Friday, July 17, 2015

Moments and Movement: Thoughts from Chiang Mai


View from a street in my neighborhood

I love blogging about my travel adventures as they are happening. When I write about them, I re-live them. I re-learn from them. I get to absorb them in their present and in their reflection. It’s like having two experiences in one.

Behind the rusty iron gate of a school, groups of boys and girls played volley ball in white blouses and pink pants.  Clinging to the gates were leafy vines with perfumed roses, the same color as the children’s school-uniform pants. Peering past the rose curtains, the skirts of girls danced in the wind like petals. I couldn’t capture it on camera, because movement was the beauty of that moment. To steal an instant from that view and put it in the confines of a frame would have been criminal, an insult to the art of the children’s game, the beauty of their petal-pink pants. It was thoughtless, unintentional beauty. The kind of moment that is unaware of itself.

There is a weird ebb and flow of this city. At times some places are packed while others are empty. Then the next house it will reverse. The crowds will move to the empty place, pour out into the streets, leave the previous place silent. We spend our days weaving between these erratic patterns, trying to seek out  the quiet spaces.

Every few hours a plane flies overhear. The sonic boom bounces off the mountain walls and shakes our little city in the valley. Somehow the sound of planes taking off has become comforting to me. Like the call to prayer, it’s a sign that the day is continuing, time is passing, a regular check-in.

Monday, Dec. 1 Wawee Coffee, 1:38 pm

No comments:

Post a Comment

Rainy Days in the City

 These days we do lunch indoors with the rainy cold weather that Portland winters always bring. This day's lunch was in the lobby of the...