Bangkok, Thailand

Home (among the many)

So I'm in an airport hotel and I'm heading home, I suppose, from another home, of sorts.  I've spent the last three weeks in Bangkok, down this small soi, in a room with a fan and a desk--reading, writing, hanging out with friends, just living.  I forget how much what I really want out of Bangkok, out of Thailand, out of Asia--is life--simply life--spicy somtahm in a sunlit kitchen, conversation into the evenings in the humid dark, Thai chatter on the streets.

I wanted to do all sorts of things with these last few weeks, forever forgetting to decide, and then just settling in the same place, deciding that maybe that's what I wanted anyway.  What I wanted about living in Bangkok was living in Bangkok, and all I could allow myself of that in this constant mess of travel is three peaceful weeks.  I sat beneath the fan and opened manuscripts I haven't looked at in years, sweat gluing my forearms to the table.  I walked to the market twice a day.  I talked Thai.  I made friends, finally meeting a Thai student of English willing to trade lessons with me on my very last week.

Always guilt haunts me.  Guilt about the Buddhism post I've been trying to write (and have now posted), about doing "nothing" with these last three weeks--when maybe nothing is what I've needed.  Maybe I've needed to lose the pressure to always be moving, roving, sightseeing.

What you want, in living someplace, are mellow afternoons when laziness swallows you, or the internet dissolves you, or you lose yourself in conversation.  What living someplace also means is the freedom to stay still, to get to know one street corner, one neighborhood's habits, its mangy dogs.  It means freedom to spend a Saturday afternoon in your pajamas, eating coconut bread and drinking coffee, listening to podcasts.  You know.  Home.

So guilt about the three weeks I allowed myself of Bangkok as home, and now guilt at how I squandered those weeks now that I'm leaving.  Never enough, never enough, I say.  I want more:  weeks, months, years in Thailand.

All the Thai people ask:  when are you coming back?

I don't know how to answer.  I'm not sure when I'm coming back, I say.

I think, but don't say:  Last time it took me fifteen years.