The thing that never changes

When I started living full time in Thailand’s northern urban darling, it was during COVID, and each soi I turned into held the same eerie hush. Shutters were closed over windows and “traffic” amounted to the echo of an odd car, motorbike, or tuktuk. I half expected to see tumbleweeds rolling down Thapae Road, to hear a haunting whistle from some Quentin Tarantino film floating in the air.  

Cycling was a routine morning activity for me then (and unintentional therapy session), as I could wind my bike down the middle of streets and safely run red lights in the absence of traffic and smog. I’d cycle way outside the city and back, past goats and haystacks, as close to the mountain as I could get without actually being on it. With each turn of the wheels I’d sweat out some rage, and every time I flew down some big or small hill, I’d integrate this tiny new freedom—a slightly lighter me, balanced on a bicycle seat, continuously moving forward. Yippee! I celebrated those hills—I still celebrate those hills, like I’m honouring some small private victory. Perhaps it’s the feeling of youth, which, in a 47-year-old body, is simply spirit. 

I’ve always loved riding my bike, even after my dad let go of the back of my childhood bike’s banana seat when I was eight, and I fell on gravel. I remember feeling so scared as the wheels did this slow-motion wobble over small jagged stones, my Harley Davidson-like handlebars went wonky and out of my control, and at that moment I was certain I was going to fall. I still loved it even after I attempted riding my super-cool new 10-speed hands-free, thinking that the jet stream-like momentum of coasting down a steep hill would keep me stable and steady. It’s no surprise that I experienced the same dreadful but far more threatening wobble, and I tumbled about halfway down the hill into a crash-landing that tore flesh from bone and totaled my favourite white denim shorts. Nothing stings like the forced bath after a bicycle crash, except maybe the wish that you’d made a different decision. Thankfully my cool new bike, which I’d just received for my tenth birthday, was spared. I loved riding my bike even after pedaling my way across Portugal’s Algarve region with heavy panniers and injuring both knees to a point where I had to give cycling a rest for a few months. I still love it, though some days it feels like a slog and I wonder why I punish my legs this way. I guess it’s time to face the hard truth about love: if it’s been here with me for this long, and it keeps finding its way back into my life with both joy and hardship, it’s likely here to stay. 

There are a few things I’ve learned to love this much—to return to again and again, even after all the time away. Most of them are hobbies I’ve kept since I was a child. Singing, cycling, sewing, crafting, playing guitar, and writing, but I haven’t done them consistently for years without pause. I used to think that a regularly waning desire to do them meant they were just passing interests, that I became bored too quickly, or none of those things were “my thing” simply because I didn’t burn steadily with passion for them all the time, or because they weren’t all I wanted to be doing every day.

But that’s the thing about love. It draws you back time and again after long periods of absence, resistance, boredom, and doubt. After the wandering eye has surveyed the block for a 17th time and returned to its rightful home. One day you notice a little shimmer, a glimpse at the way it was then, when you were younger, all gusty with passion for the thing that made your spirit sing. And you remember how you felt doing that thing you love. Happy, yes, but mostly totally present with it, absorbed in it, all sense of “I” lost to it. At least that’s how it goes for me. But it means I have to let it go for a while, without any certainty that I’ll ever reunite with it again. And inevitably, when the time feels right, I take it down from its dusty shelf and begin again, never like before, but a little like before if that makes any kind of sense.

When I returned home in May this year after being in Nepal for a few months, I was certain that Chiang Mai had lost its lustre for me. I felt apprehensive about continuing to make this city my home just because I had decided in some distant past that it was where I wanted to be most of the time. Thankfully, I didn’t feel that way my first days back, but the truth is that I go through phases of doubt that this city is my rightful place in the world. Maybe we all feel that way about where we live, I don’t know. For years, before settling down long-term, Chiang Mai had been like one of my many hobbies—I had an on-again-off-again relationship with it. I’d stay for a few months of the year, then pack up and part ways, not returning until the next high season. I had no interest in remaining through its hot smoggy and heavy monsoon seasons. And then one day I realized that I had been here a very long time, actually, without leaving, thanks to COVID. The shimmer it once cast on my spirit had disappeared. I started to feel trapped, bored, all fidgety and eager to set my eyes on something new or different, to fling myself far across its borders to a place where life was better than here. All the city’s delightful quirks became daily irritations, and the hum of anticipation and possibility that had once resonated through every tiny soi stagnated, leaving dead air in its wake. 

And then just the other day on one of my regular strolls to the nearby market, I walked into Kasem Store, which has been around for eons. I once wrote about this charming little sundries shop when I discovered it back in 2018, and a local magazine published the article on their blog. Most long-term residents of Chiang Mai know and love Kasem Store, since it’s the kind of place where nothing ever changes, in a good way. They still make the same waffles that made the shop so popular during the mid-20th century. The sauerkraut and spices still teeter on the same shelf in the same spot they did seven years ago. The pork buns are still made daily, in white flour and wholewheat versions, and Nurse’s homemade yogurt is still delivered every Monday in the same bright-lidded tubs and stored in the fridge against the back wall. The cinnamon rolls are still glutinous balls of heaven that your gut never thanks you for but you accept anyways because some things are worth the price you choose to pay. Auntie Ghee isn’t around, though I’m told she remains a feisty free spirit in an old body. Well, what’s the alternative? 

There was something about that simple visit that was so out of the ordinary yet totally familiar. It transported me back in time, through all the winding roads and dead ends and u-turns and prickly blackberry bushes and 582 half-moons to a place that has no pin on the map. I glimpsed the shimmer of a past love, and it felt a bit like looking at a photo of myself as a child and actually remembering the felt sense of being that child in that moment of capture. And I carried that feeling out into the day and on the rest of my walk, and incredibly, remarkably, that shimmer was everywhere—glimmering on the graffitied walls that edge the canal, illuminating the paper lanterns lining the shops in Kad Luang, glinting from the cracked pavement of the sidewalks I have walked hundreds of times over the years. 

Home might change on the outside—the places we choose to settle our bodies for a short or long time, but home on the inside doesn’t change. It’s the thing that never changes. Maybe we lose touch with it for a time, but I swear all it takes is one brief awake moment to reunite with it and you know that everything is going to be okay. Though I can’t speak for what happens after the big transition, when the feisty free spirit parts ways with its old body, I can imagine we will meet this never-changing, ever-present thing abundant in its purest form. If that isn’t home, then I am forever lost.

Read the CityLife article below:

https://www.chiangmaicitylife.com/clg/see-do/shopping/food-shopping/kasem-store-chiang-mais-charm/

Auntie Ghee, back in 2018 🙂