osmoala

 

Since I had no keyword to a sentence I did not write for a while. Sometimes it's all about a single phrase, or even the single word to get you started. I had no clue. There was nothing dramatic about my everyday life. Maybe I was a bit lazy too.

   Anyway, this is what I remember from full moon.

 

There was a full moon above us covering the street outside The King Kong Bar, in a friendly or spooky light depending on the way you felt about things.

 

Moon parked his scooter outside and walked in. Moon happens to be his name. He is a local young guy and he was doing double time with the school, studying hotel management and the job in the reception at one of the big hotels on the river. His vocabulary and grammar is better than some of the ”English teachers'” I meet here all the time.

   Last year he was full of positive energy, a great smile that connected to the eyes, telling me about his plans going to France to learn more about the hotel business. The smile was still there, although he had a limp and six spikes were drilled into his left leg after a motorcycle accident a few months ago. The spikes stood out ten centimeters pointing in every direction and when he sat down at the bar they touched my right leg.

   ”Does it hurt?”

   ”No, I don't feel anything.”

   I tried it rocking one of the spikes up and down.

   ”Now?”

   ”No. Nothing.” He smiled, ”I haven't seen you for a long time, but I met with Mr Ross a few months ago, he used to come here all the time. Where is he now?”

   ”Back in the UK. He hates it. It's rainy and the cold wind...” is like spikes thru your legs. I did not say that. ”What the hell happened to you?”

   ”Everything. But I'm okay now – look!” He pulled up the the shorts and showed a long scar running down his thigh.

   ”I stayed in the hospital for a month and I thought my life was finished. Then they gave me the bill. It cost me two thousand dollars.” He was laughing now.

   ”Rain”, I said ”– give him a beer. Put it on my tab.”

   ”Of course.” Rain was a friend of Moon's too. And two thousand dollars is a lot of money. ”How did you get it?”

   ”Loans and friends and parents. I paid a thousand already and it's going to be another thousand later.”

   ”When?”

   ”When they pull she spikes out.”

   ”What happened to Paris?” All of a sudden I felt like an idiot.

   ”I missed three months in school but I've caught up. Paris is coming later”.

 

There was a good sparkle in his eyes, the six spears into his leg didn't seem to worry him too much either. Hotel California started playing on the speakers and we clinked glasses.

   ”What the hell is this song Hotel California about anyway? Is it about addiction?”

   ”Maybe. At the hospital they gave me morphine but I didn't like it so much.”

   ”Yeah, maybe it's up to the individual where their next kick is coming from?”

   Moon laughed and we clinked glasses again. ”Beer is good enough for me”.

   ”Mee too. How long?”

   ”Until it has healed”.

   I wished him all luck. When we had finished our drafts we promised to meet again. I told Rain I would pay her later. I left King Kong Bar, crossed the intersection on my way to Karma Bar and then I saw Jade sitting at Mc Cool's.

 

I hadn't seen her since last year. I was happy to see her. She stood up from the table and gave me a short hug. Her stepmother was sitting opposite of her. Stepmother. Opposite. Literally.

   Her name is Marilyn and she is a lovely lady. I whisper to Jade, ”She was very beautiful when she was young. She still looks great.”

   ”I agree”, said Jade. ”Look – I will need an excuse to get out of here. How about I meet you at Karma Bar in twenty minutes?”

   ”Of course.” It would only take her one hour to get there.

 

Next morning, two o'clock in the afternoon we woke up. I took her to Palm Café and after her coffee and sandwich she looked happier. We went to the mall across the street, she collected the things she needed and we took a tuk tuk to her place with the groceries and the anti bug spray.

   ”Cockroaches”, she said.

   It was looking good. Two doors on both sides of the apartment that let the breeze in, the kitchen area, a big fridge, air con and two fans against the everlasting heat.

   ”I moved in yesterday but I haven't slept here yet because I stayed at your place.” She is like a sister to me though. ”You like a beer?” She opens the fridge, hands over a can of Cambodia.

 

Outside there is a big veranda connecting the apartments and we sit down at the table outside her door. It's on the first floor.

   Downstairs in the yard there is a guy spray painting black tires into different colours. He starts with pink. The Catwoman walks out of her room. She is feeding twelve cats. She is from Australia, seventy-two years old but like everybody else she looks a lot younger. She has lived here for almost two years now. Downstairs from the balcony it looks like a junkyard on the left and a construction site on the right, and upstairs they are building new apartments.

   ”You must like it here...”

   ”I do. The work they do doesn't bother me”. One cat after the other is coming out thru her open door licking their mouths.

   Later Jade would explain about the coloured tires. I was just going to tell her the guy with the spray paint must be out of his nuts but she said – ”He made them as flower Plants for his daughter's birthday – they looked great! And you should have seen all the balloons! There was a big party, everybody was so happy!” Lucky me I kept my mouth shut.

 

Two nights later we were sitting at The Karma Bar. The music was competing with The Draft Bar next door. Jade had an answer to my rant about the aliens visiting us here on earth – I had just read an article online because I loved conspiracy theories. There were different kinds, at least seven different races of extra terrestrials, she told me. She was into conspiracy theories for the same reasons I was – why did some people take them so seriously? She said:

   ”How come they travel all this way, it could be light years, with all this advanced technology they have – and they only end up meeting country folks and rednecks?”

 

Dave from Wales showed up and I repeated the last thing Jade just said, simply because I thought it was funny. He shrugged his shoulders – ”I'm a redneck.”

   ”Yeah, you look it too.” I was joking – there was a curious happy shimmer in his eyes connecting to the eyes that I liked but did not yet completely understand where it came from. Bright eyes, hair reaching down his shoulders and a happy grin with a set of teeth that did not need a toothpick.

   He stretched out a hand for a high five. He was a fun guy. He would tell us about his religious beliefs. He was a Protestant Christian with some Shamanism thrown into it. Jade started a conversation with David. Sometimes she would only concentrate at one person at at time. I was almost strumming at the desk. So sing, Jade. Sometimes you make time stand still...

 

I took Jade and Dave to King Kong and then to The Temple. We ordered beers and drinks. Dave said: ”Just don't say you're an atheist.”

   ”I'm not. The shaman world with its connecting energies within all kinds of any life forms is all around us. Have you heard of 5G? It's also all around us. If I need to label something I would say I'm a agnostic.”

   ”Yes, the 5G is going to expose you like sticking your head into the micro wave oven. You don't want that.” But he wouldn't let me off so easily.

   ”There has to be a God to create all this.” He streched out his arms, from the street lights down to the drink in front of him. I agreed to a certain point and right now I had no need to calibrate my gun for the future, so I said simply: That's where you're wrong – if god had anything to do with the world as it looks today he would be ashamed looking himself in the mirror.” That's the Theodocity problem – if god is almighty, then why does he let all the suffering with the people on earth go on, and on? Universe is a big place and even if there is an infinit number of universes around, and different dimensions too – why can't god look after all this, if he really is almighty?

   I remembered an old tv show with Isaac Singer and Anthony Burgess discussing the subject, and they agreed that if god is almighty he also gave the best gift to humankind he ever could give us – the free will.

   ”We are ready when you are”, said Burgess to the camera men and the producer said, ”We are done.” It was fifty minutes.

   ”But, you see”, said Dave – ”God is not looking at himself in the mirror. He jus started it all.”

   ”Then we agree. He's a lazy god though.” We did a fist bump.

 

We had a few beers and Jade asked if we should share a tuk tuk. We left Dave outside his hotel and Jade said, ”Tapul Road”.

   We were looking thru a few videos on YouTube with her and some jazz band. She laughed, ”That was in Paris, they just picked me in from the street.”

   ”I don't believe it.” Nobody could sing like that without rehearsing. But maybe I was wrong. She was a natural. When on stage she was always the centre of attention.

   ”Let's watch something else”, she said, and I put on The Shining.

   Soon we fell asleep, holding hands like Barbie and Ken. The way some girl would arrange her dolls just before closing her eyes.