April 21st (2020)

 

April 21st

Awake at 5.50am

T.S Eliot wrote...(in The Waste Land, 1922)

‘April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.’

Breakfast will be taken outside. Decisions, decisions. As it’s much cheaper, I’ll have to take the ten minute walk over to the other side of town, to the Old Market (Psa Chas). As I still have no idea when I can get back to Malaysia, I have to keep my spending to a minimum. Cooking for myself turns out to be a lot more expensive than eating out. Plus, there is no fridge space here to keep things other than butter, cheese, and one tetra pack of milk. Colors of Cambodia is not designed for long time stayers, it is a School of Art for day students, even the room that I am occupying is not meant for stays of this length. 

It’s 9.03am

I am at Psa Chas Restaurant Chan Koemluon. I’ve eaten three fried eggs, a baguette and two rashers of what tastes like home-made bacon. I’ve drank two small cups of coffee with milk. Passers-by are sporadic, while Baja Maxima riding tut tuk drivers’ voices are, for once, stilled. I am told that the sun shines on the righteous, but here in Cambodia it shines on everyone, and drenching my blue Marks & Sparks shirt in sweat, leaving salt lines on the fabric. 

I am the only customer here. 

To be isolated becomes isolation as we withdraw into ourselves, and do not like what we find there. Malaysia with its closed borders seems so far away, and in another lifetime. My heart today is heavy, my sighs plentiful, my tears closer. A young Khmer woman dressed all in black, wearing a blue mask over her nose and mouth, passes, my heart lifts momentarily, and drops again. 

I have gone back twenty-six years. Back to my post-divorce years. I am, once more, existing chiefly on bread, bananas and pot noodles. There are days of respite, fleeting glimpses of kinder humanity to lift my spirits, but it seems fleeting. Holiday Inn is changed into Heartbreak Hotel (not the Elvis Presley version but that of  manic John Cale from ‘June 1st 1974 live’ album featuring Kevin Ayers, John Cale, Nico and Brian Eno). The sun is hot. Of course it is, we are in the Tropical Indomalayan Realm. That sundering sun burns down relentlessly on local people, who plod on regardless, while expats gather, like flies, in the few watering-holes open to them in Siem Reap, sitting outside playing cards as if waiting for Godot. It all feels very colonial. Social distancing hasn’t really happened here in Siem Reap.

I spend my time writing, as there seems to be time aplenty

‘Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea’

(T.S Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, 1915).

The Iceman Cometh

In front of  Psa Chas Restaurant Chan Koemluon, a bronzed ‘Iceman’ sells ice from a square backed lorry. His ice is kept in large woven white, blue and green plastic gunny-sacks, from which the Iceman scoops, weighs and delivers the ice into the customer’s receptacles. Satisfied, those same customers ride off, their transactions completed.

I cut through the passageways full of trepidation, and am delighted to see Gelato & Coffee Lab open. I have a Lime & Mint small tub, and outside see yellow walls and blue shutters, pink, cornflower blue, mauve, white umbrellas hanging against the bright clear blue Cambodian sky; yellow doors against blue pipes like Modernist paintings. What a surprise of colour Siem Reap is revealed to be in the absence of tourists.

I walk back through the passageways, round the back of the Pagoda, and to Thai Huot Market, and buy the necessary. But I am back and now am about to shower. You need not know more.

I.30 pm

I’ve just spent the last hour laying naked on the bed listening to blues music, Gary Moore, Fleetwood Mac, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf until the internet became so bad that I couldn’t continue. I had a cry, and that has helped. But today has been the worse day so far. I am very emotional.

I switched to music stored on my Samsung Edge, and continue re-listening to those heady strains of the Quicksilver Messenger Service, album by album. I’m currently listening to ‘Happy Trails’, and the track ‘When you love’, which seems entirely appropriate.

In other news Apsara National Authority (ANA) archaeological experts have found 21 broken Buddha statues buried in the Angkor Wat Temple complex. It seems that may of the statues are headless, some have no arms, or have legs missing. The fragments may have been buried during the 1960s or 1970s, the experts think.

I skipped lunch and, now at 5.11 pm, am feeling hungry. I am sorely tempted to go eat a ‘Four Season’s’ pizza at Mama Shop just for the hell of it, to cheer myself up. It’s either that or cheese sandwiches, or alternatively pot noodles yet again. Could I justify the expense? Hell, I could justify anything. So, I eat a small loaf of raisin bread, with butter, instead, for lunch/dinner with a mug of orange juice.

Today’s spend at Thai Huot Market (Kean Orange Juice, Raisin Bread, 4x Myojo Bowl Soto Ayam, Chicken Egg Banana, 2x Dasani Water, 2x Dutchie Mixed Fruit Yogurt)... $10.65

Breakfast at Psa Chas Restaurant Chan Loemluon, (Bacon, Eggs x3 and Baguette) plus two coffees with milk.... $4.50

Gelato and Coffee Lab.....£1.50

Total....$16.65