It was a hiatus. It was bantering. It was enjoyment of each other. It
was a bit of love followed by the sharing of duties.
On that fine evening of gentility Jatupon was able to leave
earlier than usual. While the other two brothers washed dishes,
wheeled away the cart to a parking lot, chained it up to a fence, and
took supplies they couldn't lock up into and under the cart back to the
apartment, Jatupon went to Sanam Luang. Once there, he walked on the
long cobbled oval track; interweaved aimlessly around trees and
pedestrians; and watched the wind animate a bag with absolute breath
and power. The wild, breathing plastic, reminded him of being--the
putative lightning that struck the ocean and caused the crystallization
of elements.
Six adroit teenagers playing a game of takraw were in a crescent
position like the broken face of the moon. They hit a bamboo ball back
and forth with their feet and heads in a motion that depicted
continuum. Perhaps they needed to believe in the continuum of action
and being (the random balls of matter that they were). Inside the
stadium-shaped park were homeless families lying on their thin sheets
of rectangular bamboo mats and towels. Above the center of this
football field of dust he saw a few prolonged kite flyers and their
instruments swishing as mad serpents of the open night skies under gas
lamps.
He felt the lifelessness and perfunctory movements of being a
noodle worker further exorcized from him and became enriched in the
freedom of his own impulses. Still, he told himself that even though
he was almost as poor and homeless as those strewn about him, he should
not be out here to be possibly robbed. It was an inherent defense
because, more than fearing robbery, he knew that he would most likely
do anything for money. Also there was a secondary voice of a cruel
conscience that taunted him for being such easily sold goods even