Sharing city life with 11 million others, suffocation is a mild after-effect. All of us crave "the grass is greener on the other side" but I will still fight the traffic regardless; whether it's end of the month, a Friday night, or monsoon season flooding the streets that a trip of 20 minutes can turn into two hours. You would only hear explosions from my vocal chords all expletive deletives from at least 5 languages memorized. Because I'm a city girl at heart.
Entertaining a little calmness in my life, and to balance my inner karmic energy; if there is a time capsule that can dial up how many centuries to go back, I'd be tempted to turn the dial as far back as it would go. Being sensible me, my make believe time lapse dial takes me to Century Siam, a place far from the five o'clock traffic. Humanoids pushing and shoving seemingly disappear with the gentle breeze flowing through the canals, kids laughing and long tail boats swooshing are the only noise suggesting we are not alone.
Fantasy; escapism; time capsule; whatever medium that brought me here, I was not exstatic by the show case collection of old style barber shops; antiquated Chinese herbal chemist ; toy shops, nor the tailor shops with obsolete foot-peddle Singer sewing machines. What was exquisite was the atmosphere of the different style teak houses capturing uniquely Northern Lanna Siam, or Islamic Southern Siam.
Surreal was the atmosphere, where perhaps significant signs went unnoticed. Sino-Portuguese gates guarded the beautiful teak houses, were these pieces of old teak upholding the buildings emanating untold stories of long ago. If the wood could talk, stories would unfold of love, lust, life, death, drought, floods, wars, peace and the sharing of numerous religious ceremonies. The energy discarded by our forefathers that flowed through and stayed trapped in the pillars and walls echoed the conversations past, the disagreements, the hierarchical acceptance. The 60 minutes or so held my attention that these particles were hoping to pass along. Sensitive to energy I became the receptor to past issues.
As I sat there for what seemed eternal basking in the late afternoon sun and gentle evening breeze, sipping sweet coconut water, seduced by history; sunset rapidly changed the atmosphere overlooking the canal. The fireflies arrive, like Christmas tree lights sparkle on and off mesmerizing and electrifying. I was magically taken to those gentle days where no vehicles pass by leaving dust particles, no smart phones ringing, no text pinging. The world of internet, malls, banks, starbucks, mass transportation left behind in another parallel world where there was just me, Polly, and history.
