i have, in my head, a lot of mental notes that i want to remember and share with everyone, but i always forget. something about my uncle doing something very funny. or maybe something i saw on sky train? something about how horrible the flooding situation is in thailand? ah, i think i thought about my mom doing something funny, or something she would do on sky train and it made me smile very big and miss her terribly. and flooding is expected in bangkok this weekend. water washing down from the north.

killed a roach today. medium size. one less roach in this building!

the more i read thai, the better i feel about walking around this town. i also got exposed to some amazing old thai music. i think it's beautiful and the stories are so poetic, tragic, and romantic. such as one song, น้ำตาแสงไต้, tears of light, an inauspiscious love story about a soldier who rows a royal boat into land, breaking the the boat. such consequences result in death, but the king excuses him and the man returns to say that he must die for his wrong doing. it is the law and if the king lets him go, others will do wrong thinking they do not deserve to be punished. the king kills him and the wife, who honors this decision, but cannot help having a broken heart. it's about the splendor and sadness of her tears, which sheds like a candle burning in the night.

i think i would love thai poetry. if only i knew more vocabulary... i think my situation with my confidence in my command of thai is very similar to what i experienced with my english in middle school, and then later, art, in college. i didn't have enough of a vocabulary to talk about what i was thinking or what i was feeling. it's so frustrating knowing that something very deep in you cannot be reached and shared with other people. no one in my family sees the point for me to learn thai beyond simple conversation. they're incredibly discouraging about it, how it's a waste of money, but the purpose behind my interest in learning thai is beyond a quantitative result.

it's fascinating how as an individual you will consider how much you've changed or grown, but in the eyes of your family, they consider you exactly the same, as if you are just how are you.



ah i remember what it is i wanted to say: i washed my clothes by hand the other day, but i must have done something wrong because each piece smells like a different kind of curry.

wish i had a camera:

aunt in the mango tree with pink rollers in her hair. pruning by axing the lower branches that did not produce fruit this season. right up in the middle of the tree. woke up to the sound of this and went outside and she laughed hard when i asked her what in the world was she was doing.

i dragged all the debris to our very long compost yard. chilis are getting ready to pick. bright red meaning very, very spicy.

fulbright campus interview tonight. keeping awake with game of thrones. ready? hmmm, we'll see. the questions could be about anything so i am prepared with little bits of information about everything. thai events, us events, brazil events, uk events.

one banana left from the plume of 9 that we started with yesterday. all me. two and half of those bananas are equal to one american banana.

I'm still collecting

The memorable people for me represent that vast population of young and old of every hue and origin who gave up comforts and convention to answer their conscience, who are guided by their moral compass to difficult challenges and who are determined to make a difference. They lived in the real world and they took responsibility for it. They did not attach themselves simply to a virtual experience and find satisfaction in a search engine. They were boots on the ground, hands in the dirt, nights in scary places, healing and courageous. They stepped into the unknown and they made it more welcoming for the rest of us.

"certified family forests" are all over the country

It's so nice to learn about photographers you've never heard about, especially a classic like Eliot Porter. His brother is also an amazing painter. Their family owned a private island in Maine, which was an inspiring residency for their work.

Back at the aunt's for a couple days. Enjoying the fresher air. Cramming in a lot of Thai. Learning beautiful words like ความร่วมมือ, which means cooperation but translates more literally into joining of hands. Quite fitting isn't it? Then you have words like ชุมชน, which means community, but translates into crashing rally. Very ominous actually. I also like the word ทะเลทราย, which translates into sea of sand (desert)!

I'm feeling more confident walking around this town speaking Thai, but I think I got too cocky and confused the girls at 7-11 when I asked them about how I could add minutes to my phone. I later found out that you're actually suppose to say, how can I add money to my phone. In my walks about town looking for an air conditioning mechanic I came across the most amazing mini plaza. You can't tell that it's a plaza because the entrance is but a tiny walk way next to a coffee stand. At first I thought, wow, this coffee stand is very popular, and very deep.... so many people are disappearing back there. I walked by a second time and noticed a sign for GYM and YOGA and decided to run back there- THE BEST THAI VEGETARIAN FOOD EVER. They have an amazing variety and affordable selection of yummies, including fresh squeezed juices and a giant bag of juiced wheatgrass for a dollar. They have dessert stores, music classes, language classes, yoga classes etc. What I've described is actually known as the Banana Family Park!

I think I may have potentially made a friend down the street! He works at this restaurant I like to go to where there is always the owner, an old chinese lady, sitting out front and a very fresh lady chef. This potential new friend said, you're not Thai are you? I laughed and explain that I'm almost Thai because my parents are. He continued to say I look Japanese. This is often meant as a compliment because for some reason Thai people think the Japanese are better.

Dream Internship (still unofficial) wants me to be a journalist/social media correspondant as in speak to Thai journalists, be a kind of representative, or face for community forestry. Yikes. Thai can be broken down into five different registers/social contexts, only one of which can I actually speak (street/common Thai), the rest, formal, religious, rhetorical, and royal Thai I barely understand myself. This is to be discussed, but everything else about the job seems very worthwhile as it underscores exactly what I want to do in my Fulbright project. I am taking deep big breaths because I think I may have already screwed up my chances with Fulbright. I hope my hard work and references will allow them to show mercy on me.

Green Behind the Ears - Kay Ryan

I was still slightly
fuzzy in shady spots
and the tenderest lime.
It was lovely, as I
look back, but not
at the time. For it is
hard to be green and
take your turn as flesh.
So much freshness
to unlearn.

sometimes it's fascinating to try to remember what kind of pictures you took because when it's finally developed you can compare your ideas to what you actually got. sometimes you think you took the most amazing photograph, but your best photograph is the one you barely remember taking.

-two monkeys, a mama and a baby, tenderly hugging each other in a collage of forest trees
-a monkey butt
-rice terraces off of bud
-creepy plant heads in a tree at the temple
-a view of a volcano from the plane
-these amazing banana palms that grow in the shape of a fan
-an altar in a midst of tropical plants
-a view of the rice fields from the plane
-my mom doing her laundry while my brother drinks coffee
-the special lime tree my in aunt's backyard
-the monsoon, although i feel this is the least likely picture to turn out
-my aunt descaling fish, another picture that is least likely to turn out
-volcano lake agriculture!
-a big pile of red chili peppers and a naked baby next to it
-a very large ordained tree
-an even larger ordained tree
-buddhist monks hanging their bright orange laundry

discovering bits of new things everyday about life in bkk: today i went to the bangkok art and cultural center, which has a small and okay free art library. not that many great books, but a super quiet library (e.g. amazing for studying). a cool exhibit on asian masks and bunch of cool thai soft sculpture/textile artists as well. i established a relationship with the man i buy my grapefruit from every morning. he is very nice and works right next to sky train. i also ate noodles for all three meals today at different great places within a block of the studio. my first noodle dish was bahmee moo (egg noodle soup with pork), yen-tha-foe (thin noodles in red soup with crispy wontons, fish balls, and thai broccoli), and sen-lek-tom-yum (thin noodles in tom yum soup). i studied thai at a really pretentious bicycle coffee shop, but it had a cool pyramid bookshelf. oh yeah, and i've been terribly sick with some shit cold fever that won't go away, but this song really keeps me alive: