Water Celebration

Happy Songkran!

I am back from the deep dark regions of the Malaysian rain forest. My feet got pretty busted up, what with walking through river streams and being cooped up inside hiking boots 10 hours a day. Not to mention they had to share their dark, damp and sweaty confines with many leeches over the course of the week. I'll give you a better look into this experience over the next few days by reprinting the small newspaper journal pad I recorded my troubles and tribulations with.

But today I hobble through the water soaked streets of Bangkok, as it is Songkran, the Thai festival of rejuvenation where the dead are honored and the living blessed by pouring, squirting and splashing copious amounts of water on them. It is a much needed release of tension too after the red shirted protests and equally crimson drenched streets of the last week. Reports of people being shot and incarcerated were giving this year's annual series of protests a particularly nasty flavor. All shops, restaurants, banks and government are closed for the next few days so its a good opportunity to just kick back and relax at home.

Of course work still needs to be done. I'll have to start redrafting Simon & Sally soon, maybe even as soon as tomorrow, so Nancy can edit it properly without the amount of red seen on the streets last week. I'll take my time for it though. No point in rushing a work of passion and turning it into a rigid stack of deadlines riddled with bullet points of plotted information. The storyline has to flow, make sense to the senses, the characters burn with intent and purpose and the settings alive with wonder and adventure. So I will read and snip, examine and smooth, immerse and add until I get a more consistent story than the collection of chapters and paragraphs that were written with vastly different moods. I will do it sitting outside on our green porch with an iced drink and soft music playing in the background.

Last year was good. This year promises to be great.