the "truth" and a really, really old man

When they told us we were going to have an exchange with a really, really old man, we had no idea that he would roll up in a beat-up motorcycle with a beard at length halfway past his chest, a page boy cap, and grandfather eyes.

Consider me re-educated in those past four hours. How am I even supposed to describe what just happened? "I refuse to talk business with those I don't know the hearts of," he said, and proceeded to pull out a random poster advertising a festival, and ordered us ("this is not a democracy! i am a dictator!") to select one activity which speaks out most to us. Then, proceeded to give us assignment after assignment based on interpretation, truth-seeking, process, synthesis, and faith in memory. This, from a man with a bowl of hand-rolled cigarettes, the strongest tobacco I have tasted in a long while (it'll hit you harder than cloves, more satisfying than menthols). Kept filling our glasses up with Isaan beer which agreed with all our taste buds--it really is the best beer in Thailand I have had thus far (that's saying a lot considering how much I drink here).

So long as we are talking about truth seeking, I remember a drunken conversation one semester prior somewhere in someone's dorm room (must be in D's because I remember minimalism and herbal somethings) when I was arguing adamantly about the relevance of poetry to social sciences and social justice activism. Why am I suddenly remembering this? This old man today (I should give him a name, huh? His name is P'Biekbamrung... P'Biek for short) told me that as students we overintellectualize everything to the point where we distort the truth inherent in our experiences and memory. That is to say that beyond our subjectivities, there are certain truths evident. If you stare at the sun long enough, you can see ROYGBV (?) If you look harder, you can see the map of your mind as it processes your senses and sense registering. That is not to say to abandon all intellectual thought. However, P'Biek reads Alinsky (and Marx Marx Marx! Ah! Why can't I quit you!) and points to our external and internal realities... there must be spirituality to accompany theory. Otherwise, theory is empty.

In this sense, this is where poetry has successfully made the connection between all my distorted thoughts in the way no famed theorist or scholar has any access. Memory, selective and personal, is something we have learned to trust before we trust texts, teachers and lectures. This is where poetry succeeds at completing the union of concrete and abstract, theory and spirituality.

Other thought. P'Biek passes on one sentence advices to all of us. His to me: "Don't reject your mum-faith... be critical of American politics... Learn to accept your ancestors".

The next time we meet, he wants me to draw him a picture.

To end this entry, I will depart with a message my friend left on my computer when I left the room to get a banana sandwich. I think it's only funny between the three of us because we were there and P'Biek is a crazy genius old man:

"I miss you but I do not miss you. Even after I am gone, and you are reading this message, things will live on. This computer I am typing at, it will live on. This potato to my right that I take care of, this will live on. In this way I can never die."