Bangkok

BANGKOK - DUSK TO DAWN from Florian Böhm on Vimeo.

Celebrity

The celebrity, the spectacular representation of a living human being, embodies this banality by embodying the image of a possible role. Being a star means specializing in the seemingly lived; the star is the object of identification with the shallow seeming life that has to compensate for the fragmented productive specializations which are actually lived. Celebrities exist to act out various styles of living and viewing society unfettered, free to express themselves globally. They embody the inaccessible result of social labor by dramatizing its by-products magically projected above it as its goal: power and vacations, decision and consumption, which are the beginning and end of an undiscussed process.
Society of the Spectacle 60

The gym was warm from the San Francisco heat. Summer solistice had just passed and the weather was finally turning. Neungsiam was doing padwork in the ring while my camera snapped pictures. The 36 year old Thai man will be fighting next month in Ponoma California. I was at his place to help him spar, and to possibly interview him.

"Hey, I like your writing a lot," David said to me. I turned toward him. He looked vaguely familiar, later I would recognize his portrait on a fight poster for a couple of years ago. "I totally live through you reading your stuff while I'm at my job."

"There's nothing quite like mediated living," I said in reply.

He looked at me quizzically and a friend nearby smiled.

This is one of the disheartening effects of writing and being public about my trips to Thailand via mymuaythai. People read the highlights of my "adventures" and don't realize that I live an everyday life that is quite normal. Put on stage my exploits are read as a life lived unfettered by social norms, a life of permanent vacation, the complete opposite of socially necessitated labor time/work. Just like happy hours and weekends my advertisements of a life fully lived ends up being escapism. Free time is the time away from work in which we are supposed to regain ourselves and replenish. Labour is a magical commodity in that it can be replenished unlike other items such as coal, meat, or toilet paper. There is a limited supply of the latter, (although I hope that toilet paper doesn't run out anytime soon) because the earth has limited resources. Yet in our free time we reinforce spectacular society. In the above case I am inadvertently reinforcing this idealistic notion of a life truly lived yet as long as there is capital there can only be choices made by and for economics.


--

Hair cut

The blue sky had just a few clouds. The slight chilled summer breeze blew all the white whisps away. I rode my bike to 40th and Telegraph. The chain on my bike cranked along eeking out a harsh squeak. The chain was rusted and old. My bike was dented and scraped but still retained a blue sky color.

I locked my bike to a bike stand and walked inside the barbershop. Outside a striped pole twirled denoting the nature of the business. Four barber chairs were set up on the north wall. One of them was occupied. An early thirties african american man cut the hair of another's with a clipper.



I took off my bag and set it down on a row of chairs for waiting clients on the south wall.

"You need a hair cut," said a barber. His occuppation was denoted by his black smock. He motioned me to take a seat. "What do you want," he asked.

"Cut down the sides to about one and then a little off the top. I have this weird patch of hair on the top of my head from getting stitches last month and I want it to look better. I don't care what you do to it," I told him.

When the hair on the side of my hair is trimmed short you can see the lightning bolt scars from my facial reconstruction. I liked to be able to see them, they are reminders. The lines recall my fight and the surgery afterwards. Are lives are composed of scars, layers upon layers of hardened flesh. Peeling back the topmost slab of skin reveals another and another.

The barber began to cut my hair. The clipper buzzed. Attached to the western wall was a flat screen plasma television. It was showing "Die Hard 4." Bruce Willis was once again trying to save america from certain doom.

"Yo Aaron, you seen that movie yet," the other barber said.

"Nah, I'm supposed to see it with my boy later tonight," Aaron said as he cut my hair.

The barber and I saw in silence except for the ever present noise of the clippers. I thought of chatting with him but my tongue was thick.



"Look good," Aaron asked me. I looked at my reflection. The lightning bolts were there so was the new pink scar that ran down my forehead and into my hairline parting my hair like a cowlick. I blinked at my reflection and nodded.

"How much," I asked.

"Twenty dollars," he said pointing at a sign on the wall.

I gave him a bill and a few dollars as a tip. I ran my fingers through my short hair. I felt the ridge that runs just behind my hairline. I rubbed the ridge and wondered if it would ever disappear.

The sky was still blue. The clouds were still sparse. I unlocked my bicycle. The chain still squeaked slightly. I rode home, my hair cleaner and my scars a little more visible for a while.

A black shirt and a bar

I buttoned up my black shirt, the garment had been purchased less than a week ago at the Sears next door, it was a necessary item for work outfit. Once buttoned and tucked in I put my suspenders over my shirt and rolled up the sleeves.

The small closet of a room stored the staff lockers. A large sign on the front of the door stated that "This room is not secure." Several of the lockers had small locks on them with various items of clothing, purses, and bags stuffed inside.

Next to the lockers was a rack on which lay various folded piles of towels; blue ones for the kitchen, white ones for the bar, striped ones for polishing. I took two towels of the latter types and an apron. I wrapped the thin strings of the white shoe length apron around my waist and knotted it. It was a stark contrast with my otherwise black outfit; black shoes, black socks, black pants, and black shirt. I opened up the staff locker room door and walked through the hallway and through the curtains onto the restaurant floor.
Having come back from Thailand broke I didn't have much option in employment. Not having a degree (which is worthless if its not a master's or graduate degree), and there being a recession meant that my choices for what type of work I wanted to do were limited so I did what an reasonable person would do, I canvassed restaurants for work. Having worked in the food service industry for over 7 years I've done it all. I've washed dishes, prep cooked, line cooked, bussed, food ran, waited, barbacked, and bartended. I've never stepped into the big shoes of a manager because of my distaste for firing people and mucking my hands with owners and upper management.

The restaurant at which I work now is considered fine dining, which is merely a matter of appearance. Fine dining is more concerned with appearance and gives the customer higher quality food and beverages along with service. This labor and product comes at a higher cost both in terms of labour power and in price. With the higher bill comes a corresponding higher class of customer. Its hard to justify spending $50 on a meal as a worker that only makes $70 a day, but for someone that makes $150 or more daily the fee for luxurious living can be easily afforded.

As a bar back at the restaurant I am in in charge of doing all the grunt labor for the bartenders. The variety of tasks to which I am responsible for is enough to drive a schizophrenic sane. The onus is on me to make sure there is enough fresh squeezed juice, ice, crushed ice, bitters, liquors, utensils, plates, glasses, etc. all the while being burdened with customer service; clearing plates, getting and refilling waters, setting dining ware out. The pace of a restaurant is bipolar in the the psychiatric sense. The business can be depressed and slow with nothing to do and then all at once a maniac streak breaks out demanding immediate and sustained attention. This maniac dash must be reined in by concentration on a variety of tasks demanding one multi-task and constantly think ahead essentially doing labour saving tasks in order to make sure the job gets done.

Eventually the evening ends.I come home and I shower. The smell of food and liquor hangs on me like a foul perfume. The soap scrubs away the stench but doesn't alleviate the aches and pains. Its late and I know that there is no one to help me ease my pain other than other late night workers. I open a beer. The cold liquid rushes down my throat making my throat cold and my body warm at the same time. I stare out into space and try not to think of the things that I forgot tonight, of the repetition, of work.

Music

My friend Mark sent this over. The music is aight. I'm a fan because of the name, which reminds me of my blogs incorrect spelling which irks me at times. It should be les enfants perdus not les enfant perdus. Oh well. Enjoy!

The end of the affair and Oranges are not the only fruit

I picked up a copy of Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair" in a small bookshop off of Khao San road. The shop had reasonably priced used books, roughly the same price one would pay in the states. One of the drawbacks of Thailand is the expense of books as most are imported, and there is a small used book market. That market also mainly contains crappy pulp espionage Tom Clancy style books and or romance as that's what people read while on vacation.

Greene returns to the theme of affairs in "The End of the Affair," which is a running thread in all the fiction that I've read by him. The story follows Maurice Bendrix, a slightly crippled writer who while working on a novel falls in love with a married woman, Sarah. Their love affair is troubled by Sarah's refusal to separate from her boring husband, Henry. Bendrix is a jealous lover and their relationship is plagued by his emotions. Set in World War II in London the climatic change in the novel comes about from a bombing. Sarah and Bendrix are at his home and Bendrix goes downstairs, a bomb hits. He is injured and temporarily trapped underneath a door. Sarah in a fit of panic prays to god to save Bendrix. Her lover is saved and as part of her prayer Sarah has promised never to see Bendrix again. Her devotion to god and her desire to keep her promise to the almighty sets the tone and subsequent dilemmas for the second half of the novel as Bendrix tries to reunite with her. The novel's ending is predictable but what is particularly irksome is the religious tract feel of the story. Instead of being a fictional tale about the sorrowful end of a relationship the novel turns into a polemic about belief in god. Several miraculous events unfold relating to Sarah and her faith which turns everyone into big old Jesus believers. Blech!

Reading about Greene makes me not surprised in the least about this latter turn, as authors' writing is influenced by their lives. Greene was a Roman Catholic himself and had an affair, in fact the book is dedicated to his mistress at the time.

Continuing on with the overally religious is Jeannett Winterson's "Oranges are not the only fruit," a book I shamelessly stole from one of my Thai roommates (sorry man I'll pay you back for it?). The novel is a bildsungsroman about a young girl whose mother is fanatically religious. The mother's social circle is confined to her church group who routinely chastise others for their sins. The mother is heavily influenced by missionary style beliefs and has a strong pentecostal background.
The essential tension comes about because of the young girl's (and narrator) affair with another girl. Under the guise of being especially devout the two girls spend all their time together, eventually a relationship blooms. Unfortunately the lesbian flower of youth is crushed by the hammer of religion as the mother and her cronies find the passion of the two children intolerable. The two girls are torn apart, yet the cycle happens to the narrator again, and again as she become mores cognizant of her sexual desire for women.

The narrative is non-linear with several side tales told about a young woman and a wizard along with knights of the round table. Heavy on the religious symbolism the book is quite layered but what ultimately shines is the simple desire for a more diverse world in which people's desires can be accepted. The title of the book comes about because of the mother's insistence to feed her daughter oranges. The fruit is the only food available until the close of the book when the daughter has come of age and separated herself, to some extent, from the confines of her mother's religion. The mother comes to an uneasy acceptance of her daughters carnal passions by not mentioning them whilst still going out to save the world from sin.

"Oranges are not the only fruit," is Winterson's first novel, published at the age of 24 and like Greene's novel is at least semi-autobiographical. Winterson grew up in a penecostal family. A devout child, Winterson began to deliver sermons and proselytize by the age of six. Ten years down the road she realized that she was a lesbian and left home which mirrors the narrative of the novel. We write about what we know, and we only know what we live.

Winterson includes a handful of poetic and interesting lines that I liked which are included below:

"I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had. Some people's emanations are very strong, some people create themselves afresh outside of their own body. (p. 164)"

"Time is a great deadener; people forget, get bored, grow old, go away. She said that not much had happened between us anyways, historically speaking. But history is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe knot it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing. A cat's cradle (p. 166)."

"There's no choice that doesn't mean a loss (p.167)."

Back in the USA

The sky is a drab grey. The rain is cold and chilly. The people are taller, and often wear rags to accentuate their alternative lifestyle. The public transportation is slow and expensive. Bikes litter the streets. The restaurants, bars, and clubs are expensive matching worker's wages. The dominant language is english, with all of its idiosyncracies and annoyances. I am back in the USA.


I came back a little over a week ago after a final fight at MBK mall in Thailand. My bout will be posted below. The bout went well considering my opponent's experience level, he had about 40-50 fights. My corner asked me if I wanted to keep fighting as blood dripped down my face and I said that I didn't want to make the decision. They made it for me saying that continuing to fight wasn't worth it. My bout wasn't at a big stadium, it wasn't for a belt, and the money was horrific, I got paid thirty dollars for the bout, granted that is a fair amount of pad thai.

Coming back to the states is like coming back to a heap of problems, and the drudgery of everyday life. I have to find a job, I have to move, I have to pay my bills, I basically have to make up for the borrowed time that I was living on in Thailand. Vacations are borrowed time in a capitalist world, time you are lended in order to keep you in place when you return with more bills and more problems. That said my time in Thailand was one of the best times in my life because I was living exactly the way I wanted to. I went to Thai language school, I was in a great relationship, I had great friends, I trained all the time, I fought, I read a lot, I wrote a lot etc.

I would have stayed if it was feasible but its just not realistic as I don't have a degree. To get the most basic job, teaching English, you need a degree. That said degrees out here in the states are pretty much worthless. While giving a graduate a few dollars more in a new job they don't pay off the college loans right away, if ever. Instead they are a false promise of security down the road, a promise that is increasingly shown to be another lie of the capital-spectacle.

Coming back and not getting into the schools I applied for is pretty disappointing but also reminds me of how pointless it is to be university. If you want something you need to get out there and do it. Now all I have to do is fully express what it is that I wants.

Round 1


Round 2



Round 3 part 1



Round 3 part 2