(no subject)
in the spirit of things relating to records:
He was an old Hmong craftsman who worked mainly in wood - altarpieces like small bowls for water or petals, elephant-shaped incense burners, intricate rosebuds or lotuses, and, later, in accord with the inevitable crushing forward movement of the age, crucifixes - and lived in a house his father had built in the nineteen-twenties. His father had done whatever work he'd been bale to pick up in order to feed the family: selling hand-carved trinkets at religious festivals was what had done the job during the long Thai holiday season, and that was where he'd picked it up. His woodwork was neither a hobby nor a form of meditation for him, and he didn't think of himself or his job as anachronistic in any way. It was what he did for a living during the daylight hours. He fell in love with a woman who had initially stopped by the table he set up on Friday mornings on Ratchwithi Road near the children's school. She was from Taiwan: she'd met a Thai businessman there when she was nineteen, and he had brought her back home with him. Together they'd raised two daughters and a son, and then, in her forty-eighth year, just as she'd begun to enjoy adjusting to her new role as one-half of a doting grandparental couple (her first daughter, Mae Noi, having given her a grandson), her husband had been struck by a motorcycle weaving in and out of traffic during the permanent rush-hour conditions that plague the downtown Bangkok streets. The accident was not serious for the rider, who landed atop the car against which his motorcycle had pinned his victim, but the victim had suffered internal injuries too grave to be repaired. He died after two days in the hospital. She mourned him for as long as she could, and then, on days when she felt perfectly fine and the world seemed pleasant and good, she found herself mourning him some more.
Her sister-in-law came to live with her; the feeling between them was really more a matter of duty than of affection, but she was genuinely appreciative of the company. Though Mae Noi and the baby came by once a week for tea, it was hard to be alone; even with here sister-in-law there to share memories of the husband and brother they'd lost, and to make small talk when the memories became painful, she felt acutely and terribly lonely many times throughout the day. So when she stopped at his table of hand-carved bodshisattvas and spirit-houses by the school one Friday while walking her grandson to class, and he asked her innocently whether it wasn't a lovely Spring morning, she felt sharp pangs of excitement and gratitude. The feelings were like young sprouts pushing through cool earth in their difficult, explosive journey through the soil to the surface. Of course he had been lonely forever; his father and mother, though good people, had given him little idea of how one wound up getting married, and so he had wound up never doing so. Thought a solitary person by nature, he was still a very friendly man to anyone who got to know him, and he loved company though he lacked the ability to say so. she found him charming, and after seeing her at his stall a number of times throughout the course of the school year he invited her to his small, old house for soup, where they told each other stories of their lives - small stories, without the huge dramatic flourishes with which more fortunate people feel the need to embellish their histories. His soup was mild and nutty like the food that the people in the hills had been enjoying for thousands of years. It made her feel loved, and she loved him for it. They spent many evenings giving sustenance to one another, and teaching each other songs they'd sung as children. He told her how to say "good grandson" in the Hmong language, and she transliterated his name into Mandarin so he could sign his name to his pieces in one elegant, small character.
The time was not very long for them; he was fifteen years older than she was, maybe more, and while decades of daily exercise had kept his body in trim fighting shape, he could feel in his blood that he had the same hard arteries that had killed both his father and his grandfather while they were still relatively young. Within a few years of their unfathomable fortune in finding one another they were both gone, the second following the first in natural response to unendurable grief and loss. Their time together was sweet and warm, and was like nothing else in the world. May their names, which history has seen fit to hide in the warm folds of its endless memory, be sung forever in the wordless movement of young trees in the wind. Let the love they cultivates like delicate juniper seedlings go on growing forever, rooted in its own self-sustaining riches. May the hours they gave one another wash gently over our cold world and heal its terrible sickness. May they rest in the limitless grace and peace that is their love's one true reward.
He was an old Hmong craftsman who worked mainly in wood - altarpieces like small bowls for water or petals, elephant-shaped incense burners, intricate rosebuds or lotuses, and, later, in accord with the inevitable crushing forward movement of the age, crucifixes - and lived in a house his father had built in the nineteen-twenties. His father had done whatever work he'd been bale to pick up in order to feed the family: selling hand-carved trinkets at religious festivals was what had done the job during the long Thai holiday season, and that was where he'd picked it up. His woodwork was neither a hobby nor a form of meditation for him, and he didn't think of himself or his job as anachronistic in any way. It was what he did for a living during the daylight hours. He fell in love with a woman who had initially stopped by the table he set up on Friday mornings on Ratchwithi Road near the children's school. She was from Taiwan: she'd met a Thai businessman there when she was nineteen, and he had brought her back home with him. Together they'd raised two daughters and a son, and then, in her forty-eighth year, just as she'd begun to enjoy adjusting to her new role as one-half of a doting grandparental couple (her first daughter, Mae Noi, having given her a grandson), her husband had been struck by a motorcycle weaving in and out of traffic during the permanent rush-hour conditions that plague the downtown Bangkok streets. The accident was not serious for the rider, who landed atop the car against which his motorcycle had pinned his victim, but the victim had suffered internal injuries too grave to be repaired. He died after two days in the hospital. She mourned him for as long as she could, and then, on days when she felt perfectly fine and the world seemed pleasant and good, she found herself mourning him some more.
Her sister-in-law came to live with her; the feeling between them was really more a matter of duty than of affection, but she was genuinely appreciative of the company. Though Mae Noi and the baby came by once a week for tea, it was hard to be alone; even with here sister-in-law there to share memories of the husband and brother they'd lost, and to make small talk when the memories became painful, she felt acutely and terribly lonely many times throughout the day. So when she stopped at his table of hand-carved bodshisattvas and spirit-houses by the school one Friday while walking her grandson to class, and he asked her innocently whether it wasn't a lovely Spring morning, she felt sharp pangs of excitement and gratitude. The feelings were like young sprouts pushing through cool earth in their difficult, explosive journey through the soil to the surface. Of course he had been lonely forever; his father and mother, though good people, had given him little idea of how one wound up getting married, and so he had wound up never doing so. Thought a solitary person by nature, he was still a very friendly man to anyone who got to know him, and he loved company though he lacked the ability to say so. she found him charming, and after seeing her at his stall a number of times throughout the course of the school year he invited her to his small, old house for soup, where they told each other stories of their lives - small stories, without the huge dramatic flourishes with which more fortunate people feel the need to embellish their histories. His soup was mild and nutty like the food that the people in the hills had been enjoying for thousands of years. It made her feel loved, and she loved him for it. They spent many evenings giving sustenance to one another, and teaching each other songs they'd sung as children. He told her how to say "good grandson" in the Hmong language, and she transliterated his name into Mandarin so he could sign his name to his pieces in one elegant, small character.
The time was not very long for them; he was fifteen years older than she was, maybe more, and while decades of daily exercise had kept his body in trim fighting shape, he could feel in his blood that he had the same hard arteries that had killed both his father and his grandfather while they were still relatively young. Within a few years of their unfathomable fortune in finding one another they were both gone, the second following the first in natural response to unendurable grief and loss. Their time together was sweet and warm, and was like nothing else in the world. May their names, which history has seen fit to hide in the warm folds of its endless memory, be sung forever in the wordless movement of young trees in the wind. Let the love they cultivates like delicate juniper seedlings go on growing forever, rooted in its own self-sustaining riches. May the hours they gave one another wash gently over our cold world and heal its terrible sickness. May they rest in the limitless grace and peace that is their love's one true reward.