the rat

There's a rat in me kitchen what am I gonna do?
There's a rat in me kitchen what am I gonna do?

Last night while I was sleeping, I caught a rat.
Not a mouse. A rat.

And don't worry. I lean severely in the Buddhist direction, so I caught him/her alive and well. See, here in Thailand you can pick up a cruelty-free rat trap at any local market for about a buck. It's a screen-metal box, the size of a loaf of bread, with a lid at one of the ends, that can be set to slam shut when the rat has entered far enough into the trap. So you hang a little bait, position the trap, and in the morning you have a caged rat.

See, in my old house, we had a cat. Or rather, we had use of a cat, that was making use of us. The cat hung around, got fed, could stay out of the rain; and as this cat, Fang, had helped raise our two dogs from puppies, he had established a sanctuary of food and safety in a dog studded environment, without incurring (no pun intended) any obligation on his part. Yes, that old house was rat free. Any rat foolish enough to mosey around the our compost heap soon had its head or other body parts laid before us as booty for the Master, or, equally as often, the entire wolfed-down body would be up-chucked somewhere. Yum.

Fair enough. Nature solved our problems. And cleaning up occasional piles of slimy undigested rat chunks was a fair price. And half the time, Somjit (my wife), did it anyway.

Yet this world is always changing. And to even lowly, lovely Chiang Mai, comes the crush of money and fashion and stuff. We moved just before the Starbucks opened at the end of our soi (a soi is a little lane off a bigger street). Our peaceful area had become trendy. The Champs Elysees of Chiang Mai. Got more expensive too. Took us too long to cross the road. But I've digressed to far.

Last night I caught not just a rat but that rat.

See, when we moved, Fang didn't come with us. He was already getting on, and he just shifted off to another gig. We missed him and the way he used to let our youngest dog beat him up with a tolerance that I will never forget- to a point where a blurry flurry of cat-claws stopped the game.

So, that left us with two dogs, which quickly became three. But dogs, I now know for sure, are no threats to rats. And our new, quite old, house had hollow spaces in the walls and ceilings - rat-ways, built right in. We missed Fang right away.

And so for the first time I learned about these great Thai rat traps. I set one up, and the next morning I had the little bugger. He was pissing and shitting in fear, but totally unharmed, so I placed the cage-trap in the basket of my motor scooter and scooted about a kilometer and a half or so away to an open field, opened the cage and let the terrified little critter run. And run he did. God, they're fast. I had no idea. But I had given it a new lease on it's little life and I proudly puttered home on the motorbike pleased with the ease and humanity of the process to be greeted with a chorus "A kilometer and a half?! Are you crazy? That's not far enough. Have you seen how fast they run?" A monk even told me: "Your house is perfect for him. A kilometer and a half? He'll be back for dinner."

I was thrown into doubt. That little guy really had shocked me with his speed. I mean, they bound like antelope.

So soon after we had another rat. Same rat or not was hard to tell. But again I caught him/her, put the cage in the scooter basket and went about three long kilometers, across a canal and a highway to drop him/her off. Seemed like overkill to me.

I got yelled at again.

See living with rats is not just an abstract distaste. If you leave a few chips in the bottom of the bag, in the morning the bag is gone. To be found a few days later wedged behind the bookcase, plastic shreds and ratshit all around. You have to close off all food. We did.

It ate our soap. I kid you not. It gnawed on the edges of the bars, and carried some full-sized bars completely away. It dragged a bag of dried Thai chilli up into the rafters towards its lair, no doubt, somewhere in rat-highway, but alas for the rat, the bag broke, showering dried chili pepper all over our kitchen. Ate through aluminum foil bags of coffee too.

An now another rat was heard scurrying along the rat highways of our home.

I set up the cage/trap. But nothing happened.
Somjit's dad was visiting at the time and said that rats can smell the old trap. (Which meant that he was sure that I had not sent the old rat far enough away, and now it was back, smarter than ever. My bad again.) He cleaned the cage well, and set the trap. Nothing.

We waited a while. Covering food, hiding soap, and hoping hunger would drive the little jerk off.

Oh, by the way, do you know, rats are noisy? Not just their little scurrying, which is more like galomping, through the rafters, no, more than that, they chirp and call and cry and make all sorts of noise. Noise that our three dogs don't seem to take any notice of.

I set up the cage again. Nothing.

I moved it to a new place, outside our bedroom window, on a little ledge; it was a move out of character, and I got him.
This time I took no chances and went more than four kilometers away down twisty turny roads that none of you could fine your way back from. Across the canal. Across a highway. I returned home, feeling the hero, to be greeted by shaking heads.

By now you may have guessed it. This new rat seemed to know all my tricks. I set the trap with all my cunning. Nothing worked. But life wasn't so bad. We sort of resigned ourselves to live with ratness. We kept our food locked away - no bananas on the counters, no unopened bags of coffee, chili, or cookies - kept the soap in a tupperware jar. It begins to seem normal after a while. We might have been able to coexist. Just the taunt of rat galomping through the rafters, and of course the weird rat chirps and calls.

The rat diminished my manhood. No doubt.

I was ready to let it slide.

But he wanted more. He ate through the mobile phone recharger cable, which I had to jury rig with electrical tape to keep it all together. Then he did it again. Why? Just to piss us off? In the end all will be revealed. Next he started chewing new holes through the teakwood floor into our bedroom (How do you like that? An old, cheap house, with thick teakwood floors. Kinda bends the imagination.). And he taunted us with a half-chewed electric cable. The threat of fire loomed.

By now your realizing that I'm pretty much a slacker.
Judge me as you may. I believe I'm flexible with other species.

I set up the trap again last night. And I set it good.
Somjit rolled her lovely brown eyes.
I filled the cage with scraps of paper, cloaked in rubbish, and basically made it look like a trash heap. I scattered tissues and crumpled paper around. I lined the inside of the trap with paper - my students old math homework - so that the trap was not so clear amongst the mess. I did breathing exercises. I visualised rat-joy. I scattered little bread crumbs, little orange junkfood snacks bits. It was a mess.

The rat's urge for garbage sites was too much, and the door slammed shut leaving him/her in a pile on junkfood and math homework, and my manhood incrementally increased.

This Sunday morning I woke to such joy of the capture. I thumped my chest, and before the rest of this lazy house awoke, I took him five and a half kilometers away, leaving him at a carefully chosen spot, an area awash in cheap pondside restaurants and food scraps. Hell, I'd rather live there. I didn't see a single cat. Just a bunch of dogs. And we know how much a threat they are.

Only one regret.
Should've marked an 'x' on his/her nasty forehead. I thought about it and all, but it's not so easy to do as the toothy little hyperactive fellow is bounding nonstop in the cage through math homework, junkfood, and rat shit, warming up for a long run. And after all, it was Sunday morning.

the keyboard screen

The Keyboard screen

Coconuts

Babies ready to fall

Hang in my sky for weeks

Out past my laptop screen.

Roosters crow

constantly

perhaps confused by lights at night.

Voices of friends chattering on motorscooters

rise and fall as they sweep past

my fixed position.

I think of you.

snowstorms now and then

My folks had planned to fly to Reno to spend Christmas with my brother and his family, but Colorado weather intervened, and they were snowbound bigtime. A storm that comes once every ten or so years. I called on skype to make sure they were ok, and had a long talk this morning. They are well, and the govt system seemed to work well: three feet of snow across the state, no deaths; a day later the streets are plowed and they can make it to safeway - alas, no bananas.
I told them Chiang Mai was about 48 degrees (9 C) - and they laughed a that's-not-winter' laugh. Then I asked them what their thermostat was set to, and they said, about 70. Well, when it's 48 in Chiang Mai, it's 48 inside and out. In the bathroom, and the kitchen. Our house has an electric water heater for the shower, which at these temps, just takes the bite out of the cold. So go take a cool shower in 48 degree weather, and then tell me you ain't cold. They saw the difference.

Another such storm occurred on Christmas eve, when I was still a young buck living at home. My dad and I drove across denver in our 1969 Ford stationwagon - swimmingpool green - to pick up my stubbornly independent 88 year-old granny, who everyone called Granny. We got there, and got stranded. Blowing snow got under the hood and into the distributer cap; dad showed me what happened. The city declared an emergency and forbade traffic. We were rule followers. And now there are no more distributer caps. And my mom spent that Christmas morning alone. The next day I carried Granny like my new bride through hip deep snow to our trusty stationwagon, with a dry distributer cap, for the careful journey across town to home. The emergency had lifted, and the sky was blue as I lifted that small amazing woman who was born in New York in 1892 and went to Easter Sunday services in a horse and buggy through the unbroken snow in front of her condo. My Granny. I was a young buck, but I'm not a big guy, and even though she was as small fragile woman, it was hard for me to keep her above the deep snow. It's a memory that I am proud of. Dad drove us good, and got us home safe. My dad, the fighter pilot.

first post

And so, on the first Friday afternoon after the winter solstice, in the sixth year of the plague of bush, I became a blogger.

karma book

Karma for Today's Traveler

A small book that I worked on with an extraordinary Thai monk, Phra Bhasakorn Bavilai. His approach to explaining karma and the basic framework of Buddhism is new and fresh. He has created quite a stir here in Thailand with his new way of explaining the timeless teachings of Buddhism. Several years ago he wrote up his approach in a Thai book which was quite popular - though it did cause a bit of controversy, as new ideas will. But the content has been vetted at some of the highest levels of Thai Buddhism and academia, and his approach seems to help clear up a lot of concepts for people.

We worked on this English version for over two years, rewriting his ideas from scratch for a Western reader unfamiliar with the topic. Many Thai people who had read the Thai version eagerly awaited the English version, and donated money to print 62,000 books (thus far) to be distributed freely.

If you come to Thailand, don't be surprised if you find one in your hotel or guest house, like you might find a Gideon's Bible. If you come up to Chiang Mai you can pick up a copy at Wat Suan Dok, at their Monk Chat program. Soon (hopefully) an international version should be available. When it is, I'll post a link.

One of his basic concepts is to view the karmic situation as it relates to our inner mental world, and our outer worldly environment, separately. For example, donating money to a good cause would be looked at as:

• worldly - the amount of change, the size of the ripples you make, on your external world depends on how much you give, and how good the cause is.
• mentally - the amount of change, the size of the ripples you make, on your internal world depends on the quality and power of your intention in the giving.

If you're interested in such things, or are looking for an introduction to Buddhism, I recon, though I am of course rather biased, the book an interesting read.

9-11 skeptic indeed

This is an email I sent to Scientific American, a magazine I have subscribed to for many years, about the Skeptic column dealing with 9-11. I got no response.

To Sciam:

I had to laugh a bitter laugh at Mr Shermer’s last column. We have entered Alice in Wonderland when a column called “Skeptic” is not at all skeptical about physical facts. A column that agrees with official explanation absolutely – even though there was no scientific inquiry to produce such explanation.

Sorry friend. A real skeptic would be puzzled by facts that don’t align with common sense. Facts that should at least cause one to ponder.
Such as why:

• for the first time anywhere on the planet, three (not two – have you forgotten WTC 7?) steel framed buildings collapsed into their own footprints due to “fire” even though the fires had already been contained. Thick black smoke indicates an oxygen-poor fire, a relatively cool fire.
• the fire fighters (who should know) were not in anyway worried about the integrity of the building, after all, the steel was certified to withstand 2000 degrees Fahrenheit for two hours.
• people were seen standing in the hole created by the impact of the airplane – indicating that even at the point of impact the fire was not quite an “inferno.”
• the recent Madrid fire – a real inferno – resulted in a burnt out steel structure – no collapse.
• no explanation has been offered as to what caused the massive concrete core of the building to self-pulverize (and self pulverize it did – the huge concrete core above the point of impact turned to dust – instead of falling like monolith)
• there are first hand accounts of blasts being heard
• there was a hot spot under the rubble days after the collapse
• there were seismic recordings indicating blasts immediately preceding collapse
• there was no forensic study of the debris,
• the debris was shipped out of the country with whirlwind efficiency
• no one mentions the fact that the WTC buildings were sold several months before the attack.
• almost no airplane parts were found at the Pentagon
• the film from several security cameras in the Pentagon area covering the approach of the airplane were all confiscated with great efficiency and none have seen the light of day.
• a bunch of the “hijackers” are still alive
• none of the “hijackers” were on the flight manifests
• “fanatical Muslims” visited strip joints just before their martyrdom.
• a group of Israelis were arrested, and then quickly released, after being seen high-fiving and cheering as they watched the towers fall, standing on their van, in New Jersey. The van was from a dubious company, they had several different European passports, they had $4,700 stuffed into a sock.
• after many countries’ security services warned the US, our leaders lied and said they had no warning (These warnings spoke of planes used as weapons, targets would be symbols of American power, some mentioned New York, some mentioned early September – these were foreigners warning us. Surely our own security services must have come up with something too.).
• no planes were able to intercept the airliners even though the ones scrambled from Otis AFB could have (they were airborne early enough, and had they flown at top speed they would have changed history).
• none of our “representatives” cares, or is upset, or thinks it odd, that a military that costs $1.1 billion per day, could not send up a single plane to confront these lumbering airliners
• no heads have rolled as a result of the colossal security failure
• the secret service people allowed GWB to sit in a public location while America was under attack
• GWB sat doing nothing while America was under attack
• the hundreds of pages of the Patriot Act (so Orwellian a name, no?) was pre-written and ready to go, and pushed through congress before the mysterious heat beneath the trade centers had even cooled. (who wrote it, and for what purpose, and under whose authority?)
• the Pennsylvania crash (like the Pentagon crash) resembles no other crash site. The Pennsylvania crash was a barren hole in the ground, again, as in the Pentagon, missing the pieces of the plane.
• so little effort was expended to investigate what happened. (More funding was given to Clinton’s Whitewater probe than 9-11.)

Sorry dude, but you ain’t skeptical. You are a faith-based writer. Government (handlers) right / Facts ignored.

How about changing the name of your column to: “The Current Dogma Speaks,” “Status Quo Rules,” “From the Heavenly Gates of Government Science Come my Reasonable Answers.”

At least it would be honest.

Rise up!

Rise up! is an antiwar song I wrote in the run-up to the second Iraq war. The intro clip is from an antiwar protest in Washington a month or two before the invasion. I don't know who the guy speaking is, but he is great.

Rise up, rise up, rise up.
They say it's to protect you
while they try to dispossess you
of the right to decide between wrong or right
to openly discuss what politicians hide.
They want to keep their secret plans from the public eye
we got to keep our fires burning keep our spirits bright.
We got to rise up, rise up, rise up.

Rise up people against the war!

Money's got no children
and bombs ain't for building
and killing ain't no way to make a peaceful day
as all of God's children can easily explain.
We got to keep our fires burning keep our spirits bright
stand up and speak for what we know is right.
We got to rise up, rise up, rise up.

Rise up people against the war!

-I see days ahead
-kiss my children into bed
-all across the planet I
-see that everything is fine!

Rise up people against the war!

We've got the power and the will and
we'll do it for our children
put the warmongers and the corporate whores
in the history books with the dinosaurs.
I claim my power!
I claim my rights!
And no dirty tricks are gonna change my mind.
I'm gonna rise up, rise up, rise up.

Rise up people against the war!


The Positive Chi Units:
me on choppy guitar and vocals
Case Rienstra (Amsterdam) on pretty guitar and extra vocals
Simon Blechynden (Western Australia) on didgeridoo and extra vocals