Mae Sariang, October 30, 2019
Little town at the beginning of the bush, at the edge of the true jungle: Mae Sariang leaning over its river, windows mirroring the inaccessible, terraces before the impassable. On the other side it’s nothing but tufts, luxuriances, green chaos and blue mountains, all the way to the border of Myanmar.
There are storms that only the jungle prepares. One senses them coming: by the heavy air that falls on the town, by the birds squawking in the treetops, by the palm leaves quivering. The clouds organize themselves, half burst, reserve the right to pass. Finally they explode: and the downpours spoil the landscape, mix all the colours, dilute the matters, make of the town a joyful gouache.
The water of the rivers – the Yuam, the Mae Sariang – is of a brown so beautiful. Colour of life, of planed earth, of organic things carted along. A water of depths, a jungle water full of larvae and ant eggs. A water big with all the rains of the rainy season – which now is ending – or beginning again.
And in the evening, above the Yuam, we scramble our heads, we gouache our faces. We chug our glasses of suds. It’s night, the jungle disappears: I know it’s there teeming in the black on the other side of the river. Everything mixes, the heads are full of mud. An Australian spits on my ignorance:
– You don’t know who the Karens are! You don’t have a fucking clue!
An Englishman wants to convince me that monogamy is the natural law of the world. An Alaskan weeps telling me:
– Remember me. I’ll see you in paradise.
A Thai woman with a soft voice makes me advances, then tells me: Chan may chay phuying1 – I am not a woman.
Things are no longer clear in Mae Sariang, at the stumbling of the bush. Everything is larval, rich with organic forms. Even the beer that wets the lips, even the viscous words coming out of the mouths: everything mingles in the muddy course of the Yuam and the Mae Sariang.