Even if a lot of people stare.
When I wake up in the mornings to write, the couple across the street are awake also. They make jok, breakfast rice porridge, and sell it on the side of another street, from a cart. So every morning they put all the tables and stools, pots and food, in their sidecar, drive them over, and then push the cart down the street to park it and sell their food. I make my coffee (these days it’s in my stovetop espresso maker) in my kitchen which is outside and open to the street, remember, and all the while I see them preparing for their morning. The couple has one other worker, a young man, and both he and the older man sing while they work. I put cream in my coffee; they sing Thai songs.
My kitchen. Shall we talk more about my kitchen? I think I am pretty much completely resigned to the very public nature of my life, out here on this street, as I emerge in the mornings and walk down the stairs, meeting the eyes of passing monks who are up early to give blessings, or drunks still out from the night before. The occasional (very occasional) time I snap at a child, “Get out of the kitchen!” when he is racing around underfoot, and look up to see a group of tourists watching me? No sweat. We live in the middle of everything and we aren’t ashamed. Only sometimes we are. But, for the most part, I’m simply happy that my bedroom is tucked away inside my house.
Every once in a while I am standing somewhere, or doing something, when I realize, I mean, really GET IT. I live in Thailand. The other day it was in the market, while everyone was scurrying because of a downpour. I walked from the tomato seller to the avocado seller, getting soaked in the process, and thought, whew, I’m once again getting caught in the rain. And then I looked up and saw a man wearing Hmong embroidery hurrying to cover his stall, and a Lisu woman moving her greens out of the gusts of rain, and it hit me that I was getting caught in the rain in a vegetable market in Thailand. And that this is completely normal to me. Normal enough that it’s slightly annoying. But not if I stop and look around and see the wonder of my life. It’s like what Kenya said one day: Her life is made of adventures that she loves, and when she gets caught in the rain while we're driving the chariot, it reminds her that her life is amazing. Hmm. May something like getting caught in the rain always remind us that our lives are amazing.