“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” Franz Kafka.
I’m living in Bangkok now, but mostly I’m living in my own mind. I spend most of my day at the computer, reading, writing, thinking, creating, shouting. Quite a lot of shouting. Occasionally I feel guilty about having Bangkok on my doorstop and yet pursuing a daily routine that takes me as far as the local coffee shop before I return to my apartment. But in the craving for routine, this small circle of daily movements is all I want. I find that I have no problem with radically changing my surrounding and lifestyle frequently, and that I adapt quite quickly, but I also find myself locking into very set routines almost straightaway. I’ll follow a very limited circle around where I live, not exploring much unless it’s driven by necessity.
My mind is fully occupied with lots of interesting ideas (interesting to me, anyway): I don’t want anything else to get in the way of that. At the moment I don’t crave outside stimulus (well, besides the attentions of the girlfriend, anyway), I don’t need anything or anyone else to occupy my attention or time: I seem to have far too much going on in my head as it is. For all my lack of interest in “doing” Bangkok, my longevity in the city (I’m going to be here another six months at least) gives me the freedom both to spend my time thinking and to not tear around trying to see everything – I much prefer the Brian Eno method of sightseeing.
Besides, even my daily 10 minute walk to the coffee shop past the small shophouses on Soi 22 is eternally interesting: grannies tending their brightly coloured stalls, women hauling great wicker baskets around, dogs flopped on the pavement at every turn, and occasionally some boy racer screaming by bareheaded down the narrow soi on his motorbike, shrugging off collision catastrophe at the last second with a perfectly executed swerve around a taxi or unwitting pedestrian. (Indeed, it’s so interesting that someone has already made art out of it). I still get that “Fuck me, I’m in Bangkok!” feeling when I walk out the front door. And that small buzz of excitement adds indirect impetus to my day.
I never felt like this in Stoke Newington.
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