech, Thailand, Traveling

I won’t say I am nearing completion on the book but I am getting pretty close to being done. I guess that means the same thing but it seems more noncommittal to frame it in these terms.

When you tell someone you are almost done with something, that person expects to see the finished product in rather short order. Well, don’t hold your breath. I am working on it but it takes quite a while to write and edit this much content.

Currently I am in the editing phase, having created probably about 90% of the content that will be in the book. That’s a lot. Now I am editing, which is a process of tweaking, rewriting, fact-checking, deleting, adding, expanding, contracting, massaging and watching my hair get more and more gray every morning.

Editing is an important process but one that is a little too revealing sometimes, showing where I have lost sight of the ultimate story, where I strayed from my path of storytelling and trod along wandering roads, abandoning the straight and narrow razor’s edge for the meandering stream. It is important to follow the stream from time to time. I suppose that is why writers have to go through an editing phase with any project.

My goal is to be absolutely done and have the manuscript handed off to an agent or publisher by the end of the year. At very least the book will be in final form and will have been submitted to a number of folks. That I can guarantee.

So am I nearing completion? Of the writing, yes. Of the editing, maybe. Of the process? Not by a long shot. The next step is to start researching literary agents and publishers. Know one? Hook me up.

The journey is long but I think I am almost there. I can just about taste completion from where I sit. Or maybe that’s the coffee I just had.

Technorati Tags: editing, writing, writer, manuscript, publisher, literary agent

I was just working on editing the book and came across this interchange I had while in northeast Thailand. Read on:

In the daytime, mosquitoes zoomed around my head, although they rarely bit. My mosquito repellent was 100% DEET, which is about three times stronger than anything I have seen recommended for regular use. Slathering this stuff on my skin made me wonder whether I was better off getting dengue and malaria rather than being exposed to such chemicals. The trade-off was between a damaged liver and spleen from the diseases or else possibly chemical-induced cancers. Who’s to know which would have the more serious implication in the long run?

I have read that the daytime mosquitoes apparently spread dengue, while the nighttime ones spread malaria, so even if you want to limit your exposure to chemicals by applying them for only half a day, you still do not have a very good chance of timing it right to avoid the type of mosquitoes you want to avoid. When I think of malaria, the first thing that pops into my head is the image of a sweaty, lethargic Humphrey Bogart from “The African Queen.” How bad could the disease be, I wondered. Bogart was cured in ten minutes, nursed back to health by a young, beautiful Katherine Hepburn. If that’s malaria, then sign me up.

I had met a man in Udon Thani who had gotten dengue twice – once in Guatemala and once in Thailand. He was staying at a temple and studying Buddhism, on the path to ordination as a monk. “I’ve never met anyone in Thailand who had malaria, but dengue is a different story,” he said.

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Dengue is pretty common, but it isn’t that bad. All your joints ache for a couple weeks and you get a bad headache, but you only really want to die for about a day.” Thus my comfort with mosquito-borne disease was ever weakened and I made sure to apply my carcinogenic salve more diligently, even compulsively at times.

So that’s that. Enjoy. Current count: about 45,000 words.

Technorati Tags: Thailand, mosquitoes, DEET, dengue, malaria, Humphrey Bogart, Katherine Hepburn, Udon Thani, carcinogen

As I said earlier, a farang is a foreigner in Thailand. While visiting with my friend Phramaha Nattapong, I had the honor of meeting his family and visiting their home in Nonthaburi, an hour north of Bangkok. One of the younger brothers in the family took this picture. I just thought it was humorous, the way I obviously don’t blend in to the family portrait.

What do you think? Thai on the inside, maybe?

I’m the white guy with the pen in his pocket. I still look like that, except with less hair, more gray and a different pen. The others in the front row are Phramaha Nattapong’s nephew and niece and his older sister. In the back row are Phramaha Nattapong, his father and mother and younger sister.

This younger sister, Chikoo, was almost a problem between us. Phramaha Nattapong kept warning me not to be a rooster with his sister. “She very beautiful but she my sister. Don’t be a rooster.”

The talk of roosters, it turns out, is a Thai phrase about promiscuity, referring to a rooster’s sexual behavior and appetite. If you have never seen how roosters act, go visit a chicken farm and see how loyal they are. They madly hump their way across the yard, going from one bird to the next, with no thought of anyone’s needs but their own. Such selfish humpers they are.

Phramaha Nattapong was afraid I might take advantage of his sister and was being a good older brother by protecting her. She was very beautiful but not enough to be a match to the loyalty I felt toward my wife and marriage. Once I vowed not to be like a rooster I was finally allowed to meet his sister. The two of us visited a nearby temple and then went to see the giant catfish in the Chao Phraya.

All the people at the river urged me to stick my hand in the water and touch the fish heads for good luck. I smiled and said no but was polite about it. I had smelled what flows into the Chao Phraya and was certain I didn’t want to come anywhere near it.

The whole family was warm and friendly, welcoming me and trying to talk to the strange, huge forigner who had arrived with their son. We had lunch, visited, took the picture above and left. No fuss, no muss, no roosters.

Technorati Tags: farang, Thailand, Phramaha Nattapong, Nonthaburi, rooster, sex, catfish, Chao Phraya

We recently lost our beautiful, loving cat Molly. We had her cremated and spread the ashes in a swamp near the Potomac River, where she could be near wildlife and reenter the food/fertilizer cycle. She has returned to that from whence she came. Such a sweet kitty. We miss her dearly.

This all reminded me of Thai funerals. Almost every temple is equipped with a crematory and smokestack so the locals can be cremated when they die. This practice really serves two purposes. First of all, it reinforces the Buddhist doctrine of nonattachment by stressing that clinging to the physical is fruitless, as it becomes a small scattering of ashes relatively quickly.

The other functional purpose for cremation in Thailand is that it takes care of the typical body disposal problems. This is a country that has many floods each year and much of the land is close to sea level, so burial can be quite a watery process.

Cremation reduces the public health hazards associated with dead bloated bodies, freshly popped out of their graves by floods, floating down the river that used to be a street. If the cemetery, full of cremated remains, gets flooded, it just looks and acts like mud. In fact, that’s really what it is. No extra disease on account of rotting corpses and no psychological trauma from seeing such things.

Funerals in Thailand are strange affairs from an American viewpoint. The family may have monks come and chant for the deceased person, spreading blessings for all to hear and absorb, especially the decedent. The one funeral I got to attend was held at Wat Thep Surin in Bangkok and had four or five monks in attendance to chant the blessings.

While it was far from being a festive occasion, it was also far from somber. There was no expectation to show grief and many people carried on conversations during the ceremony. Young boys brought around refreshments – water, orange juice and steamed buns – and made sure that nobody sat too long without something to consume.

After all the blessings, the body was cremated. I did not stay that long, although I have to admit that I was curious. The heat from the crematory was evident and the fire glowed from around the door to the furnace.

I once read an account of a Thai funeral that was more of a bonfire with a body on it, likely for a less wealthy family who could not afford to rent the crematory. During the cremation, the body’s muscles constricted in such a way that the body sat up. The monks in attendance thought that was a sign of good luck and an indication that the person was going on to a better life. I think it’s a bit creepy, myself.

Technorati Tags: Thai funeral, crematory, cremation, Thailand, monks

Farang means something on the order of “honkey,” had the term honkey caught on. Let’s be honest – beyond those two years sometime in the 1970s, nobody has heard or used that term with any seriousness or regularity.

Farang is the designation Thais use for most non-Asian foreigners. More specifically, a stereotypical farang has light skin, blonde hair and blue eyes. Ironically, as I pointed out to my Thai friend Nut, those features are the same as you see in Siamese cats.

That brought no end of hilarity, it seemed for a little while. Farang cat, not Siamese cat. Good times.

What does it mean to be a farang in Thailand? It is like a sword with two edges. On one hand, Thais love for farangs to come and visit, spend their money and generally have a good time. On the other hand, Thais don’t particularly enjoy having farangs around for too long, thinking of us as rather uncultured, smelly people.

The smelly part – well, I hate to admit it, but that’s true. Farangs go about Thailand sweaty from the heat and don’t take the two or three showers a Thai person might take each day. For most Americans, one time is enough. And we stink.

As far as being uncultured, almost all cultures see almost all other cultures this way. We might look at Thai people and remark on their lack of proper sanitation, their open-air butcher shops and their fried insect snacks and call them backward or unhygienic. On the other hand, they see us as people who don’t shower enough, don’t remove our shoes when entering buildings and don’t bow properly in Buddhist temples and think of us as dirty and uncultured.

Which side is correct? That’s not the point. The problems with these labels are obvious and it’s easy to see how they can lead to a lack of cultural understanding on both sides. Seeing differences between cultures is not the problem. When we get into trouble is the moment we apply a value to a cultural difference.

It’s like measuring the world on a Cartesian plane in which you are at the origin – the (0,0) point. When we put ourselves in that spot and don’t see where we are on someone else’s map of the universe, it is very easy to assume that person is wrong or misguided. Just like we were told since first grade – not to judge another person before walking a mile in his shoes – we should not judge another culture before stepping into it and examining it for what it is and not necessarily from the basis of how it is different from what we are used to.

Certainly, our own point of origin is where we start from and our only real point of reference. But what we have to do, so that we can function properly in another culture, is to try to find our spot in a different Cartesian plane. We have to at least try to understand things as they are, adopt local customs as best we can and not judge the differences we encounter. We have to realize that we are no longer at the origin but at some other, less familiar point.

Understanding each other is the cornerstone to finding a meaningful dialogue, no matter the point of conflict. We have to find the humility within ourselves to let go of our point of origin and find our new home in light of the other culture.

Technorati Tags: honkey, farang, Siamese cat, Thailand, Thai, cultural understanding, cultural difference, Cartesian plane, dialogue, humility

Here is a list of cities and towns I spent some time in well enough to get to know them relatively well:

• Bangkok
• Udon Thani
• Chanthaburi
• Chiang Mai
• Sukhothai (both new and old)
• Prachin Buri

In addition, I got to visit lots of surrounding areas enough to get a feel for them, but was not able to spend lots of time there, such as Khon Kaen, Nong Khai and Nakhon Ratchasima. These were also great places but I just did not have a lot of time to spend there.

I think of all these places I liked Bangkok the most, which surprised me. That’s a very high-level statement, as I enjoyed all the places I visited for very different reasons. Bangkok has all the culture that you could want from a city, all the beauty and graft, joy and frustration. It’s like New York City but cooler and with both friendlier and fiercer people.

In Bangkok you can see a gorgeous sunrise over a stinky, fetid river and see the beauty of golden temples and turn to see a leper or someone suffering from elephantiasis. It’s a city of extremes and for the tourist not knowing to look, can seem like a place of few gradations, much like the Thai economy.

Believe me, though – there are gradations along the continua you do not see at first glance. Between the extremes is where you find the normal human interaction and I would argue that is right where you find the richest of experiences. It is easy to visit Bangkok and talk of the extremes of beauty and ugliness, but in doing so you only describe the physical characteristics.

The real beauty of Bangkok, and any city anywhere, for that matter, is in the people. The worth and beauty in the palm trees, golden chedis and floating lotuses is certainly striking but between that and discovering the hidden secrets of the human spirit, there is no comparison.

I have never received so much from people who have so little as I did in Thailand. For a group of people who could have easily taken advantage of me, I was treated more than fairly, sometimes given what they could barely afford, all in the name of graciousness and assisting someone along their path.

And as they helped me along my path, the goodness that flowed from them made evident that they were already far along their own.

Technorati Tags: Bangkok, Udon Thani, Chanthaburi, Chiang Mai, Sukhothai, Prachin Buri, culture, New York City, beauty, Thai economy, people, human spirit

The measure I use to mark the amount of work I have done is number of words. Certainly, this is not the best metric to use but it is one that is easily quantifiable. I would love to be able to use some sort of formula to figure this out, perhaps attaching one value to the number of words and another value – some sort of sliding scale – to the quality of the writing.

I am thinking of some sort of equation like this:

The ideal is not to simply churn out more words. That’s easy. I could hire a well-trained chicken to push keys on the laptop all day. The key is to have lots of words with a high quality density when strung together.

But then there’s the problem of how to measure quality, since it is really a subjective judgment. Different styles appeal to different people and even calculating grade levels or using “ease of reading” scales does not give a lot of information. Something that is easy to read, like Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, is not necessarily worse or better than something written on a very high level, such as the various writings of Umberto Eco.

Does anyone have an idea how to do something like this?

I don’t suppose I would adopt such a measure right off but I would love to see how someone else calculates it.

Until then, I will be going by quantity to measure my progress, knowing that I write at a certain level of quality on first pass. By the way, I recently passed 42,000 words, for what that means.

Technorati Tags: work, metric, formula, quality, writing, equation, well-trained chicken, judgment, Ernest Hemingway, Umberto Eco, quantity