zoot!

Here I am and we are in Taiwan's airport its very self, doing the 6 hour layover boogie thing. If this trip were a baby chick it would be totally fried and ready for dismemberment!

I've got to clarify one thing quick, because I don't want to leave an ugly portrait of anxious dad floating around the blogiverse. That is, I was never particularly abused or ill-regarded by anxious dad as a boy and so, upon talking with Alex who is wise in such things, and reflecting, I've come to think of the awful dad dreams (which were only 2, not so bad!) as not necessarly referencing real dad himself, or my relationship with him. Because he wasn't even in the first one, and in the crazy screaming one he wasn't really himself, he was just dad archetype. So, I think what maybe is going on is some sort of dream-reflex more related to fatherly....

HOLY SHIT! PAUSE! HOLD IT! AN ENORMOUS BROWN WING-ED COCKROACH JUST CRAWLED ACROSS MY ARM!!! YOU ARE KIDDING ME! THIS IS A CLEAN MODERN AIRPORT! WHERE DID IT COME FROM? NOOOO! TAIWAAAAAANNNNN!!!!

Okay here comes a staffperson. My god. The thing is wily. It's running away. It's gotta be at least three inches long. Shudder. Shudder.

Alright, so, anyway, as I was saying, I think dad conflict in my dreams is related to patriarchy/fatherly affiliated things, like responsibility, and the stress of constantly having to be responsible for myself, look after myself, make a thousand decisions every day. Granted a lot of those decisions are actually silly, but some are big!, and they all seem completely pivotal at the moment, when the sweaty fat woman in a head-dress is staring at you just inches away, stroking her noisemaking teak frog toy with such pitious and pleading melancholy, whimpering again and again, "Okay you touch, okay you touch." No thanks, but I'm sorry! You and all the others indistinguishable from you are very sweet!


And then there's always those inevitable regrets, when soon after one such decision it becomes all to clear that, made in haste or even carefully weighed, it turned out to be premature and not in good judgment. As per, when I made a purchase several days ago at a Night Market in Chiang Mai. I hesitate to mention this, because it happens to be about the souvinir I bought for anxious dad, and I feel he's suffered enough, but I'll go ahead anyway. It was saffron, alright, baggies of red saffron, big baggies, like a sandwich bag, not stuffed fat but flatly full you know, full of saffron for a very reasonable price. I asked myself, ever the cautious shopper, "Is this really saffron? It can't be, but it does look like saffron. Doesn't saffron come in tiny vials at obscene prices? And this is a lot of it for not an obscene price. But at the same time, the price doesn't seem totally ridiculously cheap, it must have some quality. It's probably a much commoner weedy saffron strain, but still dad loves to cook and when would he ever buy saffron for himself? And I've heard of saffron rissoto, which he likes to make, and maybe he'd enjoy trying to prepare it, and he could just use more than normal and the flavor might be similar?" After about thirty seconds of deliberation, I bought a little envelope of the red stuff for 100 Baht or so.

We continued wandering the market, eyeing silks and watches like grandmother gypsies out for a stroll, until we came upon an indoor mall-like area, with non-tent stalls, but real rooms from which similar goods were being sold. And there, no freaking kidding you, were bags and bags, heaps upon heaps, of the saffron we'd just bought in a comparatively tiny amount, and these bags at even MORE reasonable bulk prices. Purple with disgust, I turned to hurry out of the stall, bumping into things in my mania and rage, and I kid you not, just as I was about out, just as the nightmare of shame was almost over, I glanced down at my feet and saw a garbage bag of the stuff. A garbage bag full of Thai saffron. Just think of all that risotto!


So, the long short of this post is, sorry again, pop!