Jailbreak

Ban Don, 7/5/2020



Using my need to collect important official and work-related documents from a place that should, logically, house no such documents, I took my motorcycle up to the area of Hin Heup, then east to Ban Don where the majestic limestone mountains have been carving their way into men’s minds for centuries. According a brilliant, though very modest geologist I know and who will go unnamed, these bloody mountains are full of DNA since limestone was formed through living genetic material which means that I have been travelling through – buzzing through, really – a landscape as alive as a petri-dish while sitting over a gas tank also filled with material formed by the living.



It’s one big alive floating fuck fest of a kaleidoscope out there and in here.



The mountains are nothing less than delicious; some carry caves in them like pockmarks, others simply sit there, planted like a beacon of sensitivity to give fair warning to all who wish to cease dreaming altogether. At the end of a road I found a riverside restaurant where a young man speaking excellent English set up shop. The tables are submerged, giving diners the chance to easting with their bare feet rustling in the cool waters of the Nam Lik.



Sadly, however, they take this opportunity to toss their empty BeerLao cans into the river and so even this spot of pristine beauty is relieved of the hope for humanity that Covid-19 may have given us.



The road is not always the road, however, and a three day escapade on a motorcycle cannot compare with an endless and goalless trek on a bicycle during which one’s life is meshed with that of the people.



After a few days out, although dazzled by the physical beauty of the landscape, all I longed for was to see my family again, sleep in my own bed and be welcomed by the morning light genius of Ban Apinihan.



I never thought I’d see the day when this would happen.



Years ago, in my distant childhood, I remember going into the house of friends of my parents, the kind of people you look at as a kid and wonder, “what on earth can these people possibly have in common with us?”: plastic covers on the sofas and little tinseled shelves tucked into useless corners loaded with knickknacks like tiny porcelain poodles or Eiffel Towers, among them was a framed saying – in those days everything was made of wood and not plastic made to look like something so people could say, oh, yes, that’s what wood looked like – and so a real wooden frame and in it were a compass (une rose de vents!) and the words: “North, south, east, west. I travel far but home is best".



And I remember thinking to myself that this was the most stupid thing I had ever seen. Not even taking into consideration the fact that these people never travelled far and that their home was a cacophonous insult to the eyes, the whole system of thought reeked, in my young eyes, of a provincial and unquestioning slavery to unthinking and mediocre happiness.



And here I am, years later, thinking: North, south, east, west. I travel far but home is best.