Mother of Disaster Comedies

[Belgrade, 8/3/20]

In Tokyo, I was told by a Hong Kong immigrant that many Japanese are so punctual, they don’t just board the same train to work each day, but stand in the same spot in the same car. He had to be more or less the same, though, to notice such habitual exactitude, as he stood at his same spot each morning. Drunk after work, they can board whatever train they want.

Me, I improvise. When hungry, I eat, and when tired, I sleep. Not having a 9 to 5 allows that, but I do work, even at 4 in the morning, when I get up. In Vung Tau, church bells ring at 4:30AM, and in Bengaluru, even earlier, though indistinct, as if echoed from the beyond or in a dream.

I like to write outside. This is simply not possible in many countries, not if the streets are dark or snow is falling. In Southeast Asia, folks get up before dawn.

I’ve been at this sidewalk café since 5:15AM. On the same block are open eateries serving rice with pork chop or rice noodles with pork. Next door is GTF Express with its suggestive, skin colored map I can’t help but stare at often. To me, all destinations are magical, so I fantasize about going to Pailin, Stung Streng, Kratié or Preah Vihear, etc.

An overnight bus has just arrived. With a thin blanket draped on her like a shawl, a sleepy damsel in mild distress disembarks. A puttering tuk-tuk will deliver her to breakfast.

Punish me with savage lashes, lingo gestapo, for disembark means getting off a ship! Barca means boat, so I should have said, “disembussed.” Disembussed with mussed up hair, an unfussy hussy susses out some dusky tuk-tuk.

After two cups of so-so joe for $1.50, I get rice with pork ribs from a thin lady who owns a “REDEMPTION SONG” jean jacket, though she’s not wearing it this morning. Her daughter no older than 15 is expertly frying super thin scallion omelets. Learning her mom’s trade, she’s already self-sufficient, if required.

On a second floor balcony across the street, a man in a white tank top is doing diagonal pushups against the railing. To get their blood circulating and loosen their joints, Orientals can exercise any time anywhere. Sitting on a plastic chair, I twist my torso left and right then arch my held arms backward, as if they’re being yanked by a rope, sort of.

When I pay, the lady chirps, “Xie xie!”

As I walked into my hotel elevator the other day, a white man told his Eurasian son, “Say konichiwa!

In Siem Reap, the lady who extended my visa remarked, “You look Cambodian,” and one man on the street did address me in Khmer.

In San Gimignano, a man needing directions actually said to me as I stood at a bus stop, “Tu sei Italiano?”

In a Philly neighborhood, Frankfurt, a black woman who appeared to be half Oriental asked me, “Are you half-black?” If smoother, I would have said, “For you, honey, sure!”

That’s just how it is, your best lines or courses of action are often arrived at way too late, when you can no longer get on that escape boat or bus, to be disembussed somewhere safe.

Momentarily sated, I peek at that alluring map as I walk past GTF Express, then I spot a woman exercising on a third-floor balcony bookended by barbed wire. She doesn’t trust her neighbors.

When Vietnam’s economy collapsed from 1975 to 1990, starving spidermen appeared everywhere and barbed wire spider webbed the country. That horror film is coming to your hood.

In an alley, I say hello to a saffron colored cat who has befriended me. He has an imperfectly formed scar on his right shoulder he keeps licking, for relief. With his teeth, he also scratches himself all over. As I stroke him, I murmur in Vietnamese, “Ah, you’re dirty, itchy, suffering and starving!” I have nothing to give him.

In another alley, I notice its bareboned beauty salon isn’t open yet. Yesterday, I saw a woman who had arrived on a pink vespa having her manicure, pedicure and hair done at the same time! Playing a cheerful tune on his phone, a sashaying man in a tank top with one nipple strategically exposed bantered with his neighbors.

For a buck, I ate rice with fried fish, plus a soup with veggies and some fish. Granted, there were discarded tissues on the grimy ground, but I wasn’t plopped there, but on a sturdy plastic chair.

From me, you’re getting more trivia, for I’ve always found the most ordinary the most beautiful and comforting. There are those who have responded to my budget offerings with contemptuous outrage, which is bizarre, for they can just look away.

Sometimes, I go high class and pay $2.50 for two cappuccinos. As I paid once, the waitress asked, “Two?”

This triggered such mirth in another waitress, she repeated in a high pitched voice, “Two? Two?” Looking at me for confirmation, her face beamed, “Two?”

As I walked by a café with men in their 40’s and 50’s, laughing, a young waitress decided to mock them. “Ha, ha, ha, ha!” she cackled, but with a straight face. As a young and beautiful female, you can get away with pissing on aging men even, so they found her delightful, of course.

Coming to Phnom Penh, I thought I would stay for ten days, then go to Sihanoukville, Cambodia’s center of hyper development and organized crime, much of it Chinese. There, hundreds if not thousands of foreigners are locked inside guarded compounds. Tricked into coming here for well-paying jobs, they’re forced into conning their conationals online. With beatings routine, those trying to escape sometimes leap from windows.

I’m finding Phnom Penh too congenial, however, so will linger longer. Plus, I’m too exhausted to shift constantly.

In an alley, I write at a low plastic table with my 62-cent cans of Cambodia. This snack stand’s owner is actually a quarter Vietnamese. During the worst of the Khmer Rouge, his family escaped to Vietnam, so he speaks my language, if only haltingly. He’s traveled to Tay Ninh and Long An just for fun, and next month, he’ll take his dad to Da Nang and Hoi An.

Again, I find myself in a sane oasis in a world increasingly mad. Ignoring a horrific ecological disaster in Ohio, perhaps the worst in US history, Biden shows up in Kiev to be televised with dramatic air raid sirens in the background. Leaving, he stumbles up steps onto his plane. It’s a farcical movie, folks, except millions have already died, with millions more to come. With Jewjabs, sabotage of food supplies and world war, they’re targeting you.

With an image of a city destroyed, NATO has just tweeted:

Ukraine is hosting one of the great epics of this century “We are Harry Potter and William Wallace, the Na’vi and Han Solo. We’re escaping from Shawshank and blowing up the Death Star. We are fighting with the Harkonnens and challenging Thanos.”

It’s no howler, for they’re howling. The joke is on you.

Months before the East Palestine catastrophe, some townsfolk were cast as extras in a disaster comedy. Guess who are the extras now, in this, the mother of disaster comedies?

As I finish this piece, a bouncy duet with xylophone is on the speaker and assorted meat is being grilled over a coal fire. With chicken feet, chicken gizzards, pig offal, pig tongues, entire quails and odd hunks of just fatty pork, there’s something for every budget and taste.

Sitting in the shade, I’m further cooled by a breeze. “MADE FOR THE MAKERS,” my beer can informs. Finished with his day’s labor, a porter eats.

[Phnom Penh, 2/24/23]

[Phnom Penh, 2/24/23]

[Phnom Penh, 2/23/23]

[Phnom Penh, 2/24/23]

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