06/14/19

Rereading messages from Jasper and now I’m not sure what to make of what happened to me in Kuala Lumpur. The only other option means it was just a normal attack that anyone with M.S. would have, and NOT as a result of losing my worms to sickness or food related issues, which it seems I have not. Yet it still seems obvious to me that if certain Indian foods or spices are not affecting my worm family they are at least affecting me. Because it always seems there is a trouble after partaking of the tasty stuff.

I so love this little, yellow cafe that is like a dandelion on a street corner from which I can watch the world whiz about in no apparent meaning, but to each of those lives out there zipping by on a scooter or walking past there is a sense of purpose, at least in the immediate present. However, if there isn’t, there certainly seems a good show of it.

The cafe sits at the confluence of two narrow streets and two separate gated compounds opposite those streets that contain offices, schools, apartments and a fitness studio in one, and government-related business in another. Sitting in here safely behind the glass, and looking out on all that goes on outside is a bit like watching two rivers flow together into a central pool which then flows outward to either of the two compounds, but sometimes in reverse order, or in any other direction so that there are nearly always near-head-on collisions and traffic jams, yet for the most part a regular flow is maintained and very rearely does traffic get so snarled up that it grinds to a standstill.

Sitting in this cafe and looking out through the glass it seems as though I am at the very nexus of Quang An, Tay Ho, that I am a little bit like God looking out at his kingdom, or that I am an eye located in some central vessel of a great body observing its movements, and the flow of cells and microbes through the arteries of this one central part, that I am in the world but not necessarily of the world, and even to say that I am in it is a stretch. The world is temporary and spins by an ever and always new cast of characters, but I am permanent. I am and always will be I am.