April 15th
‘ Each day just goes so fast
I turn around, it's past
You don't get time
to hang a sign on me’
(Love to you, The Beatles, 1966)
I
awake, perform my ablutions, tie a bag for washing, take said bag
downstairs, say hello to Phany, (busy cleaning), leave that bag of
laundry on Phany’s work space and walk out to Common Grounds for
breakfast. On the menu I see ‘Build a Breakfast’, so I do - three eggs
(sunny-side), bacon and potatoes fried. I needed to get out of that
ever-shrinking, flora-mural-painted, room, if only for an hour or so.
Looking
at my mail, on my tablet, in Common Grounds, I tap on a mail in my
inbox. Who the f**k is Ryan? I received an email sent to my Martin A
Bradley account. It began ‘Dear Ryan’. It was bad enough that once, when
I took part in open mic poetry in Singapore, I was called Robert, but
where the hell did Ryan, or for that matter Robert, come from? Is this
serendipity or some weird quantum entanglement with the actor Robert
Ryan, who was mentioned in a Film Noir Facebook group today? Most
bizarre.
Being
on an enforced solitary sojourn takes its toll. Four days have been
transform into four weeks, which would have been okay had I prior
notice, for I could have saved. But seeing so many young, attractive
women in Siem Reap brings to mind Adrian Henri’s Poem ‘Love Story’.
‘..... Even when seeing schoolgirls on buses
their blackstockinged knees in morning for their lost virginity.
My
thoughts, however, are not on knees, black stockings, virginity or, in
deed, schoolgirls but on abstinence which may, or may not, make the
heart fonder.
Undoubtedly
Cambodia, but more especially Siem Reap, is chock-full of desirable
young women. Let me re-phrase that, if I were even forty years younger
my head would be turning like the Magic Roundabout, casting lustful eyes
at scooter-riding Khmer damsels. I’m not forty years younger. And have
little to offer any potential paramour. Luckily, over the vastness of
time, I have developed a goodly imagination, tempered with little
notions such as consequences and a healthy dose of experiential common
sense which also prevents me from getting an unhealthy dose.
Like
Aschenbach in Thomas Mann’s novella (1912) ‘Death in Venice’, which
also, slyly, incorporates notions of Plato’s ‘Phaedrus’, (that is the
young man, Phaedrus, in conversation about love with Socrates, not
Phaedra daughter Minos king of Crete, or the album Phaedra by Tangerine
Dream), I observe beauty, appreciate it, maybe have some small inkling
of potential desire, rather than physically participate in any
carnality. To quote Mann (‘Death in Venice)‘... desire is a product of
lacking knowledge.’
I
however, really do not want to delve into a lengthy treatise on desire,
Surrealism, Meret Oppenheimer, Georges Bataille and the Pineal Eye, for
beauty may be in the ocular orb of the beholder, but is also frequently
in the trousers and, sometimes, when you scratch an itch you simply
spread the infection.
Today
is much quieter. Siem Reap is getting back to Covid normal. Many cafes
and restaurants are closed. I have been lucky that Common Grounds has
remained open. It is a virtual oasis amidst the cultural and gastronomic
desert Siem Reap is becoming, due to this dastardly pandemic virus.
Today’s spend (breakfast)
Common Grounds - 3 eggs (sunny-side), bacon, potatoes fried (scolloped) and a Flat White. $8.75
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