Mikes Writing

Weather days and writing

Since early this morning, we have been having these light rain showers. Hitting our aluminum porch it sounds like this crescendo of little taps and touches. Sometimes the rain has already stopped but the trees over our house keep drops slowly falling. I had written on people leaving last night and this morning but when I heard that insistent tapping on the porch, I felt this other thing calling me.

Maybe this is just a compendium of little things that come my way today from walking to writing to coffee. This is my day every day but today I’ll dodge a few well established puddles to the garage down the street where the sick cars go. I’m forever grateful to not have a car because undoubtedly it would have ended up there already. Just down the street is the wooden furniture store and the nice Khmer woman that makes fresh pastries each morning. I am hoping when I go she is there. Her pastries are $0.50 for two and I always feel munching on one of them I have this wonderful start. Fresh breads and pastries are a regular thing here. The baguettes and donuts and other things like waffles cooked in rectangular waffle irons over a charcoal fire.

So I will walk soon I guess. The weather is gonna play along and the day is cool out. Sitting at 25 now which seems perfect for a morning spent doing what I will do next. I also think on going in a few weeks. Getting back to Kampot is a thing for me. The last time there in August seemed so nice. Very peaceful and slower. Different restaurants. Different vibes. I’ve really realized I can never stop just going. I need that uncertain movement and deciding its okay to change and stay longer if I want. It is never hard changing accommodation at the last moment in Cambodia. Just tell the manager or whoever. Pay more.

I’ve always enjoyed just the writing part of this. What I’ve realized is it doesn’t matter where. It’s just the act of finding words to life. The current way of doing it works well for me. If I changed, that would work fine too. It has never mattered if a single soul reads this. What matters is me writing it. Putting some voice to the void. Not screaming. Maybe not always. Maybe a whisper sometimes about life and living and choices.

Today I will head down to a favored coffee zone I like. LaLatte Coffee is a charming little Khmer coffee shop I know. The walk there always gives me the time to sense out the morning. Maybe get a little wet today going. It has never really mattered. Clothes dry. I have this little heater built inside me. I’ll catch you up on my journey down a road to another and then down that one. See you in a bit down my walk in weather and writing.

So like most things I decide change is good. Instead a stop at V Cafe. A little place I’ve come for months. Easy to just do. I can sit here and see if the morning drizzle will give way. Give me an hour and words. And some weather.

It’s dawned on me sitting here and posting stuff to mastodon that I miss so much of Hanoi. There is this spirit and soul to the city. It’s not just history. Not my timespent getting lost in the Old Quarter. It was always more. I could never really write that more. I just felt it. Now I feel its loss. Sometimes when I cast backwards Hanoi was this place of finding and loss. When I left even going to Da Nang I keenly felt the loss. Truth is Da Nang, not Hoi An, was always some second home to me. I could wander there as well. Write some. Feel more. There was something beyond the words in its worlds. The place I would get pho just by the market. The wonderful banh mi sandwich place I went once during the pandemic where I sat with a big ca phe sua da.

So the writing and words kinda stop for me to let me revel in the little things. Back later.

Later the walk took me down some side streets, along paths perhaps more traveled dodging puddles and walking through some. We don’t live in a nice place to walk to or from. I don’t particularly like the dirt roads where we live. They always seem slippery but even worse are the sidewalks. They are made with this slippery stone which has led me to slips and falls in the past. Now I walk on the road where possible. Of course, that’s not so good either since motos and cars and whatever decide none of the basic rules of driving apply. Siem Reap is walkable but when you combine sidewalks with tuktuks, motos, cars, even trucks; not so. I’ve always felt the city police should do more basic traffic enforcement. Sidewalks are not meant for motos as shortcuts.

Today perhaps with the weather being a little different, the full force of driver zanies were out. I just took it easy today and ended up walking mostly on concrete or asphalt roads.

I ended up back home and it felt so very nice to be out. These days the sleep seems harder than ever and I wake up feeling kinda zonked out most days. But when I get out going, feel the steps turn into coffee and then magically transpose to writing; life seems good. I’m alone and that’s the best. I guess these days I value solitude and being alone. I don’t think the two are the same BTW. There is some value separating them I’ve mulled and pondered many times. Maybe it is a quality thing or there is some other secret sauce to solitude that is not just the absence of people and not missing them.

I do think getting older for me has meant a desire to not have the press of people around me. That’s kind of the opposite in Khmer culture. Here the value of the communal and social is all around. People need the press of others from personal interactions to small groups to their social media applications. I don’t think Khmer people care much for being alone and equate it perhaps with being lonely.

So that’s the writing and pondering and wandering. With a dash of weather days that got so nice and cool to be out walking. It was fun just writing this as I went. There’s always more. I always feel like the faucet was not turned all the way off with words and life now.