I'm ready for my close-up Mr. Kon-Tai

I just wrote this in an email, but I must reiterate. It is 8:11 pm in Thailand, despite what my blog tells you. I sat in my room, arguing with Moby Dick, then decided to take my homework to the coffee shop inside the Tesco Lotus. After eating some kao pad sai kai gap pak (fried rice with egg and vegetables) I ordered a ridiculous chocolate smoothy drink and proceeded to do my Thai homework. A student who lives near Namthong Sikalai where I live came into the coffee shop and we spoke in very very slow English and very very slow Thai. I told her, in Thai, twice, that I lost my umbrella at the coffee shop yesterday. She then asked the coffee shop if they had it (which they did! umbrella recovered!). Then, check this out, my new friend, whose name is Ruung (it means Rainbow. adorable), got really distracted. Behind me was a Thai superstar! A famous singer. She looked like it too. She was very pale, and thin, and was surrounded by an entourage of tattooed men. The whole group looked to be half farang, and maybe they were. Sadly, the more "Thai" you look, the less beautiful you are. Most actors, if they're protagonist actors, look Chinese or European rather than darker like Khmer people. "Suai diiiiiii....." Ruung sighed. "She is so beautiful." I didn't know what to say. I was excited to be near a Thai celebrity, but why? I don't even know who she is.

I went back Namthong for suad-mon, which is the chanting/prayers that occurs at 6:00 every evening. I've been trying to relax myself by doing this. It's chanting for 35 minutes and then sitting meditation for ten minutes or so. I try to breathe in relaxing feelings, letting-go feelings, and breathe out all my attachments to the positive and negative things I create in this world. I've been having a lot of anxiety about myself as a grad student and the negative things that occurred this past year. But instead of only elevating my good accomplishments, I've been breathing out my attachments to any of them, trying to see the essence of these things as empty. It feels good.

When I step out of my room, of my Tesco Lotus Namthong Sikalai home, I feel a transformation. My tongue gets heavy with foreignness. My body begins to emit a bright light that shines everywhere I go. I glow with whiteness. I beam out otherness. People stare. Why shouldn't they? They stare and talk about me and honk and laugh. There's nothing funnier than a white girl on a bicycle, unless it's a white girl walking alone. HILARIOUS. All my movements, whether I'm walking, scratching a mosquito bite on my leg, or riding my bicycle, are amplified into a performance. This life is no longer mine, but I am an actor in the lives of the people around me. This is their home. This is their life. I'm an awkward extra, a member of the chorus, struggling to dance correctly, trying to smile even though I don't know the words to the songs. I'm the comic relief. A clown. But I don't feel human. And it's not that I feel endangered at all, it's just that I feel completely, vastly out of place.

This is a very different experience than I had in Thailand the first time, and a different experience than most farang have. To really know what it's like you have to leave Bangkok, leave the islands, come to a small town that has nothing special to offer but the usual markets and temples, convenient stores and food stalls. You have to go where all the signs are in Thai script and no one understands more than three words of English. It's overwhelming and exhausting. It's a privilege.

But it's certainly lonely.