Where the holes are

The Chiang Mai flood of 2024. That’s how we’ll refer to it years from now. It’s making history. And it’s also presenting a bizarre juxtaposition to which I have a good view from where I live. 

The Ping River broke its banks not once but twice in the past 10 days, flooding streets, homes, markets, office buildings, and farms. Yesterday (October 5th), was the most severe flood, with water nearly reaching the old city (which is actually the new centre, historically—Wiang Kum Kham was the ancient city but because it was built on a low-lying area near the Ping River, it was prone to severe flooding and the city center was relocated to the present “Old Town Chiang Mai”). 

To the east of my condo building is devastation. People are being evacuated, neighbourhoods are without water or power, rescue workers drive motorboats up and down flooded major roads transporting food and water. Big army trucks and 4x4s transport people to dry ground. Children float by in tubs, either squeaky with delight or cow-eyed and quiet. Tourists saddled with backpacks wear what-the-fuck faces as they wade or rather push through the murky brown floodwaters on Thapae Road (a main street leading from the Narawat Bridge to Thapae Gate and the eastern entrance to the Old City). Hundreds of sandbags stacked up against street-level entrances are a joke.

I stand on the corner where my little soi meets this main drag and watch, astonished and mother-hen like to witness the river taking over the town. The flow is surprisingly fast and my toes grip my cheap flip flops as the undercurrent threatens to whisk them away. The big hard sun beams down on the water’s oily surface, a gift of warmth and irony from nature. The white temple wall opposite me, normally the colour of a stained tooth, is like a bleached veneer—almost too bright to look at directly—and stands resolute against the muddy water. Thai guys with big smiles drift by on bicycles, against the flow, the water bisecting the tires so that from a distance the black rubber half-circles look like the discarded watermelon rinds of a child’s snack, inverted and floating on the surface of the water. Every so often, a bloated black garbage bag drifts by like a raft. A plastic water bottle. A lone shoe. Cockroaches have found higher ground on building walls, and it’s strange to see them too heeding their survival instincts.

One person referred to the flood as a “dystopian songkran”. Songkran is the Thai New Year water festival in April where people celebrate the end of the dry season and ring in the Buddhist New Year with a city-wide blessing that involves throwing or gently pouring water on each other. In the West we’d call it a water fight but it’s actually (mostly) gentle and respectful. Out here on the street, the vibe is certainly Songkran-like. 

Are celebrating and surviving really all that different?

On the other side of my 15th floor, high-and-dry nest, the view to the west is life as usual. So, I decided to take a walk through the old city in the evening and feel that vibe. From there, you’d never guess there’s a total disaster happening just a couple kilometers away. As I moved from thigh-deep-with-water streets to bone-dry roads, the audible swirling water and drone of pumps faded away and the buzz of Saturday night city traffic emerged. I swapped my grimy flip flops for grippy sneakers and went a-walking. Tourists were dressed neat and shiny for dinner out stood at the roadside wondering why their Grab taxi hadn’t yet arrived. Birds chirped as the sun set beautifully behind our beloved Doi Suthep. Music wafted from open cafes and restaurants. I bumped into a guy I know from around about 500m from the edge of the flood. I mentioned the chaos ensuing “over there” as I motioned towards the river. He had no idea what I was talking about. When I told him about the flood he remarked, “oh yeah, I heard something about that.” People were swimming literally 200 steps from where we were standing.

From this bizarrely polarized situation, a question emerges: which is the dark and which is the light, the good and the bad, the up and the down? On an immediate, practical level it’s obvious, but the symbolism does not escape me (especially when I go looking for it as I often do). To the west of my home, life is normal. To the east it has been turned upside down, flooded with reality’s darker side. On the surface it seems obvious that west is the light side, good side, upside of our current circumstances. Yet here we find ignorance: people totally unaware of what’s happening just a kilometer from where they stand. The streets to the east of my building are submerged in filthy, contaminated water, facing power outages and lacking fresh water. Dark side, bad side, downside, right? Yet here people are working together to meet the hardship they face, confronting it as it is, rescuing each other, delivering food. The kids enjoy rides in rowboats or floating along on inner tubes under sunny skies. People trapped in hotel lobbies are meeting and talking and swapping stories in solidarity since their phone batteries expired hours before. In the words of my friend Geoff, a “character building” situation is in full swing. So then which is actually the upside? And how is that question relevant to other parts of life, like love? 

Well, for starters. I love this city. My love developed surely and swiftly—in the week I visited for the first time in 2013, during the burning season. It was one of those situations where you step into a place or touch hands with a person and the love is instant. It happens before you have time to talk yourself out of it. I think what’s really occurring at these times is a merging of a wide open, mindless state of being for a moment with the presence of something or someone new. Something in the universe clicks and coalesces. In that one brief moment a spark ignites and a new love is born. The feeling is pure, resolute, and trusted. There’s no going back. The impression made is for a lifetime. Maybe it’s karma, maybe it’s biochemical, maybe it’s Self finally realizing its essence, I don’t know, but that was Chiang Mai for me. Looking back on past posts I’ve written about Chiang Mai, describing all the reasons I’ve given for loving it, I see how my love has been about the great times I’ve had here, the ease of life I’ve experienced, the amazing people I’ve met. My love for it has been attached to the good stuff—easy rewards, really. All I had to do was show up. 

No one to blame.

And now, as I pause writing this post, and reach to turn on my speaker to play some music, I realize how incredibly quiet it is outside, the day after the big flood. I change my mind and instead allow the rare silence of my surroundings to—pardon the pun—flood my living room in tandem with the early morning sunlight. It’s a dream living up here, especially during these times. I look up from my screen and notice that a corner of a curb has emerged on the street below, its red and white candy stripes peek out from a shimmering brown bath the colour of a latte. The water is receding. The worst has passed. I imagine the relief lapping up against worried minds, recovery plans being established in the worst parts, locals taking it all in stride—recognizing the severity of the situation but not without their usual sabai-sabai (all is well) attitudes tucked in their back pockets with their cellphones. Familiar old warm-fuzzies for Chiang Mai return to me like a long-lost favourite cardigan. A wave of love settles over me, and I return to writing.

The truth is, I actually haven’t been loving this city for a while. I’ve been frustrated by all its flaws. The motorbikes that tear through your nervous system and momentarily fuck with your peace. The suffocating smoke in April (which, where I grew up, is the freshest time of year lol). The at-times unbearable heat. The incessant, street-clogging, choke-on-fumes traffic. The drunk-people noise from nearby bars. Mostly I’m just ragging on the city for not giving me that same feeling it hand-delivered at the beginning of our relationship, as though its job is to serve me endless happiness and sweet surprises around every corner. Perhaps my real frustration is my flawed perspective and immature expectations that my relationship with my home is unlike any other relationship—a balance of giving and receiving, compromise, forgiveness.

Because deep down I do love Chiang Mai, even on the days I don’t. Even when I curse the ragged, cut up road on the outer ring southwest moat road in the lane closest to the water. Even when it’s brick-wall hot. Even when this season rains down in truckloads and floods poor sois and sweeps away the neighbourhood cats. Even when the motorbikes rip through the quiet like a cheap zipper that jams on its way up, and leaves you neither zipped up nor zipped down but stuck, crooked and annoyed. That’s true love, I guess. Underneath all the outward irritations is a deeply-decided trust that transient surface states don’t wholly represent the thing we love nor negate our inherent ability to be a loving being, even when we’re not. 

But where trust is required, action counts; action counts a lot.

It’s funny—I started writing this post last week during the heavy rains, days without my bestie and fewer work hours than normal. I was feeling depressed and by some miracle, decided to do my gardening one of those mornings—a little weeding and sorting and planting I’d been putting off for a long time, even though I “love” gardening. And as I began, somewhat begrudging this overdue task, my mind began to wander and I thought, I should write some of these thoughts down. Always, I should. Write. Because I “love” writing, even though picking up a pen or cracking open my laptop to even attempt the act of writing for myself, personally, like a blog or some musing, has not happened in well over 6 months, until now. The last blog I wrote and posted to my site was December 31, 2023. That was ten months ago. I won’t even tell you how long my long-dead plants and the few warrior, still-green stalks have sat waiting for my “love” in hard, cracked dirt.

That same morning, I decided, for a change, to open an email I subscribe to. Written in the subject line was “love as a creative force”. Hmmm. Maybe I won’t delete that one before I at least scan it, I thought. I mean, when it comes to love and creativity I could certainly use a little help these days, given there’s been both drought and doubt occurring in both areas of my life lately. Such was my state of mind. So, I poured my coffee, plunked down in my fat, squishy chair, opened up the email, read the following four questions, and had one of those heart-sink, face-flush moments of realization. I have some work to do.

In what ways is it easy for you to show love?
In what ways is it hard for you to show love?
In what ways is it easy for you to receive love?
In what ways is it hard for you to receive love?

(From James Clear in his 3-2-1 Thursday emails)

Here’s one to add: How do you love when no one’s looking? 

I have some work to do—it’s worth repeating because it’s ongoing work that confronts most of us at one time or another. Not the sit down and write kind of work, or the clean-up-the-garden kind of work, or the haul-out-the-trash and vacuum-in-the-corners kind of work, but something of a deeper variety. The kind of effort that doesn’t visibly change anything on the outside but stirs up all kinds of stuff internally. Of course, my external world will in some way benefit from my having the first glimmers of awareness that my home, my life, my relationships, my financial situation, my creative work, my gradually-drooping ass, and cracked bathtub are, actually, my responsibility and, much of the time, affected by my doings or not-doings. A quote from Erica Jong reminds me of that inconvenient truth: 

“Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame. Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.”

Huh. I forgot about that one extra hard-hitting sentence about advice. Another sinking sensation speaks volumes about Avoidance: pretending that the truth will sit and wait for our acknowledgement. It’s a bit like finishing a climb up a mountain and realizing that we’re not at the top, we’ll never be at the top, and that the top is just an illusion but a useful illusion because it keeps us moving forward and up. The surprise that we’re not done yet is both a downside and an upside. Surprises are both good and bad, afterall. Some are Sisyphus-inspired and we’re asked to both climb and push heavy shit up a hill or through flooded roads. Other surprises are bordered with gladiolas and graced by partly-sunny skies and a gentle breeze. Either way, strolling through this life doesn’t usually happen for more than a few footsteps. Sometimes we’re pushing through water; other times we’re floating. Life circumstances may dictate a certain reality, but our perspective will always complete the experience. Self-made suffering will always riddle any path with stones or cause river banks to burst and sometimes it has to be the way for a while. Regardless, love and creativity are in great demand all the time. How does one influence the other, and how can we use both to inspire more joy on this uphill-downhill journey?   

Could this be a very small start? My gardening efforts included finally planting the forget-me-not seeds I bought months ago. A little old soil, massaged and moistened, fresh peat moss, a bit of mulch, and some good old fashioned love and attention. Seems this plant has its survival instinct built right into its name, making it the perfect plant baby for me. It would be a bit like naming your kid “Feed Me”, which is to say it’s a good thing I’m not a mother to a human. 

Crisis, disaster, hardship, and heavy duty self-reflection almost always show us at least two fundamental truths: where the holes are and where the heart is. It’s up to us to decide what the hard work is. And little by little, love seeps in through the cracks. 

For the next few weeks, I’ll be privy to and participating in the “character-building” recovery efforts of the city wherever I can be of service. Helping to clear debris, clean up the soggy mess, and restore the streets I know and love to their beautiful, charming loveliness (that’s cringe-worthy literary overkill I know, but it’s true!).

May all be well.

Feature photo courtesy of Alan Strydom.