Peace Breaks

With that, everything was solved, at least this morning in this drowsy city by the ocean, where corpses are no longer washed back onto shores.

with gratitude to Linh Dinh at Postcards from the End.

We’ll see if this ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand holds. If I hadn’t just returned from Jordan, I would take a bus to Phnom Penh, then go westward, most likely to Siem Reap. There, I’d sit in Best Mom because that lady is so sweet and lovely, and she makes the most comforting food, whether Khmer or Western. Every morning, her serene daughter in a blue school uniform cleans each plastic covered menu with a wet rag. There can’t be a sweeter emblem of Cambodia at peace. Mom used to rent out the cheapest room to Max, an American expat. She even fed him if he was broke, which was often. I imagine Max has finally managed to secure his Social Security payments. If so, Max can afford to sip Angkor Beer with his meals. It’s telling Max would rather be destitute in Cambodia than return to Iowa.

Bavet, Cambodia, 12/26/24

Talking to Alexander Wolfheze yesterday, I tried to explain why poorer, more backward societies are actually saner, and I’m making this assertion without romanticizing poverty. Civilization is a progression towards isolation. With each invention, you’re further removed from nature, community, God and even yourself. Air conditioning, recorded music, television, the automobile, shoes and the cellphone all do this. Looking up at me, Coffee Seven’s white bitch clearly agrees. Every few minutes, she drops by to make sure I haven’t lost my mind.

With Wolfheze in the Hague and me in Vũng Tàu, we conversed via Zoom, so 6,000 miles of separation were, just like that, gloriously erased, thanks to progress. Next time, we’ll talk from Saturn and Mars.

Before he left just now, Nali Beach’s security guard, Sơn, recounted his time in Siem Reap. He was there in 1979 as a half starved soldier. The Khmer Rouge weren’t content to shoot you in the head, he said. They had to chop your head off. This they did quite expertly with one clean hack of a machete. Like all invading armies, the Vietnamese also committed atrocities against civilians, of course.

With so many people freshly killed by all sides, ghosts were everywhere. “I’d be choked during sleep,” Sơn remembered. “An arm would reach in through an open window.” Waking up terrified, he’d run outside.

“This happened repeatedly?”

“Yes, so I’d sleep clutching my AK and a hand grenade.”

“Why would ghosts be afraid of guns or hand grenades?”

“But they were.” Whatever works, man. I wasn’t there.

Being in Siem Reap allowed Sơn to visit Angkor Wat. Four decades later, he still remembers one large statue of Aspara. She’s a Hindu spirit of clouds and water. Since Sơn brings up Cambodia often, his time there must have been most vivid, instructive and meaningful. Stripped of all comforts and constantly threatened by both the living and the dead, Sơn couldn’t forget his animal self while still insisting, at each moment, why he was still a man. He was the furthest away from any braindead, glazed eyed zombie not even laughing at some asinine TikTok skit. There’s one right in front of me.

Coffee Seven is two miles from Sơn’s home in Bến Đình. His going so out of the way made his wife suspicious, so she showed up one morning to check out Mrs. Seven. That lithe dancer with an angelic face is now withered, wrinkled and even slightly stooped. For his part, Sơn wouldn’t know if she’s screwing some plumber or housepainter from down the street.

“He says chicken, she says duck” is one saying. Then there’s, “He eats pork roll, she eats fermented pork roll.” People don’t just disagree but have divergent needs, too often incompatible. Perhaps Sơn can’t unclog his wife’s plumbing?

Stuffing exactly what we need into our insatiable mouths, we pass each other as shadows, if not ghosts. Sometimes, though, we do manage to reach through half open windows to throttle or caress a beloved’s neck.

Cambodia: (L): Phnom Krom, 1/31/23. (R): Preaek Prasab, 10/14/23

Before reaching Coffee Seven, I paused to chat with BlueTooth. Again, he was sitting alone in the dark to listen to Eminem, without understanding one word. This 42-year-old was also reassured by his usual LA baseball cap.

He knows what he needs, and so do I. “As long as we don’t starve!” I philosophized.

“No one starves!” he blurted.

“Of course, people starve.”

“The body knows what it needs. I know this one woman. Lying in bed for two weeks, she didn’t eat, but only drank water. Her landlord thought she had died, but she didn’t die.”

“So what happened?”

“She was returned to her family.”

“She would have died if she didn’t have her family.”

“There’s no would have. She didn’t die.”

Our mental flaws and physical deformities are our artistic signatures. Bluetooth is as delighted with mine, most likely. That’s why we talk.

Yesterday with Wolfheze, I did ramble a bit. Perhaps the most important theme we discussed was demographics. I’ve said the Philippines, despite four centuries of Western colonialism, is paradoxically more intact than nearly all Western countries. Though Pinoys have lost their names and native religions, they’re more socially coherent than Spaniards or Americans, their former masters. Yesterday, I also cited the example of Albania. The isolation it suffered under the harshest Communism actually preserved its true character. With Communism gone, Albanians are more themselves than the Germans, Dutch, French or English. I have the fondest memories of Albania, where I spent six months. Such lovely people.

Ubon, Ratchathani, Thailand: (L): 6/24/23. (R): 6/22/23

Europe’s methodical destruction continues. In Scotland, Ursula von de Leyen could only look sheepish and dejected as that bloviating child rapist boasted of how Europe will have to buy hundreds of billions of dollars of American weapons and natural gas, with cash it doesn’t have. Even if the US hadn’t blown up the Nord Stream pipelines that delivered cheap Russian gas to her continent, Europe wouldn’t buy it anyway, since Putin is so evil, you see. When von de Leyen and Kaja Kallas of Estonia traveled to China to chastise it for supporting Russia, the Chinese were so contemptuous of these girlish clowns, they sent a bus to pick them up at the airport. At least it wasn’t a DiDi Chuxing Scion iQ as driven by some retired garbageman. Scheduled to stay three days, this ditzy pair escaped Beijing after one. Having piously and coolly committed so many massacres against the rest of the world over centuries, Judeo Christian Satanists are still posing as peace loving respecters of human rights.

In Southeast Asia, too, Trump got his deal. Losing badly, Cambodia had to beg for peace. Having grabbed some land and taught their foe a lesson, Thailand agreed to cease bombarding helpless Khmers with Israeli made Spike missiles and American bombs delivered from F-16’s. Most importantly, the American backed Thais had managed to humiliate a Chinese ally without engaging China.

Mere spectators, we must wait to see what happens next. Often enough, we can’t even choose what to eat.

After Coffee Seven, I walked home for a spaghetti lunch, then wandered over to Pato’s Bingsu. Three middle aged ladies were already there. Their chattering, only half caught, was most amusing.

“My husband won’t fly. He’s afraid of dying.”

Second woman, “We all must go. My husband is convinced he’ll go long before me. He says, ‘You will take care of everything.’” She giggled.

Third, “Mine says, ‘Just throw me into a river.’ Not even the ocean, just any river!”

First, “You know what we should do now? We should go to that store and look at dresses.”

Second, “We can’t. If we don’t buy, she’ll curse at us!”

Third, “That’s just how she is.”

First, “It’s fine! It’s fine! We’ll buy!”

With that, everything was solved, at least this morning for three middle aged women, in this drowsy city by the ocean, where corpses are no longer washed back onto shores, where each morning, you can hear cocks and crickets, if not a fog horn from some unseen ship, with only its lights glimmering through darkness and mist.

About Linh Dinh (@linhdinh):

‘Before being canceled, I was an anthologized poet and fairly prolific author, with my last book Postcards from the End of America. Now, I write about our increasingly sick world for a tiny audience on SubStack. Drifting overly much, I’m in Cambodia.’

AHH: Please support this wonderful writer on his Substack! Thanks