The Failure of Democracy

Democracy doesn't work if people don't vote. And voter apathy, not only in America but around the world, is undermining attempts to put political power in the hands of the people, all of the people.

But the very word "democracy" is put into question by claims from Bush & Co. that they are promoting democracy in the Middle East, when in fact they are staging sham elections in Iraq and ignoring elected leaders in Palestine. This is of a piece with the murder of the meaning of "freedom," when they claim that the "terrorists hate freedom." Seeing this misuse of language in the media, I no longer know what the words mean, beyond flags for undending warfare.

These thoughts are further reflections on the recent talk by Bill Moyers reported here yesterday. Moyers says he is obsessed by democracy, and argues that it is more than "what we were taught in high school civics -- more than the two-party system, the checks-and-balances, the debate over whether the Electoral College is a good idea." Behind all that is "the radical idea that democracy is not just about the means of governance but the means of dignifying people so they become fully free to claim their moral and political agency." Citing President Woodrow Willson, Moyers says that either "we take democracy into our own hands, or others will take democracy from us."

At that is what is happening today. Powerful interests, business and religious elites, are destroying democracy. And we are letting them get away with it by neglecting one of our most important tools, the ballot box.

California has one of the lowest voter participation rates in the nation, Moyers says, basing this on a recent article by Steven Hill in the San Francisco Chronicle which reports on several studies of voter participation and attitudes. The less than eight million who vote (out of a population of 39 million) are older, richer, whiter and more educated than the 12 million of registered and non-registered (but eligible) who do not show up at the polls. Frequent voters are more conservative. In most elections, little more than a third of eligible voters participate. All of this means that about 15% of adults make the political decisions in California, and they hardly resemble the state overall. There are two Californias, one that votes and the other that does not, and only a handful of voters elect political leaders who divide up the pie.

This is not a democracy where everyone has an equal say in the political process, even if we ignore campaign financing inequalities, along with powerful pressure groups that influence those few willing to vote. And California is not unusual; the problem is endemic. Moyers writes that "because our system feeds on campaign contributions, the powerful and the privileged shape it to their will. Only 12% of American households had incomes over $100,000 in 2000, but they made up 95% of the substantial donors to campaigns and have been the big winners in Washington ever since."

The election in 2008 will be the most expensive in American history with billions of dollars changing hands. Even the Democrats are rejecting public financing so they can raise more money to match the Repubican largesse. The rich, Moyers writes, cannot "see beyond their own perogatives. Fiercely loyal to their families, to their clubs, charities and congregations -- fiercely loyal, in other words, to their own kind," they narrowly define "membership in democracy to include only people like them." This means that they will vote to defend their money, their position and their privilege, doing whatever they can to deny the poor, the homeless, the illegals and the hedonistic young a share of their pie.

Moyers does not provide a solution to this quagmire, every bit as serious as the one in Iraq, beyond urging his audience to organize. And once organized, to vote the bastards out (I added that). Quite frankly, I don't see what can turn around voter apathy. We gave the vote to young people, and their turnouts are worse than all other categories, despite get out the vote campaigns on MTV. People act out of their interests, and the young are mostly interested in immediate pleasure rather than long-term goals. I think the poor and dispossesed in this country generally feel disspirited and powerless. Where are the leaders who might turn this around?

What will wake this country up?

Bill Moyers for President

Even Ralph Nader thinks it's a good idea. He wrote about it last October in Common Dreams:

Moyers brings impressive credentials beyond his knowledge of the White House-Congressional complexes. He puts people first. Possessed of a deep sense of history relating to the great economic struggles in American history between workers and large companies and industries, Moyers today is a leading spokesman on the need to deconcentrate the manifold concentrations of political and economic power by global corporations. He is especially keen on doing something about media concentration about which he knows from recurrent personal experience as a television commentator, investigator, anchor and newspaper editor.

A Draft Bill Moyers for President campaign began in 2005, but it didn't get very far. His lawyers sent out a cease and desist notice to the gentleman who proposed it. Then last summer, political commentators Molly Ivins (the late and lamented) and John Nichols both wrote columns about "wouldn't it be a good idea if Bill Moyers were our president." A web site was set up and online petitions were circulated, but the internet campaign didn't get very far, despite Nader's late seconding of the earlier motion.

I thought about this after reading the most recent transcribed lecture from Moyers to circulate on the internet, "A Time for Anger, A Call to Action," which appeared on Common Dreams yesterday. In it, he writes: "Our political system is melting down, right here where you live," and he describes a concentrated, coordinated assault on the democratic notion of equality conducted by corporate and theocratic interests. "Beginning a quarter of a century ago a movement of corporate, political and religious fundamentalists gained ascendancy over politics and made inequality their goal. They launched a crusade to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that have held private power. And they had the money to back of their ambition," Moyers explains in the talk give last month at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

Financial inequality -- an increasing division of society by economic class -- and voter apathy have handed over our democracy to conservative corporate thugs. This is "the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual propaganda, the rise of a religious literalism opposed to any civil and human right that threatens its paternalism, and a string of political decisions favoring the interests of wealthy elites who bought the political system right out from under us," Moyers writes.

Not only have THEY stolen our country and our government, but "they hijacked Jesus" as well. Moyers, who places a high value on religious faith, cites the Jesus who loved his enemies and turned the other cheek, and argues that "this Jesus was hijacked and turned from a friend of the dispossed into a guardian of privilege, the ally of oil barons, banking tycoons, media moguls and weapon builders."

But the Jesus Moyers knows, the man who overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the temple because they had turned a house of prayer into a den of thieves, this Jesus grows angry and he takes action. This Jesus speaks Spanish and walks with the undocumented immigrants when they take to the streets to protest their exclusion. This Jesus is disgusted by the reign of the Pharisees in Washington and their holy war against the poor in this country and overseas. This Jesus, the one known by Martin Luther King, sees a new day dawning in the United States, the periodic revolution that Thomas Jefferson said citizens need to renew their spirit.

Moyers calls on the students at Occidental to take part in the revolution of the 21st century which will bring about a democracy that leaves no one out. "The only answer to organized money," he says, "is organized people."

This man is a prophet, and wouldn't it be nice to have one as the president of the United States?

Citizen Ralph

Chris Hedges wrote recently: Ralph Nader "understands that American democracy has become a consumer fraud and that if we do not do battle with the corporations that, in the name of globalization, are cannibalizing the country for profit, our democratic state is doomed." (Hedges is the author of the wonderfully insightful book, War is a Force that Gives Life Meaning, and in this essential article he makes a strong case that Nader is a prophet rather than a pariah)

I agree with him.

Last night I saw the new documentary film about Nader, "An Unreasonable Man," and despite the shrill criticism in it of lefties who continue to blame Nader for Gore's defeat in the 2000 election, I came away convinced that Nader is right. The American political system is broken, and voting for the lesser of two evil candidates -- what Nader calls "the folly of the least worst" -- will not fix it.

"An Unreasonable Man" comes on the heels of "An Inconvenient Truth" in which a hypocritical Al Gore, who wastes jet fuel in his travels and electric power in his Tennessee mansion, trumpets a concern for the environment that was nowhere in evidence during his eight years in the White House with Bill Clinton, a corporate mouthpiece no less than his Republican kin. Who can fail to see now that the enfeebled Democratic Party is Tweedledum to the Republican Party's Tweedledee? Nader supporters have argued consistently for twenty years that there is not a dime's worth of difference between them, .

However, the documentary featuring Gore won an Academy Award, while the theater last night was mostly empty for the Nader film. After Bush was selected by the Supreme Court over Gore in 2000, Nader's supporters left him in droves. He was called a "spoiler" and prominent Nader voters like Michael Moore and Bill Maher got down on their knees on TV and begged him not to run again. Nader, in response, claims in his film that "Al Gore cost me the election." He says he is considering another run at the presidency in 2008, particularly if Hilary gets the Democratic nod.

Few would dispute Nader's dignosis of the American political system. As a lawyer and consumer advocate, his work was largely responsible for legislation in the 1960s and 1970s that gave us the Clean Air Act, the Mine and Health Safety Act and the Freedom of Information Act. He argued that automobiles were unsafe by design, and his revelations led to development of seat belts and air bags which have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. By attacking corporate crimes and misdemeanors, Nader was himself attacked, and a failed attempt by GM to dig up dirt on his private life resulted in a $425,000 fine which was used to fund citizen action groups, most notably Public Citizen. According to Hedges, Lewis Powell, who was general counsel to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce before becoming a Supreme Court justice, wrote a memo in 1971 which said:

The single most effective antagonist of American business is Ralph Nader, a legend in his own time and an idol to millions of Americans...There should be no hesitation to attack [Nader and others].

For his relentless criticism of U.S. and global corporate business practices, and for his campaigns to make America live up to her ideals, Nader should be cannonized. But what about his so far unsuccessful attempts to form a third party?

There is ample evidence in the film and from published research, that a poorly run campaign by the Democrats and a wishy-washy candidate lost the election to Bush in 2000, as well as in 2004. Gore and Kerry did not offer a clear alternative to the Republicans. If the Democrats really represented the people and had put forth a leader willing to speak truth to power (someone like Ralph Nader perhaps), then Bush and his conservative minions would have been a push-over. Maybe. There is still the problem of election campaign funding (The Republicans as the party of business have an edge there) and the hoardes of right-wing Christians willing to turn America into a theocratic state, on the order of Israel or Iran. It will be an uphill battle.

I voted for Nader, the Green Party candidate, in 2000, so this isn't the confession of a convert. But I have always been willing to listen to the pragmatic argument, the lesser of two evils line, that if we don't vote for the Democrat, whomever he or she may be, then the Republicans will stay in power forever. But I'm not marching there any more. This country is going down the tubes fast, and our highly touted political process is sick, perhaps terminal. I'm not even sure if voting has a point any more. But I'm damned sure I am not going to vote for Hilary.

Caught Between Two Worlds

While I ponder the recent disappearance and subsequent recovery of the new photo of me over on the right hand of this blog page, I also reflect on the experience of being caught between two worlds: the real and concrete one here in Santa Cruz in which I have lived for most of the last 30 years, and the world I left behind in Thailand last month which is fast taking on the dimensions of a fantasy.

Tied up in this dilemma, I have neglected my bloggerly duties here in this internet space I reserved almost a year ago. The universe spins on its axis, Bush continues to predict victory in Iraq, dismissed U.S. attorneys cause a scandal in Washington, Phil Spector goes on trial for murder, thousands march in various streets to protest the war, Brittany copes with rehab, The Rev. Al Sharpton finds out he is related to racist Strom Thurmond, Hilary and Obama wrestle on celebrity challenge, Thim sends me a letter from her rice farm in Udon province, and I sit slumped in in a stupor.

Well, not completely. Before my Sunday afternoon nap, I did my duty as commentator at Holy Cross's 8:30 mass, and then rushed down to the 418 where Molly was the DJ for Dance Church. About fifty dancers of all sexes, ages and agilities moved to the music she played, offering up worship to the spinning universe in a variety of ways. A young boy in a wheel chair was twirled around by his mother and her friends. Another man in a wheel chair, with neither legs nor sights, was touched and jostled by a number of smiling dancers. Beautiful, sweaty, and often braless women recalled the temple dancers of old. Children crawled underfoot, and I felt the spirit. Molly ended the morning with the Beatles telling us that all we needed was love, and for a moment I believed it. The dancers, exhausted from their energetic prayer service, sat in a circle and communed. It gave me hope.

Last Thursday Molly, her friend Rachel and I went to hear Patty Griffin at the Catalyst. A tiny red-headed thing, almost anorexic, Patty's deep and resonant voice filled the former bowling alley. Backed by two guitarists, a drummer, and a woman who played both standup bass and cello, I stood in the crowd with a succession of beers and felt myself transfigured by their sound. Patty, accompanying herself on both guitar and piano, can sing the blues, rock with the best, and write in a folky and sometimes country style about New England ice storms and trapeze artists who commit suicide. Her only hopeful love song was written for her dog. She's over 40, a native of Maine who has seen a bit of life, and her listeners came in all classes and sizes. The packed house loved her every note, and so did I. Four of her CDs grace my iPod.

On Friday evening, the community of believers, who hope that organized religion might withstand the Christian conservative onslaught of the last few years, gathered in the old wooden chapel of Calvaray Episcopal Church to mark and mourn the past four years of war in Iraq. We were surprised to find we could fill the place. Ministers, pastors, youth leaders and singers from a variety of Christian denominations read from scripture, sang from Psalms, recited the names of Iraqi and hometown dead, and prayed for peace. We marched behind a veiled Lenten cross, holding candles, to the statue by the town clock that memorializes innocents killed in war, and laid a wreath in tribute to the so-called "collateral damage" resulting from legalized violence. For a too-brief period, I again felt hope.

On Saturday morning, a dozen of us Camaldolese oblates gathered in the basement of St. Joseph's Church in Captola for a our semi-annual retreat to hear Fr. Daniel from New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur speak about the "New Nomadism" (which he pronounced "nomadacism"). The search for security and stability often turns up only a mirage. We are a pilgrim people, on the move ever since Abram left Ur, and the only stability we can achieve is dynamic. As nomads ever in search of God, the touchstone of our faith is hospitality: how do we welcome and heal the other? There was an interesting discussion about "freedom," a word much used and abused by our politicians. Dan made a distinction between "freedom to," which often results in licentiousness, liberty run amuk, and "freedom for," which can lead to compassion. Such gatherings of seekers also give me hope.

Saturday evening, with my Cuban friend Ofelia, I went to see "Starter for 10," a light bit of fluff from England that Helen in London would call a "romcon" and we might label a "chick flick." It featured James McAvoy, the naive young doctor in "The Last King of Scotland," who comes of age at the University of Bristol in England when forced to choose between an uncaring buxom beauty and a Jewish campus radical, while also dealing with old friends back home who think he has turned his back on them. It's an old story but it was told in a delightful way by director Tom Vaughan from a memoir by David Nicholls. Afterwards we ate at Sitar, the new India fastfood restaurant at the end of my block. How convenient to be able to live on the same street with a movie theater and a restaurant (not to mention a gym, Toadal Fitness, that I have so far avoided)!

Last night I joined my adopted family to celebrate Lyle's 33rd birthday. I remember when Lyle was born. I went to his wedding when he and Daria echanged vows on the law of their house nextdoor to Lyle's parents, my dear departed friend Peter, who died three years ago on St. Patrick's Day, and Diana, who commutes weekly from her home in northern California to the Boardwalk to she earns a living as a facepainter. The party was held right here, where I live with Diana's mother, Shirlee, and her step-father David, my landlords. Lyle's kids Wyatt and Gwen watched their father blow out the candles on his cake and unwrap the expresso maker which he'd been given. It was a lovely scene, and I appreciate so much being included. Another sign of hope. The younger generation is going to do alright, if the world survives.

What about that other world, the one I left behind a month ago? Thim's letter came yesterday and my new friend Pim in Bangkok translated it for me, long distance. She wrote that she loves me and wants me to come back quickly and marry her. If not, she wants us to be together in the next life. But this is a dream, she writes, and telling it makes her cry. She remains in Udon, where both her parents are sick, tending to the rice farm. As I mentioned in my blog posting the other day, there is a cultural gap between the two worlds that is almost unbridgeable.

Almost, but not quite. In the last week I have discovered a web site where hundreds of Thai ladies -- widowed, divorced and single, with children and without -- are looking for farangs who will marry them and support their families, parents as well as siblings and children. Most of them are young and beautiful, and a 30-year age gap does not seem to be a liability. In my online conversations with a number of these ladies, I have learned much about Thai cultural values surrounding the romance of the sexes. Because their day is our night (14 hours later) and vice versa, I am finding my sense of time somewhat disoriented.

In addition to all my new friends, I have obtained a useful book, Thailand Fever, by a Thai woman, Vitida Vasant, and an American man, Chris Pirazzi. Each has crossed the cultural divide to marry someone from the other side. The book is written in both Thai and English and endeavors to explain American values to Thai women, and Thai values to farang men. Pim told me she had read it three times. Without going into detail, which might interest no one but me, I think that Thai cultural values dealing with sex and marriage are remarkably similar to those of the 1950s in America. Good girls don't do it until after marriage. Women yearn to care for their Man (the "total woman" ideal), who will in exchange take care of them forever. And there is a strong separation between good girls and bad, virgins and whores, despite the prevalence of prostitution in Thailand.

Still, there is little information about what happens when bar girls fall in love and when their clients become boyfriends. For both good girls and bad, however, family remains the central pole around which all turns. Men who marry Thai women marry their families, for better or worse, and financial support of everyone is expected and assumed.

The thought of two sick rice farmers in Udon who need my help is unsettling.

Remembering Four Years of War in Iraq

This appeared today in the Santa Cruz Sentinel:

Christian candlelight vigil to mark war anniversary

By Todd Guild, Sentinel Correspondent

When self-styled "peace worker" Annie Kelley attended an anti-war rally in Washington, D.C., two years ago, she walked into a religious revival and discovered an ally that surprised her -- the Christian community.

Kelley, a member of the Santa Cruz chapter of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, listened to impassioned speeches by Christian leaders speaking in opposition to the Iraq war and was inspired.

"I was excited about the possibility of both religious and spiritual organizations and communities bringing their voices together to speak out against what our government is doing in Iraq," she said.

Since then, Kelley has become entrenched in the interfaith peace movement, and on Friday will help organize a Christian candlelight vigil at Calvary Episcopal Church. The day will also mark the four-year anniversary of the Iraq war.

The Santa Cruz vigil coincides with more than 190 others across the nation, from San Francisco to Little Rock to New York City.

The main event is in Washington, DC, where more than 3,000 people are expected to advocate for peace. Participants there will attend a service at the Washington National Cathedral, then walk by candlelight to the White House, where they will remain until midnight.

"We believe that it's time for Christians who believe in peace to stand up and be counted," said William Yaryan, a parishioner at Holy Cross Church who will attend the Santa Cruz vigil. "I believe that Jesus was for peace. The Gospel message was one of peace, not of war"

Nationwide, the vigils were spearheaded by Christian Peace Witness, a coalition of religious groups from across the country. They're designed as an all-Christian event to dispel the belief that the majority of Christians favor the war, according to Katie Barge, spokeswoman for the group Faith in Public Life, which works with Christian Peace Witness.

"We felt it was important as a Christian community to make a strong statement that we object to this war," she said. "Where faith has been used as a justification for going to war, we're trying to use it to justify a call to peace"

Friday's event will be attended by members of churches across the county, including United Methodist, St. Stephen's Lutheran, Garfield Park Christian, St John the Baptist and the University Christian Campus Ministry at UC Santa Cruz. Up to 180 people are expected to attend.

"This vigil wouldn't have happened without Annie," said the Rev. Joel Miller of Calvary Episcopal Church. "It was her idea to have a local expression of a national effort"

While the event was organized primarily as a Christian one, Kelley is quick to point out that the doors are open to all members of the community.

"One of the most exciting things for me is that I've met a lot of people from the spiritual and religious community who didn't know each other before," said Kelley. "They all have a desire to speak out against our leaders. They're all on the same page in their communities, but they don't know each other. It's exciting to help those introductions happen"

The vigil will be 7 p.m. at Calvary Episcopal Church, 532 Center St. It concludes with a walk up Pacific Avenue, ending at the Town Clock.

Copyright (c) Santa Cruz Sentinel. All rights reserved.

Kor Toht -- ขอโทษ

I should have known better.

After all, my friend Jerry married a woman who worked in a bar in Bangkok, and he has warned me about all the pitfalls of falling in love with a Thai prostitute.

It's such a tired old cliché: fat aging farang falls for tiny, dark, black-haired beauty. She provides not only sex, but love, all the trappings of a romantic relationship -- for a price. He is smitten, infatuated, reliving his teenage
affairs; she is taking a calculated risk. In exchange for being his girlfriend and lover, she is gambling that he will take care of her, and her extended family. He wants romance and she wants financial security, to leave the bar scene, start a business and support her aging parents.

The Thai countryside, particularly in the northeast territory called Issan, is littered with Thai-farang couples who met in the bars of Bangkok and Pattya and fell into a relationship, romantic on his part and economic on hers. He is from Australia, Norway, Germany, even the U.S., and he sends her money to keep her from returning to work in the bars, and sometimes he even builds a house for her family and spends part of the year in Thailand with them. Some men bring their brides back to the home country, with all the attendant problems that cultural adjustment brings for the women. Some of the marriages even work out. But the internet forums are full of horror stories about how Thai women only want your money, and how their families bleed you dry.

The reality of it is much more complicated.

When I went to Koh Samui in January, I was not unfamiliar with the bar scene in Bangkok. During my previous visits, Jerry had taken me to sample the charms of Nana, Soi Cowboy and Patpong, and I visited bars in Chiang Mai on my own. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of open-air bars in Lamai Beach, each with a bevy of lovely bartenders waiting to service you. The first night in Koh Samui I sat on a stool at one such establishment and got involved in a long conversation with a leftwing coal miner from Australia. After about a half dozen Heinekens, I could barely see the muay Thai ring in the middle of the circle of bars, where lady boxers were battering each other with their hands and feet. I staggered home to my hotel room and awoke with a hangover.

The next night I was more careful, and ordered my second beer at Coco Bar around the corner from my hotel. All the girls had on red tee shirts with the bar's logo, and they were very friendly. The TV was tuned to a Thai soap opera and rock and roll was blaring from large speakers. I noticed a girl on the end of the bar who was quiet and almost mousey. I thought she was rather homely compared to the others with their makeup, short shorts and high heels. I noticed that several of the girls urged her to go over and talk with me. I bought her a drink, a soda, and we played a bar game that resembled an upright tic-tac-toe. I found her to be shy, sweet and charming.

Her name, she told me, was Thim. She was 35, unmarried and with no children, and her parents were poor rice farmers in Udon near the Laotian border. She told me that she had arrived the day before with her younger sister, who worked in a market in Bangkok. Nancy, another girl who worked at Coco Bar, was from Thim's village and she had offered her a job. Since neither of us knew more than a few words in the other's language, all of this information is questionable.

We went back to my hotel room together and she spent the night. The next morning after breakfast on the hotel terrace overlooking the sea, I asked her to stay with me. There were financial details to arrange, how much I would pay the bar for her absence, how much I would pay for her presence. Once the transaction was settled, thus began one of the most delightful times of my life. We held hands in the streets, shared the back of a motorcycle taxi on sightseeing trips around the island, and we bought each other gifts, gold jewelry for her, pants and shirts for me (on display in this photo). She brought strange and exotic foods to our hotel room and fed me while we were seated on the floor. I took her on her first plane ride and we went to the movies in Bangkok where she sat cross-legged in her seat, enthralled for two hours without moving. From the second day she professed her love for this fat old farang and eventually I did likewise. It seemed so easy, if not inexpensive. She also constantly worried about my leaving, and asked frequently about when I would return.

Fast forward to our parting 19 days later at the modern new Suvarnabhumi Airport. I went inside to catch my plane to London and Thim left in our taxi to visit her sister. There was a hole where my heart had been. I mourned her absence all the way home to San Francisco.

A friend asked if I was in love. "I am in delight," I answered. I knew that falling in love with a prostitute was an old and well-established faux pas. "They lie," I was told, "tell you what you want to hear." While I have come to see that paying for sex is acceptable in Thai culture (if not in the West), it was difficult for me to accept that a romantic relationship could also be purchased. Did Thim love me because I had a jai dii (good heart), or was she just with me for the money? I was looking at it from my point of view, not hers.

Isaan, the flat agricultural land of northeast Thailand, is the poorest region of the country. Jobs off the farm are rare and pay little. Most of the lowest-paid construction workers and the girls that populate the bars are from Isaan. And becaue family is the ultimate value in Thailand, they send much of their money they earn back home. Jerry told me that a shortening of the bar hours in Bangkok, proposed by successive morally concerned governments, would be a disaster in Isaan. Prostitution is an essential part of Thailand's economy.

Upon my return home, I printed up an album full of photos of Thim and I on Koh Samui and in Bangkok. I talked with her on the telephone several times, but the few stock English phrases she knew (one of them was "you are such a flirt") and the several sentences in Thai that I had learned did not make for an informative conversation. She had gone home to Udon to help her parents with the rice harvest. I told her that I was planning to return to Thailand in August. We exchanged vows and hung up. It cost me $20 to talk for seven minutes.

My fantasy was that I would move to Bangkok, rent an apartment, find a job teaching English, and that Thim would come to stay. The romantic idyll would continue on her turf. I expected her to get a job. She said she would find work with her sister in the market or in a restaurant. I didn't imagine that I would continue to pay her for services rendered, nor did I think about getting married (my two ventures into that realm were both flops). My vision was distinctly western, one where two independent people would freely choose to spend time together. It was a liberal, free-market view. And it clashed with Thai culture.

The internet enlightened me. I've discovered several forums where Thais and Western expatriates exchange information for interested readers. And I've found a web site where Thai women by the hundreds look for farang husbands. It is possible to chat with a variety of ladies of all ages about their expectations and their cultural standards. Most, I think, are not and have never been bar girls. Some have advanced degrees and work as nurses, teachers and engineers. Marriage for them comes definitely before sex, and it is an exchange: you care for (i.e. financially support) me and I care for you. What's more, marrying a Thai girl means marrying her entire extended family. Children are obligated to take care of their parents, and that includes the children's farang husbands. Jerry's extended family includes his wife's mother, two children, and numerous sisters and a brother and their offspring. He built them a house in Surin, and is paying for his step-children's education which includes motorcycles to get to school. In exchange, he says, the family will care for him when he gets too old to work.

From the Thai girls looking for husbands, I learned that many Thai men drink too much and that farangs, although some lied and played games, were mostly kind and generous. Best of all were older farangs, and it was not unusual for 30-year-old women to actively solicit marriage from 60-year-old men. In addition to youth and beauty, they were prepared to offer the Total Woman ideal (all the housewifely chores done with a smile) in exchange for total care and support. The language they use in their profiles is romantic and idealistic, straight out of a romance novel or a chick flick film.

I found two women on the web site who were willing to call Thim and act as translators for our communication. The first worked in an internet store and I asked her to help Thim navigate the computer and use the Yahoo email address I had set up for her. She wrote back to me that Thim told her she expected money from me for her to attend computer school. Another woman had a long conversation with Thim and learned that her parents were both crippled and required help with the farm. Thim told her she wanted me to send 2000 baht (about $80) a month to her. She was waiting for me to return and she was not looking for another job. And she also expected me to marry her as soon as I got there, because that's where love went, didn't it? Love, money and marriage.

I'm sorry, Thim. Kor toht (ขอโทษ). I didn't understand. It was not my intention to hurt you. But I am not going to send you money, and although I may continue with my plan to visit Thailand again in August, I am not thinking of marrying you. My fantasy of paradise is not the same as yours, and does not fulfill your very real needs. I wondered why you seemed uncomfortable when we visited one of the supermalls in Bangkok and walked through aisle after aisle stuffed with expensive consumer goods. Your reality back in Udon, where there is so much poverty that you are forced to sell your body to provide for your parents, is quite different.

If I can ever learn to find the words in Thai, I hope you can forgive me.

Beauty from the Sea

Over last weekend, I joined my old friends (but young at heart) Jim and Gerry in Monterey for our yearly reunion. The main goal of our trip was a visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The last time I went I was with parents on a field trip when Molly was 13 (she's about to turn 30), and it was just as long for Jim. Gerry had never been there. I took lots of photos, most of them unusable, and one video. Here it is: My first experiment at uploading to YouTube. (And my offering joins about a dozen other videos there of jellyfish at various aquariums, a popular subject.)

The weather was beautiful, clear skies and temperatures up into the 70s. We fattened up on fish and steaks at various eateries and went to see a couple of movies: "Black Snake Moan" and "Wild Hogs" (the former because we wanted to oogle a half-naked Christina Ricci, and the latter because Gerry has owned several Harleys). I was the only one who liked BSN and mostly because of the good blues soundtrack. Even Samuel Jackson picked a guitar and sang, not half bad. Christina, whom I remember as a chubby youngster in films, is anorexic thin with dark eyes befitting her character who has found no drug she wouldn't ingest and no male she wouldn't ball. The less said about Hogs the better. John Travolta continues his downward slide in films. The premise -- four aging yuppies who take a road trip on their motorcycles -- has promise, but the plotting and writing was schlock. Hard to believe it was the top box office grosser last weekend. William Macy, however, was great as the wimp who discovers his inner biker.

Hanging out with a couple of old codgers like myself gave me another opportunity to marvel over the ravages of age. Bulging midriffs, half-assed attempts to diet, an unholy curiosity about the opposite sex (now that 99% of the women are younger than we are), rigid and dogmatic political views, disturbed sleeping patterns, and big cars. What were we thinking when we came out into the world!

The weather continues mild and warm here in Santa Cruz. I learned today that Daylight Savings Time (spring forward!) is coming this Sunday. It seems earlier every year, just like the Academy Awards. Part of my brain, though, is still on Thai time (18 hours ahead of California).

This weekend is the anniversary of the start of the fiasco in Iraq (how many years ago?). Many of my friends are trying to put together a prayer service or a vigil to commemorate the event. But of course we've been at war with Iraq since the first Gulf battle under Bush Senior. It just got hotter under Bush Junior. We've been slaughtering the Iraqis, just like the Vietnamese before them, for an ungodly number of years. What date do we pick?

I have little enthusiasm for empty gestures. I think the next elections will solve little, although we may exchange an idiot for someone with a little smarts, and a better ideology. But no candidate has expressed my feelings that America made a major wrong turn with the Bay of Pigs and the Tonkin Gulf lie, and is on a doomed course. Don't even talk to me about economics. We're in hock to the world, and the only reason they don't call in our debts is because we're the buyer of last resort, the only country who will buy all the crap from China and elsewhere.

So I continue to explore options for moving elsewhere. And from time to time I find a little beauty in the natural world, like the jellyfish tank at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

"All our theology is shit!"

My friend Ted is not one to mince words. I wrote this quote down because it had me in hysterics, but now, a day later, I can't remember at what in particular his irritation was directed. We both belong to a men's group composed of old left-wing farts, mostly discontented Catholics, and we meet twice a month in different homes to ponder the weekly mass readings and how they apply to the world, and we puzzle over the sorry state of the Church and its misguided hierarchy. This is not to say that we are total heretics. Most of us go to mass regularly and value the ritual and the sacraments, but we often differ from the faithful in our interpretation of scripture.

I was telling Ted about film director James Cameron's upcoming documentary for the Discovery Channel that claims to give evidence that a crypt discovered over twenty years ago in Jerusalem once contained the bones of Jesus of Nazareth. I was less interested in the documentary (without cable, I won't see it until it's released on DVD) than I was in the hysterical reaction to it by Christians insulted that Cameron, director of "Titanic" and "The Terminator," was trying to disprove the resurrection. It was "The Da Vinci Code" furor all over again, only this time Cameron, who made a documentary about the finding of the remains of the Titanic deep at sea, is claiming that his discovery is truth, not fiction.

I don't understand why some think the Gospel message of Jesus stands or falls on the truth of his resurrection from the dead (St. Paul clearly thought so). And this is where Ted and I got into the insufficiency of Christian theology. I told him that a member of our Sangha, a group studying the writings of Bede Griffiths on Hindu-Christian dialogue, was upset because Timothy Freke was invited to speak at a conference on Griffiths last summer in England. He called Freke a "self-styled, pagan-gnostic author," and said "he argues that Jesus never existed as a historical person but was rather a fictional construction from various pagan myths." But why, I wanted to know, is it necessary that Jesus was a historical person? Do all Buddhists believe that Buddha must have existed, and Muslims that Mohammed was a a real person? How about Hindus, the followers of the blue-skinned Krishna. Was he for real Arjuna's charioteer. I see the life and teachings of Jesus as a parable, and parables are powerful for what they say, and not because they are historically true.

Such questions get me into trouble. So I looked up Timothy Freke on the internet to see if he was a kindred soul. He has a web site and a Wikipedia entry, so it's easy to check out his views. My sense, from a quick scan, is that Freke is an enterprising New Age entrepreneur who is plowing the same contrarian field that Dan Brown and dozens of others have plowed. I had to laugh at his catch phrase for awakening: "lucid living." If his books help anyone to wake up to the timeless truth of non-duality, and to a desire for social justice based on the intuition of interconnectedness, more power to him. But I suspect his more immediate goal is to make a buck off of disenchanted people who know they're sick but can't find a physician.

Bede Griffiths was aware that a concern for historical truth, for facts that can be supported by science and reason, is a diversion. "The sacrifice of Christ is the central event of human history; it is the event which alone gives meaning to life," he wrote. But this truth is a mystery. The "dogmas of the church, of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Eucharist, do not define the mystery properly speaking. They only express in human terms what he [God] has chosen to reveal concerning himself," according to Griffiths. "For the divine mystery can only be approached by faith." (Quotes from The One Light: Bede Griffiths Principal Writings, edited by Bruno Barnhart) Because the core of spirituality is a divine mystery, I think an obsession with historical reality, with what really happened, is a mistake. It's not important that Jesus really existed, or that he really rose from the dead. So I don't feel threatened by Brown's fiction or Cameron's possible discovery that the bones of Jesus once resided in a tomb in Jerusalem.

Christians are now observing Lent, the period between Ash Wednesday and Easter that commemorates the 40 days Jesus spend in wilderness where he was tempted by the devil. It is a time of fasting and repentence, of reflection and renewal. Our priest last Sunday spoke of his addiction to chocolate and his struggle to resist its charms. I thought this a trivialization of temptation and hoped that he would find something deeper for his homily, like addiction to power that tempts politicians and the yearning for world domination that attracts our leaders. At the end of his sermon he told of presiding over a funeral the day before for a 17-year-old girl who had committed suicide. "She had been unable to resist the temptation," he said, and his insensitivity shocked me. Is death addictive, like chocolate or power? At one time the church refused to bury suicides in the same cemetaries along with the virtuous others. Are we returning to that time?

In a recent column for the online site Common Dreams.org, Joyce Marcel wrote perceptively of the link between death and culture: "Anna Nicole Smith died for your sins, America." The writer's indictment includes that "cruel show," "American Idol," with its over 30 million weekly viewers, the universal desire to be famous, plastic surgery as a way to stay young and beautiful, "nitwit comedians who make jokes about women's 'racks,'" the rising popularity of "entertainment" publications that thrive on celebrity "news," and even gold-diggers looking to marry money, incoluding "all of you who married Donald Trump." Marcel sees Anna Nicole Smith's life as "almost a symbol of what America's become. Rapacious, willful, undisciplined, ignorant, venal, anything for pleasure, anything for conquest. Tell me that's not America incarnate."

While I was traveling in Europe and Asia and speaking with people from many different countries, I thought about America and wondered what went wrong in our culture. Has our technological progress and economic success blinded us to the plight of the poor and the destruction of the environment? Of course the wealthy are the same everywhere, unable to see past their privileges. But why in America, where all are created equal, is there so much inequality today? And why, when they finally earn a little leisure, are so many attracted to the "bread and circuses" of celebrity news, obsessed about the death and life of Anna Nicole Smith and Brittany Spears, as well as the winners and losers of "American Idol"?

I met few Americans on my travels and wondered where they were. I heard stories of Americans who sewed Canadian flags on their backpacks, fearful of people learning where they were from. I suspect that after 9/11, many Americans decided to stay home rather than see the world. Statistics are hard to come by, but it looks as if fewer Americans have passports than citizens from other countries (18-30% compared with 40% for Canadians, for example), and probably even fewer of these passport holders use them. This will change, now that visitors to Canada and Mexico are required to carry a passport. And I've learned that all soldiers sent to Iraq must have a passport (many of whom might not otherwise travel overseas). American is isolated in North America with only two borders to the north and south, and most Americans never cross them. Only Australia is similarly isolated, but I met lots of Aussies in Thailand. Another reason might be that Americas have less vacation time than travelers from other first world countries. Whatever the reason, Americans tend to be insular and isolationist. Even if they embrace the big picture, they have less experience with The Other.

So what's the answer? Turn off your TV, cross borders, and encounter the divine mystery in others.

And the Winner Was...

Since my return home to California 13 days ago, I've been out to theaters to see seven movies and I've watched six videos from the comfort of my couch. I've walked in the rain, been to mass three times (once as commentator on Ash Wednesday and again last Sunday as lector), eaten lunch from the buffet at Sitar, the new Indian restaurant at the end of my street, walked in the rain, attended two 70th birthday parties, read three books, drunk cappuccinos at my three favorite neighborhood watering holes, walked in the rain again, and missed the Academy Awards.

Shirlee and I did go to hear the pre-Academy Awards discussion at the Nick with local movie reviewers Lisa Jensen, Morton Marcus and Bruce Bratton. They attracted a big audience of mostly white haired movie buffs like ourselves, and talked about the awards they thought would be given and the ones they believed should be given. All agreed that "The Departed" was one of Martin Scorsese's least successful films, but predicted he would get the Oscar more for cumulative achievement than anything else. According to Marcus, Scorsese had lost control of his actors, led by Jack Nicholson's over the top excesses, and the film was a mess. No one thought it would win best film.

I only predicted two winners: Alan Arkin for his supporting role in "Little Miss Sunshine" (my pick, along with "Babel," for best film) and "An Inconvenient Truth," a no brainer as best documentary. I'd seen all the films mentioned, except for "Little Children," which the reviewers hated and which won nothing, and "Dreamgirls," so I couldn't judge Jennifer Hudson's winning performance. For me, Peter O'Toole's portrayal of a dying lover in "Venus" was far and away the best of the bunch, and Judi Dench's role as a misguided lover in "Notes on a Scandal," could not be topped. I believe there is a fine distinction between acting and impersonation, and winners Forest Whitaker and Helen Mirren were merely fine impersonators. "Pan's Labyrinth," which should have been in the running for best film, was passed over in favor of "The Lives of Others" for best foreign film; it opens next weekend at the Nick and so I will see perhaps why Guillermo del Toro's wonderful cinematic myth was denied its due. Besides the quirky "Miss Sunshine," I would like to have seen the innovative and emotionally powerful "Babel" take the prize, or even the un-nominated "Children of Men." But Scorsese can now join the greats in the Hollywood pantheon with his double Oscars.

I emailed a fellow pilgrim from the trip to India that since my return I've been rethinking all of my former activities and withdrawing like a turtle into my shell. She replied that she'd been feeling "a bit paralyzed" between her return from India and "all the pieces that seem to be unravelling a bit around the edges of life at Holy Cross." In our absence there was a very successful ecumenical New Year's Eve Vigil for Peace that drew perhaps 300 to the church parish hall, and the installation of the new bishop for the diocese of Monterey. Richard Garcia is one of a handful of Hispanics in that office and his appointment by the Vatican means a renewed focus on immigration as the place of social injustice in our community. Why aren't these two events signs of hope? Next week we meet to discuss the future of Pax Christi Santa Cruz County. The monthly meetings have been drawing a dwindling number of people. At our church the Outreach Director resigned and was not replaced, and the various ministries seem staffed by the same few volunteers, many of whom are experiencing burnout. Most of the people in the pews sit on their hands and refuse to participate.

Last Sunday some of the pilgrims to India presented a show-and-tell at the bi-monthly meeting of Sangha Shantivanam. The photo albums and slide shows brought back the trip for us and showed the stay-at-homes what India and Shantivanam were like. The pilgrims presented me with a gift for leading the tour, a five-night all-expenses-paid visit to the Camaldolese Hermitage in Big Sur. Radha handed me the bag of stuff I gave her in Chennai to carry home and now the carved Ganesha ball from Mamallapuram sits on my desk, removing all obstacles from my path.

The wind and rain brought power failures over the weekend, and after the last my refrigerator refused to stay cold. It's only two years old, and I poked and prodded it, hoping to find the fault and fix it. After putting my perishables in Shirlee's fridge, I unplugged mine and gave it a time out in the corner. Then, 15 minutes later I plugged it back in and heard the motor start up. With an hour, it was cold again. But this morning, when I went to get cream for my coffee, I found the carton frozen. Now the whole refrigerator was a freezer. Ain't life a feast or famine? I turned the thermostat down in a quest for the golden mean, between everything frozen and only the freezer stuff stiff. Wish me luck.

I've been on the phone to Thailand several times but the gap between presence and communication seems unbridgeable. She says "Willie" and I say "Thim" and we get no further. I say my prepared phrases, and she says "Willie speak Thai" and I realize she has misunderstood my pronunciation. Because Thai is a tonal language, the same word can be said five different ways, with a different meaning each time. The opportunities for misunderstanding are quintupled. The 18-hour difference means that when it's day there it is night here, and vice versa. Even the sun divides us. Eventually we each say "bye bye," and the pipeline between a rice farm in Udon and my studio apartment in Santa Cruz closes. I've discovered, however, a wealth of tools on the internet for learning Thai, searchable dictionaries and grammar tips, as well as online forums where students and native speakers can get together. I'm studying the alphabet (44 consonants and over 20 vowel sounds) and trying to learn to recognize and write letters, separately and in whole words and phrases. It's slow going.

I've also been gathering information on long-term visas for Thailand, and the requirements for teaching English there. Did you know that there is a Craig's List for Bangkok? There are ads for rooms and apartments and personal listings by Thai women looking for older men to support them and their families. Expats in BKK and upcountry recount their experiences in forums and warn prospective visitors about pitfalls in the "Land of Smiles" (LOS for short).

The time spent surfing the net for information on Thailand and its language means less time looking at Common Dreams, Antiwar.com, truthout and Truthdig, the web sites I've marked for fresh perspectives on the political situation here and abroad. I started checking the news again when I reached London and what I saw and heard just made me weary. The Democrats are squabbling among themselves, the great liberal hope Nancy Pelosi wants to continue giving Israel a blank check to oppress the Palestinians, and the unseemly pandering for votes by candidates for president has already begun , two years before the election. We all know that America has the best democracy money can buy, and the prize positions go to those with the deepest pockets. After living for a month in a country under military rule, I've again begun to question the whole ideology of democracy and our so-called "freedom," that word that grates on my ear when I hear it coming out of Bush or Chaney's mouths. Despite the anti-war message from the voters last November, the fiasco in Iraq continues. Even while unwilling partners in the "Coalition of the Willing" are sending their troops home, Bush increases the size of our presence there with soldiers who are returning for their third and fourth tours of duty. I hear no one other than that great statesman (at least when he got over integregation) Robert Byrd speaking of accountability for so many deaths on all sides. The occupation of Iraq was a crime against humanity and Bush and his minions must be accountable, must pay for their complicity.

But then that's just one person's opinion.

And now for something completely different: My daughter Molly (under her stage name Molly Hartwell) performs tonight -- "lush, evocotive improvisations & vocal acrobatics" -- at the Cayuga Vault in Santa Cruz with her friend Yanú, a guitarist and singer from Slovakia she met in Europe two years ago. I've heard them practice and their voices go beautifully together. It's nice to hear Molly with an accompanist after so many a capella performances. So if you live anywhere near Santa Cruz, get yourself down to the Vault, 1100 Soquel Avenue, by 8 PM tonight. Tickets are $12-15 at the door.

Mumblings of a Jet-Lagged Traveler

Although I've been back home for five nights, I still wake up around 2, certain that it's time to get up. In Thailand, where I left my heart, it's 15 hours later, early evening. So I turn the light on by my bed and read for an hour or so until the go-to-sleep antihistamine can do its work. I don't find it to be time wasted. The book I started on the plane from London, Carl Hiaasen's Skinny Dip, was good, and it pleased me to discover a new mystery writer whose wit and intelligence could keep my interest. Michael Connelly's latest book, Echo Park, was waiting for me at the library, and it's every bit as absorbing as his others (I've read them all). So getting up in the middle of every night is not such a bad thing.

It was a bright sunny afternoon in San Francisco when my eldest son Chris picked me up at the airport. After the cool drizzle of London, it seemed unseasonably warm. Our plane had flown over Iceland, Greenland, and the frozen bits of Canada, including Hudson Bay; I watched our progress not out the window but on the screen in front of my seat. Traveling west is disorienting. We leave England at 10:30 in the morning on a Wednesday and arrive, nearly 11 hours later, in the early afternoon of the same day in California. Time and space is a mystery; Einstein would be pleased.

That same evening I try to watch a video at Chris and Sandy's house in Sonoma, while they celebrate Valentine's Day by going to see Dolly Parton in concert. After ten minutes I begin to struggle with sleep. The next day I drive my truck down to Santa Cruz where mail in two large piles spills off the table. Among the offerings of magazines and junk mail are three DVDs from Netflix; I restarted my account while still in London. That evening I try to watch M. Night Shyamalan's latest film, "Lady in the Water," but fall asleep within minutes. It took me three nights to wade through that pretentious clap-trap. Likewise, Richard Linklater's "A Scanner Darkly," which remains in the player until and if I can finish watching it. Finally, yesterday Shirlee and I go to see "Factory Girl," the biopic about Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol's favorite muse (until she went off the deep end with drugs). I stayed awake probably because it was screening at 11 in the morning before the weekly film discussion led by Morton Marcus. It's a gloomy and depressing movie.

But last night I went to see "Venus" with the ever magnificent Peter O'Toole playing an aging lecherous actor, and Jodie Whittaker who is spunky in her film debut as the woman 20 years his junior who reciprocates -- somewhat -- his attentions. It's a movie about desire rather than sex (O'Toole's character is impotent and dying of prostate cancer). What's wrong, I wonder, with a 73-year-old man finding beauty, with sexual overtones, in a young woman? In their previous movie, "The Mother," director Roger Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi went in the other direction with a grandmother who has a sexual affair with a young handyman, played by Daniel Craig. It, too, was done with taste and poignancy. Helen's lesbian friends in London had advised her to avoid going to see "Venus," and I'm curious about their objections. If it's because the power relations are unequal between older men and younger women, hinting at the ubiquity of rape, then in this film the 20-year-old more than holds her own against O'Toole's character, kneeing him in the groin when he touches her breast. Maybe it's just because it's about a heterosexual relationship? Anyway, "Venus" is also a terrific view of London, with scenes of places I visited just last week.

Perhaps I'm sensitive on the issue of May-December romance because of my time with Thim in Thailand. There are thirty years separating us. But even if we were close in age, the power relations would be unequal. I tried to tell her that I was poor in America, but all she could see was how rich I was in Thailand. Any westerner who comes to visit that country is rich by virtue of the money it takes to buy a plane ticket. Most Thais, particularly the children of poor rice farmers from Isan, can never contemplate traveling around the world as a tourist. The fact that I had been a university teacher, while she was only a farm girl, also separated us, and she made this clear one evening in a conversation by holding her hands in front of her, with the lowly left one symbolizing her life and the right one high above it symbolizing me and my existence. The analogy humbled me.

When I checked my phone messages from Sonoma, there were several which appeared to be from Thim, although no words were spoken. After a few days home, I dialed the mobile phone number she gave me, with codes supplied for calling from America, and she answered. It was a strange conversation, filled with excitement and laughter on both sides, and a variety of phrases we had used in Thailand with each other, culled from our various dictionaries and grammar books, including Thai for Lovers. "You are such a flirt," she said, something she had learned that struck her funny bone. I told her I missed her, and much more which she seemed to understand. Then we said "bye bye." Yesterday morning she called me, and I bid her good night (it being after one in the morning in Bangkok where she was staying with her sister).

Was it the two months away or jet lag that made the familiar seem strange? I had been home for two days when I stood in front of my toilet for a full minute before realizing that the object on top of it, connected by a cord to an plug, was my electric toothbrush. The old habits take hold slowly. I've forgotten what I fix for breakfast and have to go through the motions step by step.

For now, all I can manage besides seeing movies is to catch up on my email correspondance and sort through the 1500 digital photos I took in India, Thailand, London and Paris. Next Sunday the pilgrims from Sangha Shantivanam will share their memories of the trip with other members of the sangha, and I put together an album of 100 photos that I had taken. I went to mass yesterday and saw numerous friends, but the liturgy did not touch me as it has in the past. I haven't meditated for more than a month, and now, instead of climbing up to my altar in the loft first thing after waking, I make coffee and surf the internet. Molly is singing at the Vault a week from Tuesday and I will miss the meeting of my men's group. But Gene came by the house the other morning with his dog Sydney, and I sat with Ted in church yesterday. I can feel my previous interests and responsibilities tugging at my pant's leg, but I find myself turning away.

Will I Always Have Paris?

Rick in "Casablanca" may "always have Paris" (with Ingrid Berman, that is), but will I?

Random thoughts about Paris and "home" on the last day of my two-month journey to Europe and Asia:

The only person I saw wearing a beret in Paris on Monday and Tuesday was an elderly Chinese woman on the Metro. But there were piles of them for sale in the souvenir store across from Notre Dame.

I'm not ready to go home. I could live out of my suitcase forever. It's not that I don't miss my children or my friends. But the lure of the open road is difficult to resist. Ulysses must have experienced that on his voyages, but I don't have mythical creatures to blame. Or do I?

While walking down a street on the Ile St-Louis yesterday, three gentleman holding cameras came up to me and asked if I was a Czech photographer. By their attitude I could tell that they held this person in much respect. Of course they asked in French and I answered in English, "Nope." They seemed quite disappointed, and told me, in English, that "you look just like him." I almost pulled out my Nikkon pocket digital and tried to be whom they wanted.

Who said "home is where the heart is"? (Google doesn't seem to know) But what if your heart is everywhere? As big as the whole outdoors? (Not that I'd make so grand a claim.)

Yesterday in front of the Sacre Coeur (can't find accent marks on this Bill Gates keyboard) on Montmarte, I was almost blown over by gale force winds. Tourists were huddled under the portico of the basilica, their umbrellas turned inside out. Rain came and went. The view from the hill was spectacular however, even though the climb up nearly wiped me out (the funicular on which I pinned my hopes having stopped running). All Paris was laid out before my eyes under the storm clouds.

Of course I miss the familiarity of my pied a terre back in Santa Cruz where Shirlee tells me the mail is piling up like crazy. I miss the Nick, Lulu's, Logos, and my community at Holy Cross. But why is it I always seem to fall into the trap of overburdening myself with appointments? The dance card fills up so easily. I find it hard to say no. And then I resent the commitments I've made, the responsibilities I've taken on. On the road, there is only the Now: no regrets for the past, no plans for the future. Wouldn't that appeal to anyone?

But then commitments and responsibilities are what life involves. To not have them is to be...irresponsible and afraid of committing one's self. Argh.

I ate dinner last night at the Buffalo Grill across the place from the Gare du Nord with its hoardes of Gypsy girls looking for handouts from unsuspecting travelers. No, I didn't eat the buffalo meat burger, but I did have a delicious stear steak. The dominant color in the bistro was red, the decor featured wild west and Indian themes, and on the wall a television set showed showed a repeating loop of Ronald Reagan on horseback, riding off into the sunset. Music from the Eagles played on the sound system.

I left mosquito repellant back in Thailand along with other toiletries and personal effects I would no longer use. Here I'll donate most of my winter clothes to a charity. It's a challenge to travel as lightly as possible and my small black canvas bag is no more fully packed now, although I'm bringing new clothes that Thim bought me in Ko Samui, along with some additional books and artifacts to remember this journey.

The transportation map for Paris, showing the Metro, train and bus lines, looks like a Jackson Pollock painting, random squiggles of all kinds. I bought a carnet (10-pack) of tickets and quickly mastered the system (although I stuck with the Metro). Paris is easy to maneuver, and I criss-crossed the city willy-nilly to see the places that caught my interest. I avoided museums, which for some are the high points of paris, and traveled through the parks and gardens, the Luxembourg, the Tuilleries, and the Parc de la Villette in the north of the city where Francois' Cite des Sciences et de L'Industrie is located, along with the Cite de la Musique and a large concert hall, a conglomeration of former abbatoirs interspersed with wide swaths of grass and amusement areas for kids. I strolled through the Latin Quarter and Montparnasse, drank coffee in one-time literary cafes, and prayed in Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur. I saw the landmarks, --the Eiffel Tower, the dome of the Pantheon, and Sacre Coeur -- from a distance, and mostly I enjoyed strolling the boulevards. Paris is so cute! It's almost like a Disney version of the city (and it even has its own Disneyland now on the outskirts of the city).

It feels like I've been on the road forever. Things I did here in December seem like remote memories. Christmas in London, New Year's Eve at Shantivanam in India. Now Valentine's Day is upon us. Who will be my Valentine?

With Francois and Danielle, I watched some of the televised speech given by Segolene Royal, the leader of the Socialist Party who is in the running to become president of France at the May elections. Her opponent is Nicholas Sarkozy, a right-winger of Hungarian descent who believes, along with the infamous La Pen, that France should be for the French. Love it or leave it. That has a familiar ring to it. Royal, a 53-year-old woman, unveiled a 100-point manifesto which took power away from capitalists and passed it on to labor. Can socialism still be a viable option. My friends thinks so, and their optimism fills me with hope. Unfortunately, Hilary does not, and I suspect Obama is more media hype than tangible reality. He still needs a little seasoning to be able to stand up to the nay sayers of the Democratic Party who have forgotten the lessons of Vietnam.

The exchange rate of dollars to euros shocked me when I got money at the EuroStar terminal for my two days on the continent. The dollar continues to slide against other world currencies. I suppose this is good for sales of American products, but it means my trip has become quite a bit more expensive than I'd planned. Only India was cheap. Bangkok, London and Paris are the playgrounds of the rich these days, not us poor colonial cousins.

When I made up the name of this blog, it occured to me that of course there is more to life than religion, sex and politics. But I keep coming back to these themes, although reticence overtakes me when it comes time to write about sex. Maybe later. Politics is more apparent by its absence as I enjoy a newsless day without hearing about the nonsense and exploits of George Bush. American politics seems so less important the farther you get from her borders. Each country I've visited has its own more insistent concerns.

As for religion, I've not missed so many masses in years. It was hard to get back in touch with the Spirit even in Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur, surrounded by tourists taking pictures. Can religion, like culture, now be commodities for the short attention span of tourists? And just where do I stand? For this, and for my "summer romance" in Thailand, I need some thinking space.

After complaining about the British winter I've experienced in December and February, my last day dawned cloudless and bright. The sun is saying "Goodbye, Willie, come again!" Helen has a singing class in the city and I will go to meet her in the afternoon. Then we'll stroll along the Thames and I'll enjoy the sights for the last time. When the EuroStar arrived at Paddington Station last night I could see the London Eye, its lights all in purple, through the glass roof of the terminal. Lovely.

Tomorrow, an almost 11-hour flight from London Heathrow to San Francisco. That is, if the British Airways employes do not decide to go on strike.

Ah, Paree!

Why did I wait so long to return to Paris? It's been over 30 years. And why am I only here for not quite two days? It must be something to do with the jet lag.

I'm in a computer place on the Left Bank, just off the Boulevard St-Germain, trying with considerable difficulty to master the French keyboard. Why do they have one different from all the rest of the world? Why do they lay claim to fried potatoes (the ones our Fuhrer renamed "freedom fries"). And why is the sky blue?

Being in Paris brings out the philosopher in me. Did you know the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas has a tiny Place named after him? I ran across it this morning, just down lovely Rue Moffetard from the Place de la Contrascarpe where Jack and Derroll used to play music back in the 1950s.

I spent a peaceful night in my tiny postage-stamp room (it felt like a monk's cell, which for me is just what I prefer) at the Hotel Port Royal which was recommended by Sheila and Jerry who have stayed there many times. Thank you, Delaneys.

The weather here is unstable; sun at one minute, showers the next. It's quite breezy, but not very cold. My lunch today was poulet fermier avec pommes purée (baked chicken and mashed potatoes), and a nice glass of the house white wine, at Le Petit Pontoise which was justly recommended by Lonely Planet. I think I was surrounded by distinguished looking professors from the nearby Sorbonne. So I felt right at home, naturally.

The high point of my walk this morning was seeing the building where Gertrude Stein lived with Alice B. Toklas. Hemmingway, judging by the many plaques on the sides of buildings in this quartier, lived everywhere. Notre Dame was suitably impressive, but it is hard to pray with camera flashes going off non-stop. I saw a Japanese woman in a pew near me wearing a kimona. And I watched a large crew filming a scene from a movie called "Modern Love" in the Luxembourg Gardens. A day in the life of a pilgrim.

If it wasn't so hard to write, I would write more. Yesterday, François showed me around the incredible Cité de Sciences where he is in charge of computers. In the evening, I joined François and his family for dinner in their warm home near the Bastille. Wonderful food cooked by Danielle and stimulating conversation.

Tonight, back to London, and on to San Francisco on Wednesday. I wish I could say I was ready to stop traveling, but I'm not. C'est la vie.

Back in Britain

There was a sliver of sunshine for a short period this afternoon, but for the most part London is as I remember it from my visit in December: cold, cloudy and damp. Toto, we're not in Thailand any more.

Today I met my friend Angie from Menorca in Trafalgar Square and we walked toward Covent Garden until we found a likely restaurant, the Bella Italia, where I had a delicious pesto risoto and she had penne with tomato sauce and a salad. Angie's mother died earlier this month and she's in England with her son and daughter for a memorial service at Minster Acres, the family home, in Yorshire.

Yesterday was spent with Gulf Airlines on two flights that took me from Bangkok to London with a change in Muscat, Oman, in the Arabian Peninsula. I followed our progress on the in-flight map with much interest as we flew up the Persian Gulf, past Abu Dhabi and Doha, and over the Zagros Mountains along the border between Iraq and Iran. As the sun set, our Airbus 330 aircraft flew at 40,000 feet, not far to the east of Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk. Watching the map was more fascinating than watching any of the movie offerings, most of which I'd seen anyway.

I've no idea how long I spent traveling in total, but each leg of the journey was about eight hours. My ankles were swollen and my sense of time was totally distorted by the time I caught the express train from Heathrow to Paddington. Rather than wait for the bus at the Tufnell Park tube station, I lugged my luggage up the hill and knocked on Helen's door about 11. She greeted me with a cup of tea and lots of stories, and I noted that the tree we put up and decorated almost two months ago was still standing, though a bit dry and droopy. "She looks like an old tart, don't you think?" Helen said.

Bangkok seems very far away, the humidity and the heat a dim memory. I've retrieved the bag of winter clothes left in Helen's closet and now I'm wearing layers and carrying an umbrella, with hiking boots on my feet instead of the Chaco sandals. Angie said I had a tan, which may be the only souvenir left.

Tomorrow, I leave on the EuroStar from Waterloo at 8 AM for Paris and two days in the French capital.

Addicted to Bubble Tea

I remember when Thai bubble tea first appeared in Santa Cruz a few years ago. I recall that it was advertised as an acquired taste. The idea of sucking down tapioca pearls at the bottom of a glass of tea sounded disgusting. Then one night in San Francisco Nick and I were strolling the the mall near the Myoko Hotel and he suggested we try it. I thought it all right but it was not about to replace my addiction to cappuccino.

Then Thim bought me a bubble tea at the market in Ko Samui and it was delicious. The tapioca was exactly right. That was the first of many here. And in this picture I am drinking a coffee tea (not that distant from a cappuccino) after a visit to the Earawan Shrine in the shopping section of Bangkok near Siam Square. Yum.

The weather has been delightful in Bangkok for this short final visit, humid but with a breeze that seems to have dissipated some of the big smog that greeted our arrival on Monday. Today we went to the movies, to see the new Zhang Yimou epic, "Curse of the Golden Flower," with his star Gong Li. Also in the film playing the wicked emperor was the ever wonderful Chow Yun-Fat. While not as graphic as "Kill Bill," it was one of the bloodiest films I've ever seen with very few left standing at the end. I had wanted to see "Dream Girls" which opened today, but Thim quickly chose the Chinese film when I showed her the entertainment section of the Bangkok Post. The theater was nearly empty but we had popcorn and were captivated by the movie. Thim barely moved for the entire two hours, sitting cross-legged in the seat beside me, hardly touching the popcorn.

Gerry writes that he detected a note of melancholy in my last post. Perhaps. Endings are always difficult. It's been a magical two and a half weeks with Thim, my guide and translator. She wants to accompany me to the airport early tomorrow morning, and afterwards will take an overnight bus to her home in Udon Thani up north where her parents await. She said Nancy called from the Coco Bar in Ko Samui to see how she was doing with this crazy farang, and she's been chatting up a storm with her sister, Song, who is suffering from a migraine headache and unable to work today.

Tomorrow I'm off to Muscat, wherever the hell that is, where I change planes for one headed towards London. The weather report on BBC News this morning said it was bitterly cold and snowing in London, and rainy and cold in Paris where I go on Sunday. I packed clothes to dress in layers for the winter weather in Europe but I'm not sure they will be enough. For most of the way from Heathrow to Helen's house in Highgate, I'll be underground or in trains. But in Tufnell Park, I have to emerge into the cold to catch a bus up the hill. There I will probably freeze. It's hard to imagine now, dressed as I am for tropical weather.

I have some much on which to reflect, from tourism in third world countries to the trials and tribulations of an old man lost in delight with a younger woman. Jerry has been giving me lots of advice, some of which I'll follow and some of which I'll ignore. I'm not sure what will happen next. The world may look quite a bit different from Europe, Sonoma and Santa Cruz. Thim and I have exchanged phone numbers and I've set her up with an email account. But although she can access it through a page in Thai, her home page will be in English and I doubt that she will be able to navigate it easily. I'm hoping that she'll at least be able to log on and look at photos I'll send her. I printed up nearly 50 pictures of the two of us, together and singly, and she will carry the two albums back home to show the folks. I have no idea what their reaction will be.

So tomorrow I bid farewell to this nearly two month Asian voyage. It will certainly not leave me unmarked.

Yellow Banners in Bangkok

Bangkok is all decorated for a celebration but no one has yet been able to tell me what it's all about. The King's picture is everywhere, surrounded by mostly yellow banners and flags. My best guess is that it has something to do with the end of the first month of the year, but I'm still checking into it.

We flew out of the tiny Ko Samui airport at midday on Monday. It was Thim's first flight on an airplane and she was looking forward to it like an eager child. But the seat they put us in was at the rear of the small plane and the only view she had outside of her window was of one of the jet engines. By pushing on the seat in front of her she could see a sliver of the sky, and she kept her head glued to the crack between the seat and the window in front of her for the entire hour's journey.

At first I thought it was going to rain when we arrived at the Suvarnabhumi International Airport (pronounced Suv-a-na-porn for some reason), but quickly realized the sky was dark because of smog, not rain clouds. The pollution was as bad as I've seen it. But the traffic in the early afternoon was almost reasonable. We settled at the P.S. Guest House, which is beginning to feel like home after half a dozen stays there, and then set out to explore Sukhumvit. In Ko Samui, Thim told me how much she liked Bangkok (and, by extension, disliked Ko Samui where she was fond of neither the sea nor the sun). I'm not sure how much time she's spent here. But it didn't take me long to see that the big city did not enchant her either. Thim is a farmer's daughter and her heart remains in the rural countryside west of Udon Thani where her family raises rice and other crops. You can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take it out of the girl. We had dinner at Cabbages & Condoms, one of my favorite restaurants. The owner is the condom king of Thailand and he works closely with rural assistance programs in an attempt to curtail AIDs which is a problem here.

On Tuesday, Thim's younger sister, Song, came to visit. She lives in Bang Son in the north end of the city and works at a market in Bang Seu not far from Chatuchak, the giant outdoor weekend flea market. Both girls, whose ancestors I believe came from Laos, look similar, with the same hooked nose. And both are small, "no bigger than a minute," as my mother would say. We went down to Jerry's apartment and they checked out his place while Jerry and I drank beers and caught each other up on events. Then we went around the corner for a lunch of ah-hahn Thai.

Afterwards, Song wanted to take us to a wat. I had no idea where, the language barrier being a bit high. But we got into a taxi and took a long ride to the Grand Palace, the walled compound where royalty used to used, and Wat Phra Kaew which houses the Emerald Buddha, one of the country's most important treasures. The picture above was taken of Thim and I in front of one of the several unsmiling guards. Afterward paying our respects to Buddha representations there, we went across the street to the temple on the site of the marker for the founding of the city. It was filled with worshippers at four or five locations, burning incense, lighting candles, applying tiny gold squares to various icons (I'm getting better at it). When we had suitably placated the gods (Thai Buddhism seems more like animism than the Vipassana and Zen Buddhism I'm used to back home), Song caught a bus back to her home, and we returned to Sukhumvit by taxi. In the evening, we went looking for a movie among the upscale malls at Siam Square, but never found any that interested either me or Thim. I wanted to see "Dream Girls" but learned it doesn't open until tomorrow, my last day in Bangkok.

Today Thim and I took the Skytrain to the Chao Praya River and boarded a river taxi for the trip to Wat Pho. I've been there several times, most recently with Baron Wohlman, but I wanted to share the impressive Reclining Buddha with Thim. After viewing it, we dropped coins in buckets, I believe 108 of them, which seemed an appropriate ritual in which to participate. Thim was hungry and I took her to the S&P which she initially disliked. But I got us a table overlooking the river boat traffic and she found the food aroy. I'm sure we paid three times what the food she wanted to get from street stalls would have cost us. My efforts to impress her have not been too successful. I think she believes I am the one in need of education.

Lady Boys and Fighting Women

I must have been the only person without a camera at the two events we attended last night, but I'd left mine back in the room. The full moon evening began with fireworks on the beach which we could see from my room. When we set out, my only plan had been to find a place to "eat rice" (the Thai expression for having a meal). Since I expressed a desire for "ah-hahn Thai," to eat Thai food, Thim decided we would go again to the sidewalk restaurant across from the square of bars around the muay Thai boxing arena. It's the kind of chaotic street scene I would probably not visit on my own for fear of being misunderstood. But, as she did a few nights before, Thim ordered for me, after I pointed out "beef in oyster sauce" on the menu which looked good. She went next door to the minimart and got us Cokes and managed to find cups with ice. Her meal was mostly noodles and green leafy stalks, and a small taste set my mouth on fire. Thais must have cast iron stomachs. My food arrived and it was delicious,"aroy mahk."

Every now and then I would notice a girl who was unusually tall and lanky with a masculine face, and I would whisper "katooey" to Thim, which was guaranteed to make her giggle. Katooeys are "lady boys," Thai men who have chosen to cross dress, or in the extreme to undergo a sex change operation. They seem quite accepted here, and in Bangkok several years ago Jerry took me to a katooey show that was fabulous, where the boys were more glamorous than most of the girls I've seen. Katooeys are also active as "bar girls" and in massage parlors, and I've noticed more than a few in Lamai Beach.

Since Thim was curious, I told her I'd heard there was a show across from the boxing area, and after dinner we went over to check it out. There were a number of katooeys out front and we learned the show began at 9. So after a stroll down the moonlit street and a bit of window shopping (counterfeit CDs andDVDs, tacky souvenir shops, tables full of beautifully carved soap, a local art form, and an ice cream shop), we took our seats at a table right in front of the stage. The room was filling with farangs, lots of old folks and even a few children (there are quite a few families vacationing in Lamai). The music was ear-splitting and the drinks nearly twice as expensive as elsewhere.

The nearly hour-long show was terrific. The "girls" were suitably glamorous and the costumes were elaborate, if a bit thread-bare. Some of the performers had obviously had silicon injections, and their private parts were either tied down so as to be invisible, or surgically removed. I didn't look that carefully. Each number featured recorded music to which the ladies mimed, and the high point of the evening was a version of "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina," complete with army hats and fascist salutes from the chorus. It reminded me of "Springtime for Hitler" from "The Producers." There was also a Tina Turner imitator with silicon lips and a bright orange wig who was fabulous. Another performer was made up and dressed as a woman on one side and a man on the other, and she/he would turn whatever side to the audience that was called for by the song. The finale was a rousing "Blame it on the Bossa Nova" and the stage was filled with flying feathers from the Mardis Gras costumes. The evening ended when the entire cast sang "Happy Birthday" to a lady named Nadine from Germany who was invited up on stage. The affair had an intimate family feel to it.

From the ridiculous to the sublime, Thim and I walked across the street to the boxing arena where each of the eight bars had set up plastic seats for their sections and the girls were taking orders for drinks. It was women's night and most of the boxers were members of the fairer sex (but watch out for their feet). The screeching music that accompanies this sport for some reason was playing at full blast over the loud speakers. Some of the bars were sponsoring fighters, and a tiny woman at the bar near our seats was collecting money to be stapled on a garland around her neck. She looked sweet and innocent. A little later I would watch her knock another girl almost senseless.

It's too bad I'd forgotten my camera. The three matches we watched were a riot. In the first fight the boxers made up in passionate enthusiasm for killing the other what they lacked in style. The crowd was filled with partisans who stood and screamed support for their friend and unspeakable epithets at their opponent. Most of the audience were farang and, since the young crowd was whooping it up on the beach in Ko Pha-Ngan under the full moon, they were older. Elderly gentlemen were there with beautiful young Thai girls on their arm (strange that there doesn't seem to be a similar market for the older farang ladies). We saw two girls from Coco Bar with new friends on their arm. The second fight was between two good-sized men, and after two rounds one of them disabled the leg of his opponent and was declared the winner. In the final fight the innocent young girl I'd seen raising funds turned out to be a furious fighter in the ring, and she clearly overwhelmed her opponent. But by then it was midnight and I'd had enough fisticuffs and gender confusion.

This morning, after some dark clouds put my final day in question, the sun came out and remained. After breakfast at the Jungle Juice Cafe, where Ta gave me a lovely farewell card and I gave her Eric and Get's address in Pai, I grabbed my towel and suit and we headed to Georgio's Bao Bob Restaurant for a final morning on the beach. Thim fed me pieces of chocolate while we waited for the clouds to blow away. "I give you," she said, practicing her English. The Cafe del Mar next door was playing opera on their sound system, as Georgio set up his catamaran for a day of sailing. Nearby, a topless lady watched the sails go up. Vendors waved their wares at the sunbathers. Another day in paradise.