Thai/Tie Pun II: El(i)es and Wats' Wat

After a two month hiatus from blogging, I am returning with recollections--recollections of the two month hiatus from blogging. I do not feel like my vacation was a "whirlwind" or that it "flew by." Actually, eight weeks of vacation feels exactly like eight weeks of vacation when entire weeks are defined by a specific activity, reunions, and locations. This is the fourth and final entry of journal "highlights"--here is the first entry, the second entry, and the third entry (which was the first half of my time in Thailand). These are excerpts from what I wrote while I was in or around Chiang Mai and Cambodia. Hereafter, I promise my blog's contents will shift from personal journal regurgitation.

Eyes of the ele

***

01/28

I slept terribly last night; I woke repeatedly to mosquitoes biting my face. At least they weren't bed bugs.

Our cubby in our train car sleeps four passengers. Coincidentally, I bump into a fellow alum from my childhood summer camp--he sleeps two-cubbies-down.

01/29

"Good morneen," the car manager calls as she walks the aisle. "Brekfest fifteen minoots."

I slide open my lower berth's curtains. The air-con reasserts its unforgettable presence without the poor shield that was the curtain; I've been freezing for the nearly nine hours of Benadryl-clouded sleep. At some point in the night, I wake to put on my flannel; the cotton blanket does not match the pillow in comfort-level. 

While eating my rice soup with chicken, I join our cubby's roommates (a body-odor-plagued French couple) in watching the hills covered in tropical forest--not quite rainforest. We rumble past a pineapple orchard, and I wonder if I'm not stationary while everything crashes past.

While I was out...

I suppose I should have expected that I would not have been able to live-up to my expectations to have posted at least one entry while on my whirlwind three-and-a-half week tour of the United States. Still, I am disappointed in myself for not writing just once. I barely even wrote in my personal journal. And I find that when I procrastinate [or avoid prioritizing] my written reflections, I tend to forget the pithy phrasings and descriptive language to which I sometimes dedicate hours of internal editing.

Alas! I have forgotten some of the whimsical and some of the refined observations on America and my American interactions that all seemed strangely familiar.

Flatirons, CO

I Would Pay For Some of This

3/23: Eager eyes

In its 48th year, Ann Arbor Film Festival is the longest running experimental film festival in the world--or so they claim, and I am disinclined to investigate. I am generally intrigued by the ways that people use moving media to convey the human experience or the human imagination, so I am generally intrigued by the films at the festival. As many of you may or may not know, I tend to take advantage of freebies and have a good ear for good deals. So, I am volunteering 15 hours for the festival this weekend in exchange for a free weekend pass. I prepare my eyes for the avant garde and abstract.

(N.B. I am not preparing my eyes for the avant garde as Bunuel and Dali would:



Ew. I am sorry. Though the rest of "Un Chien Andalou" is strange and occasionally funny in its absurdity. Deemed a "classic" by many, I would hesitate to actually recommend unless you plan on partaking in a dialogue about cinema, theory, genre, and the avant garde in film. Basically, that film would be a crucial part of the primer for the AA Filmfest.)