Letter 4.8

The weather this month has been very hot and very dry, but the porch is cool and picks up cool breezes, off Ella Rock, I assume, which I plan to climb in the next couple weeks. Better do it now before the forest on top of it gets burnt to the ground -- there have already been two fires up there (set by farmers burning off land -- and a few trees -- to grow crops), as well as several fires in the nearby pine forest. The philosophy around here seems to be, if you see a tree, burn it.

This cottage is curiously cool. Other tin-roofed houses I've lived in have been, in the hot season, unbearably hot at midday, but this one is cooler inside than out. Partly because it has a high roof, but that seems an inadequate explanation. It's dry enough so that in the afternoon my water trickle dries up and the level of the pond sinks down until, after sunset, the water starts to flow again. A minor inconvenience to me, but more serious to the farmer below, who isn't getting enough water to irrigate his paddy, (Even if I took no water he still wouldn't get nearly enough.) People say the NE monsoon is due to start this month. (The SW monsoon, just finished, affects this part of the island only in clouds and wind, not in rain.) We'll see what that brings. Nights have been noticeably cooler the last few days -- if we can call night day.

So much fruit around, I'm on a high-fruit diet. Bananas, papayas, avocados, some citrus, lots of fruits I can't even name. Plus rice, bread, roti, and various vegetables -- carrots, lettuce, and tomato salad the most easily identifiable. Lots of lentils. Some coconut. I keep discovering more stuff growing on this acre of land. 4 avocado trees. 2 naval orange trees. A lime tree. A coffee bush with nearly-ripe berries. (Coffee is very highly taxed on import, so it's definitely a luxury item, yet, until 100 years ago, Ceylon grew much of the world's coffee, no tea, and then blight and insects and planters' skepticism about their seriousness wiped out the coffee, and tea was planted as a substitute crop. Nowadays cautious attempts are made to re-introduce coffee, but with mixed results.) Anyway, I shall certainly make use of these coffee beans. Not that I'm such a coffee lover, but I love to use what's here. Along with what grows wild I have my usual failing flower garden. Main crop seems to be clover and some onions sprouted from old ones I tossed away last month. I wait for the jack fruit to ripen.

Two crows come to eat my left-overs, and are becoming less and less afraid of me. (Curiously, both of them are named Charlie.) Recently their 3 fledglings learned to fly and now appear here: they stand in front of a pile of (say) rice and caw and caw, demanding to be fed. They feel, apparently, that the world should be so arranged that they need only open their mouths and they will be fed. (We Buddhist monks close our mouths and get fed.) Their parents (Charlie & Charlie) sometimes feed them and sometimes ignore them. When ignored long enough they finally peck disconsolately at the food, complaining bitterly all the while at the injustice of it all.

Last night as I was standing outside looking at the moon (full tomorrow) a rabbit dashed past, not 5 feet from me. This is the biggest wildlife I've seen around here. He lives, no doubt, in the tea bushes, where small creatures can survive, and was on his way downhill to try his luck in the rice paddy, now all transplanted. The farmers arc working their vegetables, spending most of the day watering. I should think they would have, by now, evolved a system to lift the water from the stream to the fields (a vertical distance of under 15 feet), rather than hauling it by hand in buckets. I've been tinkering with some Rube Goldberg designs using simple materials -- bamboo for piping, etc. -- that could ease their work considerably. Assuming, of course, it doesn't lead to quarrels over water rights, and presto! the modern world. Sometimes technology can have a devastating effect on cultural mores, as in the U.S., for instance, and in these utters it's best to proceed carefully.

Letter 4.7

Greetings from the edge. Restoration work continues, at about the same speed as demolition work. Unravelling stringhoppers and then ravelling them up again. (Ravioli?) Good exercise for my amusing muse, whoever she be. What is the Greek for this?) But which part is the restoration and which the demolition leaves me puzzled.

Things are here as always, changeless change, a bit for the better a bit for the worse, a bit closer to the grave, nothing dramatic to tell of – certainly no bullet holes through stump windows as you report, Nature's way of telling you... -- except the excitement generated by the slow cultivation of boredom coupled with a gradual distaste for everything the world has to offer and some of the things it doesn't. The writing of this letter, for instance, is an Event in my life that I shall remember, review -- oh, I could have said it that way, ever so much more clever, and I should have mentioned such and such, etc. -- as I have anticipated and savoured the prospect these last several months. TODAY'S THE DAY! Hi, Hum. Ho, hum. Something to DO. Contact (Roger Wilco) with another person. Well, it's not as great as I describe it, really. It has its mundane moments, such as the mundane boredom of studying Sinhalese – and such low-level low-count low-down kind of boredom if ever there was one -- and such as the sensual high of food every day, but there's disadvantages to every profession, as well as every antifession.

As a bullet found its way inside your stump and plugged Mirotchka's sunflower painting, have you considered hanging it on the outside instead of over your bed? Over the bed sounds like a very tough shot, even for a great billiards player. Outdoors the flowers may get enough sun, air, and bullet holes to germinate.

Well, I'd love to write more now, but my muse, my very own moose, is calling me, so I think I'll go out on the porch now and be bored some more. Ah, Wilderness!

V .

Letter 4.6

Well, I've moved in -- for how long remains to be seen -- to the cottage I told you about, near the town of Ella, about 8 miles from Bandarawela. My German monk friend didn't want to stay here, preferring to be away from roads and RR tracks. He's found a place he likes about 3 miles away and will build something that suits him, which will probably take him 3 months. Some workmen have been here doing various work; clearing the yard, digging a hole for the pond, repairing the porch and the stone parapet walls.

Ella, as I described briefly in my last letter, is on the eastern edge of Upcountry, 3400 feet high, and there is a gap leading down to the lowland, which offers a fine view; also a large rock, certainly over 1000 feet high, with a eucalyptus forest on its side and top and a cave halfway up where, I'm told, Rohanna took refuge when his kingdom was conquered. Rohanna was the first of the great pre-Sinhalese kings, some 3 thousand years ago. The cottage looks out on this rock, and is bordered by rice-paddy below and to the right, a pine forest to the right and behind, tea on the left, and partly-wooded hills in front.

By co-incidence the manager of the estate (tea) -- a Burgher -- is a client of a Colombo man I know, and he has proven helpful in some ways. I occupy about an acre of hillside, not all at once, but such is life. A water channel from the tea above has been tapped and now there is a small 5 feet high waterfall going into the pond, and a tiny river running past my front door, over which the workmen have built a tiny stone bridge, for, presumably, a tiny Buddhist monk to cross on.

I'm about 150-200 yards back of a secondary road with little traffic but some noise, and at least double that distance from the RR tracks behind, from which comes at regular intervals a muted rumble. The tracks go around a hill, making a complete U-turn, west to east to west, before turning north for Badulla, the end of the line, about 12 miles up.

From the cottage the prospect sweeps over hills upon hills, dotted with dwellings here and there and several tea factories -- large two-and-three story structures; they're all built on the same general plan, all have many small-paned windows, and all are painted white.

Very few mosquitos or other noxious pests here. The children can be pests (though are not noxious), but the first time they came I put them to work sweeping and clearing and they've tended to stay away since then.

Today a centipede fell from the ceiling to the ground only a few inches from where I sat, and proceeded to scurry onto my lap. I shook him away and he hid in the bedding, which I had to dismantle to find him and remove him. I'm told this chap has a very painful (though not fatal) bite, but I have some native oil that works amazingly well against poisonous bites. But such incidents are to be expected from time to time, as, in LA, close calls on the freeways are to be expected from time to time. Preferably while you're not eating, however, which I was.

Ella, by the way, seems to be perhaps the only place in Sri Lanka where they don't load up their food with enormous quantities of chilis. Also lots of vegetables are grown around here (some of the paddy field below is used for vegetables), so my diet suits me. But it's still uncertain how long I'll stay in this particular cottage -- I too am not overly fond of trains, traffic, and neighbors (the nearest house is about 60 yards off) whose radios blare with Sinhalese music.

What do I know about President Jayawardene? Only that he's held in very high regard in Sri Lanka and considered their equivalent of, say, a Sadat or Nehru. I met his son once in Thailand, a very quiet and well-mannered boy about 20, but haven't felt inclined to contact him. Jayawardene is up for re-election next year. Since even the anti-government papers seem to keep hands off him I assume he will be re-elected. Obviously, he's not in it for the money. I don't know how much political power he has, if any, but I believe the position is more of a moral than political significance, as is India's presidency, for example, where the P.M. -- Mrs. Gandhi -- has great power and the president -- J.M. Reddy until he died recently, don't know who's replaced him -- has great respect. A reasonable division of the spoils.

Letter 4.5

I left not and humid Colombo for the cool, dry upcountry, but found Kandy, on the wet side of the hills, not so dry, so, after a few days poking around old haunts, took the train to the Eastern Part, to a town called Bandarawela. There I visited an old friend -- a German monk -- he was in Kandy when I lived there and helped in building my kuti. Unfortunately, about 2 years ago he developed poly-arthritis and since then has had a lot of difficulties, particularly since he's an active sort who previously lived alone in very remote areas. Now he's looking for someplace less remote. I may have found a place for him, actually, on one of my outings: in a small town called Ella, on the edge of Upcountry, where there is a view down to the plains 3000 feet below, a sweeping panorama, I found a small cottage empty, not far from town, on the edge of a tea estate on one side, rice fields on the other, a pine forest behind it, with water close by, and some land prepared for planting. A fine spot; if it's not too noisy -- and that can only be known by living there for a while. I told him of it and he'll go to see it and decide. If he doesn't want it I might take it myself.

On another trip I went to see a place called Werakangama but missed the way and wound up walking on a steep uphill path four miles and came, quite unexpectedly, to an enormous waterfall -- 790 feet high, according to a small and ancient signpost -- which was in fine wild country just below the tea line. I've told Sinhalese about it but none of them (except those living in the area) seem to have even heard of it. Several of Sri Lanka's famous falls are much shorter. And then a local lad, as evening was approaching, invited me to stay in a bungalow. This usually means a well-made house, but I assumed he meant an ordinary shelter, but no, he led me to a fine brick house with glass windows -- uncommon in the tropics, where shutters are usually considered sufficient -- and a large stone fireplace and skylights in every room -- including one door with a sign on it reading 'SILENCE -- COURTLMARTIAL SITTING' which opened into a room with a Western-style sit-down toilet and shower fitted with a water heater. All abandoned years ago. Why, I c0uldn't learn, but because of the sign speculated that it might have been some Brit's retirement home, perhaps military, since all the doors had 7 feet clearance and were nearly wide enough for 2-abreast, perhaps someone loved Ceylon but was damned tired of always knocking his head on low doorways that had to be squeezed through and wasn't going to have that in his retirement home, which had a lovely view of the falls.

Letter 4.4

Somehow I have the feeling I've been here before. I keep trying to analyze what it can be that gives me that feeling -- maybe it is the stringhoppers, maybe it isn't the way I sweep up leaves -- but the only result is that I suspect the feeling arises from trying to analyze it, and that if I stopped trying to figure out why I feel that way I'd stop feeling that way. But what would there be to do instead? Write indolent letters to exdolent friends, no doubt.

It's definitely a change for the better. Thailand has such a rigid hierarchical social structure, so unyielding, and so hostile to any with the temerity to not accept their proper place, let alone to not accept any place, and on the other hand so rewarding, materially, to those who do (I speak of farangs -- certainly the poor rice farmers get no rewards for being rice farmers) -- for a loner like meself it was difficult in extremis, and that's why, of course, the twits gave me the old heave ho. Others may follow, but I was clearly the worst example of a bad lot -- 'the worst of hippies', as one writer styled me in a widely circulated Buddhist journal. I would have preferred 'the worst of late-blooming beatniks', myself, but we have to accept what we can get, these days, and be duly grateful.

Anyhoo, ol' S.L. is a breath of fresh, if rather damp, air, after the stifling mentality of Thailand (not to mention the pollution), and a green and beautiful place still, showing unfortunate signs of a disease called progress, but not yet infecting the whole of it, and there are a few odd corners left where an odd person can tuck himself away, and so, after completing the bureaucratic business of Colombo, I now find myself, or perhaps lose myself, in Upcountry, walking beneath cloudy skies down little-travelled roads, all of which feel like I've been here before. I feel like I've written this before. Or perhaps it's you who has written this before and I've read/not read it before -- it's getting harder to tell who's to blame for what, these days, both of us shaping the same Carmen Vipaka[1]. (I re-read W.B. before leaving Colombo, and must admit that it was funnier to write than to read. Still, it did evoke some smiles, one or two chuckles, and assorted wheezes and snorts. But yes, the thing is open to just about any potshot, fair or foul, one might care to heave at it, and it don't mean a thing 'cause it ain't got no swing -- the shots, that is, not the book -- but there too much, plotwise, to swallow easily, and possibly not enough, characterwise, to chew on. I say it what wrote it, or atleast what partly rewrote it, so it's said with some affection and love, and if a publisher says just the same without affection and love, that's his bag, but the mss. can be made into something, there's enough good stuff to be molded fairer and finer, amen.)

And you?

The Once and Future Present

V.

__________

[1] The name of the Israeli heroine of Worthy Bones is a pun on the Pali kamma vipaka: 'ripening of karma'

Letter 4.3

Sri Lanka -- BEAD

The flight to Sri Lanka was comfortable, a DC-10 half empty so plenty of room, with good Thai Airlines food and service. My first flight on a DC-10, which doesn't compare with a 747 in terms of impressiveness, although -- in as much as it got me here -- quite adequate. Adequate, too, is the word for Colombo's airport. Not only not air-conditioned, but not even ceiling fans. But Sri Lanka has always been a country that scraped by on frugal standards. Thailand, of course, is given to a sybaritic luxuriousness, and can afford to do so -- atleast the Bangkok people can, because they ruthlessly plunder the labor and fruit of the countryside. But in Sri Lanka things seem more equitable. There are beggars, as in Bangkok, and poor people who live in hovels (these are, mostly, Tamils, Sri Lanka's oppressed minority); but not teeming hordes of them as in the squalid Bangkok slums and hungry countryfolk. Therefore Sri Lanka doesn't have the wealth (and perhaps not even the inclination) to indulge in the sensual crossness of Bangkok-style living.

Not that there haven't been changes. Many more cars (though Mercedes', etc., are still rare, not commonplace as in Bangkok, and many well-maintained old cars still ply the roads). Streets widened. TV arrived about 2 years ago, and the well-off all have color sets now. Such changes are found; but underlying it all is a sameness that is surprising: like a dowager aunt who has always had two biscuits at teatime, she is not going to change her habits in old age, nor even consider refurbishing all the somewhat tatty or shabby remnants of her old life just for the sake of appearances (as Bangkok has just done for its bicentennial). And, of course, the place is green. Unlike the brown of Thailand here there are palm trees in profusion, pleasant -- perceptible even from the plane (which, by the way, took 15 minutes to fly over the entire island – distances that 12 years ago took me 15 days padding barefoot).

In company with the owner of a rubber estate, I took a trip about 36 miles south of Colombo to his place, and remarked on the stability of the country-side. He repeated the fact that other parts of the country had been much developed while this corner remained ignored -- sounded promising -- and ominous. I've also visited old acquaintances in Kandy and have taken the first steps towards finding a suitable place to stay in the upcountry. Kandy, having been a pleasant small town, with some sense of itself in style and history, showed more signs of 'development' than Colombo: construction despoils nearly every hillside, save the tall mountain to the Southwest. I went to the clearing where my old kuti used to stand, but the clearing had been replanted in pine and was so overgrown with dense stands of elephant grass that I couldn't even force my way to the old site to see if, perhaps, a wall might not yet stand... So much (or so little) swept away by time, the earth overgrowing our traces. A breath of relief, somehow...

As for mother... what can I say that I haven't said (and thought) so many times before? It grieves me that she should be in such a state; I'm only relieved that she has you to look after her, for no one else -- let alone hospital staff -- could do so with such love and care and attentiveness to what is needed.

Letter 4.2

Bangkok -- BEAD

It's come down to the crux and so it's the end of the road here in Thailand for me. Next stop: Sri Lanka. Well, it's changed its name and I've changed mine, so we might still have things in common, even if they are uncommon things. However, I've still got a month on my visa, so I'm going to spend this time in the North backwoods country wandering, which is a complex form of walking and sitting. Complex, but not complicated.

This will be the first time I've returned to a country after a long absence (except for the U.S.), so it will be interesting from that point of view to see what changes have gone on there, and how conditions might have to be adapted to. And, of course, I'll be arriving with a rather different set of intellectual baggage -- it's a good thing that the airlines don't charge overweight for that! -- and be in a very different mind-set than 15 years ago too. (I like the way certain epochs of my life have worked out in round numbers. It makes accountancy so much easier. I think this is a gratuitous or accidental feature of my life-script. Act 97, Scene 16 finds us back in...)

3,5 years in Thailand. Well, that's not a round number, but that's because Thailand (unlike Sri Lanka) is not a round country, nor is 3,5 a whole or rational number, for the same relationship. It's a country fragmented into area vs. area, city vs. country, new vs. old, M16 vs. AK 47, and getting more fragmented. It seems clear that the divisive forces dominate over the cohesive ones, so Thailand, too, will come to the end of its road. Nor is it a rational country, even -- I'm sure -- by its own definition of 'rationality'. Emotions which cannot be expressed lurk beneath the surface of every relationship, an unseen motivator making situations forever irrational.

But my time there has been of use to me in a number of ways. It's a strong contrast to Sri Lanka, and so gives me a broader perspective of the way I can relate within different systems, a more coherent set of values about what is truly of value to me, and it's given me, until 6 months ago, the space (and time) I needed. Also some more difficult lessons, the one of the past half year perhaps the most trying, and still leaving much to be learned about it.

As for writing, I've mailed the lot off to Sri Lanka, including your conclusion to Worthy Bones (which I haven't had a chance yet to go over carefully). I think the book needs to be re-conceived in certain ways. (That's a new one, eh?) The characters need to be more human, less character-ish. The plot needs to be honed down. A lot of extraneous matters needs to go – e.g. Carmen's Israeli experience, a real shift for Jizi, and Mohel has to be less a Batman and more a real person with a problem related, somehow, to the matter at hand. The philosophy must emerge from the story, and not bury the story. And the tone, in the middle chapters, should be lightened up. We'll see what kind of set-up I can arrive at in Sri Lanka, and whether the space I'll be in there includes paper and ink. If so, I'm thinking of a few things -- revising Getting Off, some short stuff, carrying on with my Dhammapada verses -- here's a couple.

326.
Once this mind fared as it wished, quite free
to wander where it lusted, as it pleased.
Today I shall restrain it properly,
as the mahout trains the rutting beast.

327.
Be watchful of the mind.
For non-remiss aspire.
Rise above the unrefined
like a tusker from the mire.

'That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions' – Santayana

How's the old sod near Sooke?

V.

Chapter IV: Letter 4.1

Chapter IV
Come Back a Long Way

Hindu mythology tells how a wrathful, avenging god set fire to a glittering pleasure city on the island of Ceylon. Today the exquisite island is called Sri Lanka and it is again aflame with violence.

The mythical demon-god of Ceylon kidnapped Lord Rama's wife from India and imprisoned her in what now is Colombo, and history records that on the island Buddhist Sinhalese kings fought Hindu Tamil kings from South India before and after the birth of Christ.

____________________

 

"...Heller presses his point home by telling us (on the same page) that Catch-22 is like the flies that Orr sees in Appleby's eyes.

"Oh, they're there, all right," Orr had assured [Yossarian]... "although he probably doesn't even know it. That's why he can't see things as they really are."

"How come he doesn't know it?" inquired Yossarian.

"Because he's got flies in his eyes," Orr with exaggerated patience. "How can he see he's got flies in his eyes if he's got flies in his eyes?"

It made as much sense as anything else....

Yathābhūtam na pajānāti: he does not see things as they really are: the phrase -- so typical a Sutta description of the puthujjana, the unenlightened commoner -- is used here by Heller to illuminate precisely the characteristic of being entrapped in a situation. Not only does the puthujjana have flies in his eyes, he does not see that he has them, and he does not see this because he has them. His dilemma is that though he must find a way to see, yet he cannot find that way precisely because he cannot see. Indeed, he cannot even see for himself that this is his problem. And this is the dilemma which, at its most fundamental level, is the specific concern of the Buddha's Teaching. The structure of avijjā, the structure of Catch-22, the structure of "having flies in one's eyes": they are one and the same. Catch-22 is avijjā. The title character in both the novel and in our lives never appears and yet is omnipresent..."

Sāmanera Bodhesako,
from The Buddha and the Catch-22

END

End of Chapter III

Getting There

Letter 3.73

(Culled from Thailand's English-language press, came the last news from that fabled land, as my legman was about to take up his new Sri Lankan beat. 'Khomeini objects to the bureaucracy because they are competent,' 'We didn't recommend it, we didn't approve it, we simply endorsed it.' 'No one told them what they had done wrong apart from performing official duties.' Former Prime Minister Moraraji Desai, 84, says the young generation should not feel discouraged, because India cannot get worse and the situation can only improve. 'We have kept going downhill for the past 2,000 years and now we have reached rock bottom. There is no way except to go up. So don't feel discouraged,' he told a meeting of his Janata Party youth section in Bombay. -- Húm)

Someone from Radio Thailand came through and asked me to write some 'Five minute pieces on Buddhism'. I bet he's sorry now!

 

PEACE THROUGH SIMPLICITY

Can we be at peace? Not only with others but with ourselves? Is it possible? Or must we always make war with ourselves, always separating what we want from where we are? For a long time now we have been at odds with ourselves, restless and dissatisfied. For a long time now we have filled ourselves with praise and blame, attraction and aversion, love and hate. For a long time now we have found ourselves as if entangled, caught up and not free, and we haven't found any way that didn't lead to new entanglements, new bonds. New entanglements? Not really; just variations of the same old entanglements and bonds, the ways we've been confined all our lives. So: we haven't even found a way that didn't lead to old entanglements, old bonds. Can we do so now?

Can we do something new? Something truly new? Enough of the old: entanglements, loves, hates, dissatisfactions. All of that is just different ways of being filled with ourselves. Perhaps filled with ourselves to do good, perhaps filled with ourselves to do bad, but always full. Can we, instead, be empty? I don't mean empty of everything whatsoever: that's too difficult. Let's just say, can we be empty of ourselves? Everything that's not ourselves can stay: that's not our problem, we don't have to worry about what's not ours. Others can take care of that, or we can take care of it later, So first let's just deal with what is ours. And let's try a brand new way of dealing with it, something we may never have tried before. Okay?

Let's make things simple. Do just this. Let's close our eyes and empty our hearts of everything that has to do with 'me' and 'mine'. Nothing more than that. It's that simple. If we see a revolting sights -- say, a decaying corpse -- we can easily avert our eyes. If we smell a bad smell we cover our noses. There are lots of bad smells around, but when we can avoid them it's certainly more pleasant to do so. If we accidentally touch a hot stove we pull our hand back quickly! So let us turn away from these thoughts of 'me' and 'mine' in the same way, just as if we touched something burning, or smelled something foul, or saw something revolting. Do this right now, please: don't wait. In the next minute you may be dead. Then you will have missed the chance to do something truly new.

Close your eyes. That way it's simpler. Forget about what your ears hear. Pay no attention to smells, tastes, touches. If the wind touches you just let it be a touch. Don't take it to be my touch, 'Oh, the wind is touching me!' It's just wind touching skin. It's just a perception, just like a rock is just a rock. Don't make it more than that. Let it be simple. Any time you see a complication, watch out! That's a good hiding place for 'me' and 'mine'. 'Me' and 'mine' love complications, so if we are to succeed in this new thing we'll have to avoid complications. Wherever there's a complication, that's the old way. Leave it be! If you try to 'do' anything with it you'll just make it more complicated! Treat it like you would a tangle of barbed wire. Did you ever try to untangle a bunch of rusty old barbed wire? Hopeless, isn't it? So leave all that aside. It's hopeless, these complications, so let's empty ourselves of it all. We can do that; just let the mind turn away from it, let the mind turn away from everything that's the old way, the complicated way, the way of 'me' and 'mine'. Okay?

So... What's left? Is it like we expected or like we didn't expect? If it's like we expected, we've probably made a misjudgment, because what we expected is the old way. Only if it's what we didn't expect can we know that this is, for us, a truly new way, a way we've never before imagined. If it didn't work for you then try it again. Keep trying it until it does work. Keep trying, because there's really nothing else worth doing. Everything else is the old way, the way of dissatisfaction. Maybe even trying is the old way too, but if it works, then it won't be the old way any more, the way of dissatisfaction. Then it will be a new way. So keep trying.

Only one thing to remember; don't be like a man looking for silence. Everywhere he goes there's too much noise for him, and as he goes along he keeps shouting, 'SILENCE!' at the top of his voice. But he can't find silence anywhere. Don't be like that. But then this man, one day he stops calling for silence, and he hears that it really is quiet... everywhere. That silence, that's not what he'd been expecting, is it? He'd always thought that silence had a voice. But it doesn't even have a name. Or if it has a name, it's a name that's not spoken. 0rif it is spoken, it is said without echoes.

Letter 3.72

Several glorious months up at Wat Palad, outside Chiang Mai, came to a sad end when my visa contracted what may yet turn out to be a fatal illness, terminal. Red Tape-itis. I'm in the middle of one of those interminal oriental intrigues, this one designed (by the Director of the Department of Religious Affairs) to kick out all foreign Buddhists without anyone who cares knowing about it. Some of us have banded together to try to Do Something about it, but Doing Something in Thailand is a very difficult matter, not at all like in the West, and though we're not defeated, we're rather stymied, after several months of fairly intensive effort, and it seems a possibility (to say the least) that a few of the most expendable of us (of which I'm at the forefront) may have to leave soon enough, the rest to follow in dribs and drabs as the Director, a xenophobe if there ever was one, can manage. It's a very long story, so naturally I consider writing it up. Difficult to start it, though, when it hasn't yet ended.

What is this about a publisher interested in Bones? A hell of a thing to mention it and to say no more. Well, say more. Please be less cryptic than usual. I know the world suffers from too much straightforwardness, too much prosaicness, too much detail, too little fancy, etc., but You have a Golden Oppy to add to the mess, and I'm surprised you would pass up the chance to leave your portion on the pile. Please don't keep me posted. The cancelling machines are hard on my fingers. But if you write fairly soon I'll still be in Occupied Palestine, oops, Siam, since I expect to hold out till the end of the year before giving up the visa -- the modern equivalent of giving up the ghost -- and transmigrating to Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Sikkim, Bhutan, Bangladesh, or Tavatimsa [1].

I always thought a Sooke [2] was part of a town; the part where they sold not Buddha bones but Mohamed hairs.

Yours in falchah shovelling,

V.

__________
[1] Tavatimsa: the Buddhist 'heaven'; a blissful, albeit impermanent, place or state of being; highly dangerous as it may sap the will to break through it to liberation, nibbána.

[2] A play on the Arabic word souk meaning bazaar or marketplace.

Letter 3.71

Still in Thailand, as you can tell, but also still only on the edge of Thailand, meaning the visa situation is not yet resolved, though I have some hope of a favorable outcome, since a number of people are helping me. It would seem that something has to work. For example, I know the 2nd-in-charge at Immigration, who has agreed to submit my application to the committee with last year's letter. (The problem is that I need a letter from a certain department before Immigration can officially give me a visa and that department has so far refused to give me one, for reasons which are too complicated to explain in a sheaf of aerogrammes, but they gave me a letter last year, and it's that letter that my friend in Immigration will use to see if it can slip past the committee which decides on all visa applications.) Also, someone who knows the boss of the man who refuses to give me the letter said he will speak to the boss (who is the Minister of Education)... But... enough of all this...

Bangkok is having its bicentennial celebrations, both of Bangkok as capital and of the Chakri dynasty as kings of Siam. This means that after a few frantic months of attempting to cover two centuries of filth with a coat of white-wash and patches of cement and plaster, there is now a hokey month of festivities, noise, crowds of tourists all trying to figure out what is happening (answer: nothing worth bothering about), and where it's happening (nowhere/everywhere), herds of hustlers all out for the main chance, and more traffic and turmoil and pollution than is normal even for a place like Bangkok, which, you may have gathered, is not my favorite place to be. Later this month the city will experience its annual floods, which submerge parts of the city in inches and sometimes feet of filthy water, so perhaps the parade will all float away like a bad dream (inspired by indigestion, no doubt).

The Thai baht, by the way, continues to plummet, and Thai upper-classes continue to seek foreign shelters for their (usually ill-gotten) gains. It may not be long before visas aren't worth very much. Meanwhile, the far-right-wing forces, under a general named Arthit, gather their strength. These are really vicious people, the sort who are quoted in interviews as saying things like 'I am bored with humanitarianism, very bored.' Not exactly the sort of people who would bridge the mammoth gap between Bangkok's very rich and the countryside's very poor (and, because of the encroaching technology of Bangkok, the countryside becomes poorer even without the rapacious rip-offs of the government forces). But then the very rich aren't interested in bridging any gaps in this country, only between themselves and the U.S. (or Australia, England, or whatever, but mostly the U.S.)

No doubt I could continue to struggle on in Thailand with short visa extensions; however, this would tie me up indefinitely in Bangkok, and I've had quite enough of that, so I'm more and more inclined to choose a country where, from all reports, these visa hassles don't exist, and that country looks more and more (for more than this reason) like my old isle of Serendip... Ceylon... Sri Lanka...

To bow out of society in style, this evening I shall be having tea with the family of a princess. English-educated, and though directly descended from King Mongkut -- the King of the ling and I -- yet very remote from the present royal family. Her husband is English. She makes a living as a batik artist. I'll tell her about a man who looked like a fisherman in a Chinese painting: my teacher in Jogjakarta. Perhaps even demonstrate his silence.

Letter 3.70

If you think winter was great, wait until you try a sweet-&-sour stringhopper: guaranteed to draw a fine line between (or is it around?) reality and illusion. Only trouble is, which side is reality?

What do you mean did I get the tail-end of Bones? If you mean did I finish writing it the answer is no; if you mean that you mailed me something more, the answer is still no, but with a question: what did you mail, when was it mailed, and where was it mailed to? And does the 'tail-end' suggest that you've mailed a middle-end and/or front-end as well (or would it be tail-middle and tail-beginning?)? Well, I haven't received any of that either, whether or not you've mailed it. That makes it serious. Waylaid by a brown-nosed coprophile (coprophobe?)? Hope not. Bless you and your 'feeble hawkings'. Spit for shit. That about sums up the selling of delusions. I'm especially interested in the negative commentary of readers and form letters which so carefully avoid saying anything in as few innocuous words as possible. So keep them cards and letters comin', folks.

So you woke up one morning laughing and nothing mattered in the slightest? Wunderbar! (But why laugh, then?) Did the woman appear because of, as a result of laughing/waking up/nothing mattering in the slightest? Or co-incidentally? Subsequently? Hyperspacially? (Land o' goshen, don't that beat all? Hyperspace would be merely an excuse for hypershit.) But then you say this woman wasn't actually there in the flesh. What was she there in? What is allowed now that wasn't before? In short, brother, whatever has or hasn't happened to you is all great and good (it's all perfect, it's all perfect), particularly so if I rightly interpret your statements as meaning that you have seen/do see Dhamma (it's all suffering, it's all suffering), but I'm not sure that that's what you mean. (Perhaps you're not sure either?) But then again I'm not sure about a lot of things, but I am sure that it's time to start a new paragraph.

I'm staying outside of Chiang Mai, about a 1500 feet climb from alms round every morning -- does my lungs and sweat glands a world of good, though it's hell on the knees and ankles -- in a square but decaying kuti. The carika was very good, found some fine places, including one actually inhabitable, which I may return to, and lots of adventures and experiences ('But what's so great about adventures and experiences?' you may ask; to which I reply, tellingly, 'Well you may ask.') of no use to anybody, and more on the way. Why do I do it? Hell, I haven't even figured out (yet) how I do it. In fact, I'm only a shade on the side of thinking that I actually do do it, or at least that it's done (but not over and done; perhaps under and done).

I agree Something Happened didn't measure up to Catch-22 (from an overblown wordiness, trying to tell too much, but not from a lack of trying). Catch-22 is still, for me, one of the great influences on my life (an adventure and experience both?)

V.

Letter 3.69

The mountain to the east of Pai (the provincial capital) is gorgeous: heavy jungle in parts, forest in parts, and parts of it like grassy parkland with enough trees for shade but no undergrowth. Wide vistas. Very steep in places -- sometimes switchback roads pass the same viewpoint 5 or 6 times, each time from a higher vantage point, before moving on to the next hill.

The whole area from about 5 miles west of Pah Poe (i.e. about 10 miles east of Pung Duat) to the final downgrade of the mountains descending to the Pai valley floor (a very steep descent of 15 miles) is the finest country I've seen in Thailand.

Pai is a small town, about 3500 population, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, very ordinary, sleepy, old clapboard beside new concrete, tar roads needing repairs, an agricultural center of the only substantial valley between Mai Mali (where the westbound road began, 25 miles north of Chiang Mai) and Mae Hong Son (which is about 15 miles east of the Burmese border).

A night there at a temple, then over the next mountain on the most difficult day of the trip: walked 25 miles over the highest mountain in the area and through heavy rainstorm and clouds, simply because there was no place to stop, and the entire day there wasn't one single vehicle going my way (which will tell you how well travelled the road is, though there were 4 vehicles that day going the other way -- I find it an invariable rule of walking or hitching that no matter which way I'm going there's always more traffic the other way). Anyway, I reached the summit and looked out on a magnificent view of range after range of mountains -- I'm sure I could see well into Burma -- and a valley before me, and after a 5 mile walk I reached a village of Lisu people about 7 PM and spent the night there in the school house.

The Lisu are hill-tribe people who wear very colorful dress, have their own language and customs (animistic), live in bamboo and thatch houses, quite large but without windows, smoke opium, are quite clean (which is no easy thing in the hills: their village, after the storm, was a quagmire), keep a lot of animals (pigs, dogs, cows, horses, but I saw no buffalo, and of course a lot of hens; I also saw several cats, an uncommon sight in Thailand), most of which roam freely. The boys all have their head shaved saved for a square patch, about 2 inches on the side, in the front center of their skull. The children all wear pullover dresses, boys and girls alike. The men wear baggy pantaloons and shirt, the women skirts (black), blouses of many colors, and a brilliant light-blue apron, long hair in a bun. They eat white fluffy rice, unlike most of the Thais in the north of Thailand, who eat brown glutinous rice, and meat of course, and I was given also some sort of root, not potato but not too different, fried with chili and some type of green all quite spicy and also quite dry, so I couldn't eat much of it and drank a lot of water (which fortunately was available outside the schoolhouse in a rain-catchment tank). The food also was quite clean.

The people were hospitable but, aside from the curious children, they left me alone unless I approached them. Few of the women spoke Thai and the men spoke with more of a Bangkok accent than the heavy and hard to understand Northern dialect -- obviously they've learned their Thai in the school house (where the Bangkok dialect is taught, compulsory since various regions cannot understand each others' dialects), rather than through much contact with Thais. Also, their Thai is, in sore cases, not even as good as mine, though a few can speak quite well. I saw one vehicle in the village, a Jap pickup converted, as is common in Thailand, with two benches and a roof into a sort of jitney or small bus.

From a distance I saw some fields, but couldn't make out what they were growing -- obviously not rice, which requires bottom-land -- probably some poppies. The school was staffed by 3 teachers, all Thais from Chiang Mai who had no ties with the Lisu. The school had posters on the wall teaching the children to give respect and allegiance to the King and Queen, and to brush their teeth properly.

The village had about 30 to 40 houses, all on stilts about 5 feet off the ground in standard Thai fashion. This is very different from the Burmese style, which is to be found in the older buildings of Mae Hong Son (which, I believe, used to be part of Burma), where buildings sit flat on the ground. The old Burmese temples here, for example, rise in layers, like a square multi-layered cube, each level smaller than the lower one, with gingerbread fancy work on the eaves and other fittings, and ending, on top, with a spire or cupola. Navy gray de rigueur. Wood planks run vertically, not horizontally. Tin roofs always. (Thai temples all have tile roofs in a particular pattern of green, red, and yellow, and curlicue fancy work on the eaves rather than Burmese lattice-work.)

The tail-end of the trip was spent among the Shan people (who call themselves Tai-yai) who live around the border of Shan state in Burma. Some of these people have been there many generations (the border used to be farther east, I believe), but some of them are recent refugees (in the last 10-15 years) from the fighting in Shan state, where they are faced with a hostile Burmese army on one hand and a collection of various political and opium -- financed armies on the other.

The Burmese, who look upon the Shan people as inferiors, to be kept in their place and exploited, have been fighting a shifting panoply of revolutionary and mercenary armies since 1958, when Shan tried (as it still tries) to secede from the Union of Burma. (The Kayah state, south of Shan, also tries to secede, but though they have not succeeded either they are less harassed since they're not an opium-growing region.) The other armies, such as the Kuomintang, Communist Party of Burma, etc, control their various territories, collect taxes (mainly off the trade with Thailand, which profitably feeds a strong black market, and from the opium trade: the farmers have little left to give other than forced labor), but the Burmese army just takes over a town, confiscates all livestock and property, and tries to force the unwilling farmers to accept the government's socialist-collectivization plan, which is a tool for robbing the farmers and forcing them into a position of helplessness.

So some of the people have fled and settled in Thailand as refugees, living in remote border areas where conditions are very harsh (walking to one village the footpath was so muddy and tortuous that it took me 30 minutes to go half a mile; there are no facilities, schools, communications, etc, for these people; yet their life here is better than their prospects in Burma).

The one ray of hope in the situation of the Shan people is the Shan State Army, which seems to be, from what I can tell, to be a true people's army, with principles of democracy and freedom, and who are scrupulous in their relations with the people. They refuse to participate in the opium trade, so they are poor and poorly equipped, yet in the 10 or so years since their founding (mostly by disaffected students) they have grown into the second largest revolutionary army. (The CPB, funded by China, is twice their size, at about 15,000 men. The Burmese have 50,000 soldiers in Shan state.)

The refugees I've met (who sometimes return to Shan for visits) generally (but not always) speak well of the SSA, so if they can continue to grow in strength there may be a less than tragic conclusion to the Burmese uprising. Politics -- no space left to remark on the appearance of the refugee villages, their social structure, the more settled groups, etc., nor to speak of the Kayah village I visited, which underwent 7 years ago a remarkable mass conversion from Protestant to Buddhist. Only to say I've been collecting medicine from various contacts I have in Thailand, which are passed on to the refugees from Shan state. As bad as the Cambodian situation was they still got some international aid. The Shan get no aid at all. Many have illnesses, including malaria and typhoid. So I'm glad to be able to funnel some medicines their way.

Letter 3.68

Two days after writing the last letter, I was walking up the track to the hotsprings when I met a Landrover returning from there. The Landrover had been rented by a group of Europeans. The person I talked with was a French photographer free-lance but on assignment to do a photo article on the most difficult roads a Landrover can travel. He told the car rental agency that he wanted rough roads and they told their driver to take him here. I was surprised that the river was fordable and even more surprised that they were able to get past two particularly bad points, one where a culvert -- the only one on the track, had collapsed (but they managed to squeeze past it, going over a mud flat with 2 wheels) and another where a huge tree root covered most of the track (but they squeezed by, with 2 wheels going on a rather steep incline). The photographer took a few pictures of me, so perhaps in a few months I will appear in a French automotive magazine. And he also took your letter to mail.

In the month I stayed at Pung Duat there was only one other vehicle on the track, a Jeep which seems to belong to the son of one of the villagers -- a rattletrap affair held together with wire and bubblegum -- which for several days, at odd hours, carted odd goods from one place on the track to another. I don't know exactly what that was about.

And those were the 2 most exciting events of my stay here, which is coming to an end, for tomorrow I expect to continue on my way to Mae Hong Son, near the Burmese border. Either despite or because of its lack of eventfulness, Pung Duat has not only been very pleasant but very useful for my practice. I'd certainly stay longer, but as it happens I have to be back in Chiang Mai by the end of June if I'm to stay the rainy season at Wat Palad. I'd stay the rainy season at Pung Duat if it weren't that (I'm told) it's already reserved and the next most suitable forest hermitage I know of is Wat Palad. So I'll have a look at Mae Hong Son before I head back.

Letter 3.67

First I went north about 40 miles to Kaeng Pan Dao, which you may recall, is the place I was staying at about 2,5 years ago when I was robbed twice, and learned so much about how the police work in Thailand. Now, however, I found that since the abbot has left (about a year ago he went to France, which I already knew, where he now teaches) the place is totally deserted of resident monks. There were 3 carika monks there, out wandering like me, who'd been there about a week already, and so I stayed a few days and then left. The villagers didn't say anything directly about it, but I suspect they recognized me. I'd hoped a few of the monks from 2,5 years ago would be there, but as it was there was the chance to cover once-familiar ground and also to speak with the 3 monks, who gave me some useful 'tips for the road'.

After leaving, I headed west, and walked, in 3 days, about 50 miles over rolling scrub bush interspersed with buffalo grazing and cultivated plots; just clusters of a few huts and small houses on stilts passing for villages. As I went on the country got a more and more primitive feeling to it, until there was a very fine feeling to the land: the people seemed different, more open, more accepting, helpful but not pushy, and the land, on the verge of mountainous, felt fresh and clean, well irrigated, not overpopulated, smelling of the elements not oil fumes.

So I was very pleased to be walking through this country when, some days ago, I came to this place, Nam Pung Duat, which is on a dirt road about 3 miles north of the main (partly paved) road (which goes through Pai to Mae Hong Son, near the Burmese border -- my destination), and there I've found what is to my mind the finest forest hermitage I've come across in Thailand. A hermitage, indeed: there's no one living here so I have the place entirely to myself. (I later learned it's used almost exclusively by carika monks, who come, stay for a while, then leave.)

The wat consists of 4 small bamboo cottages and one spacious hall, also mainly bamboo (though it has a corrugated metal roof and good timber in its framework). The bamboo around here can often have a circumference of over 12 inches. Used as whole lengths it provides a slightly springy base for a floor. Split lengthwise and opened up, it makes large panels which can be used for flooring or as walls. It's easy to sweep and comfortable to live on and around. The hall is very open (though it has an attached room which is enclosed where I've set myself up), with a fine view of pine forest, dominated by a verdant and precipitously steep mountain. Clouds like to pass across the belt of this mountain leaving its upper reaches exposed but no longer grounded, afloat in the clouds as it were; bamboo stands, wild banana plants in the lowlands, papaya trees around the hall, and no sounds other than forest sounds, and those muted and discreetly orchestrated.

Near the main road there's a village (15 houses) and another one about a mile north of here (10 houses) where the people are very rustic, with little or no formal schooling, but they are openly glad to have me here (they are careful to leave me undisturbed: they know the ways of wanderers, and I'm not the first farang -- foreigner -- to stay here), even though they know almost nothing about the outside world. Almost everything they have -- even their rifles -- are of regional, if not local, manufacture, houses are of forest material, they roll their tobacco in slices of cut and dried banana leaf (which, when dry, separates into thin layers), and even the women smoke large -- 10 inches long -- conical cigarettes. They carry short jungle knives in unwieldy rattan cases on their belt and hunt with their front-loading rifles (i.e. they load it by pushing a bullet down the muzzle) small animals and birds, which seems to be the only game left alive in these parts. (In Ceylon it was unknown for a villager to have a gun, and Ceylon still has lots of large wildlife; in Thailand everyone has guns and the animal population has been decimated.)

About 2 miles north of here are some hot springs, small geysers, water churning as much as 10 feet into the air from a few of the pots, steam visible a long ways off, and a river of hot water running off of them. By going downstream until the water is at just the right temperature for me, I took a fine bath in a pond of hot running water (maybe a couple gallons/second-quite rapid). Nearby is a (cold) raging river, with impressive rapids and falls, and a pond, and a fine flower garden kept by an old man who, I assume, is in the hire of the government: a few facilities and sturdy bamboo bridges were paid for by someone -- I suspect that when the main road was built, about 7 or 8 years ago, someone thought to make a park out of the springs, but since this dirt road is motorable (by Jeep, at best) only in the dry season (otherwise the river it crosses up near the main road is too deep for vehicles, though wade-able) the plan seems to have deteriorated, which means I've got the place pretty much to myself whenever I want to walk out there and get a hot bath.

I do have one new friend at the wat: a porcupine. He takes food from my hand and even lets me scratch him (a tricky business, let me tell you). He has no quills under his chin or around his ears. On his back I can scratch between the quills; his skin is baby-tender. He loves fruit, especially papaya and rambutan.

Another extraordinary thing about this wat: many fireflies at night. In front of the hall, in the clearing, where they can see each other, they tend to gather, and also tend to flash simultaneously. It seems to be line-of-sight, so sometimes different clusters will each have their own rhythm, but sometimes the different clusters get synchronized, and then it's quite extraordinary to watch.

The place has such a good and magical feeling to it I expect to stay for a spell. However, I haven't yet found a way to send mail from here and suspect there isn't any, so probably this letter won't get posted until I push on to Pai (another 40 miles), where there's a post-office.

Letter 3.66

Despite the Reagan shooting, and the endless instant replays on TV, riveting the nation, perhaps there's been some mention in the US papers of the trouble in Bangkok -- practically on the eve of my departure for the North.

First there was the hijacking, ending in a deadly shootout, and then the attempted coup, which saw fewer fatalities, but a lot more excitement. The latter came close to a shootout too, but Sant, the usurping general, seems to have lacked sufficient strength and his troops, understanding that they were something less than a quarter of the army, and that neither the navy nor the airforce supported them, seem to have refused orders to fight Prem's troops (Prem is the PM) when several thousand of them actually entered the city.

That the navy and airforce were opposed to Sant was clear from the presence of some large warships in the Chao Phaya River, which flows past Bangkok not far from Wat Bovaranives, where I was staying, and from the fly-over of a number of F-5A fighter-bombers, who executed mock bombing runs over several of Sant's strongholds (all of which are within walking distance of Wat Bovaranives, which is on the 'government' end of town -- the business end being on the East Side).

Nevertheless, even if fighting had broken out the wat would certainly have been safe, for neither side would endanger a place whose first 3 abbots were crown princes. (The King of 'The King and I' was a monk, as you know, before he was a king and he was, as a monk, the first abbot of this wat -- the present abbot is the 6th.) So we had grandstand seats for a show that was better off not having happened. Still, there was a little nervous rush, what with the announcements crackling over the radio, sirens, sounds of distant gunfire, leaflets dropped from planes, etc.

The King of Thailand came to the wat the night before the coup attempt. Obviously he knew what was up and wanted to consult the abbot, who is his special adviser. He looked bewildered; now I know why.

Far from the King's bewildered face, I sit 350 miles north of Bangkok -- not as far north as Chiang Mai, but most of the way -- in a spacious cave in a limestone hill overlooking a forested valley. On the other side of the valley rise a fairly steep range of hills, running north/south, and on this side of the valley a lower range runs parallel. There are several caves in this hill, some as spacious as this one, but this one goes all the way through the rock and out the backside (maybe 250 feet), and, in this hot season, it's delightfully cool. Far better than the heat of Bangkok even with an electric fan. No bats seem to share this abode. The Northern RR line runs along the valley floor and I can see but only hear like a whisper a train at this moment. It's a 5 mile round trip to the village for alms, but I do it early in the day (leaving about sunrise) to get back before the heat. A small stream nearly dry each evening but fresh and clear each morning provides water. Since I'm unlikely to find another place as pleasing as this, not for a while, I'll stay here a while before heading north to Chiang Mai and beyond before I have to stay put for the rainy season.

Letter 3.65

What's a falchah? Choose one and only one of the following:

a) a Turkish sweet
b) a Japanese religion
c) a Soviet official
d) a species of ginseng
e) a Yiddish word meaning 'brother-in-law on the mother's side'
f) a Hebrew word meaning 'fields of grain'
g) a Swahili word meaning 'my neighbor's garbage'
h) the sound a person makes when he tries simultaneously to gargle and spit
i) none of the above
j) all of the above, including i

Any more questions?

Motto of the month:

Gather ye hens' eggs while ye may,
for the clock it is a-tickin',
and that same egg ye seek today,
tomorrow will be chicken.

(A toss up between an Egg-McMuffin and Colonel Sanders.)

Rains. Wandering. Here and there, Walking. Sitting, Carika (in Thailand miscalled thudong -- a corruption of dhutanga) in Northern Thailand. Hills. Cool. Soon rainy season retreat. Where? up in the air, No, no, actually, I'll stay on the ground. But where? Still up in the air.

A few ideas keep arising, but instead of chewing on these old bones, I just let 'em fall.

Yes, sure, but... but what's it all about?

V.

Letter 3.64

(Atleast there were some bits of world-shaking news to pass the time, judging from the clippings stuck to his next letter. 'Even someone who falls off a 15-story building bounces a little bit when he hits the sidewalk'. 'Under Taiwan's martial law proceedings, defendants are not regarded as innocent unless proven guilty'. Visa problems, no doubt: 'The numbers of Sumatran rhinoceros are dwindling fast and there are only about 4O left in Malaysia,' 'There is no report of progress, but there is also no report of no progress,' said a spokesman for the union. 'We live in a complex world. Some may be saying, We want out. But this is 1981. The complications are the price of civilization as we know it. You can't get out.' ISRAEL FOR EVERYONE. -- Hūm)

Yes, I'm still waiting for it (the f/Future!). How much longer, please? I remain in Thailand (as a samanera, by the way, got rid of some baggage in Bangkok, but picked up a new name -- a lighter carrying-case -- Bodhesako; where do I put it now?), but things are still precarious.

My mother, who has been in poor and failing health for years, has now had to be put in a home because her mental state has deteriorated and my father, exhausted, can no longer care for her. He is very pained by the whole situation. They (he, my sister, and presumably my mother) want me to return, perhaps for some prolonged (years?) deathbed vigil, and I am reluctant to do so, for obvious reason although I love them all and feel in many ways that I ought to go in spite of my own feelings that it would be a perilous journey -- and one that would only add more pain and complications to the situation. I don't know what to do; it may depend on what pressure is put upon me. There's nothing they can say that won't make me fee guilty (even that they don't need me) -- how cleverly we arrange our lives -- but obviously some techniques are more effective than others. I'm not unhappy where I am, aside from this matter, and fear I'd be most unhappy, indeed, in L.A., but it's entirely possible I will go anyway. My father has given his all, and, I'm told, is aging rapidly. It's a difficult and painful matter, perhaps least for me but there it is. And my interests are divided so neatly in such a way that every decision seems to be the wrong one.

Meanwhile, visa hassles continue but, because of the robes, may have a satisfactory resolution.

V.

Letter 3.63

Your Bones arrived, a Worthy supplement to my own narrow marrow. Not yet had time to do more than gnaw a bit on the joints, but it's my hope to have time (Time!) to swallow, digest, and shit them out again, to re-fertilize this old (Old!) earth. (!) What I have seen of them so far, they remind me of a fellow I once met in Afghanistan... who had a good story...

Glad you liked my story, Vision. I think it has a maturity and depth that much of my previous work lacks. And since I know exactly how and why it does so, it may be expected that future (Future!) work will have or strive for the same. But I write only when the daemons drive me to do so, or boredom, or (rarely) vast inspiration, and these days there is not much of any of those, so it may be a while before anything more turns up.

Your letter was even more Worthy than Bones (more Worthy and more Bones?). Indeed, I think you (and perhaps me too) are most lucid when your audience (potential audience, that is) is the smallest (for both of us our actual audience are about the same whether we write letters or novels). Nevertheless, John Barth seems to have killed off that genre (or at least laid it to rest for a while) as he did with the Great American Historical Novel (though the GAHN was done in with wit, humor, grace, complexity, etc., whereas the epistolary novel was bludgeoned with a long-handled solipsism that only an omphalophile could love.

Meanwhile, back at the monastery... we last left our hero he was striving, pen sharpened and at the ready, to do battle with the evil monster, Paranoia, and his scurrilous master, Chauvin. We remember how our beautiful heroine, Visa O. Lovely, was in danger of being done in by the monster: chained down, stripped to her bare essentials, and guarded by a Passport About to Expire... And our hero's friends, a motley (but lovable) crew of eccentric seers, visionaries, do-gooders, do-badders, do-nothings, and (zippity) do-dahs, were striving mite and maign to help our hero rescue his beloved from the maws of an Expiration Worse Than Death... And how breathlessly we awaited the next installment of this thrilling (and seemingly endless) episodic soft-soap opera. Well, we're still waiting, we're still waiting, we're still waiting, 'cause nuttin' ain't happened yet. (Gorsh, maw, I can't hardly stand the excitement. Now let's go watch an ice cube melt.)

Well, it seems (Again!) hardly no trouble at all to fill a letter with the most pointless inanities and mealy-mouthed moronisms, so I can only conclude that in this case I must have slipped up and said something substantive, for I find that hardly halfway through the available (indeed, virtually obligatory) space of this aerogramme I have nothing more to say, and am forced to close. The rest of the paper will be fine toilet quality, void of black ink (with life as complicated as it is already, who needs a black asshole?) for the only thing left to say is, love you brother, and dig your trip and wish you a fine and error-free winter.

V.

Letter 3.62

It's always too late. You can always write. I can always read. And, as if happens, vice versa as well. It wasn't the Bones that didn't want to get connected, but a Bone-crusher interceded in the matter. Sorry it cost you such a bundle to be parted for 6 months from the last third (knees down) of Bones. Just think how much it would cost you to be parted from them for a year? In any case, I never received any shin-bones, ankle-bones, or foot-bones, connected or disconnected. If you can give them another go-round, even by surface mail, I'd be willing to wait patiently (for about 3 months), but if you can't I'll still be willing to wait patiently, though in the end with much less to show for it.

What leads you to believe any Canadian publisher would give a puck about Bones? Something up front? Down back? I'm glad if it's true, and I'm glad if it's not, but some gladness is more equal than others. As for establishing the H/V Foundation[1], it sounds as mysterious to me as the Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, though presumably it's a foundation established on a different (though equal) footing. But the idea of investing what I don't have fascinates me. If I had it I might be less interested. Doing Business As? When I was a little kid with a new puppy my mother told me (and told me and told me) to train the dog to go outside to do his business as. There was a suitable place to do his business as. And it was okay to spread a lot of newspapers on which he could do his business as. You might consider whether the last third of Bones are enough papers to do business as.

This is Be Kind to Neutron Bombs week (Day? Hour? Minute? Millennium?).

Meanwhile, back at the monastery... I continue to hang on, but prospects remain (as always) uncertain, and though I'm ever being reassured that all really will work out for the best, there seems to be some perverse nugget in my gullet that makes me hack out a doubt or two, particularly when the sky is most blue. Besides, I can never really decide which course would be best for me. Perhaps it will be a misfortune to finally get the visa? ow can I ever know? Even getting it won't tell me, for I'll never know what wonderful, terrible, or totally mediocre things might have happened if the visa hadn't been issued (as it hasn't). And vice versa, as well. Which brings us full circle, and now we can go around the second time. But we always do go around a second time, don't we? Perhaps that's why it's always too late; or perhaps, again vice versa. Anyway, I see I've said nothing at all so far, and so without marring a perfect record, adding only that my own plans, such as they are, aren't -- still not the foggiest what will become of me -- I bid thee an fond one.

V.

__________

[1] A non-prophet organization stillborn for lack of sense -- Hūm.

Letter 3.61

Bangkok's not a healthy place. You walk around the city for a couple hours and you're covered with a gray film. The city strangles on its congestion, which it brought on itself by rapaciously robbing the countryside of its wealth and, subsequently, becoming filled with rural migrants who can no longer survive. (Farmers are required to sell their rice at government controlled and artificially low prices. This is only one of many techniques by which Bangkok middle-men get rich.) The result is that the city can't keep itself clean: the air is full of garbage, I invariably get minor ailments here, infrequently in the countryside.

If my visa hash is ever settled, and I'm allowed to stay on, I expect to find a fairly remote area, so some knowledge of Thai will be necessary. Consequently my intermittent and floundering efforts to learn the language have been revived. Unlike in Sri Lanka, it's rare to find any Thais in the country -- side who are competent English-speakers; in spite of the fact that they are required to study English for 5 years in school, few of them seem to have progressed beyond 'Hey you', 'Was is your name?', and 'Where you go? Where you go?' -- This question being, in Thai, the cultural equivalent of 'How are you?' -- i.e. they don't really care where you're going, they're translating their form of greeting -- 'Pai nai' -- literally, not understanding that to a Westerner they could be giving an impression of rudeness or nosiness, arousing suspicions in this bandit-plagued country rather than allaying them. Some countries -- e.g. Pakistan -- have exactly the opposite sort of greeting: 'Hey, you! Where you come from, huh?'

Thai script is incredibly complicated. Some of the complication is due to the necessity to indicate which of the 5 tones in Thai is to be used, but a lot of the complication is just plain complication. For example, there are 7 ways to represent the short vowel a (irrespective of tone) and the short vowel a is the most common vowel in the language. The various tone markers, or absence of them, affect different letters in different ways, and also the rules change according to what letter a syllable ends with as well as the letter at the beginning of the syllable (which is the letter that has dominant rule over the vowel and tone markers, although these markers are not necessarily written together with that letter. Got that? OK. Vowel markers are written before, behind, above, below, or in various combinations of these positions, and are sometimes not written at all. A final consonant can change the tone (and change itself; if it's a d, for example, it can change to a t). Also a low tone can be made by a tone marker. Etc., etc.

Probably there are exceptions and further complicating factors to these rules that I haven't learned yet, so I wouldn't place too much trust in the above brief explanation. Also Thai writing doesn't separate words, only sentences, so not only is it uncertain, unless one knows the words already (shades of Hebrew), where one word ends and the next begins, it's also uncertain, sometimes, which word, or which syllable within a word, a vowel marker belongs to. Does it follow the preceding letter or precede the following letter? There are 44 consonants. The number of vowels is indefinite, depending on how they are counted, but at least 9 and as many, perhaps, as 33, in addition to which are 4 tone markers. I'm trying to learn to write 'Which way out of here?' and to learn to read the directions.

Recently stopped off at the USICA library to see what's been happening in the world, and was shocked to learn of the murder by the Guatemalan government of a U.S. priest in the town of Santiago Atitlan, where I lived for about 3 months while in the country. It seems, from the report (in Time Magazine -- hardly a radical rag) that the priest was put on the death list for having reported the Guatemalan army's previous murder of about 30 villagers (although that incident doesn't seem to have been previously reported in Time) for having 'wrong' political views. I've written, while in Guatemala, of the fear and repression I saw around me; it seems, though, that the situation is far worse now than it was then (at which time there was a change of power and a new president was just coming into office: though the various presidents are carbon copies of each other and there is only one political party with any effective power, a transition of of government every five years usually means a pause in the machinations of the powers-that-be). At that time there were about 4 political murders per day. Now, according to Time, the figure is about triple that. The situation in Thailand, though always tentative, doesn't seem so bad as that, though this country has to have one of the highest murder rates in the world (everybody seems armed). Even a town like Chiang Mai, with perhaps 500,000 people, has about 3 murders per day, and certainly individual police do a good share of the killing, they being by far the most corrupt people in the country; and yet none of this seems approved of and directed from the top, as it certainly is in Guatemala. When I leave Bangkok, by the way, it will probably be for a spell of wandering in the hills around the Chiang Mai area.

Letter 3.60

In Bangkok I met with some friends who've been involved with the refugee camps, and they know a bit more about the country they're in. You may have heard of the 'voluntary' repatriation of the Khymer. It was of course far less voluntary than the Thai government tried to make it sound like.

At Sae Keo camp, which is controlled internally by the Khymer Rouge, the government was expecting about 25,000 of the 32,000 refugees -- soldiers, their families, and isolated family-less persons -- to return to Cambodia to take up positions fighting against the Vietnamese. Much of the aid that had come into Thailand for the refugees has of course been used to provision Pol Pot's people. They're re-armed, rested up, given surreptitious training, and sent back to fight -- a policy Thailand vociferously denies it is following -- and only a small amount of aid gets to non-participant refugees.

A great deal is skimmed off the top by the Thai bureaucracy and higher-ups, and Thai villagers near the border are also demanding -- and getting -- aid: perhaps not unfairly, since they've suffered from both the war and the presence of refugees; but there is a great deal of anger and it has happened that Thai villagers have harassed the refugees and even fired rifles and thrown grenades into the camps. Every Thai has a vast store of armament. But what the villagers are doing in the Northeast is, apparently, child's play to what the Thais living on the Gulf islands are doing to this years crop of boat people: yes, there are boat people again, now that the currents and winds have become favorable again, though not in the same numbers as last year.

Anyway, the people I know have been working to provide the real refugees with some possibilities: training programs, language programs, etc., and of course a religious program. (The Khymer are a devout people, and all their monks were killed or forcibly disrobed many years ago. Quite a few of the men in the camp would like to ordain as monks, but the Thai government will not allow it, ostensibly for the reason that as monks they would have to be allowed to remain in Thailand and that the Khymer would be ordaining not out of religious motivation but from a desire to be free of the camps. Another reason, though, is that these men as monks would be useless as a buffer between Thailand and Vietnam. The whole point of Thailand's allowing the refugees in in the first place was to be able to support the Khymer Rouge as a buffer force.)

So... my friends were doing obvious good in the camps, and had an established position, and so they were watched carefully to make sure they didn't get out of line and were tolerated. (Once at the wat -- temple -- inside the camp -- founded by them -- a number of Khymer men shaved their heads and the Thai government got very upset, accusing them of plans to be secretly ordained in the night and the government needed to be re-assured that things weren't as terrible as all that and that at any rate the men's hair would soon grow back, which in fact it did.)

Then when this repatriation thing came up -- because of the beginning of the wet season, when the heavy equipment of Vietnam is of less use against the Khymer Rouge -- neither the Thai government nor the Khymer Rouge leadership inside the camp (this leadership is carefully controlled by the Thai government, of course) informed the refugees that the proposed repatriation was voluntary -- as was insisted by the UNHCR, IRC, etc. -- but simply that they would be repatriated, the refugees didn't know they had any choice in the matter. Therefore the government expected that some 25,000 would go, leaving only those who were too old, too young, or too sick to go. 'Going' meant, of course, not just going back to Cambodia but going back to Khymer Rouge-controlled Cambodia and fighting again, or supporting the fighters. So what was done was that Rob, an Australian fluent in Thai, wrote up a leaflet (in Khymer) informing the people that they couldn't be forced to go back to Cambodia, and he and Bent, a Swedish journalist, began distributing them, having first received the customary clearance from the camp commander.

The commander was immediately besieged by refugees declaring their unwillingness to be repatriated, and when he realized what was happening the commander flew into a rage. He ordered that Rob, Bent, and their leader, Peter, an American minister (and, also, the step-son of a former U.S. ambassador to Thailand), be arrested. Peter was arrested and held in jail five days, during which he was harassed and intimidated and some very heavy charges were laid on his head.

Rob and Bent managed to escape from the camp before being arrested, and made their way to Bangkok, where they hid out. Word came through that the orders at the camp were that if they showed up there they were to be shot on sight. After five days Peter's friends got him out on bail, but everybody was very upset, because now instead of 25,000 Khymer being repatriated from Sae Keo camp only about 8,000 went voluntarily, and fully 17,000 refused to go, all as a result of these leaflets Rob and Bent distributed. They figure they probably saved about 10,000 lives, but the Thai government sees it differently: to them it's a betrayal of Thai security.

Rob, who was the prime mover in this particular incident -- which none of them imagined at the time to be particularly significant or telling -- has been in Thailand for some years (he can even type in Thai, a rare skill for a foreigner) -- has had to leave the country and is now back in Australia. (Previous to the refuges situation he had been working, as a monk, with the hill-tribes in the North, doing social work.) Bent has been cleared and is still in Thailand, willing to go back to the camps if he can. Just before I got to Bangkok all charges against Peter were dropped and he too is now in the clear. The camp commander was fired -- someone's head had to roll -- and just before I left Bangkok Peter was on his way back to the camp to see if he would be allowed back in, and if so what he might still be effective at. I haven't heard anything further about this.

Because of all this, the Thai government has become even more uptight and paranoid than usual about foreigners messing around with their plans, and even though they would acknowledge, if asked about it, that foreigners such as myself are not relevant to their border problems, nevertheless their paranoia extends in all directions and affects the uninvolved as well as the involved. They have established a new rule with regard to foreigners connected with Buddhism: they will grant visa-extensions only to those who are monks.

After doing some running around in Bangkok I learned about all this, for of course they could never explain to me. Rather, the way it worked was that a) the World Fellowship of Buddhists, who had previously sponsored my applications for visa extensions, told me that Immigration no longer accepted sponsorship from them but rather required it non from the Department of Religious Affairs of the Ministry of Education. b) the Department of Religious Affairs maintained at first that they were still studying the regulations and would not be able to respond to my application for sponsorship for at least 3 weeks. When I pointed out that my visa expired in 12 days they informed me that I could leave the country and come back in 3 weeks. I told them that by doing so I would lose my Non-Immigrant visa status -- which was no easy thing to come by -- and would have to revert to Tourist status, which limits visits to 2 months. They said it was no problem, and of course it wasn't for them.

After further visits -- during which the Director-General refused to even see me -- they finally admitted that they were not studying the regulations and point-blank refused my application unless I ordained. Actually this was a step forward for me, for an application 'under consideration' is moribund even if its fate is known. Once it's refused then it becomes possible to explore other avenues. c) I then went to Immigration, who told me that they couldn't consider my application unless it had the approval of Religious Affairs. I told them that Religious Affairs had told me that they (R.A.) had been ordered by Immigration not to approve any applications by laypeople. So sorry, they'd like to help, but what can they do? Can't I see that their hands are tied? Who, I asked, has tied their hands by making this rule? The Police Commission, or one of the Police Commissions, or something like that, I was told: I don't understand the various levels of authority that were being discussed (and, perhaps, neither did they, though they knew what they didn't want: me).

Anyway, the upshot of it was that eventually I got to see a big-shot who I'd seen before (on previous visa application sojourns) and who was not unsympathetic to my plight. 'It's because of all the drug addicts,' he told me, as if laypeople living in temples was the source of Thailand's drug industry (the relationship of the government to the drug industry is another interesting topic). But of course he couldn't tell me it was because of the Cambodian situation, or more precisely because of the paranoia that has resulted from the situation, so he told me it was because of drugs. So I appealed to him on the basis of my past record in Thailand and long-time connection with Buddhism, and he looked sympathetic and said he would present the Police Commission, or whatever it is, with my appeal for an exception, and that he couldn't promise anything, but that he would do that, and he gave me a 2-week extension of my visa so that I could stay in the country until the decision was made (instead of having to go to Penang), and so I'm still here but on a very tentative basis.

Letter 3.59

The banalities of Bangkok pound my brain like .45 slugs made of cotton. It's over 4 months here now, but how ya gonna keep 'em down on Patpong after they've seen the forests? I'm Thaired of it.

Managed to learn a bit of the lingo in the last few months, what with a classroom situation and a good teacher, and expect, d.v. as they say, to leave next month for the hills of the North -- no idea where yet, or maybe too many ideas -- and be clear of the heavy vibes of Bangkok, where I've managed to do exactly no writing (hardly even answering correspondence, as you already have guessed), although I have learned to endure adverse conditions, in an intense form the jungle seldom offers.

I'd love to see what you're doing with Bones. No hurry -- until I have an address mil will be held here at Wat Bovaranives for me -- and expect to send you what I'm doing eventually, maybe even with Bones. Maybe we can both rewrite it simultaneously and then collate our efforts, you can do odd f pages and I'll do even # pages. What a collaboration! On the other hand, I my pick up Getting Off, in which case a collaboration would produce either Getting Bones or Worthy Off, I can't figure out which. Track of Truth needs some pottering too. I grow geranium alongside the roadway, wave to passerby, snigger at their idea that they're going somewhere, at my own idea that I'm not.

Shit's good fertilizer. Shovel some on my geraniums. We all shovel our shit, of course, but few of us get paid for it, many of us pay for it, and pay and pay. I trust you're not being paid more than you're worth. Is the shit better (or even different), after all, from printer's ink? Or is it that printer's ink is unused shit? Lose a newspaper and find a farm?

Worthy Bones -- love Mohel/Carmen/Jizi, stick with them, let them relate together, quarrel, see things same/different, love, let them be the story and let the bones be the background to their story. Let them seek truth between themselves, and learn the price of their illusions.

love, brother

V.

Letter 3.58

I've had a bad case of visa-itis, which required emergency treatment at the Thai Consulate in Penang. My file received an I.V. solution of 5% black ink and 3% red tape and is now recuperating. I've managed to get back to Suan Moke with an interrupted past and an uncertain future. Not a great deal to say for the present either. (Although one thing about the present, you can't fault it for endurance.)

Could your 'gift' of Bones (if such a gift can be made), besides being graciously magnanimous and possibly saving complications (I've got an excellent collection of complications which I must show you some time -- I save them, like bits of string), also have been inspired by the suspicion that by the time I'd finished with it it would be too removed from your intents and attempts to want anything more to do with it? (When either of us whistles now, what comes?) I have, I see, made it a rather different book. Or, atleast, more like a book I remember... once upon a time, I've not put a highway through your jungle, but I've cut out everything that looked to me like undergrowth, trimmed what was left, and did a bit of planting myself. Perhaps everyone needs his own jungle. Your comments (cloud gristle) have contained some useful suggestions, however.

By the way, I beg to differ with your friend, Polly Ethyl Lean, in her crusade to stop the slaughter of the naugas for their hides. I refer to her uninformed comment about 'placid herds of naugas'. I have a friend whose grandfather was killed by one of those placid herds. Stamp out the menace, I say!

V.

Letter 3.57

(Sometimes running around the margins of Bob's letters were postscript bugs, which seemed to be chasing one another, or perhaps were bugged to keep circling the square edges of their paper world. 'SLOGAN OF THE MONTH: A GAPING CHEST WOUND IS NATURE'S WAY OF TELLING YOU YOU'VE BEEN SHOT'. After reading a book on St. Francis by Chesterton: 'Francis is the greatest Hindu Italy ever produced.' And... 'If the Buddha were alive today he'd probably get arrested for insighting the people to quiet,' -- Hūm)

Okay, I'll try again. The complete incomplete Worthy Bones has, I gather, not settled well in LA, so maybe it can be coughed up if my feather keeps tickling that distant throat. Beyond that I've got notes and scribblings which I'll send to you if you ever decide to do anything further with it. For my part, unless some publisher takes a definite interest in it I doubt that I'll find the enthusiasm to go back to it. This isn't because of the story, but because of my telling of it, which I feel has gone downhill more and more precipitously as the story got along. Not bad, perhaps, for half of it, but then somehow it lost energy, picked up a lot of heavy weight and lost a certain essence of human interaction which had been its motivating power earlier on. It got too plotty. Ponderous. Some good moments, perhaps, but essentially static moments: the book doesn't seem to be moving along, and that's why it got to be such a burden. I had to push it along, whereas in the early part it had its own momentum.

I think any reader would sense this, and find the reading as tough going as I've found the writing. If you are going to do anything with it, strive for dynamism. Sure, motion is illusion, but that's what people are after, after all: illusion. Nobody's gonna pay hard-earned money for reality. Who needs to? Reality's free. It's everywhere. We've got more of it than we know what to do with. If you can slip a little uneasiness into the illusion, make them feel not quite so sure of themselves, that's about all that can be hoped for.

I think Worthy Bones -- for both of us -- has not been remiss in the uneasiness department. I think it needs to be more illusory, and that means more believable. The plot is absurd, of course, and I've known this from the start, but then I know of some very successful books with very absurd plots. (Slaughterhouse-5, for example, going from WW2 to another star, and all that.) But I think in order to make a plot believable you gotta skim over it lightly, not pay so much attention to it, and what I've been doing is delving into the details of the how's and wherefore's of it, trying to establish its reality through accretion instead of suggestion. Some good accretions in there, but that's all they is, accretions, and they don't really succeed in making anything more believable, do they?

On the other hand, of course, it's entirely possible (though, I think, unlikely) that I'll wake up one day full of enthusiasm and see clearly what needs to be done to correct what's been done poorly (I don't see this now; perhaps you will: you have a much lighter touch than me) and set to work. But barring that, or unexpected publisher interest (in which case I would finish it even if I knew it to be a flawed finish) I'll likely be finished with Worthy Bones. It was fun for a long while, though. Thanks for letting me play with your toys.

I leave in a few days for Malaysia, where I'll get a 60 day tourist visa and -- hopefully -- be allowed to re-enter Thailand for that time, I figure I'll probably do that twice -- once now, and once again early in November -- and then I'll make some sort of decision. The logistics of various things seem to make it preferable for me to delay such a decision until November, Bureaucracy Willing. Until the November trip I'll stay at Suan Moke. Then I'll move up to Bangkok to settle my hash.

I have no choice but to make some sort of change in my life now. It's been a rather good life, quite suiting me, so far, and I wouldn't want to do anything too different. Considering the options available to me, the least different thing I can think of is ordaining again. Perhaps I'll think of something less different in the next 2 months, or perhaps I'll decide to try something more different anyway. But that seems to cover the range of my choices. It's enough to make my teeth itch.

V.

Letter 3.56

(Enclosed with this letter was a copy of Bob's formal come-on to the mean offices of NY publishing -- Hūm)

A breather, it was. Having caught my breath, I'm back at work. Not on the book, mind. But the publisher's mind. No need for you to do anything, since this effort is intended to be decisive. If I get no more than nibbles, you can finish it, fiddle with it, or flick it aside.

From W.W. Norton comes these encouraging discouraging words:

'...We have decided against an offer of publication. This is a witty, well-told, and extremely inventive story. But it is also unbelievable. Mohel, Jizi, and Carmen are reminiscent of Batman, Robin, and Batgirl, as they wheel and deal in the power politics of Samadhi. They are all cartoons of real people. The plot is a fantasy. One is not sure it's tongue in cheek or for real. With no apparent purpose other than entertainment, the novel cannot succeed, for its lack of credibility alienates the reader.'

You should have by now, or soon, my contribution to this fantastic purposeless incredible alien entertaining failure.

A metaphysical bricklayer, Thomas Mann? Who said that? You? Him? My hope is that Worthy Bones is not just some metaphysical bricks. Anyone can shit metaphysical bricks all day long, pile them up, and call it a novel, but it's just a pile of shit. I tried to include not just the shit, which is certainly needed to create whole characters, but also the flesh, blood and gristle and bone that are needed to support a brain and an alimentary track.

And to do that...well...my problem's not with the Editor in me (who's often overambitious but can be controlled) but with the Creator, who's a lazy little fellow who has to be practically beaten or cajoled before he'll do fuck-all. Or else just wait patiently until he's in the mood. Or?

V.

Letter 3.55

For your various missives and hitives, too, as well as hard-to-come-by 9X12 envelopes, in one of which I'm posting another installment to be Xeroxed and thence dropped (by carrying crow) on your stump -- for these and thou, saaam... And they say that serialized fiction is out of style. Gosh, I had a list of points on which I wanted your opinion and info, and now, of course, I can't find it. I even emptied out the top half of my overflowing wastepaper bag. Not there. Well, poor old Mia Memory isn't much given to total recall, never has been, poor dear, but one of them was about the 'King Oliver on Trumpet' quote: where did it come from? It's beautiful, and if I see a chance I'll work it in, but, is it your own original, or, as it sounds, is it from Shakespear or the Bible or James Branch Cabal or something? Also, I don't know if there is any meaning to some of your names that I could have (easily) missed. Such as: Jizi (other than 'thief' in Swahili, is it involved with 'righteous'?)

Of course, if you see a place where a character isn't drawn in well, where motivation is misdirected, confusion reigns (and rains), or whatever, give me a tweak; and if you have a handle on how to set things right, give 'er a crank. Or two. Yes, actually the only major characters of your version I've killed off is the entire diplomatic corps. In this regard I may be outdoing Joyce himself, who avenged himself on an outrageous British diplomat in Switzerland by portraying him as a drunken sailor (in Ulysses). Anyway, too many characters spoil the book.

Your piece about Mohel's Spanish scam brought back memories... that I don't even have yet. Certainly a place for them in a prequel: Falangista Mohel. Mohel meets Gidgit? Mohel and Gidget Get it On with Godzilla?

V.

Letter 3.54

Sometimes after reading your flights of fancy, all very clever and what-not I feel like a dung beetle busy rolling my little piece of shit in an unimaginative and mundane manner, just trying to get to wherever it is I'm trying to get to. Plodding. But those clouds that you swoop in and out of, and roll up into balls, and push them to wherever it is you're trying to get to -- they're too light and airy for a stolid down-to-earth (in-the-ground?) type like me, who, though not unimaginative, prefers to imagine things with lots of gristle, and whose imagination is constrained, perhaps – 'flightless'?

I've read Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and liked it mucho, but now must -- with a bit of anxiety -- not read Another Roadside Attraction lest I find myself using up energy in going around non-existent obstacles. Or do they exist? Like waking up in the morning to find an elephant in your room...good grief... Just the other day someone asked me if I'd read so-and-so's account of when he was a Buddhist monk.

There's been talk of Achan Cha going to Vancouver, but I guess not. Yes, Groucho would have had a terrible time if he wasn't there. And when a wealthy dowager looked down 6 yards of nose at Stan Laurel to tell him how delighted she was to meet him, he replied, 'I'm not either'. Ah well. If I get the energy I may send you an unpublished short talk of his (A.C. not S.L.), which will at least help keep the P.O. solvent. I'm not pushing him like I was Ñānavīra, mind you, but... well, I liked the old gaffer, and he seemed to be pretty sharp. You won't find any Big Macism in him.

Bones still needs to get hold of the right piece of gristle here and there. Trouble is, cloud-gristle is so hard to get a hook into.

But you got a hook -- a nail -- in a package of dates? Were you charged extra? A special on Khomeini Suppositories?

When I was in Guatemala there was a S.F. fag type who claimed to be Tom Robbins, and who did a very effective impersonation, but who was probably a fake. Perhaps Another Roadside Attraction is also a fake? This fake T.R. said that his next book would be called 'Divorces'. Sounds like Siamese twins are only half as Siamese as once believed, I haven't heard from my agent in nearly a year. Maybe he died? Maybe I can help? Maybe I did?

Abrazon,

V.