Thursday, December 21, 2006

Time keeping its own time

I finished "One Hundred Years of Solitude" on Lonely Beach this afternoon. It's a very funny book. And, like love affairs, the isolated South American town of Macondo exists outside of time. The book's matriarch, Ursula Buendia, lives so long and sees so much that she becomes convinced that life moves in great cycles; dejectedly watching her family's vices, trials and tribulations repeated and re-played across the generations. But it's not just in evading modernity's penchant for timekeeping that Macondo is peculiar; Garcia Marquez's final alchemical masterstroke reveals how past, present and the future have existed all at once, side by side, simultaneously, throughout its history. Putting the book down I knew this to be true, as once I looked into a man's face and could already feel the beginning and the end of our love affair, years before it started.

I got drunk with some Parisian guy after it got dark, before realising I was a little stranded in the countryside. South East Asian time still revolves around the habits of the sun and the moon far more than in the 'liberated' west, and there were no more buses back up to the north of the island. But it all worked out. This kind of thing happens nearly daily as I slip and slide across countries with the same laissez-faire attitude I applied to my former life, always a little last-minute, never entirely sure where I'm going, or when, how or even why half the time. Things tend to be fine if you have faith and don't sweat it I find, and even if they don't, something far more interesting inevitably follows. Things and people come along in their own time, although this approach occasionally malfunctions. When I finally discovered the perfect house-warming gift for some friends at the Chatuchak Weekend Market in Bangkok the other day; it only made me cry since it's far too late, they've already moved out and on.

In Bangkok I saw 'Driving Lessons' at the Siam Lido, a most welcome dose of eccentric Englishness. Christian and literary worlds collide around an unusual friendship, with a cute Sufjan Stevens and Salsa Celtica soundtrack. Before the movie they showed Nike-sponsored short doc 'Total Bangkok' about lads playing football under a Bangkok underpass, on a pitch they've rigged up and fund themselves. It's pretty good, the team even thrashes the Thai under 20 squad, though they're at an advantage on their home turf.
Filmmaker Pen-ek Ratanaruang realises by the end that he's making a film about what makes people happy, helps them forget themselves. "'Don't worry be happy' sang Bobby McFerrin. 'Just do it' says Nike" he muses, before concluding they're really saying the same thing. It's a very Thai sentiment to boot. Also very Thai was standing to attention before the films to sing the national anthem and pay respect to the King. Everyone loves the King in Thailand. The world's longest serving monarch, he's a real figurehead, his image as ubiquitous as the Buddha. And he regularly steps in to look after the interests of the people.

Well you rarely see the sun going down where I've been living in Tonsai in the South, so I've been soaking up the sunsets during a timeout trip over to Koh Chang, in the East. I thought about my nature-loving Swedish friend Niklaus as I watched it doing its thing earlier, remembering how we sped down the river Kinabatanguan into the dusk in North Borneo, eyes peeled for wildlife along the last ribbon of jungle. Sandwiched between palm plantations, long ago logged, the rainforest's demise is imminent said the local lads. Like Macondo, we're out of time. But then again, as the sun sets, the seasons have changed again and the King is reborn. And tomorrow I'll run into Niklaus on the beach at White Sands, though I don't know it yet, and we'll arrange to go diving together in a few months time.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home