Penang Gone

Sumatra was a lost world in 1990. Tigers prowled the western jungles of Indonesia's largest island, active volcanoes glowed in the night, and I drank Bintang beer with the ancestors of headhunters on the shore of Lake Toba 1500 meters above the sea and the night air was chilly after months along the equator .

Inside the traditional long houses skulls adorned the main beam of the roof.

Cutting off heads for the Bataks was an ancient tradition, until forbidden by the Dutch government in Java.

Sitting with several men around a fire I realized Jakarta was over a thousand miles away from the highlands. A hundred years ago I might have been a hapless victim of their deadly tradition, but they swore I was safe and the Bataks were renown for being true to their word.

After two weeks on Lake Toba I descended down the slopes to Medan, a Muslim city a little north of equator on the simmering Malacca Straits. The temperature and humidity were both in the 90s. Neither seemed to bother the residents.

That afternoon I booked a flight across the Malacca Straits to Penang in Malaysia.

I arrived there before sunset. I was back in the modern world.

Skyscrapers, telephones, air-conditioning and smooth roads.

I stayed at an old Chinese mansion off Chulia Street. The main travelers' drag offered good food and old navy bars.

Drinks were cheap.

The women were ugly.

.They liked a good laugh.

The architecture revealed a melting pot of culture.

I loved the call for evening prayers from the mosque.

I drank tuak or palm wine next to the Chinese temple.

The British had left their mark.

Beaches lay the the west.

Durians grew in the jungles.

The city was sleep-walking toward the 21st Century.

But that was then.

Chinese money had woken Penang from the past.

Construction was booming along the coast, as land was reclaimed from the sea.

Only the rich have rights to this dream.

And old Penang will never be old again.

Neither will I.

What a shame.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen / Hot Season in Pattaya

Last week I met Jamie Parker on Soi Chaiyapoon. I hadn't seen him in ages. He looked ten years younger and said, "Botox. Only cost 5000 baht."

No wrinkles around his eyes and those furrows in his forehead had been smoothed out like 5-star hotel sheets. I was a little jealous. "So now you're ready for a gigolo position on Palm Beach."

"Not the right season." He grabbed my arm. "Damn, it's hot."

"Lorn mak." Pattaya for the last week has been baked by the seasonal heat wave. "I think it's hotter than last year."

"Me too, but check out that fat Teabag across the street."

"He seems fine with it." The Brit was about 55. Tattooed like a druid, 5-5 and weighing about 14 ton which is a XXXXL in the USA. bare-headed and no shirt. Skin burnt to a tender red. I was wearing a full-length shirt and a cowboy hat. Long pants too. Standing in the shade we ordered two beers from the PIM bar.

"Yeah, mad dogs and Englishmen. Only ones that can take this heat.

"You know this isn't really hot."

"up in Isaan it gets hotter."

"Cambodia is a frying pan this time of year." My friend Nick and I had spent Songkran 2007 in Phnom Penh. Both of us would have suffered from water depletion if it wasn't for a steady replenishing our liquids with Khang beer. (7-11% alcohol).

"What about the East Village in July?"

"Worst is Needles, California in August. I got off a bus there and smacked by a wall of heat. The thermometer inside the Dairy Queen said 135. didn't have any money and had to hitchhike out of there. Old couple heading to Lake Havesu saved my life." I can remember a cold glass of lemonade. The old man wasn't scared of madmen on the highway because his wife had a gun. A Colt 45.

"What year was that?"

"1974."

"You were a hippie then, right?"

"I had long hair." At least I listened to the Jefferson Airplane and Iggy Pop, instead of the Dead.

"Here come some more mad Englishmen."

A trio of skinhead beer-drinkers on motor scooters. Sometimes Pattaya seems like the Millwall hooligans have a training center on Soi Bukhao. especially after my Boxing Day 2006 beating by King Kong.

(Who seems have gone back to his cro-magnon existence in the UK. Small miracle)

"They all early melanoma cases." I use sun block 50 on my face, which vanished the black circles under my eyes. "Madmen. I was stranded in Penang once and wandered into the old English graveyard crammed with Brits struck down by the heat."

"No one sane should be out in the heat this time of day." I was melting like the Wicked Witch of the West.

"What about us?" Jamie was no hypocrite.

"Let's go up to Maggie's for a cold one."

Jamie was primed for a pint. Me too.

We were only a little bah or crazed by the sun. Back in the 70s hippies went to the California Welfare Bureau to get certified as mad to get checks from the state. I don't think Cally offers that service anymore, but if the State does, then you could take advantage of the list sent by Michelle from New York's famed Gotham Bookstore (Wise men fish here).

20 Ways to Maintain a Healthy Level of Insanity

1. At Lunch Time, Sit in Your Parked Car with Sunglasses on and point a Hair Dryer at Passing Cars. See If They Slow Down.

2. Page Yourself Over The Intercom. Don't Disguise Your Voice.

3. Every Time Someone Asks You to Do Something, ask If They Want Fries with that.

4. Put Your Garbage Can on Your Desk and Label it "In".

5. Put Decaf In The Coffee Maker For 3 Weeks. Once everyone has gotten Over Their Caffeine Addictions, Switch to Espresso.

6. In The Memo Field Of All Your Checks, Write "For Smuggling Drugs".

7. Finish All Your sentences with "In Accordance With The Prophecy".

8. Don't use any punctuation.

9. As Often As Possible, Skip Rather Than Walk.

10. Order a Diet Water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.

11. Specify That Your Drive-through Order Is "To Go".

12. Sing Along At The Opera.

13. Go To A Poetry Recital. And Ask Why The Poems Don't Rhyme?

14. Put Mosquito Netting Around Your Work Area, Play tropical Sounds All Day.

15. Five Days In Advance, Tell Your Friends You Can't Attend Their Party, Because You're Not In The Mood.

16. Have Your Co-workers Address You by Your Wrestling Name, Rock Bottom.

17. When The Money Comes Out The ATM, Scream "I Won! I Won!"

18. When Leaving the Zoo, Start Running towards the Parking lot, Yelling "Run For Your Lives! They're Loose!"

19. Tell Your Children Over Dinner, "Due To The Economy, We Are Going To Have To Let One Of You Go."

20. And The Final Way To Keep A Healthy Level Of Insanity ...

Text this To someone To make them Smile.

It's Called... therapy!

I got a little smile from this, then again I'm a simple man and sometimes a little ting tong or mad. ps The saying “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun” is thought to have originated with Rudyard Kipling.

Watchic Pond 1964

Before the coming of the White Race the land around Watchic Pond belonged to Sokokis Tribe of the Abenaki Indians. The occupiers bulit a fort atop the highest hill and disposed the original inhabitants from their farms. In 1844 the settlers dammed Stout Creek to expand the pond to its present size. I had been told in my early youth that my grandfather and his friends had dammed a Stout Stream creating the lake. Obviously my story seems to have a hole in it, but rather that than a hole in the dam loosing the tannin tea waters from the barrier. I have never seen an Abenaki in the town, but have felt their ghosts in the woods even though the forests are not ancient like the ghosts, bith Abenaki, Yankee or Canadian. My grandmother and grandfather on my father's side are buried on a bluff overlooking our old camp. my suster and brother-in-law have a camp a short distance from the dam. Most recently the Lake association approved funds to restore the dam's integrity. The photo is of my brothers and sisters reenacting the Titanic sinking in 1964 off the camp, which belong to my Aunt Sally and Russ. Every summer our family came up from Boston to stay a weekend, sleeping in bunkheads. Five of us ruled the pond. My youngest brother Michael Charles was too young to swim. The rowboat was unsinkable and providing hours of fun for us.

A Long Lost Note

Several years ago I found a note written behind a photograph of a long ago woman friend. She said I wasn't romantic enough and left me for Richard Hell. Forkhead deserted her within the month. My friend Thar read the missive from the 1980s.

Sylvia Von Hatten by Otto Dix

SSylvia Von Hatten by Otto Dix A German poet/journalist I could only find a single poem in Polish Translated from Polish to English by means of burying in corpses in mental corpses not organic ones in corpses of thoughts I have for you taming silence over the coffin Otto Dix said to her, "I must paint you! I simply must! ... You are representative of an entire epoch!____ 'So, you want to paint my lacklustre eyes, my ornate ears, my long nose, my thin lips; you want to paint my long hands, my short legs, my big feet—things which can only scare people off and delight no-one?____ You have brilliantly characterized yourself, and all that will lead to a portrait representative of an epoch concerned not with the outward beauty of a woman but rather with her psychological condition." From Wikipedia.

Stormy Rockaway Beach

Francis Timoney Jacob Eye and I left from Malcolm X Boulevard for the beach under darkening skies. By the time we crossed the Broad Channel the clouds threatened a storm. Undeterred Francis parked his Saab 900 at Fort Tilden and we walked to the beach. Bathers were fleeing the threat of a downpour. Undeterred Francis and I stripped off our shirts and plunged into the rough shore break. The ocean temperature was delightful, but thunder and lightning flowing fast from the west. Squalls whip sand with a sting to our skin. Gulls and plovers skated into the dunes for safety. Francis and Jacob Eye joined them. I stood still in marvel of nature in motion.

Swimming In The Seine 1985

In the summer of 1985 I rode my Vespa 150 east from Paris along the Seine until reaching a strand of strand past Melun. The temperature was warm and I waded into the river. It smelled of algae, but I plunged into the waters. Not pleasant, but not unpleasant, then again as a child in the early 1960s we swam off the sewer ducts off Wollaston Beach. Warm. We didn't know any better as hadn't an Amerlot swimming in the Seine.

Of course our prime swimming hole in Paris was the Piscine Deligny. The floating pool was moored on the Rive Gauche. Paris' only outdoor piscine or at least the only one I knew. A favorite of the young and old alike.

According to parisisinvisible.blogspot.com/ at the beginning of the 1970s, one French politician, Emmanuel Hamel, wrote a letter to the Minister of the Interior complaining about topless sunbathing at the pool. His particular concern about that? The French parliament, the Assemblée nationale overlooked the pool, and it was 'offputting'!

Tant pis.

Foto Helmut Newton 1976