A good friend and I made plans to meet up on a beach on an island in Thailand.
I was wandering around Asia with a backpack on a hiatus, or a sabbatical, or hiding from real life, or engaged in something for which I didn’t yet have a term. He was in the middle of a marriage that was apparently breaking apart; coming to Koh Chang probably wouldn’t help matters, but he said he needed some time away. I told him my ‘hotel’ name, just a scattering of thin-walled huts raised off the steep hillside overlooking a thin strip of sand, up the beach, just around the bend.
He arrived late at night from Bangkok via minibus and ferry; in the morning, the hut-runner, a nice Thai lady, said to me
“You friend here.”
“I certainly feel that way–thanks”, with a wink, eating my muesli with bananas and yogurt. One US dollar.
In the late morning he emerged from his hut. I looked up through the foliage and we smiled.
It was quiet, hot, not a breath of wind or even the smallest wave to break the feeling of profound stillness. He came down and sat, and for fun we said nothing.
It was the beginning of a movie, an absence of context for a moment. Eventually he’d make something of a base of this island; I’d aspire to wage freedom.
“I feel my lifespan increasing.”
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