80 Burma

Still in 2014. Now it is July. I got sick of being in rainy season Bangkok, with the coup and the increasingly depressing military junta's rules, bullshit and decrees. I knew I needed to go when I was getting ratty, out loud, at the internet and at the pick up trucks selling fruit off the back with their loudspeakers blaring.

I went to Burma. To relive what it was like being British. A century out of date British, dinosaur British. A Kipling British, an Orwell British.

In Rangoon I walked the colonial buildings and watched what the new regime had done to the city. In the rain.

I visited pagodas all over the country. White ones, stone ones, brick ones and golden ones. Sometimes in the rain.

I tried not to take the gushy tourist photos of cutesie monks and lovely women smiling subserviently, with their gappy betel stained teeth, and tree paste circles on their cheeks, marvelously "captured" in the evening sunlight. Sod that. Do them as they come. A bonkers monk, a worn out worker.

I got cynical about the modern day plebs buggering up the visuals when they get hold of "religion" and cheap art supplies.

I read a few novels and revisited my pal George Orwell, writing notes in the book margins. I sought out where he was trained, when he was still Eric, to be a policeman in the Empire. I ran my hand along his bannister rail.

 

I gave my podcasts a good lashing, downloading appropriately associated tunes; Mission of Burma (naturally) "Revolver" and

 

Moby, with his remix.

 

Siouxsie... "Passenger"... riding along in the train, as you do.

A Passage to Indian Burma. I lapped it up and plan to be back in a drier November, right up north to Katha where the rains and trains won't get in my way.

...I feel that today, I'm more in the mood for adding to this temporal spatial thing. It's been a long time missing. I must get back to writing East Africa, twenty odd years ago. I should buckle down, focus and put this into order that makes sense. And get the home build back on the tracks.

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