I suppose that as a person tries to understand another she must take that person in context - understand where they're coming from.  I was born in 1959, became an orphan by 1972, then spent time growing up on West Coast streets.  It made me kind of feral, maybe primal, and very transient.  I'm sure the title of Ten Years After's album "A Space In Time" came from somewhere else, but the words have always meant something to me.  After these decades, it's another space in time - now a moment in time where I'll try to write about Thailand.

Why Thailand?  Well, I'm fond of the dark side.  Wherever I go I'm inclined to gravitate toward the places Edgar Winter spoke of, where they "only come out at night." In that darkness I've found a much brighter place than I grew up in.

Bangkok kills.  The social situation is brutal.  You're constantly reminded of the cataclysms that force us to "come together."  As I write this a siren is screaming.  There are two sounds that have always tormented me:  sirens, and rain striking anything.  It's because, as a small child, I found, my father's corpse.  There's an idelible image in my head.  It's the image of a window beaten by a fierce rain, and the view of emergency lights dancing while sirens screamed into eternity.  Life could have been different.

It's only the night I love.  In Bangkok it tears one to pieces, like a tiger's kill.  The wasted, drug-dealing kids near the Triangle recognized me immediately.  In Bangkok they weren't sure, then embraced me.  It was one woman who accepted me, then brought me into her life.

I'll never forget sitting naked on the bed, drinking, absorbing, looking for God.  There were several there.  Some had been operated on.  I was curious, so they showed me.  Others were thinking about it, while some didn't consider it.  One endearing sort did it, then suffered too much.  They were all in that space that lies between genders.  It's a space I know, but don't understand.  And the river of life flows over neurons as the bits of eternity form bytes that are deleted in the end.

She wanted me to be her savior from Laos and the exploitation of the living.  I watched my savior dying.  The disease had blinded her, she stopped eating and knew death was imminent.  She held my hand hard and said, "everyone loves me."  Yes, everyone loved her, but no one more than me.  While she could never pull me from the darkness, she pulled me into a twilight I can live with.

And the oscillation continues as the ladyboys live on and the wars make the rich poor while the new boss beats a child.  Some think it's sane.  Others don't think about it.  Sometimes I laugh because it's better than crying.  Whether She exists or not, we need her.  C'est la vie.