LOOKING FORWARD TO NEW HORIZONS & BIDDING FAREWELL TO 2012

It’s been more than two weeks since I flew back from Southeast Asia to Toronto, and that same amount of time since I posted a blogpost. Disgraceful, you might well say. I enjoy writing here, thinking on the page, so to speak. So what is it that’s caused this lacuna? I ask myself.

There are the obvious reasons: jetlag and disorientation after the flights from Rangoon via Bangkok etc, and the busy-ness of seeing friends after a travel gap, with the added intensity and expectations that come during the Christmas season.

But it felt like there was more to it. I think I was more wrecked by the whirlwind of book tour than I was prepared to acknowledge. I’m not complaining, especially not after having had the chance to recharge in Chiang Mai, but somehow the deep tiredness, more emotional than physical, continued long after and left me empty of initiative for ideas. I displaced my energies into baking and cooking and seeing friends, but could never quite feel the deep juiciness that I love to feel when I sit down to write here.

And now at last that richer energy is back, as of two or three days ago. I rejoice.

On this last day of the year that marks a dozen years since 2000, that’s been a leap-year/election year and a year that for me was all about the BURMA book, I’m feeling mighty grateful to be alive and in good health, with projects to look forward to and friends to rejoice with.

The holidays have been multi-layered. In our house we don’t have any particular holiday ritual. The only rule is that no-one gets imposed upon, in fact basically the only rule is that there are no rules. It makes things very relaxed, somewhat shapeless, and very pleasurable. 

This year we ate a huge meal with friends, family-style, on Chrstmas evening, beginning with PEI oysters and some extraordinary shrimp, moving on to a Berkshire pork rib roast with brilliant crackling, as well as several Burmese salads (the grapefruit salad was especially delish with the pork), and then following up with a choice of sweets that included mince tarts and pumpkin pie, as well as home-made chestnut ice cream. Are you having indigestion reading this list? I am.  

And all week we’ve been snacking on various biscotti, made from my recipes in HomeBaking. Cooking was part of my way of dealing with patchy tiredness from jetlag. I made jars of mincemeat a week ago, using homemade candied peel, suet, currants, sultanas, chopped apple, lemon and orange zest and juice, and a good splash of brandy. Some went into the mince tarts, some has gone as presents, but I have to confess that there’s one open jar in the fridge that I dip into every once in a while - with a clean spoon, I swear - to take a lovely rich and intense mouthful. It’s like an over-the-top version of the classic scoop-a-finger-into-the-peanut butter jar, and to me way more tempting and delicious.

So it is that most of us emerge into 2013 having to loosen our belts and opt for those less-fitted garments that allow us to breath easily. The wonderful sereendipitous ski that I had in the city a few days ago, up ravines etc, after our huge snowfall last Wednesday-Thursday, was not enough to work off all this indulgence, nor was the fabulous dancing we all did last night. 

But so what? It’s not worth worrying about weight and tight clothing. Life is too short to focus on such trivial “first world problems”. I prefer to turn my imagination to wider less me-centred horizons, those which beckon endlessly, and remind me that the world is an infinitely fascinating place, where people of all kinds face intractable problems and conflicts and try to do so with courage and dignity. 

So I’ll close with a wish. Sorry if it seems preachy or pretentious, for it’s heartfelt: May this coming year bring more justice and more peace: more negotiation and less conflict, more respect and less arrogance, to us all.

MEMORIES OF INLE

I was up just before dawn in Yaungshwe this morning, dressed quickly in the chilly damp air, breakfasted wrapped in my shawl, looking out at foggy streets dotted with the occasional monk on his morning round, then climbed into a car to go to Heho airport, an hour’s drive to the north.

After about half an hour, as we started climbing up the curves of the steep road that leads to the upland where the airport sits, we emerged from mist. Looking back I could see, framed by the long lines of morning-light-etched hills to the east and west, a soft billowing white cloud, lit by early sun, that hid the lowlands. Underneath it, I knew, lay fields of rice stubble and dried stalks of harvested corn; children heading to school in their white shirts and green lungyis; men and women on small motorcycles heading to market or to work, others walking out into their fields, carrying a machete or knife or mattock; the occasional oxcart with high wooden frame, pulled with slow deliberation by a pair of white oxen; villages of wooden houses set on stilts, and a few houses made of cement and built on the ground; small teashops already busy with morning customers, the steam rising from their handle-less cups of tea. And a little farther away, the river leading to the lake was already alive with long powerful boats, headed out to pick up loads of tomatoes from the Intha villages on the lake, or loads of tourists from the hotels out there. On the lake itself, early fishermen would be out in their small narrow wooden boats, paddling them out to their nets, or already out there and paddling standing up, one leg wrapped around the paddle, leaving their hands free to work with the nets.  Farther out still, people would be streaming in boats and on foot or oxcart toward whichever lake-side village has its market today. 

The markets operate on a five-day cycle, moving from village to village in sequence. Pa-O people, who mostly live up in the hills, travel down to buy meat and fish; and to bring vegetables to sell. The Intha are there with strings of small eels, as well as larger fish and dried  fish. men gamble in one corner, and at the edge of the market a blacksmith hammers at a red-hot implement, dipping it back into water to cool it, perhaps, then checking the trueness of the edge and hammering some more. Standing nearby, his helper (often a grown son or daughter) will be working the bellows. It’s an ingenious design, those bellows:. Two fat lengths (four feet or so) of bamboo are set on end. From the bottom small hoses lead to under the coals of the fire. The helper has a pole with a wad of cloth at the end, and slides them alternately up and down the bamboo shafts, driving air down under the fire. The alternation means the fire gets a regular even supply of air and stays steady. And the bellows work is relatively effortless, as well as being nicely far from the heat of the fire. 

I’ve now got a sample of the rice liquor made by a Shan guy south of Inle Lake; it comes as 20, forty, and sixty proof. I have a bottle each of the twenty and forty, smooth-tasting and delicious. His still arrangement is another ingenious design, made of cermaic and bamboo, simple and effective.  I’d like to take the Burma food tour people to visit him, as well as to a village market or two.

All this is such a lesson in ingenuity and creativity, as well as in the food basics that our manufactured world can hide from our sight.

I’m sorry to be leaving, and happy to think that I’m due to be back here in February. Then, too, I’m sure I’ll come on more local technologies that are new to me. There is so much to learn here in Burma.

Next step, after Rangoon, is the trip home, via a night with good friends in Bangkok. Toronto with its chilly air and festive lights feels far away still, but it’s approaching fast in my mind’s eye... I’m looking forward to reconnecting with Dom and Tashi and with friends, all of whom I’ve seen little of in this busy fall of book tour travel plus Southeast Asia time.  

The warmth and conversation of my extended family of friends is so precious. And it’s while heading home that I most often take the time to reflect on its wonderfulness. 

LETTING THE BRAIN REST...

The western sky is an extraordinary pale green shading lower to warm yellow and further down into almost orange, with dark purple trailings of cloud here and there to give it contour. Here in Chiang Mai it’s just past six oclock and time for night to fall.

Many people here have already closed the shutters or sliding metal doors on their shops and businesses and headed home for a well-deserved rest. Others, especially bars and restaurants, are just opening for business. 

It’s “well-deserved rest” that I want to talk about here, “down time”, to use another term. Several days ago I read a posting by a meditation guy about our brain’s need for down time or repose. His argument is that our brains are designed for long pauses where nothing much happens, a time to reflect and be centred, rather than engaged in active “seeking”. He’s starting from the premise that the way humans lived in the time before cities developed involved long periods when nothing much happened, and where there was no stimulus for the brain. He says if we time-machined back to that time, we’d be bored silly.

And he argues that meditation techniques were developed by the great religions precisely when humans developed cities and started living in  stimulating environments. He says we are born with the urge to seek stimulus. And in the modern era we can go on doing that 24/7. Just as the modern easy availability of sugar (another thing we are genetically programmed to want and seek out) leads many to over-indulge, so the easy availability of distraction, of things to want and seek for and obtain, leads to over-indulgence and is damaging to our health.  The article is here: http://www.wildnessandwonder.com/2011/06/downtime-for-the-brain/

I’m not sure of his science or his reasoning from the Paleolithic, but I do agree that taking a pause from the hamster wheel of running in endless circles checking Facebook and links and then Twitter then circling back around to Facebook with perhaps a stop in to check personal mail, and so on, can dull the mind and lead to a kind of self-loathing. And of course it also cuts deeply into the capacity to get any original thinking or work done. At least that’s the case for me.

A long while ago I wrote about the need to allow ourselves “buffer days”, days when we don’t work and don’t put pressure on ourselves to produce. I’d argue now that there’s an urgent need to give ourselves a holiday from the button-pushing stimulus seeking that our laptops or smart phones entice us into. There are days when I have lots to get done, and so I am not tempted into the round-robin described above. But on days when I’m at a loose end, or procrastinating about getting started on a project, I’m vulnerable to getting sucked into the whirlpool. And then an hour or two later I realise how much time has passed, and I feel a little nauseated. 

I wrote all the above two evenings ago.

Since then I have taken several breaks from the hamster wheel, and it has felt so good. The most outstanding brain rest was the long bicycle ride I went on yesterday with three guys who pedal a lot here in Chiang Mai and know good countryside routes. We ended up covering about 110 km (over 65 miles), on what was a beautiful but very hot-in-the-early-afternoon day. Whew!

I was immersed in conversations occasionally, but was mostly in a nice undemanding zone of pedalling and looking at the places I was passing by: fields of rice stubble with lean lop-eared white cattle grazing, often with an egret perched on their shoulders; hamlets and villages with shady trees and wooden houses and small village markets; clumps of tall graceful bamboo; and in the distance beautiful hills/mountains, cleanly etched on the near horizon. A perfect day, except when the heat bouncing back up off the tarmac at around 1 pm started to make me feel a little queasy.

(Perhaps I wasn’t coping as well with the heat because of our lunch. We stopped at “the pig place” as they called it, on a small road off the road to Pai. There the poeple roast/grill whole pig, one at a time, then cut it in portions and charcoal grill it a little more. Unbelievably delicious, as was the nam jiim sauce they served in it (a touch of coriander seed in it) and the som tam. Meat at midday is not recommended when there are over 50 kilometres to cover in the hot afternoon! But it was so special that it was worth the discomfort of a little queasiness an hour later.)

I cannot imagine sitting still for long periods and meditating. But moving meditation, being out in my body and centred there rather than in restless thoughts, sure seems like a good way of having brain “down time”. 

Other options, pleasurable ones, are a little less kinetic, and also wonderful: singing, drawing or making some other creation, walking, swimming... Even getting lost in a good book can still your brain’s searching.

While I was on book tour this fall I failed to take the pauses I needed, I got swept up in the buzzing to-and-fro of schedules and other people’s expectations. The one exception was when I was in St Helena for the CIA’s Worlds of Flavor conference. The conference itself was intense and charged, but each morning while I was there I was able to swim lengths in a lap pool, getting up at 5.30 to swim in the calm California-scented darkness. It was healing in ways I didn’t realise at the time.

Now as I pack up for a short trip into Burma and then a flight back to Toronto for a month there (I’ll be back in Chiang Mai in mid-January), I’m imagining forward as I try to decide what to pack and what to leave, and at the same time in a small way mourning the fact that I am leaving just as I’ve found ease and restedness. 

AFTERTHOUGHT: It’s the King of Thailand’s 85th birthday today. When I went out for coffee near Chiang Mai Gate this morning, almost everyone was wearing yellow in his honour. I read on Twitter and elsewhere that many people are lined up in Bangkok to see him, or planning to watch the ceremonies on TV this morning. And on the King’s birthday the rule is that no alcohol is served, so though restaurants are open, straight bars will not be.

LIGHTS IN THE SKY AND ON THE WATER

I’m sitting on the floor up here in my airy ninth floor corner apartment in Chiang Mai. I have sound in three-D here, and what is it? First there’s the rhythmic beating of a gong at the Pa-O wat (buddhist temple) across the street, sometimes with cymbals too, as a clashing under-over note. Then there’s the bang bang, at irregular intervals, of fireworks. Smetimes it’s a “pop” loud and sudden, sometimes there’s a whistle and then a bang. There’s very lttle traffic noise though, for many streets around here have been closed off, for tonight’s big parade. Last year I was down by the parade watching and photographing; this year I’m keeping my distance

All this is Loy Kratong in Chiang Mai. Twenty-three years ago at my first Loy Kratong here, things were smaller...there were some big exploding whooshes of fireworks in the sky, bright bursts of colour, and there were the little scary firework “bomblets”, firecrackers in a string, that people would toss out into the road. But there weren’t many cars and crowds were manageable.  Like so much else in Chiang Mai and Thailand, Loy Kratong  has gotten bigger and more modern in many ways recently.

But up here I’m low-tech: I just have two little ceramic candles, out on the ledge of my little balcony. 

And last night, after making kratongs in the afternoon with two neighbours, using rounds of banana stem as base, then wrapping each round with banana leaf, anchored with pins, and decorating the top with flowers and folded banana leaf and candles, I carried my two to the river. I went with a friend early. We sat at a little restaurant on the far bank, at a table near the water, and watched the sun set and the lights of floating kratongs make their flickering way down the river. Finally it was our turn. I lit the little candles on my kratongs, then launched them, one by one. As I watched them totter away on the dark water, heading downstream, they seemed like little freshly hatched baby turtles, or any fledgling, precariously setting out.

They were like the embodiment of our hopes and fears, fragile, vulnerable, optimistic nonetheless, in fact rather valiant.

That was last night. After watching the scene for a good long while, we made out way through incredibly thick traffic and crowds, oh so grateful to be on foot, over the bridge, past arade, and thence into the relative peace of the lane I live on. 

All this evening the moon has been coy, draping herself in gauzy cloud one minute, then peering out in a silvery gleam, then completely veiling herself in thick cloud the next moment. But now she’s out, the sky is clearing, and the moving golden yellow lights of fire-paper lanterns are sliding upward across the sky. Oh now there are some bursts of red and then sparkling white-silver from fireworks to the east, and here’s a zinging whine of something... But the backdrop is the floating moving constellations of fire-in-the-sky paper lanterns. And if I look closely I can see their ghosts, the blackened husks of expired paper lanterns as they drift slowly, like tired phantoms, back to earth. 

Suddenly, a pair of very loud bangs make me jump. I can’t imagine how people who have been in war of any kind ever tolerate this festival; there are so many explosions large and small, unexpected bangs and pops. 

In the distance I can hear the music that accompanies the various floats in today’s enormous elaborate parade. They pass down Thapae Road, then north along the river. The sound is carrying up to me from the river, born by the breeze in irregular gusts. 

How peaceful I feel up here, not distant, but just at a calm remove, looking out at and listening to the panorama of light and action. Meantime the two ceramic candles are bright on the ledge before me, flickering with a strong golden yellow light. 

Above the moon seems cool and very silvery in comparison to all this man-made yellow flame. She’s got an aureole now, pinkish, the haze caused by the fireworks’ smoke perhaps...or just the remnant of damp air from the quickly disappearing clouds.

The breeze has freshened. I think the wind has changed. Perhaps finally dry season with its clear skies and crisper temperatures and dry air is finally ready to start. Hallelujah! 

And there’s another reason to feel grateful: tomorrow, November 30, my older kid will be twenty-five. To think, speaking of vulnerable fledglings, that he has grown up to be such a strong and capable wonderful person - it seems miraculous to me, another cause for optimism as we light our candles in the dark and admire the glow of the moon above.

THE TEXTURES OF MEMORY

This day twenty-two years ago was momentous: my second boy child was born the morning of November 27 in Toronto. His older brother was three days short of his third birthday at the time. 

I remember their birthdays of course, without even having to think about it; what parents don’t keep a connection to their kids’ beginnings? 

But memory about other events is fickle and uneven, “unreliable” may be a better description. We’re told that each time we remember something, it’s not like we’re going into a cupboard and reading a file folder, then putting it away again. Instead, neurologists tell us that each time we retrieve a memory, we reinscribe it, which shifts and changes it. I always thought the changes in my memories were just the result of slippage, intentional and subconscious deletion of less interesting or perhaps more troubling bits of the past. But this new description of memory makes everything seem much more fluid, and memory like a log-rolling contest, with slippery surfaces and shifting “facts”.

Why do I care about memory? And why am I thinking about it now? The answer to the second lies in the fact that I’ve just been reading the Tony Judt book The Memory Chalet, as I mentioned in my last post. The book is the device he uses to distract himself from an intolerable present: in his case his long nights imprisoned by ALS and unable to move. All he can do is think. And so he thinks about the past, uses it as a springboard to shape thoughts and story. Then in a second use of memory - a second application of memory skill as it were - he uses a mnemonic device adapted from the “memory palace” technique of the Middle Ages to pin down in his mind the “writing” he has done in his head, so that he can remember it in the morning and dictate it. 

That act of actually transcibing/writing is the way we pin down the moment. If we take notes, in the moment or soon afterward, we are already sifting and selecting, but less so, and we are more likely to be “accurate” about what took place. The longer we leave our note-taking or writing, the more we’re apt to weed out bits, and also to alter our recollections, shape them, consciously and unconsciously.

But I’m not so interested in the issues of “accuracy” here. That’s a huge issue though for people assesssing the worth or weight of eye-witness testimary for example. (And indeed it does seem to me that eye-witness evidence must have been inherently more accurate in the days before universal literacy enabled people to be distracted on their own by written stories and images. How much more inaccurate have memories become recently, with the distraction and fragmentation of attention caused by electronic media of various kinds?)

I’m more interested in the process of remembering, in how we do it. For example, I remember mostly in images, pictures in my mind’s eye you might say. If you tell me about a transaction or incident, if I’m asked later to repeat what you told me, I’m most likely, rather than repeating exactly what you said, to give my own version, based on the picture that your story made in my head. It will be fairly accurate in feel and in the details, but the words won’t be a quotation of yours. And each time I tell it, I assume from what the neurologists are saying, I am unconsciously shifting the story, giving varying emphasis to its elements.

Tony Judt’s pieces in The Memory Chalet begin with a remembered incident or setting, most often. The factual accuracy of his starting point isn’t particularly important to us  as readers. Instead its importance lies in its role as a trigger for Judt’s analysis, or, put another way, as a springboard for his thinking.

And that brings me back to my first question, why is memory important? Of course we’re oriented by our memories, and often reassured by them. They can keep us company. For example, for me my memories of people and places and events are like a huge undulating tapestry, an entertainment that I can turn to when nothing else is going on, or escape to when I’m stuck in a tedious situation. I can look at them from a variety of perspectives: I can situate myself inside them in a form of present tense, or look retrospectively at them with after-knowledge. It’s rather like the variety of choices of point-of-view that a novelist has when telling a story.

I’m not sure if other people do this too, and if so, how frequently.

But in all that, how important is it that I get the facts or details “right”? Surely it’s not vital. What’s more important it seems to me is the meaning I draw from my memories. Occasionally I find myself re-analysing a moment or a transaction or even an era in my life, seeing it from new perspectives. That can be very exciting (and equally, can be disturbing, when I realise something that I had failed to understand at the time for example). 

By now I’ve got a lot of life-lived material to “work” with.  And that fact, of having a rich store to reflect on and puzzle over, is for me one of the important aspects of memory. 

In the shorter term, in everyday life, I also rely on memory for a different kind of context. Many people are good at remembering people’s names, but I am not one of them. Instead my signposts are dates and times. My year is in some ways structured by birthdays and other anniversaries. They colour the months and give meaning to particular dates. For example, November starts with the week in which my mother died, now thirty-five years ago (unbelievable...both long ago and fresh), and ends with the birthdays of my two now-grown kids. In between come birthdays of friends far and near, of various ages and connection. Each of them sets off a nice “ping” in my head, a reverberation of images and feelings associated with that person. These reminders colour my days and thoughts, mostly pleasurably.

It’s the same with years: I look back and calculate how many years it is since I was in a particular place (for example I was thinking about Hanoi last evening - 23 years ago is when I was last there, yikes!), or what age I was when a particular public or private event happened, from the election of Reagan to the birth of a friend’s child.

It seems to me that all these ways of thinking about the past are a form of contextualising, a way to give meaning to and gain understanding of both the past and the present. In that sense, in doing this memory-merging and memory-analysing, I’m a working historian of my particular individual passage through life. And from that personal historical analysis, hopefully I gain some insight into other people’s situations and attitudes. 

Is everyone else doing this kind of thing in their spare moments? It’s fun to think so. I like to imagine each of us working on our particular life-tapestry, examining stitches, holding different bits up to the light, making the odd repair now and then.

It’s all a particular kind of seeking of wisdom and understanding, I think. We each have our views of what life is about, what we want to contribute or achieve. And those views and ambitions evolve over time for most people. In any case making the effort, engaging with our memories and trying to tease out meaning and connection, for me this is an always-fascinating and -fruitful pursuit.

Perhaps that’s why I am so drawn to the Judt book. There’s consolation in thinking that in my dotage, assuming I still have a brain to think and remember with (and of course this is why all we Boomers are so obsessed with a fear of dementia), I will have the resources to entertain myself with my own thoughts and memories. I hope I have the chance to gain greater insight into world events, and at the more intimate scale, into other peoples’ actions and interactions...

Meanwhile, here in Chiang Mai, as these layers of thoughts have been rolling around in my head, I’ve been enjoying each day in the soft air of an unseasonably warm November. I’ve been pedalling around on a rackety rented one-speed bicycle, have had a rather intense evening at the Writers’ Bar - and expect to have more - talking about Burma and other emotionally intense international issues, and have been hanging around chatting to friends on the soi and getting caught up on everyone’s news.

Yesterday I drove north with generous friends to Chiang Dao for a meal at a secluded peaceful restaurant called Chiang Dao Nest, a favorite of theirs. It’s an unlikely setting for a cordon bleu menu: there are stands of tall graceful bamboo, birds singing and twittering in the trees, and no traffic or other urban sounds. My prejudice against eating “western food” while in Southeast Asia melted away as soon as I tasted the house-made pate, lush and greed-inducing. And then there was a memorable salad nicoise, and a coconut milk creme brulee. Astonishing. 

I was glad to have been pushed out of my rigid attitude toward eating “foreign food” here. It's a reminder that I do need a push from time to time, no question, to oblige me to stay open to new ideas and possibilities. After all, the unexpected makes life so interesting...

REFLECTIONS ON ADVERSITY AMID CHIANG MAI PLEASURES

As I sit here thinking about where to begin this post, I’m a little paralysed by several issues: first, there’s a lot to tell, because the couple of days since my arrival here in Chiang Mai have been full of incident and interest; and second, perhaps more problematic, I’m in the middle of a book of short pieces, segments that are story-telling and reflective memoir, by the brilliant Tony Judt, whose thinking and writing are both so clear that I feel my writing and thinking to be muddled, predictable, and inelegant in comparison.

If you haven’t come across Tony Judt - he’s most famous for his writing on twentieth century European history, in his book Postwar, and for his reflections on contemporary society, in his book Ill Fares the Land - then you have a lot of wonderful reading and thinking to look forward to. And if you have, then I imagine you’re as big a fan as I am. The tragedy is that he died in August 2010, of the horrible ALS (aka Lou Gehrig disease), in his early sixties. The book I’m reading, The Memory Chalet, was written when he was incapacitated physically, partly as a way of staying sane. In short vignettes and reflections we travel through rooms in his life, from his early childhood memories of postwar London onward.

As I read I can’t help visualising his situation at the time he was “writing” (by dictation, since of course ALS had robbed him of the use of his fingers), and marvelling at his clarity.

It’s  form of solitary confinement and torture, ALS, but of course it makes me aware of all the different incapacities that lie ahead for most of us as we move from full health into older age. Some of us will drop dead, but many will have to figure out how to live well with diminished faculties and capacities. And it’s that goal of living well, with positive energy and a feeling of accomplishment and forward momentum, that is so important for our mental health, and so difficult to achieve.

The Tony Judt book, and the underlying circumstances, are thus a good solid reminder to make each day count, and to figure out how to maintain my equilibrium even when circumstances don’t go my way. I’m not being namby-pamby here. I really do believe that the hardest thing is maintaining grace under fire, or positive equanimity, or whatever other way you wish to phrase it, in situations that are harsh, hurtful, “unfair” or just plain horrible. They come to us all, at one time or another. And we want that for everyone, don’t we? that we all keep our dignity and self-respect even when things are dire or painful.

How to manage it? is the question. Nothing worthwhile is easy, it seems, and this surely isn’t easy. But we have the chance as we pass through various rough patches in our lives, to practice and become more skilled at managing how we cope with adversity. It’s a life-skill we need to develop, in the same way as a child’s learning to fall asleep on her own is, or learning how to calm ourselves when we’re feeling anxious or fearful...

Meantime, when I’m not reading and being amazed by Tony Judt, I’m out and about in Chiang Mai. I’ve seen friends, had time with a New York friend who left this morning for Burma, and eaten some of my favorite treats. 

On Friday morning we went early to the weekly Haw Market, in the parking lot opposite the mosque. It was a reminder that even as things stay constant (the market is always on Friday morning) they also evolve: the market has changed its geography, because part of the area it was in is now slated for a building. The two soup places I usually go to in the corner were somewhere else entirely, for example, and so was the Chinese pickles stand. The market is spreading south along a lane now. I wonder whether development pressures will eventually force it to move elsewhere entirely. That would be a pity, for it exists because of the mosque: Haw (Chinese muslim) traders set up there when they were in town for Friday services at the mosque. The market is much more than Haw people now of course. There are Burmese of various cultures (Shan, Burman, Karen, etc) and also hill people of many kinds, selling their oh-so-fresh and healthy-looking fruits and vegetables (huge avocados yesterday, pink radishes, and lots more), and a wonderful array of rices.

I took my friend to eat what I call (in the BURMA book) Silky Shan Soup, unctuous and comforting, and then after awhile we shared a bowl of mohinga too. In between we bought samosas, beautifully fried, and also black rice donuts, chewy, darkly almost-sweet with palm sugar syrup, and oozing deliciousness. It’s a filling morning, Friday morning, always.

On Thursday evening we went to Huen Pen, the North Thai restaurant in the old city that has been consistently good for a long time. My friend is pescatarian, and even though Northern Thai food uses meat as a flavouring in many dishes, we found lots of choices to order, from a great som-o (pomelo) salad, a joung jackfruit salad, a fish curry, nam prik num, and more. Yum. 

This morning as I pedalled up Thapae Road, I found myself behind one of the old Chiang Mai cycle rickshaws. It was early and still cool, so the driver’s hat was still tied onto the back of the rickshaw. His passenger was an older Thai woman being pedalled home from her trip to the market to buy meat and vegetables for the day. I caught a quick whiff of her scented powder in the breeze and was reminded of my grandmother. The woman turned her head, caught sight of me pedalling behind, and gave me a nod and a smile as we glided along. 

All this is a lovely welcoming landing-pad, from the food and the markets, to old friends and cycling through the streets, to the look of Doi Sutep, looming northwest of the city, its mountain bulk sometimes blue-green, sometimes purplish (especially in the evening), and always a reassuring reminder of where I am, right here, right now.

TAKING A PAUSE TO RENEW...

Here it is the third week in November (my apologies for being dilatory; it's twelve days since I last wrote here) and we’re still in the season of mists and sunshine, a slippage of weather that makes it feel like late October. But the days are short: here in Toronto we have less than nine and a half hours of daylight right now.

And so I am leaving, for a few short weeks, to Southeast Asia, where it’s starting to be winter, but of a different kind. Daytime temperatures are around 30 Centigrade (about 84 F) and can be higher - Chiang Mai’s forecast is in the mid-thirties for some reason, highly unusual for this time of year - and in the night it drops to the low twenties or so. As I was packing, a rather approximate activity compared to my careful abstemious packing for my book tour trips, I was reminded of summer, for light-weight cotton skirts, pants, tops, all folded down into nothing. I am checking one bag, a lumpy backpack, so there’s lots of leeway for the “why not this too?” kind of packing. I added a couple of sweaters, then took one back out. No need for overkill! I’ve got a shawl for layering and emergency shelter, socks for the plane, and books. Nothing more needed.

Except perhaps the key card that lets me into the lobby of the apartment building in Chiang Mai. hmm... Somehow it’s gone missing. I’ve got the keys to my apartment, but not the card. I’m hoping that someone is around when I get to Chiang Mai, late on Wednesday evening (with the time change and date line, I’m losing most of November 21), to let me in. And then I hope to veg out for a few days. 

Jetlag is like the flu: it’s important to get naps in, drink fluids, have books to read, and to remember that any thinking I think I’m doing is in fact unreliable and muddied.

So don’t expect much from me here, or on Facebook etc, for the next few days. I’ll try to get restored quickly, by eating fresh fruit, going for khao tom (pork rice soup) at my favorite street stall (I wrote about it in Lucky Peach in their third issue), and walking a lot. A friend said to me recently that what I need after the sometimes exhilarating intensities of book tour with the BURMA book is days to be bored...That “boredom” is a kind of fruitful emptiness that leaves space for new thoughts and ideas. Right now it feels like an enticing prospect.

I’ve loved being out and about with the BURMA book. I’ve met so many interesting people, been asked intelligent unusual questions, had great conversations. But now it’s time to retrench, consolidate, pull in my horns and recharge.

I can’t think of a better place to do that than Chiang Mai. I’m so grateful to have it as a “bolt hole”. And to have friends there who will keep me on track, call me on things, engage in discussions, challenge me....

Bring it on!

And happy thanksgiving to all who celebrate it this week. I hope you are in good company, eating interesting things, kicking back from your regular routines and responsibilities, and feeling grateful for all that you have.

POSTSCRIPT: How amazing to read about Obama’s trip to Burma this week. His speech at the University in Rangoon was terrific, cautioning about all that there is still do to, but also congratulating the government and people for the recent changes in the country. Here’s the link: http://www.paramuspost.com/article.php/20121119162947827#.UKqnAjvC018.facebook Who would have thought a year ago that he’d be coming to Burma for a visit and then going on to Cambodia to give Hun Sen a piece of his mind, holding up Burma as an example of progressive movement toward democracy? Astonishing!