Dear Toronto,

First, my regards to Almond, who has mastered the “sleep-eat-shit” lifestyle and is otherwise free from structure. The area of the university where I work is populated by 8 – 12 sandy colored dogs. I can’t be sure of the exact number because they usually hang out in groups of four and, being from the same clan, they all look basically identical. They are very well fed (especially in comparison with the average stray dog in Bangkok) because they get all the scraps they want from the cafeteria and they spend their days lying in the sun, rolling joyfully in the grass, lying in the shade, scratching themselves, and barking furiously at lizards. Whenever I see them lounging in the hall outside my office I am reminded of the part in “The Odyssey” where Odysseus’ crew members are turned into pigs after eating enchanted food on the island of Circe. Are these languid pups actually a family of transfigured warriors? University students who didn’t pass their final exams and so were imprisoned here as guard dogs? I like to think so…

Yes! “Waste” your time this summer. It will ultimately produce great things, quelling the winds of frenetic activity and smoothing your mind out into a still reservoir from which will bubble all sorts of wonderful creations of their own accord.

I agree with what you say about graphomania’s relation to leisure; everybody has the urge to tell stories (to different degrees) and when society reaches a certain level of comfort, more people are afforded the luxury of writing their narratives down.

You’re right to point out that there are many places where that luxury doesn’t exist and where authorship is not expanding. I met a guy a month or two ago who told me about his visit to China. He went to the dining carriage on the train he was taking from one massive city to another and when he tried to pay his bill he found that a middle aged Chinese man had paid for his meal. “Now you are my guest,” the man said, and he took the traveler under his wing for the following two days, paying for spa sessions, elaborate meals, and sightseeing. His unexpected host, it turned out, was a very wealthy businessman, and he exemplified the fact that in a country where Facebook is illegal, the internet is censored, and travel between provinces is restricted, money is a form of magic, granting ultimate mobility and access to those who possess it. The businessman soon added the traveler as a Facebook friend, he could travel wherever he wanted in China, and censorship didn’t apply to him. It occurred to me, when I heard this, that countries like this are dams blocking millions and millions of stories that are ready to burst out. Think about the stories that will flow out of there!

Mmm…I very much like the Hrabal quote you sent me about sipping a sentence “like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol”. It suggests that what we read, watch, and listen to has an irresistible effect on us, dissolving into our blood and intoxicating us for good. My friend Glenn and I would often discuss this idea: if we our thought patterns are influenced by what we read, should we expose ourselves to new reading according to our preferences and dispositions or should we try to delve into the unappealing, the opposite of what we want? It’s probably much more complicated than that. You and I aren’t chemistry sets, we can’t step outside of ourselves and say “I’ll add a dash of this and pinch of that to steer my thinking in such and such a direction”. Still, it’s worth wondering about. If words, images, and sounds are fruit drops and liqueurs what’s your preference of the ones you consume? Do you ravenously seek all forms? Do you look to reinforce and build upon your existing notions? Do you seek the fruit drops that might not appeal, like black liquorish for example? Eugh!        

Much Love,

Bangkok
 

I have always been so obedient to the temporal predictability of school, the routine and habit. Unlike you, the younger Celine knew when the sandbox time was over, it was over. Of course, I wanted to play in the sandbox longer, too -- I was certainly not a robot -- but I believed that rules were rules and time is regimented for a good reason. 

Dear Toronto,

Tyrannosaurus Time has been on my mind too.

As you say, it’s advisable to learn to float, let the current take you, and explore the sea life in your immediate vicinity rather than thrashing about and rolling your eyes toward the distant horizons of past and present.

Instead of floating, though, we tend to busy ourselves with regimenting time. O how we’ve shaped and reshaped it! On a personal level, I’ve noticed how much my experience of time has changed now that I’m living outside the world of semesters, midterms, and years named one through four. At first I was excited to shatter the old routine and habits of university, but leaving the temporal predictability of school (time has been structured for us since we were tots—I got in trouble one day at preschool because I wanted to stay in the sandbox longer than the allocated shift) is like stepping out into a massive field. It’s agoraphobic! It’s terrifying! It’s the dizziness of possibility…life suddenly seems extremely short and extremely long at the same time.

So, after an initial few weeks of wobbly, wide-open time, I quickly erected the support beams of a Bangkok routine that makes things comprehensible and allows me to function. Routine, I’ve learned, can become something plodding that needs to be cracked and discarded, but it can also be necessary and good if you treat it a bare bones apparatus with lots of room for new people, thoughts, and adventures to weave their way in.

One thing I want to quickly mention before I move away from time and into what you were saying about creativity: when you think back to certain “time chunks” or periods in your life are they characterized by certain physical sensations? I’m interested in this strange relationship between the concrete world of objects and the abstract world of time. For grades 7-10 I wore a uniform to school, and the awkward woolen pressure of the navy sweater I had on for all those hours is inextricable from my memory of that time. The same goes for the dress shirts I wear to work now; they shape me in a certain way and time flows differently when I’m in that costume. Tailored time?

Yes, I agree, we create in order to pour a lasting part of ourselves into the world before the curtain falls. Imperfect immortality, as you called it—ambitious and passionate and foolish and the only choice! I’m reading The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera right now, and he puts it pretty nicely when he says “everyone is pained by thought of disappearing, unheard and unseen, into an indifferent universe, and because of that everyone wants, while there is still time, to turn himself into a universe of words”.

BUT! That quote comes in the context of Kundera’s meditations on graphomania, a mania for writing books:

“The invention of printing formerly enabled people to understand one another. In the era of universal graphomania, the writing of books has an opposite meaning: everyone surrounded by his own words as by a wall of mirrors, which allows to voice to filter through from outside.”

And, a little while later:

“One morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have arrived.”

What are your thoughts on that? In this new century of expanding authorship, are we approaching the age of universal deafness and incomprehension, or is that a needlessly pessimistic view?

All is well with me. I am going to Cambodia in a few weeks! I wish the streets of Bangkok were covered in snow like they are in Kingston. I doubt they are as lovely, but they are lively with activity and movement; time marches on here, as everywhere, clattering along the cracked pavement and up into the humid air on its journey back to the sun.    

Love,