welcome home, Oat!

When I was thirteen, my grandfather took me to a music shop in Livonia, Michigan to get a guitar. She was big like a cow, so I named her Bessie. In the years that followed, my grandfather would call long-distance to Spokane and say, “Ellie Sue, I’ve been on the porch all day but I still haven’t heard a thing. You got to play louder!”

After much debate, I decided to leave Bessie in the states. I didn’t want to lose her to the humidity. The past four weeks, though, I have been wandering around Chiang Mai with a guitar-shaped hole in my heart, paired with the impatience of new songs wanting to be written. These wanderings led me to one guitar shop after the next, with no luck and a lot of “special, just-for-you” (a.k.a. astronomical) prices. Finally, a random run-in with another farang (who was from NJ but went to college in Spokane—small world!) pointed me in the right direction and I dragged Ajarn Lauren with me to a guitar shop in the north of the Old City.

As is the case with many shops and homes in Thailand, we took off our shoes to go in. I tried out a few guitars, and soon enough had narrowed it down. The price was right, and the pretty two-tone body was a hit. I asked the guy manning the counter about bars in Chiang Mai with a live music scene. Turns out he plays drums in a band here, and he gave me a list of places—and a discount on the guitar. I asked him what his name was. Oat!

As Lauren and I jetted back to our neighborhood, I suddenly had both a guitar and a name for it. In the days since, I have been happy as a clam. It wasn’t until I started writing new songs and recording the old ones that I realized just how much I had missed playing. It’s a relief, a release and a hoot. Every time I walk into my apartment and see Oat, I feel a little more at home. Bessie’s still my one and only, but Oat and I are on our way to something good. And no noise complaints from the neighbors so far…

Speaking of home, here are a few photos of mine, complete with día de los muertos flags:

six foot angel

On Wednesday I moved into my apartment. (Mi Thai casa es su Thai casa for those of you trekking around or planning to trek around Asia this year…) The following evening as I walked home from my Thai teacher’s house, I asked a blonde girl on the street 1. if she spoke English and 2. if she knew a place nearby where I could buy some sheets. Since she was a tall drink of water, she leant down as she answered, and thank goodness she did! Fifteen minutes of conversation later, we made plans to have dinner once I finished my just-moved-in errands.

By the time I got to the main road, the rainy-season humidity snapped and on came a downpour. A Western guy outside the 7-11 handed me a folded garbage bag and said, “Here, have a rain coat.” I gave up on my errands (and on lugging big shopping bags of household goods through the rain) and, an hour later, me and my makeshift poncho made it through the deluge to the restaurant.

We ate in a hole-in-the-wall, family-run place in a random hallway of her apartment building. The cooks’ adorable four-year-old daughter paraded back and forth on her training-wheeled bicycle, sometimes stopping at our table to rattle off some Thai that I miraculously understood. (Granted, it was a four-year-old’s vocabulary, but still!) As it turns out, my new six-foot-friend was leaving Chiang Mai in two days. She had been living in Thailand for six months, studying ecological politics and working in an incredible sounding non-profit doing humanitarian work in Burma. As we finished up our curry fried rice, we swapped stories (why are you here? what did you leave? what’ll you come home to?) and every time she mentioned an experience with Thai people or the language or the urban insanity that is Chiang Mai, she literally glowed. We paid our bill, bid goodbye to our bicycling sidekick, and she said, “This is random, but do you need pillows?” Then came a different downpour: household goods. We went up to her apartment and she gave me all the cleaning supplies, cutlery, bowls, buckets, glasses and pillows she would leave behind when she left Chiang Mai—and her parting gifts were pretty much my shopping list verbatim.

I was just a few days past my arrival, and she was mere days from departure, and I’m grateful for the slim chance of overlap in our Chiang Mai chronology. The stars aligned with one big, “Hark!” While it’s always nice to go home with a garbage bag rain poncho and an even bigger garbage bag of stuff, it’s even nicer to go home with some impromptu words of wisdom and a damn good omen.

i jaywalk you jaywalk she jaywalks

To cross a street in Chiang Mai, you wait for a gap in the first lane and run. You stand on the dotted line and watch for a break in the next lane of traffic. On a smaller street this might be streamlined, but when it’s a four-lane road you might find yourself stranded in the middle of motorbikes, sedans and trucks for more than a hot minute. Cross walk? Forget about it.

Aside from the adrenaline that comes from feeling like I’m in a video game, the past two weeks’ worth of sprinted street crossings have been pretty analogous to the rest of my experience. If I want to get anywhere, I better make a run for it. Whether it be taking a stab at a spicier curry, making use of the tap-water made ice cubes, speaking some Thai, or rolling into my first class a mere 11.5 hours after getting into the Chiang Mai airport, I’ve been trying my best to curtail the hesitation. Sometimes it means going with the flow, other times it means stepping into traffic, but so far so good.

hello!

Two days from now I will be arriving in Thailand and will get this show (and blog) on the road. Don't touch that dial!