Month: January 2019

Posted on in commentary, creative writing, DEATH, dementia, essay, humor, MORTALITY, philosophy, RETIREMENT, Uncategorized

Yes, You Will Die


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We will pray for you, if that’s any consolation. You ask “is there any way to avoid death?” In the long run, I’m afraid not. We are all on that journey, like cattle in a chute. We hear the frantic mooing of those who are ahead of us on the one-way path to the slaughterhouse. There, a man who holds a large hammer stands poised to strike.

 

What, you have other plans? Sorry, they amount to no more than wishful thinking. This world is a small part of a much greater cosmos. Will you persist? I can’t promise anything. To tell the truth, I don’t know what awaits us. I only know we’re in the chute. You can moo and kick the walls all the like, but you will move forward. See, you just took another step!

 

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Posted on in chiang mai, commentary, creative writing, essay, RETIREMENT, thailand, travel, Uncategorized

Found A New Setting On My Camera


photos are much better! Don’t have to process them in any way. Yippee. Cameras are better and cheaper than they’ve ever been.

 

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I live in Northern Thailand, and even though I’ve lived here for seven years, I haven’t grown tired of the photographic possibilities. I don’t work and I ride around on my motorcycle, which gives me plenty of opportunity to see various vistas.

Posted on in commentary, creative writing, entertainment, essay, humor, MORTALITY, RETIREMENT, thailand, travel

Diaper Man


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If you had told me a week ago that I would be flown to Bangkok for 3 days to play an American cotton farmer in a Chinese diaper commercial I wouldn’t have believed it. But indeed this is what has happened. The location for the three-day shoot is a rich man’s estate with hundreds of acres of lagoons and gardens with carefully landscaped Lombardi pines. It looks like Versailles transplanted to Thailand. I am hardly the most important person in this project, in fact I am almost inconsequential, but they saw something in me I guess they could not find among the expatriates living in Bangkok.

Or maybe I just had a lucky break and a good Agent. The woman who plays the mother of the cute baby who needs my diapers is an incredibly beautiful young woman. She is so beautiful in that Thai way that a billboard sized picture of her could stop traffic.

The man who owns this estate is probably long dead. There is a bust of him on the landing and a huge oil portrait of him on the second floor, with photos of him and the royal family, but no one in the crew seems to know who he is, or care. We’re just using his house as a location for a commercial shoot.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi. You can be rich enough to own Versailles but your house will be used as a location for a diaper commercial and no one will know who you are.

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Posted on in commentary, creative writing, entertainment, essay, MORTALITY, NOSTALGIA, philosophy, RETIREMENT, thailand, Uncategorized

Youth Wasted on the Young


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There was a time when I was better looking and so was everybody with whom I hung around. I could stay up late abusing my body with alcohol, tobacco and drugs and still function the next day. I showed promise. People cut me slack based on that promise, and maybe because they felt I wasn’t evil, just stupid.

 

They were right, I wasn’t evil, just arrogant and self-centered. Blindly egotistical. All the while I simmered with a quiet rage that I hadn’t been given the reward I was due. Why were other people prospering while I wasn’t? Where were my just desserts?

 

Turns out I received just as much acclaim and support as I was due. If I wanted more, I should have worked harder. Simple, really.

 

I don’t even have any advice to give the young, because the world has changed so dramatically that I can’t imagine how any artist, musician or writer can fit in or get ahead in an era where all content is delivered instantly, for free.

 

Good luck, young people. Take care of your taut bodies and enjoy them while you can. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.

Posted on in Uncategorized

Remain Teachable


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Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, still exists.” – Philip K. Dick

We put a lot of stock in our beliefs nowadays, because we’ve concluded that Science is too hard. The rigors of scientific proof take too long, and often don’t appeal directly to the emotions. We have been taught to prize our emotional state above all else.

Advertisers encourage that. Feelings trump facts. Life is short, the world is complex, so you might as well follow your gut. Our current president puts of a lot of stock in following his gut, which seems to be increasing in size even as we speak. His gut tells him to build a wall.

The rest of us are free to imagine a world bigger than our digestive promptings, with powerful forces at play that might surpass our understanding, but which could work in our favor if we remain teachable.