Markets and Street Joy

It was time for a visit with famous film director S. Sundar. He had some good ideas about the story we're trying to do. He showed me some of his editing equipment and let me see the film he's working on.

It's a pretty high-tech setup with 3 giant high-definition screens for video viewing and editing. We were meeting to finalize details on the shooting scipt and some last minute changes.

That's Mr. Sundar behind me. He's a very talented director, cinematographer and master camera-man who may help us with our little project.

We had a long and stormy story conference with lots of passion and black tea. Then it was time for the online radio talk.

After solving a number of world crises, I was just as tired as Milo the temple dog. It was time for a siesta.

Milo the temple dog.

In the afternoon, I felt like a little tourism. Sometimes I need to get out and see a bit of Thailand just to make sure I'm not still in Mexico. So we loaded up the hero wagon and went to the Sunday market for souvenirs. Last year we did the Hari nam Nagar street joy party here. Here's a few photos.

Here we are dancing and chanting in the streets, just like in the good old days in Los Angeles back in the 1970s before it all got too crazy.

Here we are celebrating our faith in downtown Chiang Mai at the Sunday Market. This is last December, before military law was declared.

Military law put an end to our weekly street-joy parade. People protested...

But in the end, might made right and the military won out.
Today, the street market is still colorful, and a great place for tourist bargains. One can find most anything, from hand-crafted brassware...

Brassware at the Sunday Street market

 To colorful fun to wear plastic sandals.

Cheap footware of all shapes and sizes

 Or fine, decorative tea-sets, cups, bowls, and plates.

Painted ceramics

 Or weird street food. I have no idea what this woman is preparing. It had a pungent, garlic smell, and seemed popular to the locals, but looked like a one-way ticket to the food-poisoning ward at the local hospital.

Weird street food

 Here's a dancer. Most of the dancers in the group were about 12 or 14 years old. I think the middle schools were competing. A judges booth was set up in front and took notes as they performed traditional Thai dances.

Dancer performing at street fair

 The dances celebrated the king and his overall wonderfullness.

Patriotic Street fair, honoring the King

 More street food, These are giant crepes, created on the spot by expert gastronomic masters and served to the hungry masses. This looks really good.

Making Thai Crepes

 In addition to street food, there's fine silver in all sizes and shapes, earrings, necklaces, chains, wrist bangles. Everything you need to shine.

Silver Jewelry

Postcards, old photos, lithographs, and other collectors items.

Postcards

You can find all the colorful bags you want...

And street musicians performing traditional Thai music.

Thai women in traditional costumes promoting tourism....But I was fascinated with the girls making crepes. How do they do it?

More Dancers

But without the Harinam street joy, the market seemed as empty as this Chinese Restaurant. I missed the happy days before martial law when we would fill the streets with joy and the sounds of the drum.

Shopping, or The End of the World as we know it.

People think that writing is easy. Someone once said, "Writing is easy. Just cut a vein and bleed the story." I'm doing my best to write a good script. I get 10 pages done, show it to the boss, and then discover that I have to rewrite it, even before I come to the next idea. It's more difficult than it looks.

I

Back in Mexico, life was easy. I have my regular job at the University. I work a few hours a day and have time to eat lunch with my wife Aurora, play the Ukulele, hang out with friends. I even do a little painting. Why am I doing this crazy world tour?

It's hard to explain. This blog is my attempt to understand it myself. The best I can do is say, "It's my karma," or "I'm fulfilling my dream." Maybe I'll have a better handle on it all after we finish the journey, but the journey itself is worth it. The call to adventure doesn't come too often in one lifetime. Shakespeare says, 

There is a tide in the affairs of men.

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

It's not often that someone offers you an around-the-world ticket based on your writing, or past-life abilities and skills. So when the mysterious Russian Swami, Avadhuta Maharaja asked me to fly to Thailand and Russia and work on this movie, of course I said yes.

 So, I miss Mexico, but I feel that Krishna called me here to Thailand.

Land of orchids and elephants, to fulfill an important purpose. 

And so each morning I meet with Avadhuta Maharaja to go over the script. 

We sip cold juice from the green coconuts, and go over the literature. I feel quite unprepared to take on such a complicated subject, so rich in meaning. Each morning our talks range from the scope of the Khmer empire to the distinction between Vishnu worship and Krishna consciousness, to the Vedic Cosmology as it was seen a thousand years ago in Cambodia, to practical considerations like what the characters in the script say while riding elephants or dugout canoes on the Mekong River. Mostly we're in the planning stages.

A Cool One, Thai style: the juice of the green coconut.

We realized that our source materials were lacking so, I was dispatched to the local shopping mall to buy some guide books and coffee table books on Angkor with plenty of pictures, maps, and diagrams.

And it was strange, after contemplating the ruins of Angkor, to see these megastructures dedicated to consumer capitalism with families shopping for the after-Christmas bargain. Will these buildings stand in ruin centuries from now as mute witnesses to the great petro-civilizations of rush-hour traffic and nuclear missiles?  When there's no more oil to power the escalators and keep the lights on, what will archeologists make of these temples of exploitation, hundreds of years hence?

Empty suitcases

Empty Shoes

Empty Shopping Mall near the Airport in Chiang Mai.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it all seems so empty, so purposeless. I miss Mexico with its color and vibrant life, its scandals and fiestas.

Cavalcade in San Miguel de Allende

But for now it's back to the bamboo by the little stream in the jungle.

Here in the jungles of Chiang Mai, life is quiet and contemplative. The trip to the big city was jarring. Outside my door I hear the sounds of children running, the gurgle of the fountain in the fish pond. It's a good place to write and meditate.

 We found some good books in the Airport Mall, and now I'm back to work on the script, trying to imagine a place I've never been to.

That's all for now. I'm going to study hard and see if I can make progress on the script. Thanks for checking in. Dandabats all.

Influences

Now for a little geography lesson. To get some perspective on where I am and what I am about to do, I checked the map. Here is Asia with the Indochinese Peninsula highlighted.

Zoom in a bit and we can see how close India is...

...to the Indochinese Peninsula...

You can see that Bankgok and Angkor are not far apart, perhaps 300 kilometers or so in a straight line. I'm in Chiang Mai, in the North, close to the border with Burma. The goal is Angkor Wat. 

The story of my fascination with Angkor Wat really goes back in time to the 60s. The Vietnam War was just heating up. But I knew about Angkor through my first real teacher.

My first spiritual preceptor was an old Chinese man, born in Indonesia. He had been a Buddhist monk before converting to Catholicism. I met him when I was just a kid, in California.

Just a kid, thinking about life...

I liked to think about things, and as I was growing up back in the sixties, I had a lot of questions. After our family moved to California, we lived in the Mohave Desert in a little town called Pearblossom. Close by was a Benedictine Monastery, St. Andrews Priory,  where I met this man.

Father Thaddeus Yang at Valyermo   http://www.saintandrewsabbey.com/category_s/79.htm

By this time, I was around 11 or 12 years old. In those days, the Benedictine monks were supposed to do some work or service apart from saying prayers and offering Mass. Father Yang used to make sculptures in driftwood. He would find an interesting tree branch fallen in the desert and sculpt it with a blow torch, finishing it with sandpaper and finally polish the work with the sweat of his fine oriental fingers. 

I would take long walks in the Mohave Desert, looking for cactus for my cactus collection, or rocks for my rock collection. At the end of the day, I would find Father Yang, standing over an enormous driftwood horse, his black monk's habit moving in the wind. In one hand he slowly waved his blow-torch over the wood. In the other was the ever-present cigarette. "Camels" was his preferred brand. He would weave the magic of fire and Chinese wisdom over the blasted wood as it gradually took shape. 

Driftwood horse

Then he would quench the flame of the blow-torch, drag on his Camel, and say "Yes, my son. How can I help you?" 

Somehow tea would appear and we would sit and sip the smokey Lapsang Souchong tea and discuss the secrets of the universe. I asked him, "How come Adam and Eve only have two children, Cain and Abel. And Cain kills Abel, so where do all the people come from?" He would smile wearily, puff on his cigarette, and say, "Ahh yes. But it never says there is only one Adam or one Eve. There may have been many Adams and many Eves. It's a metaphor, my child."

Father Yang always had me thinking. One day I asked him where he was from. He was Chinese, after all, but he had been born in Siem Reap, Cambodia. I had a lot of questions, so I pressed him to tell me more stories. He told the story of an ancient city where thousands of people came together with a spiritual purpose. He told me the story of Angkor.

Giant Head at Angkor.

It all seemed like science fiction at the time, but later we moved to the Pacific Palisades. My brothers and I would go to the beach,swim all day and hunt seaweed, underwater treasure,  and bottles we could return for the nickle deposit. If we returned 5 or 6 bottles we had enough for candy and a soda pop we could split. It was paradise.

We could walk to the beach from our house. We spent long hours playing on the beach and stayed in the water until we turned blue. But when I was interested in deeper things, I turned to another man who was a great mentor in my life. My Grandfather, Clinton Stoner.

Clinton Stoner

My grandfather was a mysterious man with a long career in Hollywood. He designed costumes and wardrobe for MGM and Warner Brothers back in the glory days of Hollywood. But one of the things that amazed me about my Grandfather was his library. He had thousands of books: UFOs, Dolphins, Telepathy, Telekineses, Lobsang Rampa, the Third Eye, Bhagavad-Gita, Edgar Cayce, the sleeping prophet, hundreds of old magazines called Fate Magazine, and a book by James Churchward on the Sunken Continent of Lemuria and the links between the Mexican Pyramids, Lost Lemuria, and the ancient city of Angkor Wat. I couldn't believe my eyes. Here were actual photos of the lost city spoken of by my eminent preceptor, Father Yang.

I was stunned. I began reading all the books I could on ancient civilizations: India, Greece, and Egypt. When the Tutankhamen exhibit came to the Los Angeles Museum of Art, I went again and again to visit. I saw the golden mask of the Egyptian boy-king. I wanted to know more about the original civilizations of this earth: how they saw the world, how they lived.
More later. Thanks for reading.