Here’s a writer at work beside what he’s working on — and as usual you can click on him to see better, indeed more than once if you really want to get into his world as well as into hers which is multiple too. He’s fishing on an autumn day in Stuttgart, Germany, and she’s wringing the very same water he’s fishing in out of her hair at Wat Pha Lad in Chiang Mai. And for the record, he’s Everyman and she’s Mae Thorani,
Some of you reading this will have been to Wat Pha Lad with me, and will understand what I mean when I say it’s the most beautiful mess in the world, an abandoned other-world nursery full of broken toys, baby buddhas, bric-a-brac, cast-offs, and basketfuls of dressing-up glitter. A very old water Wat in the jungle on the way up Doi Suthep, the holy mountain that hangs over Chiang Mai, Wat Pha Lad is a spiritual honey-pot that every day attracts mysterious little things that seem to sprout up out of the ruins — like that preposterous white chicken rocking back on its heels to gaze up at Mae Thorani wringing the water out of her hair. Indeed, this image of the goddess herself just turned up out of nowhere the other day, complete with the over-the-top dime-store necklace, and I was so excited I had to go all the way home and come back the next day with my camera. I almost said fishing rod, but that would be getting way ahead of myself.
I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
Christopher. ….
P.S. Next day. ……………………………………………………..November 1st, 2017.
If you clicked twice on the goddess you might have noticed the bejeweled dancing girl scrunched up in the lower left corner behind the white chicken. When I first saw her I thought the curled leaf was her skirt, but in fact it’s not clear where her legs are, which of course are important for who she is and what she does, which is dancing. For she’s a Nang Ram, and even disheveled in the undergrowth she minces and glitters with her beautiful bare arms and her bracelets thrown back on the pillow beside her slightly turned head. What you might not have noticed is that her body is poised on the edge of an upturned bowl — that’s the remains of a red lacquer offering tray which may or may not have been instrumental on the day of her arrival. On the other hand, the offering tray could have brought up anything that matters, the place being piled so high with the detritus of hope.*….
* NOTE:…………………………………………………………..November 3rd, 2017.
Things that are really important like hope shouldn’t be talked about, that’s my feeling, and I know I’m already skirting dangerously near the edge. That’s why I’m not going to tell you what a Nang Ram is, because if I do I’ll tell you things that I don’t know myself, and those things will get in the way not only of your understanding of them but, even worse, indeed fatally, of my own. Because in my experience the deepest things have to be seen out of the corner of the eye, so to speak, a flickering shadow, an apparition, a bump in the dark, and the moment you turn your head to focus on such things directly, turn on the lights, let’s say, they vanish into things you already know. And that’s simply not what or who they are.
It’s in the detritus of hope where the meaning lies, remnants in the bushes at the back of the house, for example, or buried in the leaves, broken and twisted or lost — off the path, off the record, off limits /sides /color /balance /duty /one’s rocker etc.
The evidence of the spirit world that we can see is way beyond its expiry date, if I might be so bold — it’s because the spirit has ‘gone off’ that we can follow its scent like the physicist can ‘track’ the fading footprints of atomic particles in a cloud chamber, or the mathematician ‘crunch’ what is left of what may or may not have been there in the numbers at Cern. You may remember some of the photos I’ve posted of what I sometimes call the ‘cloud chambers’ where I live, like the terrible mess in this one. (Forgive me for coming back to that, but I think it’s really worth visiting again.)
Human beings are afraid so they sweep the floor and make lists. The spirit lives equally in disorder as in order, and it falls apart as fast as it’s born. It’s on- and off-hours, on- and off-work all at once.**…..
**NOTE 2:…………………………………………………………November 4th, 2017.
The “writer at work beside what he’s working on” is off-work, of course he is, and the water he’s ‘working,’ as we fishermen say, is the same water that she’s wringing out of her long black hair. In addition, do note that Mae Thorani is gathering the water that flows from her hair into her cupped hand — and that’s woman’s work, needless to say, and why men need her so badly and hope she’ll understand when they come home from the river full but empty-handed.***
Here’s another with a clay pot for the water she’s gathering this time, and a fish.…..
***POSTSCRIPT…………………………………………………November 5th, 2017.
So here’s what I think happened.
Because the original fisherman had been sitting there for so long with his eye fixed on that one still spot which all fishermen know is just where it happens, he was absolutely sure this was it. But the place was also the lair of the beautiful goddess called ‘Earth,’ and she loved her fisherman so much, and wanted him so passionately, so ‘badly’ as we say, to stay right where he was. That was because when he was there on the bank beside her, everything in the world mattered, everything was full and steady, everything moved so smoothly with the light caressing the eddies and the ripples and the flicker of the leaves and the shadows of the birds overhead and the fish slipping like lovers into each other’s perfect shelter beneath. But if her fisherman went away, if he left her, how would she ever recover from that? How could she ever let the man she loved so much slip away like some dirty little hermit out of her life?
So she decided to keep him, and to do that she would have to make him surrender, make him give up his selfish quest to abandon her world for another place he preferred — an unreal, negative place where there was no more desire, or so he explained it, no more impatience, no more striving or anger, conniving, or killing above all, and no more broken hearts, at least that’s what he said. But this would-be lover-woman was a fierce-some power to be reckoned with, no doubt about that — because she was Mara herself, the invincible Wicked Witch of Nature, the fanged woman, the specter of lust, rivalry, betrayal and anger, and totally red in every root, rotten tooth and wretched claw of her being.
So Mara came out perfectly suited in her slippery-wet dappled trout-skin with her bright red gills and mascara and musk, irresistible for the task at hand — which was to seduce the Buddha and knock him off the Path of Enlightenment once and for all. With nothing on but her bracelets and bangles she knelt before him perfectly at ease, and she reached up over her head with her strong brown arms as all women do with supernatural grace so many times each day all over the world. And she drew her heavy black hair out in a long thick plait that gleamed with the water she’d just come up out of herself — and she twisted it deftly and the water streamed out in a jet of perfectly clear, perfectly uncluttered, perfectly free water. And the water was the new water in which all human beings are blessed and fulfilled and feel right in themselves, i.e. just as we are if we’re patient whether we catch a fish or not. So Mara the Whore is also Mara the Nang Ram, the lovely, light-hearted Dancing Girl crumpled in the bushes as well as the heavenly Deva with the necklace above, indeed both up and down come together in the frank, irresistible allure of Mae Thorani.
That’s what the Thais call her, Mae Thorani — and how they love her. “Mae” means “Mother” in Thai but you have to bleat her name like a goat to get the full sense of the sort of mother she is, that rough and that intimate. The name “Thorani” comes into Thai from the sacred language of the Theravada scriptures, Pali, a close cousin of Sanskrit — dhāraṇī, earth. And her name is often preceded by the highest celestial title of them all: Phra — Lord, God, Brahma, Seigneur!
Phra Mae Thorani is everywhere in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Burma — almost every shrine, temple, garden and ordinary household has at least one of them. The figure I have chosen here is even more naked than usual — but that’s the whole point, isn’t it? On the other hand, she’s never immodest, even this one, and how could she be, being who she is and so close to you, and the hope in the water she brings!
C.
Christopher
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