For the dead.

The other night Rhys and I went out walking in Bangkok at night. We had some dinner and I enjoyed being overwhelmed by the unfamiliar bustle. I have, for God's sake, been living in the middle of nowhere Oregon. This city has almost the same population as New York. I find that I am alive to strange presences here. There are ghosts everywhere. I am sure that if this is so here, it is so everywhere. But here, I don't know, they are more present.

I am a bit confounded by the sweet, beautiful girls selling their  bodies everywhere. They look so young and so sweet, laughing and chatting while waiting for customers. I am no puritan. I understand the poverty and the economics. They can earn by six tricks what their whole family in the countryside earns working on a farm for a month. They come to support their families.

Is that good karma? I suppose it must be. Sacrificing for the welfare of others must be good. But what happens to the good karma when they have a degraded rest of their lives? Everything has a cause and everything has an effect. That is my simplistic understanding of karma. I suppose, ultimately, I can only do deeds to create my own karma.

That night in Bangkok, Rhys took me to a temple in the middle of one red light district. There were so many people in the temple that you sort of had to shove your way around. This temple is a place where kind Buddhists collect the bodies daily of the poor souls who wind up dead in the river or on the streets and bring them to have some burial ceremonies and be carried in boxes to be cremated. The hundreds of people who go there each day to earn merit and assist the dead on their journey pay whatever they can, get two chits, put one on whatever coffin they choose from many, get twenty sticks of incense and go from altar to altar saying prayers, leaving 3 sticks behind until they burn the second chit in a fire and bow down to the departed soul. At nearly midnight on a random night there were hundreds of people doing this. It goes on all day in this city of millions.

It was a powerful ceremony for me. That temple was swarming with ghosts but in all the bustling activity there was an uncanny atmosphere of peace. Wow. Somehow gaining merit this way doesn't bother my sensibilities the way the idea of buying indulgences from the Catholic Church in olden days did. I can't quite get the difference but is has to do with the fact that there is something private and personal in this deed here. There is no priest between you and your God.

Foot looks better but cracked and bled last night. I went to the pharmacy and got some strong medicine for it. I am such a good girl.

Rhys and I are catching up on a friendship in which we haven't seen each other for forty years. Shades of last year's Dana Hall reunion. Great fun.