Mikes Writing

Our Measures

Living here this time for 5 years has been puzzling and illuminating both. A completely different culture brings about both things. Sometimes in rapid succession. There is no daily grind of things for me. Instead like most retirees here life just comes. But when it does come it brings both. Of course life really doesn't care how I find the things. It's too busy moving on. Other people have their things. There's the old adage,

life sucks

I've come to realize it doesn't. For me it has been what I've done with it. Or not done. It's easy to step aside and feel out of the flow. Or to just stop. Meanwhile it all goes on all around me. The coffee shop this morning. Stopping for the fresh pastries that I'm addicted to. Even a listen to a vlogger on YouTube about his life things. His depressions. His angst. How that little voice he has plays games with him. I was thinking on that this morning. How we all come here it seems and we are damaged goods. Bill told me last night over my beers how his life in some relationship descended into hell. It left him not wanting a person again. The same with Sean. He found levels of toxicity in a person that left him shaken. Then there's my story. How it winds around the same things. Failed relationships. Families that won't or don't. Leaving.

I don't think people come here expecting to find a person. Many of us are desperately seeking to leave a person that has engulfed us. Left us wounded. Perhaps they moved on. Like more poor victims to claim and we are the left behinds. The ones that knew life could not be. Well there's that life word again. Obviously uncaring and letting us do what we will.

So many of us just go. Ten years ago I knew when I boarded the flight to Japan. I knew the first step really was taken when I left way before. I was just finalizing my walk. Other people did their steps. Got lost. Found themselves in Southeast Asia. This could be the land both of wonder and lost and found souls. Some though never do find. I was in Phnom Penh and saw a barang guy going through the trash. Khmer people were watching and I can imagine the thoughts.

how could they descend so far? What happened to them here? Or back there?

It's always a question. And yeah. Homelessness and anguish live on here. Khmer people are just kinder about it and will help with food and a little money.

Then there's us so-called found people. Well we aren't found. We just did different. Life handed out different alternatives or paths and we took one or more. Bill found his person. Sean his. I found my wife.

We were all lost you know. We still are. We are individuals here as one YouTuber pointed out. We are not there and never can be. We will be the outsiders still welcomed but always strange. Different.

Watching some of the "be happy" videos about expat retired life settles on the things. Cost of living. Things to do. Places and people. There's always an under-current. A riptide of life that sometimes makes some of us lost souls drag down. For some it's never ending drinking days in the bars along Sok San road. Others pivot and find a little more. Still others pick up aluminum and plastic in the big garbage cans at Wat Phnom. All of us are a continuum. We are the same lost generation here as we were there. Here though we can find a measure of happiness. Of a life we could never afford financially or spiritually in our original countries. And that brings us back to life.

Welcome back. It's a long road and I'm lost along it. But I stopped and am having a coffee. Writing this because it's feeling today. This sense and senselessness of it all. And most of all taking my Now.

I can't wish these other people to find something. There something is different than mine. I take little things. This walk and my coffee. The writing.

The little measures of things and how I don't want to ever measure up. I'd rather be lost in Siem Reap than found in San Francisco. Then there's this person. She found me. Gives me my Now.

Thanks honey.

my alin

new measures felt

This evening some Khmer kids from one of my wife’s family and friends came over. They are poor and want school. It costs about $200 to give them school. The older girl needs to be in grade 3. The younger in kindergarten. If not they will simply not learn. Their parents have no money. This is a measure keenly felt. What we will do is help them along. Get them the money for school. To want something desperately like school and not be able is not a good thing. It ends up not just being money. It ends up always being more here. They came to visit to see me. Not to ask. They asked my wife in Khmer to see Mike. Then the older one asked when she will be able to go to school. It’s this divide here. What would you do?

We are a different calculus. I’ve said forever it’s really the kids here to me. This sense of the present and future colliding.

I’ll be finishing whatever this needs to be. I’m just writing along.

Wednesday coffee thoughts

Finally on my last things for this. I want to get out to coffee this morning. Take the walk. Feel the thing that fuels my lust. Simple things. Some of them bleed into other things. The walking and the writing. The yoga and meditation. How they all cross over and become my days. This morning I’ll go. Find the spot to finish. See how it feels.

Down to coffee. Closing things. I wanted to say a bunch of stuff. It’s like this blur of life here. The thoughts and people. How I feel sometimes here. Then other times come and it all turns. I figure the morning walk and feeling the cooler green season morning helps.

See you in my next measure.