Dhanakosa to Kati: epilogue
Some notes from a Cambodian birding trip, after a retreat, a workshop and a dream.
After my recent three posts, which I did not really expect to write, here is a brief return to what passes for regular programming around here.
After the bear-related interview work in Kati Village in Cambodia, I came back to Phnom Penh and then went for a trip round the country - a genuine jolly - with some friends. This piece contains some descriptions of birds that I rather like, including of Cambodia’s national bird, the giant ibis. It also contains some rather weird navel-gazing in cafes (and this is the edited version) which I think is relevant but needs rather a lot of reworking. This is probably the last such post I’'ll do, at least for a while. The next post ought to be a plan for what I’m doing with this substack next.
For anyone interested in a current project working in one of these areas on some of these species, do look at Rising Phoenix and see what you think.
20th of November 2017, Kaiser Bakery, Street 63, Phnom Penh.
I am back from Kati, writing up methods for the bear interviews.
Last night's Saola-related dream was about an argument with Andrew; about a real point of disagreement between us. The kind of argument that happened at previous SWG meetings, but not the one just gone. We were in a hotel breakfast bar and I was wrapped only in a sheet. Bill was also there, worrying about the contents of his sandwich. The argument was so fierce, it woke me up. Ever since dreaming of that leopard in my parents’ house, it seems that dreams always wake me up if they get past a certain point of intensity.
Cars squeeze past each other in the street outside. A sad-eyed boy clings to his mother's back on a bicycle and a huge red bus lumbers through somehow. Flags wave. In the paper, the opposition leader is wanted for suddenly-remembered charges of defaming the foreign minister for informing on inmates of a Khmer Rouge Prison camp. The sky is somewhere above all this, huge and blue; as bronze.
You take one war and only the princes from it and write the most powerful poem in the West. You know when you are avoiding something. You can place, for a moment, your foot in the mud of the doorway, then scamper off. Ethical dilemmas are not helpful. Practical decision-making is not helpful.
The saola doesn't matter really; what matters? Spit falls from the spoken words and burns, drops in the floor unnoticed. Leeches writhe inside the salt of the drops, every one your mother. The last captured saola also died. The intestines have been thrown away but one testicle has been reserved for the Smithsonian. What will Pierre do with it? How many years of my life have gone on this symbol, without me being any closer to its meaning?
I flick through the deck, asking each card if the saola matters: Black waters of Lock Voil; black golden eagles over. Serpent-eagle on a branch over the cassava field. The slender shopkeeper in Kati village with her crimped-again-smooth-again brow. The foreign minister's similar brow, over his Nixonish jowls; it seems to be polished. The ribbed black bitch whose patience draws flames of accusation round her in my mind. The squid-thick fallen flowers about the temple's concrete gate. The half-constructed monster mansion on the highway. The fragments of expat gossip about positions and secretaries which arranged themselves uncomfortably in Sarah and Simon's garden under the night. The coconut petioles, clinging in false modesty to the tree. Daisy Duck's coquettishly-wiggling tail on the TV in a Seima Restaurant. The flat top of Zeke's head, my restlessness on the bus and Brian's tired blue eyes. Jupiter, Mars and Venus. I am too busy asking to listen to an answer and perhaps I am asking the wrong people. I used to think I had iron engrained in my bone, and that was why the enchantments were gone. Now it seems more like motorbikes running round and round and round the orbits of my eyes.
I have some emails to send.