Mikes Thoughts

Finding this weekend

It’s a Saturday in Siem Reap. I had thought of just hanging out at some local coffee shop endeavor. Instead, I woke up this morning knowing it would not happen. I want to get a tuktuk and go to some coffee shop elsewhere. I enjoy so much writing in the journal the morning things. Little thoughts, issues, paranoias that come over or overcome me. The other morning my daughter in the US messaged me for the first time in years. It was not so good. It left me feeling like California is farther than X thousand miles away. It’s like X million memories away. I cannot imagine ever just going back. It would be a sentence commuted to hell because I would have to stay until I left. Last time in 2022, I spent three days and it felt like a forever sentence. I guess because Mexico never felt that way and coming back to Cambodia, I knew My Edge was rising. My place to capture the goodness of life or find the mornings of a life where life does not spin out of control. I remember driving in California. On some weekend in 2017 or so. Heading to work. I never did get days off. Some Saturday sitting in a dimly lit office while the security guard said hello and welcome back. I could have done his shift I guess.

I told my daughter that all things are connected and you bring a thing back in focus that I felt after is best left in some place I wrote yesterday about in my backlinks. But we all do that and it’s the weekend here in this kingdom of wonder. So I shall coffee out and find new little things that perhaps silently wait for some attention. Some steps or other to feel alone and not lonely.

I heard from my friend T in email. I had been worried about him and tried sending him email. He has had challenging times but because of my error I lost his email. I heard from him and will write back once I clear this house and its host of things. Now it’s music Bruce Hornsby and the Range. I have this chill mix on Spotify that always keeps me feeling. Mandolin Rain. One little lyric about losing it all strikes some chord. It makes me wonder for the umpteenth time what is it we all need in life. I let more things go that when I look at them in the retrospective have meant shit. Lets he honest we accumulate crap in our lives because of hobbies and desires and wants. Not needs. It’s the same with our past moments and memories. I think those, upon reflection, are harder to get rid of than the car was. Those unwanted, unwashed memories turn up at the flip side of some message from a person there and then. I’m glad to hear from T! That he’s safe and life will be improving for him.

It’s 8am and it’s time I think to get the fuck out of here. I am not particularly enamored with this place ever but some days the thought of going downtown for coffee is like this overriding thing. So soon and then I write yet more crap here. Just in a different place. Same weekend.

tuktuk take me away

Down to noi coffee. A river stop. It’s obvious why this is better. Trees and river. Being just as close to other people as a few tables away. The WiFi is good here. I feel like this place will hold me until I want to walk. Walking downtown means city streets and rivers. Little back alleys and side streets that turn and twist on themselves. Take me to streets either small local markets. Little cafes. I remember walking in Taipei thinking,

I love it here because I shall never see this again.

Even if I were to go to Taipei to the same exact street, all life has passed by between. I felt the same in Saigon. I could walk the street again that took me to little Japan there. Hear the wonderful language I know just a little of. See Japanese men ducking into the small bar with the sign only in Japanese. I knew I could always return. But see all the same things again? No.

Each moment I walk is a unique thread of time. Each takes me to a particular place frozen at the moment I see it.

It’s the same walking here. Siem Reap gives just a little. Lets me find this thing. Unravels just a bit. This weekend I shall find some dying ember of a thread. Walk to find nothing and be constantly amazed. Most of all be alone. Find all the threads alone. Then let them go. On purpose.

That’s my weekend. Welcome to it.