Doi Inthanon, October 29, 2019

On the roof of the country that notches itself into the sea, Thailand that dreams perhaps of Himalayas, has no land more northern than the Golden Triangle, no outcrop higher than Doi Inthanon, on the black scooter I gravitate around the rim, I circle the pot, I spiral up the vertical kilometres.

The air cools, the clouds threaten. The pines rise, people of the heights. Their bundles shine in the brief rays.

I’ve left the floor of the cows and everything is red suddenly – even the cows. Bay the heifers whose shoulder blades jut between the grasses. Reddish the beds of thorns where the trunks slumber. Ochre even – red ochre – the asphalt that heats our tires. They’ll have taken the sand on the spot, no doubt, to make the road. The earth, even the earth here is red, as red as earth can be: paprika. There where the road has cut into the tuff, there where the vegetation – that green which covers all – has been torn away, there where man has wounded the jungle, one sees its rich and ferrous texture exposed. Take a handful and it would crumble between our fingers like coffee grounds. Farmers live here, grow rice plants that absorb the iron, raise cattle with red tongues, drink a water that tastes of steel.

People live here, walk on the friable, subsist in this world that rusts – like us, like all of us.