Mikes Thoughts

curating moments

Lately I’ve viewed the writing as capturing little moments. Snippets of life that I find along my way. I guess life here in Cambodia is not a ledger of life’s big things. Events marked by their significance. Instead, what I’ve wanted is to capture and curate little things. How I feel. What I think. What I see out there when I walk sometimes. The blog has always been a personal endeavor for me. Every so often, I feel like I want to write more or differently so I go try. I fail miserably. I just cannot be a second brain or PKMS or zettelkasten person. I also cannot just write notes.

What does seem to work is this. This collaboration of thoughts, feelings, emotions. Some desires. A morning americano that takes me to some Khmer places or for a walk downtown along the river or out on some street I vaguely remember. Then there’s the music of life here. Not just Spotify going but the melodious cacophony of horns honking, motos going. People engaging in their moments. At some coffee place or along the street where smaller coffee shacks operate with abandon. I stop at those sometimes to get the iced coffee for $0.75 and sit and watch. Everywhere are moments I can see.

I want to present some of these back to the blog, where things connect. Where they don’t. Where life leads to happiness and where it doesn’t. The truth is living in Cambodia is not some fantasy and utopian paradise. Some moments get painfully curated I wish I would not. Lately it’s been how and where we live. Breaking that causes pain. There are painful moments that I just save too. I am cursed or blessed with still a good memory of things. Perhaps like someone remarked here that I am vindictive. Could be. When I did archeology, we excavated archeological sites in danger or destruction. The Mojave Desert is an agent of change. Its twin forces erosion and deposition could cover up or displace things. These things were curated away from those forces or we directed some agency away from impacting the record.

Perhaps it’s the same now. I am still an anthropologist carefully taking stock. Finding moments good and bad, up and down, left and right. I just record them on the blog and let them stand or fail on their and my merits. Like today I guess. I will start this on the wonderful MacBook M1 Air that still powers my life and gives me much pleasure. I told my friend Sean,

best laptop I have ever owned.

He has one too so he gets it. These things are powerful and beautiful little pieces of curation.

moving on to a coffee and a place

As I love doing, starting the blog in the morning is always a thing for me. I love being able to start a thing in iA Writer on the Mac and then find it patiently waiting on the iPhone when I go. Today I will go. It’s a certainty with recent events that I need to go find other pastures and places. I’ll see you down that road. Coffee and time at a favored place and then a walk wherever.

Here I am at Noi Cafe. Meet a Cambodian American that worked for years at Lockheed in Los Angeles. Knows the area I was a kid in. Life is this wonderful blend of the unplanned. The unique. With random stuff tossed in. If I had not decided to go for coffee at Noi I would not have had those moments. Carefully curated I guess. Another person that crosses some path. That comes in and then goes.

That’s so what life is like. I went from this movement whenever I wanted to wanting to slow down. In 2020 I wanted that too. I took Vietnam again. Ended up slowing down for 2 years. Then Mexico for a year. Mexico is prime slowing down territory. I could always do things “mañana”. Time always for that. In the forever today, that time never did come.

I’ll just dwell on the happenstance of life. How the little things come along. Unexpected delights and others less.

See you down my road again.