ROAD POETS IN BANGKOK AND SAGADA

Two contrasting takes on life, both appearing on walls, one in Bangkok and the other at Sagada in the Northern Philippines.
Independent travelling anywhere can be a roller coaster, not only because of where you are geographically, but where you are, emotionally and mentally, and how you interpret what you see. There are no ultimate truths. You see it all through the filter of your own mind, your life experience and its accumulated baggage. You don't see a jitney driver, a baby soldier, a beautiful temple, a sweating labourer, a frenetic marketplace, a spaced-out traveller, a moody border guard, a magnificent sunset. You see your judgments and opinions on them all.
Amid the chaos of Bangkok, then and, I suspect, now, I came across some lost soul's observation.
For freaks, the Thai Son Greet was for many years an iconic watering hole and shelter from the storm in a frenetic, and not always, predictable city, where few could be trusted and your stay could be either heaven or hell - on the same day! Did the author ship out the next day, in a disillusioned haze I wonder.

circa September 1976

Welcome stranger.
Welcome to the anus of the Universe
To the asshole of the World,
Welcome to everything you left behind
And travelled thousands of miles to find.
Welcome to the army of mirror images
Of yourself marching the well-trampled trail
Like blind lemmings in search of nothing.
Welcome to the hapless tribes dancing
Their well-rehearsed bathos,
To your slick cameras and tapes.
Welcome brother to the divine rip-off,
You’ve arrived.

In June 1979, I was high up in the mountains, 8000 feet above sea level, in the mountain province of Sagada, north of Manila at Saint Joseph's Resthouse. I remember the peace, silence and simplicity of this wooden-framed retreat house and how every morning the mountains, like islands rose through the layers of cotton wool clouds below us. This tranquility certainly inspired someone. It couldn't have been a greater contrast to Bangkok.

circa September 1979

No one will ever get out of this World alive.
Therefore maintain a sense of values.
Take care of yourself.
Good health is everyone’s major source of wealth.
Without it happiness is almost impossible
Be cheerful and helpful. People will repay in kind.
Avoid angry and abrasive persons. They are generally vengeful.
Avoid zealots. They are generally humourless.
Listen more and talk less. No one ever learnt by talking.
Be chary in giving advice: wise men don’t need it and fools won’t heed it.
Be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, tolerant of the weak and the wrong.
Sometime in life you will be all of these.
Don’t equate money with success. There are many successful money makers who are miserable failures as human beings.
What counts most about success is how a man achieves it.
Love someone you did not love for love is the enriching ingredient of life.

BREAKFAST WITH TOLSTOY

Breakfast is a routine enough event, isn't it? The kitchen wakes up to the sound of porridge being stirred, toast being burnt under my watchful eye, fish oil capsules bouncing as they hit the side plate and plummet onto the floor, the teapot steaming under my Mum's tea cosy.
John Humphrey's strident, but somehow comforting, tone emanates from the radio as I dart out the back door to stampede the squirrels off the bird feeder.
The wild card at the breakfast table is always the presence of human beings and the possibilities arising from conversation!
As I put a comforting layer of honey on my toast (on top of the layer that was already there), my wife tucked into her porridge. An item on freedom of expression in Putin's Russia came and went on Radio 4.
"I don't think I've ever read a Russian classic novel., I said. I think of them as magnificent of course but tragic and sombre and - well, heavy".
Having passed judgement on something I knew nothing about, satisfied, I rested my case and focused on the prunes and yoghurt once more. "Four or five", I pondered.
"It just depends what you read," came the reply from the other side of the table.
"Is there any of that nice Waitrose honey left?", she said.
While my wife continued seamlessly,I made myself useful and hunted it down. It was cowering behind the pepper grinder.
"What do you mean?" I said. Distracted by thoughts of blueberry jam, I'd let the genie out of the bottle.
"For instance, you'd love Pages from a Huntsman's Diary by Turgenev or The Cossacks by Tolstoy. Oh, and Years of Childhood by Aksakov is brilliant. Do you think this milk's off?"
While she spoke, she poured the Twinings and I stumbled around frantically for a biro and something to scribble on.
"Oh, yes - and don't forget Goncharov's Oblomov and", as she closed the dishwasher door, "any short stories by Pushkin. They're so beautiful. Do you fancy going to the gym later?
And whatever you do, you must read A Hero of Our Time by Lermontov."
"It's ok. I've got them all!
Right, I think I'll go and have a bath" - and off she went, happy as a sandboy (apparently they delivered sand, the precursor of sawdust, to pubs and theatres in the 18th century. Why that made them happy is anyone's guess!).
Reeling, I noted the last of the names down and collapsed, exhausted and amazed, not for the first time.
All that knowledge, all that love of the novel, of the 19th Century, here and abroad. I'd pressed a button and a stream of consciousness had flowed out, from the mother lode, lovingly and unpretentiously. About a minute's worth, no more.
For her, it was an effortless process of enthusiastically assembling a 'shopping list'.
For me, I saw her love of reading and what it's always meant to her - and given her. All that secret reading under the bedspread, late into the night as a little girl.
And it somehow colonised me over my muesli.
I was gobsmacked,- in awe really. I may not read any of them.
I feel like I have.