Today I went to the Burmese embassy and applied for a visa. I walked down to the Chao Praya river taxi and took it seventeen stops to the BTC, then a motorcycle taxi to the embassy. I brought with my passport photographs and that’s about it, so I had to buy a copy of my passport and a blue pen, since the one I’d remembered (my last live one from the States), is red. So tonight my passport rests with the Republic of Myanmar, and I hope that my application for visa is successful.
If it is, then I may really make it to Burma, or Myanmar, as the United Nations calls it and the Democratic Voice of Burma does not. Maybe that’s all I’ll say about that. As with previous online entries, I am forever fearful of jinxing things by talking about them before they are certain. I still have a long way to go before that border crossing.
Nevertheless, this means that today I woke up at eight AM and ate coconut bread with the sunshine. I experienced that peculiar aloneness that accompanies the solo traveler on public transportation. That anonymity in the middle of the crowd, what I loved about living in Chicago. Proximity to physical bodies with none of that annoying communication stuff.
By the time I made it into the office I was dripping with sweat. Not metaphorically. I forgot what it was like to be drenched with fluid coming from my own body. I forgot about how in May the moisture just hangs in the hyper-heated April hot season air, now filled with condensation from all the water below and all the monsoon clouds hanging above.
No comments:
Post a Comment