think that her money and education have made her as valuable as white
ivory -the type often used in Buddhist statuettes. Hormonal
discriminatory passions ensue, dopamine hits the pleasure receptors of
the brain, and make him an addict for a hormonal pleasure with her."
"Is this love? Is this all that we are? Love is the best part of
us and yet it is as this? I can't believe that," retorted Jatupon.
The mosquito, the big "it," guffawed. "You are truly ingenuous.
You are contrary to the natural world around you-a true babe focusing
your trusting round eyes so eagerly on the savage world around you.
Personally it is a novelty to me and I don't mind it at all. Do you
remember how you felt when you were young?"
He remembered the warmth he felt toward his mother even though she
did not like him. He remembered how she cared for him despite thinking
him a burden. She was the good birdie feeding his mouth. Had he not
believed all love to be something like a mother's love and that this
mother's love was pure? Had he as little as a few days earlier been
inveigled in the optimism of being free from the consideration of how
instinct is passed down in genetic transfer from generation to
generation? Had he not imagined a desire for a woman and being "in
love" as something more spectacular than bottle rockets and Roman
candles lit from the bridges over the Chao Phraya River in the Loi
krathong celebration?
There were times he had even considered love to be a preordained
gift bestowed onto each being in subtle and illuminating graces. It
was a bit like a lit candle on a krathong, a hand length banana-leaf
boat sent out onto waters during the Loi krathong holiday. A given
krathong would perhaps sail a hundred meters on a river before being
tipped over in waves and winds along with one's negativity and
culpability; and for this exorcism the river goddess would bestow onto
such an individual a new year of blessings. As a boy he had thought