On the Bowery 1977

Walking through the Bowery.

Memories abound from the last century.

In 1962 my father had a business meeting in New York with executives from AT&T. He drove our Ford station wagon with my mother and his two adolescent son south from Boston and we stayed at the Manhattan Hotel on West 34th Street. While he was with fellow electrical engineers we visited the Empire State Building, saw the Rockettes, ate at Tads Steakhouse, and viewed the Statue of Liberty. On the way back by Yellow Cab we rode along the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. A sunny day much like that of the photo.

Spotting a man sprawled on that narrow meridian strip, I asked, if he were dead.

“No, he’s just drunk.” My mother answered with a disapproving glance.

I knew what drunk was since an old man hung out at the gas station in our suburban town. Red Tate. A Korean war veteran. My father, a WWII veteran, sometimes gave him a buck for a bottle of wine. There weren't many bums in my hometown. It was a dry town without any liquor stores, but Red Tate always had his bottle of Thunderbird.

In the next block were three more collapsed men. Lost to oblivion.

I later lived in the East Village and frequented CBGBs, passing countless enlistees to a state of inebriation on the Bowery. I never joined them, but not for lack of trying.

Letter From the Grave

On September 11, 2001 four planes piloted by Muslims; fifteen of them were citizens of Saudi Arabia, two were from the United Arab Emirates, one was from Egypt, and one from Lebanon. Nineteen in total. One hijacker missed out of the attacks. The FBI and their hanlers, Mossad, accused Investigators have accused Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi national, of being the intended 20th hijacker, who had been refused entry to the USA on August 3, 2001. He was later captured in Afghanistan later that year and then subjected to torture at Gitmo by Mossad and the CIA.

I have always suspeected him on being a Mossad plant inside the plot.

After twenty yers of captivity he was flown to Saudi Arabia. No news from him since, but the Saudi nobility are no friends of Al Qaeda.

In November 2001 Osmana Bin Ladin released a letter to Al Jazeera justifying the 9/11 attacks without claiming any involvement. The Bush regime saw his words as an admission of guilt, although he stated nothing of the kind in the letter. No one in the States read it. Not me, so here it is;

Observer Worldview Extra ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Full text: bin Laden's 'letter to America'

Online document: the full text of Osama bin Laden's "letter to the American people", reported in today's Observer. The letter first appeared on the internet in Arabic and has since been translated and circulated by Islamists in Britain.

Observer Worldview

Sunday November 24, 2002

Observer.co.uk

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,

"Permission to fight (against disbelievers) is given to those (believers) who are fought against, because they have been wronged and surely, Allah is Able to give them (believers) victory" [Quran 22:39]

"Those who believe, fight in the Cause of Allah, and those who disbelieve, fight in the cause of Taghut (anything worshipped other than Allah e.g. Satan). So fight you against the friends of Satan; ever feeble is indeed the plot of Satan."[Quran 4:76]

Some American writers have published articles under the title 'On what basis are we fighting?' These articles have generated a number of responses, some of which adhered to the truth and were based on Islamic Law, and others which have not. Here we wanted to outline the truth - as an explanation and warning - hoping for Allah's reward, seeking success and support from Him.

While seeking Allah's help, we form our reply based on two questions directed at the Americans:

(Q1) Why are we fighting and opposing you? Q2)What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

As for the first question: Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:

(1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.

a) You attacked us in Palestine:

(i) Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction and devastation. The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its*price, and pay for it heavily.

(ii) It brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine, as it was promised to them in the Torah. Anyone who disputes with them on this alleged fact is accused of anti-semitism. This is one of the most fallacious, widely-circulated fabrications in history. The people of Palestine are pure Arabs and original Semites. It is the Muslims who are the inheritors of Moses (peace be upon him) and the inheritors of the real Torah that has not been changed. Muslims believe in all of the Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all. If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this.

When the Muslims conquered Palestine and drove out the Romans, Palestine and Jerusalem returned to Islaam, the religion of all the Prophets peace be upon them. Therefore, the call to a historical right to Palestine cannot be raised against the Islamic Ummah that believes in all the Prophets of Allah (peace and blessings be upon them) - and we make no distinction between them.

(iii) The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenged. You must know that the Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned alone.

(b) You attacked us in Somalia; you supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon.

(c) Under your supervision, consent and orders, the governments of our countries which act as your agents, attack us on a daily basis;

(i) These governments prevent our people from establishing the Islamic Shariah, using violence and lies to do so.

(ii) These governments give us a taste of humiliation, and places us in a large prison of fear and subdual.

(iii) These governments steal our Ummah's wealth and sell them to you at a paltry price. (iv) These governments have surrendered to the Jews, and handed them most of Palestine, acknowledging the existence of their state over the dismembered limbs of their own people. (v) The removal of these governments is an obligation upon us, and a necessary step to free the Ummah, to make the Shariah the supreme law and to regain Palestine. And our fight against these governments is not separate from out fight against you. (d) You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of you international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world. (e) Your forces occupy our countries; you spread your military bases throughout them; you corrupt our lands, and you besiege our sanctities, to protect the security of the Jews and to ensure the continuity of your pillage of our treasures. (f) You have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day. It is a wonder that more than 1.5 million Iraqi children have died as a result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern. Yet when 3000 of your people died, the entire world rises and has not yet sat down. (g) You have supported the Jews in their idea that Jerusalem is their eternal capital, and agreed to move your embassy there. With your help and under your protection, the Israelis are planning to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque. Under the protection of your weapons, Sharon entered the Al-Aqsa mosque, to pollute it as a preparation to capture and destroy it. (2) These tragedies and calamities are only a few examples of your oppression and aggression against us. It is commanded by our religion and intellect that the oppressed have a right to return the aggression. Do not await anything from us but Jihad, resistance and revenge. Is it in any way rational to expect that after America has attacked us for more than half a century, that we will then leave her to live in security and peace?!!

(3) You may then dispute that all the above does not justify aggression against civilians, for crimes they did not commit and offenses in which they did not partake:

(a) This argument contradicts your continuous repetition that America is the land of freedom, and its leaders in this world. Therefore, the American people are the ones who choose their government by way of their own free will; a choice which stems from their agreement to its policies. Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want.

(b) The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq. These tax dollars are given to Israel for it to continue to attack us and penetrate our lands. So the American people are the ones who fund the attacks against us, and they are the ones who oversee the expenditure of these monies in the way they wish, through their elected candidates.

(c) Also the American army is part of the American people. It is this very same people who are shamelessly helping Israel fight against us.

(d) The American people are the ones who employ both their men and their women in the American Forces which attack us.

(e) This is why the American people cannot be not innocent of all the crimes committed by the Americans and Israelis against us.

(f) Allah, the Almighty, legislated the permission and the option to take revenge. Thus, if we are attacked, then we have the right to attack back. Whoever has destroyed our villages and towns, then we have the right to destroy their villages and towns. Whoever has stolen our wealth, then we have the right to destroy their economy. And whoever has killed our civilians, then we have the right to kill theirs.

The American Government and press still refuses to answer the question:

Why did they attack us in New York and Washington?

If Sharon is a man of peace in the eyes of Bush, then we are also men of peace!!! America does not understand the language of manners and pri

nciples, so we are addressing it using the language it understands.

(Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.

(a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them - peace be upon them all.

It is to this religion that we call you; the seal of all the previous religions. It is the religion of Unification of God, sincerity, the best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honour, purity, and piety. It is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted. It is the religion of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil with the hand, tongue and heart. It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme. And it is the religion of unity and agreement on the obedience to Allah, and total equality between all people, without regarding their colour, sex, or language.

(b) It is the religion whose book - the Quran - will remained preserved and unchanged, after the other Divine books and messages have been changed. The Quran is the miracle until the Day of Judgment. Allah has challenged anyone to bring a book like the Quran or even ten verses like it.

(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.

(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.

We call you to all of this that you may be freed from that which you have become caught up in; that you may be freed from the deceptive lies that you are a great nation, that your leaders spread amongst you to conceal from you the despicable state to which you have reached.

(b) It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind:

(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator. You flee from the embarrassing question posed to you: How is it possible for Allah the Almighty to create His creation, grant them power over all the creatures and land, grant them all the amenities of life, and then deny them that which they are most in need of: knowledge of the laws which govern their lives?

(ii) You are the nation that permits Usury, which has been forbidden by all the religions. Yet you build your economy and investments on Usury. As a result of this, in all its different forms and guises, the Jews have taken control of your economy, through which they have then taken control of your media, and now control all aspects of your life making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense; precisely what Benjamin Franklin warned you against.

(iii) You are a nation that permits the production, trading and usage of intoxicants. You also permit drugs, and only forbid the trade of them, even though your nation is the largest consumer of them.

(iv) You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you, in the face of which neither your sense of honour nor your laws object.

Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?

(v) You are a nation that permits gambling in its all forms. The companies practice this as well, resulting in the investments becoming active and the criminals becoming rich.

(vi) You are a nation that exploits women like consumer products or advertising tools calling upon customers to purchase them. You use women to serve passengers, visitors, and strangers to increase your profit margins. You then rant that you support the liberation of women. (vii) You are a nation that practices the trade of sex in all its forms, directly and indirectly. Giant corporations and establishments are established on this, under the name of art, entertainment, tourism and freedom, and other deceptive names you attribute to it. (viii) And because of all this, you have been described in history as a nation that spreads diseases that were unknown to man in the past. Go ahead and boast to the nations of man, that you brought them AIDS as a Satanic American Invention. (xi) You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and*industries. (x) Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaigns with their gifts. Behind them stand the Jews, who control your policies, media and economy. (xi) That which you are singled out for in the history of mankind, is that you have used your force to destroy mankind more than any other nation in history; not to defend principles and values, but to hasten to secure your interests and profits. You who dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan, even though Japan was ready to negotiate an end to the war. How many acts of oppression, tyranny and injustice have you carried out, O callers to freedom? (xii) Let us not forget one of your major characteristics: your duality in both manners and values; your hypocrisy in manners and principles. All*manners, principles and values have two scales: one for you and one for the others. (a)The freedom and democracy that you call to is for yourselves and for white race only; as for the rest of the world, you impose upon them your monstrous, destructive policies and Governments, which you call the 'American friends'. Yet you prevent them from establishing democracies. When the Islamic party in Algeria wanted to practice democracy and they won the election, you unleashed your agents in the Algerian army onto them, and to attack them with tanks and guns, to imprison them and torture them - a new lesson from the 'American book of democracy'!!!

(b)Your policy on prohibiting and forcibly removing weapons of mass destruction to ensure world peace: it only applies to those countries which you do not permit to possess such weapons. As for the countries you consent to, such as Israel, then they are allowed to keep and use such weapons to defend their security. Anyone else who you suspect might be manufacturing or keeping these kinds of weapons, you call them criminals and you take military action against them.

(c)You are the last ones to respect the resolutions and policies of International Law, yet you claim to want to selectively punish anyone else who does the same. Israel has for more than 50 years been pushing UN resolutions and rules against the wall with the full support of America.

(d)As for the war criminals which you censure and form criminal courts for - you shamelessly ask that your own are granted immunity!! However, history will not forget the war crimes that you committed against the Muslims and the rest of the world; those you have killed in Japan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon and Iraq will remain a shame that you will never be able to escape. It will suffice to remind you of your latest war crimes in Afghanistan, in which densely populated innocent civilian villages were destroyed, bombs were dropped on mosques causing the roof of the mosque to come crashing down on the heads of the Muslims praying inside. You are the ones who broke the agreement with the Mujahideen when they left Qunduz, bombing them in Jangi fort, and killing more than 1,000 of your prisoners through suffocation and thirst. Allah alone knows how many people have died by torture at the hands of you and your agents. Your planes remain in the Afghan skies, looking for anyone remotely suspicious.

(e)You have claimed to be the vanguards of Human Rights, and your Ministry of Foreign affairs issues annual reports containing statistics of those countries that violate any Human Rights. However, all these things vanished when the Mujahideen hit you, and you then implemented the methods of the same documented governments that you used to curse. In America, you captured thousands the Muslims and Arabs, took them into custody with neither reason, court trial, nor even disclosing their names. You issued newer, harsher laws.

What happens in Guatanamo is a historical embarrassment to America and its values, and it screams into your faces - you hypocrites, "What is the value of your signature on any agreement or treaty?"

(3) What we call you to thirdly is to take an honest stance with yourselves - and I doubt you will do so - to discover that you are a nation without principles or manners, and that the values and principles to you are something which you merely demand from others, not that which you yourself must adhere to.

(4) We also advise you to stop supporting Israel, and to end your support of the Indians in Kashmir, the Russians against the Chechens and to also cease supporting the Manila Government against the Muslims in Southern Philippines.

(5) We also advise you to pack your luggage and get out of our lands. We desire for your goodness, guidance, and righteousness, so do not force us to send you back as cargo in coffins.

(6) Sixthly, we call upon you to end your support of the corrupt leaders in our countries. Do not interfere in our politics and method of education. Leave us alone, or else expect us in New York and Washington.

(7) We also call you to deal with us and interact with us on the basis of mutual interests and benefits, rather than the policies of sub dual, theft and occupation, and not to continue your policy of supporting the Jews because this will result in more disasters for you.

If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation. The Nation of Monotheism, that puts complete trust on Allah and fears none other than Him. The Nation which is addressed by its Quran with the words: "Do you fear them? Allah has more right that you should fear Him if you are believers. Fight against them so that Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of believing people. And remove the anger of their (believers') hearts. Allah accepts the repentance of whom He wills. Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise." [Quran9:13-1]

The Nation of honour and respect:

"But honour, power and glory belong to Allah, and to His Messenger (Muhammad- peace be upon him) and to the believers." [Quran 63:8]

"So do not become weak (against your enemy), nor be sad, and you will be*superior ( in victory )if you are indeed (true) believers" [Quran 3:139]

The Nation of Martyrdom; the Nation that desires death more than you desire life:

"Think not of those who are killed in the way of Allah as dead. Nay, they are alive with their Lord, and they are being provided for. They rejoice in what Allah has bestowed upon them from His bounty and rejoice for the sake of those who have not yet joined them, but are left behind (not yet martyred) that on them no fear shall come, nor shall they grieve. They rejoice in a grace and a bounty from Allah, and that Allah will not waste the reward of the believers." [Quran 3:169-171]

The Nation of victory and success that Allah has promised:

"It is He Who has sent His Messenger (Muhammad peace be upon him) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam), to make it victorious over all other religions even though the Polytheists hate it." [Quran 61:9]

"Allah has decreed that 'Verily it is I and My Messengers who shall be victorious.' Verily Allah is All-Powerful, All-Mighty." [Quran 58:21]

The Islamic Nation that was able to dismiss and destroy the previous evil Empires like yourself; the Nation that rejects your attacks, wishes to remove your evils, and is prepared to fight you. You are well aware that the Islamic Nation, from the very core of its soul, despises your haughtiness and arrogance.

If the Americans refuse to listen to our advice and the goodness, guidance and righteousness that we call them to, then be aware that you will lose this Crusade Bush began, just like the other previous Crusades in which you were humiliated by the hands of the Mujahideen, fleeing to your home in great silence and disgrace. If the Americans do not respond, then their fate will be that of the Soviets who fled from Afghanistan to deal with their military defeat, political breakup, ideological downfall, and economic bankruptcy.

This is our message to the Americans, as an answer to theirs. Do they now know why we fight them and over which form of ignorance, by the permission of Allah, we shall be victorious?

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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Short Poems, Long Poems

Back in the last decade Eric Marciano, Stephen Facedroph, and I sat in Eric's basement East Village apartment, drinking and snorting blow. HIs wife and children were up in New England. Safe passing midnight we decided to read short poems.

Eric read O Hara's THE DAY THE LADY DIED

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days

I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

I thought it long and went for Hart Crane's At Melville's Tomb

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death’s bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent wound in corridors of shells.

Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars.

Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive
No farther tides ... High in the azure steeps
Monody shall not wake the mariner.
This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

I hd not idea what a calyx meant. I asked myself. A guess. In context. A basket.

Steven the thespian went long with TS Eliot THE LOVESONG OF J ALFRED PRUFROCK. He began with the second stanza. English instead of the opening Italian. I have always been inpressed by his memory.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

On and on and one ad finitum

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

It was an impressive performance.

Drinks all around and more blow of course.

Until my landlord calls screaming that the furnace is broken and get back to the building.

Buzzkill.

ps Frank O'Hara died after a beach buggy stuck him on a Fire Island beach, Hart Crane jumped or was thrown over board in the Gulf of Mexico from the USS Orizaba April 27, 1932, and TS Eliot passed peacefully short of breath at his home in Kensington in London, on 4 January 1965.

"In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning."

Short or long and in-between poetry knows no time. - James Steele

Almost a haiku

Alex
Young
Beautiful
I ask
Do I smell old
Sniff
No
She has a cold___

ps - calyx - the sepals of a flower, typically forming a whorl that encloses the petals and forms a protective layer around a flower in bud.

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Mango Season for Yai

Throughout the first decade of this century I lived in Pattaya in a lovely house off Soi Bong Koch. The neighborhood had once been a mango farm. The last tree rose survived my front yard. Nothing grew beneath the tree. The sap killed grass and any flowers, yet during the hot season February to April hundreds of mangos sprouted from the branches. My neighbors admired the small green fruit, as they grew into maturity. My wife and daughter harvested the early ones. Tart and hard perfect sliced and smeared with chili sauce. Perfect for Sum Tam salad, the famed spicy green mango salad belover by Thai women.

Every evening an older elephant or chang from the nearby elephant tourist park lumbered down the soi to enjoy the night air. , His mahout sold sugar cane to feed the neighborhood. My wife and daughter stood in the yard behind the fence. They were rightfully scared of changs. In the late 1950s I had ridden atop an elephant at Simpson’s Animal Park in York, Maine. I had been probably the same age was my daughter, Angie, and just as small. I still recalled the smell; dusty. I later learned that the elephants have no sweat glands and cover their cracked skin with dirt or mud to protect their flesh from the heat and sun.

The massive male chang was over sixty years old. Yai eyed the mangos. The mahout gently restrained his snout from snagging at the fruit. He surrendered without resistance, as if there was a reason he hadn’t ravage the fruit. I lifted a bag of mangos for Yai as reward. He stared in my eyes, squinted, then allowed me to feed him by hand the mangoes one by one. When done he extended his trunk as a friendly gesture and I held it with both hands, feeling the strength and his gratitude. He smiled his thanks and the mahout tugged on his ear. Yai silently shambled down to Soi Bong Koch. I realized elephants for all their size were extremely quiet as long as they had a clear path. I smiled, thinking I had a new friend.

The next morning I went to the tree, intending to pick off mangos from the higher branches for Yai.

Climbing trees isn’t advisable for men in their fifties, but I easily scaled the tree. My wife came out and shouted something about red ants. I looked around and saw there were thousands of them living off the sap. Hundreds were on my skin. The second I saw them they bit in unison. I dropped from the tree and wheeled crazily in the driveway, swiping off the ants and realized why Yai hadn’t attempted to seize the mangos off the branches.

“Mot daeng,” my wife laughed. Thais love seeing farangs or westerners do something stupid.

Red ants indeed. I never climbed the tree again.

Throughout that hot season and those to come Yai turned up every year and every day along with my neighbors to feast on the sweet ripened fruits. The tree produced mangos much sweeter than offered at the ta-lat or market on Pattaya Klang. Yai always wore a smile for me and scared the shit out of Angie every time he embraced me with his trunk.

Sadly I moved away from that house off Soi Bongkot in 2008. My business selling bootleg F1.shopping.net clothing has been closed by the Thai Cyber-Police. I returned to New York to earn money. Enough to take care of both my expanding family. Three to four times a year I returned to Thailand to spend time with my clan who lived in Chai-Nat and Sri Racha.

During these visits I traveled to Pattaya for a night or two at the Last Babylon on Earth. Drinking with friends at the Buffalo Bar and wandering Walking Street drinking more. One night I walked along Beach Road with Sam Royalle, my friend from London days and a refugee from a Rasta Brixton yardie gang. He loved go-go bars. I loved drinking. He was English and loved drinking too.

We weaved though Walking Street packed with farangs, Thais, Chinese, Indians, every nationalities on Earth, then the crowd parted and everyone looked over my head. Sam and I turned expecting the Brixton Yardies. Yai stood behind us. A smile on his face. I shone one too. I hugged his trunk and he hugged me. I laughed with joy. The mahout too. Released I bought two watermelons from a fruit stand. They weren’t mangos, but Yai happily popped them in his mouth. We strolled down the street together to the Tuna Bar. Yai and I bid farewell. I handed the mahout five hundred baht.

“Chai yo.” I shouted and Yai bellowed his answer.

Loudly.

I haven’t seen him again, but maybe this hot season in 2026.

After all elephants live a long time and so do I.

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Tanked Tiger

Tigers are native to Asia. Deforestation and farming have diminished their hunting grounds. Indonesia boasts some 400 tigers on Sumatra and Russia’s Siberian tigers are estimated to number over 300. The feline predator hasn’t so lucky in other lands. Cambodia is down to thirty with poachers.

Thailand’s tiger population has been bolstered by the Tiger Zoo in Sri Racha, although this small reserve has allegedly sold animal parts to the Chinese, who are mad for the medicinal properties of the great cat’s bones and organs. Most notably as bone wine or tiger penis parts to improve sexual performance. Their lives in captivity are a pale shadow of their existence in the jungles. Experts have estimated that 250-300 tigers live in the wild forests of Thailand.

My wife and daughter Angie and their family lived in Thailand on the edge of the Western Forest. Very Ban Nok, which is Thai for 'the sticks'.At night the old men drink lao whiskey around a fire. The women watch Thai soap operas. We tell stories. I asked, if any of them had seen a tiger. They pointed to the distant mountains on the Burma border.

“Tigers gone here. Mountain have tiger.” My fiftyish brother-in-law had hunted for mushrooms in the jungles in the last century. His father and his neighbors had cleared the forests to create the rice paddies surrounding their farms

“You see one?”

“No one see tiger. Tiger see man. Eat man.” Noy shivered with fear. The only paths in the jungle are those made by wild elephants and no trails lead to the top of mountains.

“I hear tiger once. In Indonesia.” I had been staying in a small village on the West Coast south of Banda Aceh. “I heard a roar.”

I mimicked the low echoing growl.

The pi dogs in the yard started barking with alarm.

My daughter ran into the house.

“Good tiger.” My brother-in-law loved my act.

“The tiger scared me too and it was loud. I heard it in my bones.”

“Tiger big spirit.”

“The people in the village were frightened white. They wore masks on the back of their heads.”

“Tiger like to attack from behind.”

“Same as people.”

“Not same Thai.”

“That’s because you smile before a fight.”

“Land of Smiles. Chai yo”

We downed the rice whiskey from a plastic bag. Never a bottle. The fiery brew burned our throats. The dogs stopped barking and the insects resumed their buzzing. The only growl was my stomach grumbling from the bootleg liquor. It was much more dangerous than a tiger. The Big Cats only ate your body. Lao Khao, the bootleg liquor, ate your soul.

The foto is from Noong Nooch Gardens in Pattaya. The tiger is drugged with morphine. He only gets angry when he’s waiting for his man ala the Velvet Underground.

Same as any noble and oppresssed junkie.

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Wicasset Ghost Ships

The old bridge at Wiscassett spanned the Sheepscot River for decades and I loved the hum of tires over the narrow steel girder bridge. A new bridge replaced the old in 1983. New. No charm. Wicasset's primary attractions were its Maine coastal charms and the pair of rotting hulks wallowing in the mud flats. The state of ruin of the Hesper and Luther Little bespoke shipwreck to my boyish mind. These two timber schooners once transported pine trees from Maine to the world along with hundreds of other wind-powered Casco Bay schooners.

The Hesper and the Luther Little were the last two ships of their kind. The owner finally stranded them on the mudflats of the Sheepscot River. Each winter ravaged the ships rising and falling with the tides without ever floating free of the muck, yet they withstood the harsh treatment of Nature for decades. Finally two teenage boys set fire to the relics, damaging them to such a state that the town had them dismantled as a safety hazard.

Of course they could have remained in their final berth for another half-century, if it were not for the threat of legal suits and the town dismantld the wrecks. The Hesper and the Luther Little joined the hum of car tires over the Wicassett Bridge. Something gone, but not forgotten__

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I See Seagulls - 6/24/24

Sea gulls
I see seagulls
Seagulls o'er the sea
Gliding on the updraft
O'er the Montauk bluff__

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Seagulls In The Air

Written Jan. 1, 1920

When six
My best friend Chaney and I walked
To the end of the McKinley Road on Falmouth Foresides
Portland lay across the harbor
The color of the water a Maine blue
Seagulls skated through the cloudless sky__
Chaney pulled out darts taken from his father's den
He gave me one
I threw it without aim
The dart struck a seagull in the neck
Its wings quivered and the bird fluttered down to the mud flat
Blood seeped from the wound
Chaney and I watched the bird die
A wave lapped over the gull
Another washed the corpse into the harbor__
Chaney put away the darts
We walked back home
Neither of us said anything to anyone
Not even to Cathy Burns
We both loved her__
Chaney drowned in Sebago Lake in 1960
Age eight
Always will be eight
I will never forget him
Or the seagull__

Seagulls Adrift - Staten Island Ferry

Sea gulls drafting behind the Staten Island Out of St. George Manhattan bound The Samuel L Newhouse An old ferry from 1982 Big enough for over 5000 passengers Paint flaking from overhead Top speed 16 knots Churning up the harbor Sea gulls Diving into the wake To feast on the propellers' chum Not the Atlantic Ah, the harbor The inner harbor of the great city of New York___

Nothing like the Staten Island Ferry connecting St. George to Battery Park. Free still despite the billionaires__

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Naked On Nauset Beach - 1972 - HIlde Me and the Atlantic

In the early 70s
Below the ridege of dune
Hilde and me
Stood on Nauset's nude beach
The two of us
Me 20 lean and young
She eighteen blonde skin more burnt than tanned
Hippies not yet punks__
A thick ledge of wet seaweed
Covered the high tide mark.
Off with our clothes
We lay on the cool green algae
Our bare bodies sinking beneath the sludge
Comforted by the endless ocean
The two us silent
Seagulls squatted at the high tide mark
Never within arm's reach
We lay down to be one
To make love
Hippie love
Young love___
After we rise
Like seals from the seal
Naked to the elements
Wiping the seaweed
Off each other
Free
We both laugh
Skin blue-green as the cold Atlantic__
Eyes meet
Understand
We all come from the sea__
The two of us run into the ocean
Water
To be embraced by Neptune
The waves
Cold as ice
Cold as the once immortal Glacier
Rising over the continental shelf
Over a mile high
Gone today
Gone for thousands of years
Melted into the Ocean
Its green expanse
Clean as melted ice__
Hilde and me
Forever young for now
Hippies not yet punks
1972

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You Bet I Would - Bugis Street - 1960s

Bunny from Bugis Street, Singapore.

None of those girls are around anymore, thus neither am I.

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MACAM KUMBANG by Peter Nolan Smith

In 1990 I got off the train from Surabaya a little past dawn and headed over to the port of Jakarta to catch the noon ferry to Sumatra. The inter-island ship was a big liner and I was looking forward to a cruise through the Java Sea into the Indian Ocean.

As I neared the dock, a man of indeterminable race approached with a smile. His greeting was in Hebrew to which I responded in Yiddish thanks to my reading the books of Isaac B. Singer.

"Sholem Aleykhem." I readjusted the bag on my shoulder. I was traveling light, but also carried a small electric word processor.

"Are you Jewish?" asked the portly man in his thirties.

"No, but I'm the shabbos goy." I had spent the previous year on 47th Street schlepping diamonds between the Ashkenazi and the Hasidim. My commish from the sale of a 5-carat FSI1 diamond bought a round-the-world ticket from Pan Express Travel. Mostly by planes. The Bali to Singapore had been by sea and land. My next destination was the West Coast of Sumatra.

"Then you're the closest thing to a Jew in this city." Jakarta was 99% Muslim and this was Ramadan. Not a single food stall was on the pier.

"I like pastrami and don't mix dairy with meat." The Javanese weren't too friendly to Christians and the imams reserved a special vitriol for non-believers like myself. "Some of my best friends are Jewish."

"And I'll be your newest." David Mussery introduced himself as a Syrian Jew running a nightclub called the Pink Panther. "Where are you going?"

"Padang, Sumatra by ferry."

"Have you bought your ticket yet?"

"No."

"I'll send my servant over to the ticket office, while you visit my club. Drinks are free for a Landsmann. It's a fun place. Girls and sailors."

"What about Ramadan?"

"There is no religion inside the Pink Panther, where even Gods fear to enter "

"Sounds irresistable." I liked bars like his. "But I don't want to miss the ferry. There isn't another for three days."

"No worries." He checked his Rolex watch. Business at his bar was either good or the watch was a fake. "I'll get you on the boat."

"Okay, I'll check it out."

"Great, you won't regret it." David grabbed my bag and motioned to follow him down a muddy street.

Jalan Macam Kumbang.

"Macam Kumbang means Panther in Bahasa Indonesian. Are you a journalist?" He pointed to my typewriter.

"No, I'm writing a novel about pornography in LA." I noticed that the sailors on the sidewalk were drinking tuak, a cheap sweet palm wine in violation of Ramadan prohibition of eating or drinksbg anything between dawn and dusk. Their eyes were glazed from the morning's drinking session.

"Shouldn't you be writing that in LA?" It was a logical question.

"Probably, but I wanted to see the world."

"Well, you've come to the right place." David held open the pink door to his bar. "This is the crossroads of the world."

It was barely 8am, but his rundown establishment was filled with sailors from Malaysia, the Philippines, Indian, Africa, and Europe and the seadogs were drinking with an assortment of Indonesian women ranging in age from young to very old. The music crackling from the jukebox speakers was loud garage Indonesian rock.

"Dara Puspita doing TANKA AKU. Those girls were big in the 60s."

Several girls danced to the song. Their partners were doing the Twist. Most everyone rank a Bintang Beer, although several Bugis sailors chugged brown liquor from small glasses.

"Palm Whiskey. 40 degree in strength," David explained in a hushed voice. "My customers think it's whiskey."

"After a few I guess they don't care what it is." I sat at the bar and a wrinkled woman chewing betel poured David and me a 'whiskey'. Glancing at its effect on the sailors, I hesitated clinking glasses with my host.

"I know what you're thinking." David laughed aloud. "You meet a strange man in Jakarta and you're thinking I'll slip you a sleeping pill and get robbed."

"The thought crossed my mind." My version had me shanghaied to Sulawesi on a sea pirate prahu.

"I've been running the Pink Panther since 1974. It had been my uncle's place back then. He left it to me. I was the only one who didn't leave for Israel. I went once and came right back. Here I'm me. Back there I was another Jew among millions."

"And you have no trouble with the Muslims." Drinking and dancing were not condoned by strict Islamists.

"As long as I don't throw it in their face, everyone loves the Pink Panther. It's someplace you can come and not be yourself." He raised his glass. "It's good for you."

"Sie gesund." I toasted him and downed my glass. It wasn't bad and I ordered two more. David signaled for a waiter and ordered him to get a second-class ticket to Padang. I handed the man 40,000 rupiah. It was more than a month's wages on Java.

The jukebox switched to the same band performing A GO GO.

I started moving to the music. I like this place. It was rough on the edges and even rougher in the corners. A scary-looking tranny asked me to dance. David waved away the banci.

"Some things are always tref." He snapped his finger and a beautiful young girl emerged from the dance floor. She could have been Miss Teen Indonesia 1990. "Her name is Sandy. She's from Madura. They have a special way about them with men."

In the dim light Sandy looked about 16. She put an arm around my waist and stroked my thigh.
"Sorry, she doesn't speak any English. She's new to the scene." He smiled upon seeing my expression. "Don't look so surprised. Eveything goes at the Pink Panther. So where are you from?"

I didn't tell him Boston, but said New York and added, "I work selling diamonds for an old friend. Manny lets me work six months of the year and the rest I write."

"Diamonds? Maybe I should have slipped you something." David lifted his hands. "Just kidding."

A Javanese version of LOUIE LOUIE dropped onto the jukebox record player. Sandy pulled me onto the dance floor. She was a good dancer and loved a singer called Adnan Othman. When I came back to the bar, David handed me a 2nd class ticket. "My man says no one is in your cabin, so it will be like 1st class."

"Terima kasih."

"So you speak ein bissel Bahasa?"

"Enough to keep from starving." I signaled to the bartender. "Tiga bintang."

"Make it two beers. Sandy doesn't drink. She's a good Muslim girl. Still a virgin too."

"Are there any virgins in here?"

"Just Sandy. She's a friend's daughter. She makes her money from tips. Nothing else. But you can always think about it. That's free."

I spent the next two hours dancing and drinking with David. We discussed Palestine.

"They'll never be peace there, until Israel accepts that it stole the land."

"They'll never do that."

"They'll never say it, but they will know the truth."

"Thinking it is not as good as saying it." I knew, because I really wanted to kiss Sandy.

"Thinking it is the first step, but we're thousands of miles from Jerusalem. Here's to Peace on Earth."

I bought the bar a round. It cost me $20US. We drank to Meraka or Freedom.

"I love this place, because it has everyone from everywhere. We are all human. If only everyone knew that, the world would be a better place for everyone."

I drank to that and several more of his comments.

A little before noon he tapped his watch.

"Time to go, unless you want to stay." He offered me a job with very little pay. "A sheygutz like you could make a fortune."

"Money and I are distant cousins." I was counting on getting rich in my next life.

"I could teach you the ways of my tribe." David was lonely. I had lived in Hamburg during the winter of 1982. Everyone was a German, but me. I also knew loneliness, but I had a ticket for a ferry.

David accompanied to the port with Sandy. They bid me Selamat Jalaan with their hearts. Sandy cried on cue. I tipped her $20. David asked me to call him, if I passed through town again and the following year I swung by the Pink Panther.

Nothing had changed in the bar.

He was a good Jew, I was a good sheygutz, and Sandy was more indah than ever.

Both are a state of mind.

ps several years ago I receunted this tale to John Cowell, an English photographer, and he exclaimed, "I drank there. A right wicked place. I thought I might have imagined it."

" Same for me."

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AUGUST 21, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

Society in America has hit the skids. The corruption of the Two-Party System has reduced the working classes to the edge of poverty with 55% of earnings taxed by the IRS, while the rich pay nothing. Socialist Sweden, Kuwait, and the frozen snowbacks of Canada have higher per capita incomes. Most Americans had blamed President Carter for our impoverishment without ever accusing Israel for the devastation of the 1974 Oil Embargo and demanding for cuts in the Pentagon's budget. The only other recognizable politician has been Richard Nixon and he's persona non grata to the GOP.

The country is further defined my the faces of our cinematic gun-toting heroes; John Wayne, Charles Bronson, and Clint Eastwood. The Bad are usually foreigners or black drug dealers. The Good like Elvis and Marilyn are assassinated by the fatal drug overdoses by the FBI and CIA. The media blame their deaths on Fame and Fortune. Olympians burned by the sun, but they were gods and neither are the rest of us. We are humans with all our faults; Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, El Salvador et al.

We are fast approaching the 1980s with a destiny of apathy. The USSR aren't in much better shape, as their scientists attempt to compete with SAC's $40,000 B-52 toilet seats. It's not easy to spent that much money on a toilet seat, unless it's made of gold. The crops fail in the Ukraine. the Comintern buys wheat from the USA and Canada to feed the starving labor force and distill the wheat into vodka, the fuel of revolution.

Tonight at CBGBs Alice is puking in the ladies room. She ate roasted chicken leg at the Kiev. Her retching sounds like an air bubble exploding from a lake.

"Ei-rup. I ate too much. Ei-rup."

These purges are Alice's only method of handling her excesses; eating, drinking, and nerves. A tool to achieve temperance, but I never think she's fat.

"It has nothing to do with fat. My stomach is small and sometimes it feels, as if food is crammed in my esophagus. Ei-rup. Eir-rup. Ei-ru."

"What's up?" Guadalcanal asked from the men's room door. His sidekick, pockmarked Bobby, stood in the shadows invisibly attached to Guadalcanal.

"Nothing. Alice is sick."

"Too much to drink."

"Her drinking is not enough to get me a buzz, but it doesn't agree with her stomach."

"You'd think a hillbilly girl could down a jug of moonshine."

"I'm not a hillbilly!!!", shouted Alice from behind the closed doors. Women had serious hearing skills. "Ei-rup. Eir-rup. Ei-ru."

"More for us." Guadalcanal swiftly shoveled cocaine into my nostrils. Bobby and he went into the men's room for a one-on-one. The blow hit hard and I continued to listen to Alice getting sick. Crazy Juliette pushed by me.

"You look like you've had enough." She studied me and heard Alice by the porcelain god and said, "Your girl has had way more."

"I've done no drugs. I ate something funny at Kiev."

"The death diner. I saw you and Alice earlier. She looked so cool, unlike her Neanderthal boyfriend."

"I'm not trying to look cool." I was wearing the same jacket and jeans from two years ago. Bobby and Guadalcanal exited from the toilet and I took their place. I shit fast and hard. I can't talk to anyone about shitting, but I consider it the Sixth Sense; the urge to shit.

Alice has gone up stairs and I find her talking to Richard Hell. Neither of them pay any mind to me. I like the curve of her stomach. It's a soft pillow of comfort. I say nothing about it. Sometimes it's best to say nothing about what you love about someone.

Richard Hell was the Elvis of Punk in 1979. Alice had seen the King in Charleston, West Virginia. She said she had cried when he left the stage. I never saw him, but I had seen Richard Hell and the Voidoids often played CBGBs. They were a favorite of mine and everyone else. He was renown as a singer, a poet, a junkie, and a genius, although never at the same time. His teeth were as rotten as Johnny Lydon from the Sex Pistols. No one had a worst grill than Shane McGowan from the Pogues.

We start our adulthood with thirty-two teeth. I've lost all four wisdom teeth yanked before they rotted out of my jaw.

I don't recall Alice puking so much or her being fat.

I liked her just fine, but everyone looks in the mirror the wrong way, especially those who can't believe in love.

ps. I lasted thirty minutes in the 169 Bar.

It isn't the same without drink.

Nothing is.

Not even me.

Bugis Street Selama-Lamanya

The Bugis people were great voyagers from Sulawesi. They sailed small crafts from Padang Padang to many ports of the Far East ranging from Burma to Northern Australia. Many practiced piracy and as Thomas Forrest wrote in A Voyage from Calcutta to the Mergui Archipelago, “The Buginese are a high-spirited people: they will not bear ill-usage…They are fond of adventures, emigration, and capable of undertaking the most dangerous enterprises.”

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Most westerners are unfamiliar with the Bugis and especially their complex five gender society.

Men and women are joined by ‘bissu’ which combined all five genders, ‘calabai’ a false woman, and ‘calalai’ a masculine female.

Thriving Bugis communities existed throughout the Orient, although few as famous as Singapore’s Bugis Street on which calabai transgenderettes gathered in the 1950s to sexually entertain randy sailors and curious travelers, passing time in the Straits city. According to legend the easy way to discern which working girls were female and which were trannies was that the calabai were beautiful and the female hookers were ugly.

Singapore banned wanton behavior in the 1980s to transformed the tawdry area into another worthless shopping mall.

I got there in 1990 and stayed at a cheap Chinese hotel on Bugis Street.

The trannies were few.

The sidewalks were clean.

The Long Bar at Raffles was undergoing renovations.

I left the next day for Penang.

Each time I returned to the Pearl of the Orient I stayed only long enough to catch the train.

Singapore has nothing to offer anyone looking for a walk on the wild side.

It’s the most boring big city in the Orient, but not in the 60s.

It swung with the best of them.

Bugis Street selama-lamanya.

Forever.

Singapore To Bangkok By Train

In 1990 I bought a second-class ticket from Singapore to Bangkok with stops in Penang and Suranthani.

The old Pearl of the Orient was too clean for me. The Chinese president had ordered the city-state's police to fine people for chewing gum or not washing their hands after using the WC. Effacing the walls with graffiti has punishable by caning and possession of heroin earned addicts a death sentence.

At night the city was quiet.

The Long Bar at Raffles Hotel was closed for renovation.

Gone were the 'girls' from Bugis Street. I was ready for another country. To the north Malaysia stretched up the peninsula to Thailand.

The early-morning train departed Tanjong Pagar rail station. I bought roti and beer for the seven-hour trip to Georgetown, from where a ferry crossed the harbor to Penang.

The conductor called for the passengers to board and we left the station several minutes behind schedule. Several westerners complained about the delay, but the engineer made up time through the Woodlands and the train crossed the narrow bridge into Malaysia.

On the other side immigration officers checked our passports and we reboarded the train for the northbound journey. The train stopped at Senai, then traversed verdant ricefields into the thick mountain jungles of Segamat to arrive at the Malaysian capitol of Kuala Lumpur.

The Central Train Station had been designed in a "Neo-Moorish/Mughal/Indo-Saracenic/Neo-Saracenic" by AC Normanhad and completed in 1897. The train stopped for a few minutes.

I ran across the platform to buy two can of ice-cold Tiger beer from a store. to a store. The day was getting warm.

I bought another beer at Kluang.

Around noon the train pulled into Taiping. The hill station was reportedly the wettest region of the Peninsular, but the monsoon was months away and we traveled under sunny skies.

A Muslim man boarded the train. I put away my beer. Admad spoke of the Koran. "Everything known is written in the holy words of Allah. It gives all answers." Having spent the last six months in Indonesia, I did not challenge his statements. Strict Muslims have no use for atheists. Neither did Christians.

I got off at Georgetown. The Sultan Abdul Halim Ferry Terminal was a short distance from the train station. The trip across the narrow channel lasted twenty minutes. Penang was a beautiful city with ecletic melange of architecture.

British Empire buildings.

Chinese godowns.

Malaysian mosques.

Hindu temples.

There were beaches.

Jungles.

And funny hotels and bars and good Indian food.

I stayed a few days extra.

I met a young British nurse. She was vacationing in South East Asia. Sara and I had a good time. But she was heading south and I was going north.

We said fare-well at the train station. The train left on time. Sara waved good-bye. I sat by the open window and enjoyed the comforting sway of the train.

Past Gunung Jerai.

Through rice fields.

To Pasang Besar and the Thai border.

To the passport control I was just another westerner was heading Thailand. A bald Frenchman pointed to a sign proclaiming death for possession of drugs. "The Thai are serious about drugs." "So am I."

We spoke on the train. He was traveling with a western woman. She was just a friend. Michael lived in Pattaya. Maria made a face. Women didn't approve of that city. "Come see me some time. It's the last Babylon." "I've heard of it."

Everyone had heard of Pattaya. No place on the planet offered such wickedness.

I got off the train at Suranthani.

A ferry ran tourists to Koh Samui. The day was beautiful. The weather was warm. The beer was cold.

The sea at the beach was as clear as gin.

I rode a dirt bike around the island.

I met a girl named Vee. She worked a bar. We pretended to be boyfriend and girlfriend.

After a week I was almost sad to leave the island

The night train pulled out of Suranthani a little before sunset.

The 2nd Class sleeper was clean.

The food in the dining car offered a special menu for Thais. We drank Mekong whiskey with soda water and ice. The windows were open to the wind.

I slept in the upper berth.

The cleaning crew woke the passengers before dawn.

Bangkok was less an hour away.

I held off on breakfast and watched the scenery change from rice fields to factories to city..

Steel tracks split, as the train neared the station.

The engine lurched to a halt.

I checked my seat.

Everything was in my bag or on my person.

I tipped the cleaner fifty baht.

The price of a big beer.

Hua Lamphong wasn't busy.

Almost everyone was Thai.

This was not the West.

None of the trip had been and I would expect anything else.

It felt good to be in the Orient.

It was the other side of the world.