before dawn--the beggar rejoices.

Dear Friends and Family -

In my last blog I proclaimed myself to be Zen, and said that Zen doesn’t make any sense. I’ve come to realize that “non-sense” really makes me happy. I was just at a French Bakery (the big name on the sign out front) down the road. There was nothing French in the decor--all Thai. There was coffee and tea and only a few pastries, like New York cheesecake, in the display case. There were no baguettes or croissants at all--Mon dieu!!--nothing that was even close to being French. The employees spoke a little English . . . and I just loved the fact that it was so contraire.

While I sat there under the veranda sipping my French latte, a happy man wearing a Mexican sombrero strolled by. He was selling rainbow colored brooms for forty baht each. Forty baht is around a buck thirty and no matter how you do the math, walking the streets with eight brooms isn’t going to cut it. But he was smiling and happy like “I’m the best damn door-to-door broom salesman in the whole universe!” (all the while I contemplated a Star Trek haiku: warp control activated-- flux distortion--Tijuana 1965)

All this is the way of Zen (though Zen is no way) - You could just see that Thai Mexican broom guy affecting the French wave of the hand, “Insouciance a conneries du votre avis. J’aime vente manche a balai.” (something along the line of: I don’t give a crap about your opinion. I love selling brooms) BTW - try pronouncing it in French - it sounds so beautiful.

Someone told me that there are around 40,000 farangs living in Chiang Mai. I don’t find farangs to be particularly friendly. That’s probably because the greater percentage of them are French. I think there’s a low percentage of Americans here and the lowest percentage of farangs are the African-American gay circus midgets (btw--if I offend anyone with my humor - Insouciance a conneries du votre avis - seriously, I have nothing against anyone who is black, gay, a midget or who works in a circus, but if so offended let me erase and write - the lowest percentage of farangs are fat white ugly whores from Iowa (I actually had a good friend once who met that description - and she would have thought it funny - since she was a very popular Honolulu hooker with the Navy farm boys--back in the day). Reminds me of a Faulkner novel I once read.

I’m meeting quite a few new friends and that’s good. Eric who is Swedish rode me up the mountains on the back of his scooter last week. It was Marks birthday and he took JB. We went to a monastery (the photos in this blog) and sat by a mountain stream. Ah!! I needed that. I met some young Buddhist monks who tried to get me to eat all their food. They have their begging pots and had a pretty good haul that day. I enjoyed sitting by a stream with them, talking story. It seemed familiar. They said it wasn’t too late for me to join in their fun. I told them I would rather be the Buddha, than a Buddhist. It didn’t translate. (interesting that their photo's didn't load up)

An empty cup--before dawn--the beggar rejoices. I continue on with the 5th draft of my novel Shambala. I keep raising the bar for myself. This time around I decided to begin each of the fifty chapters with an original haiku, like this one to start Chapter 4.

So, after about six weeks in Chiang Mai I’m settling in. I’m sort of liking my sixth floor apartment. I’m oddly entertained by the traffic below and the evening sunsets. I have seen a rat and a cockroach and quite a few ants, but none of them in my apartment. I like my favorite market, even with their piped in Christmas music and that I have to ride my bike through a sometimes smokey crematorium to get there. I’m easily entertained.

And I hope you were easily entertained by this silly blog.

With love always,

David Dakan Allison