Saturday meanings
This morning was the usual thing. I like catching up with some of the YouTube creators. Most of them here in Cambodia are an easy miss. It’s never the day to day life things I dislike with them although I question how and why. It’s more their mantra. Their message each day.
Been following this woman expat from the UK with her voyage back here. She worked here before I guess. It’s interesting how people feel things should go here. And they never do. Nothing ever goes the way it’s meant here. Or believed. A lot of it living here is learning to live next to it and not feel one has to succumb. No one expects it here. I think Khmer people just expect us to be different and maybe they enjoy it.
She is on a mission though to invent again. To find a life here that is a step away from what she had. I think I get it. I left almost 5 years ago this time. When I saw the steps in California for only 3 days I knew. We like to think we can hold on to things there. Like relationships and families and meanings. I’ve doubted that for some time. Everything there you could see on a zoom call is there. It’s not just miles and time zones. It’s a distance that they can never get really. Perhaps the real change is not flying away or living in Siem Reap. Maybe it’s what happens to us inside when we do the things. We are like a bit of this and some that. We cannot blend in where we are and cannot just hold what we were. So what to do?
Adapting to change means sometimes seeing that past you held different values. Maybe that you wanted cars and expensive clothing. Watches and motorcycles. Or some final ties to people then. I don’t think it really works. We don’t break them and they don’t. They just disintegrate and become jaded and faded things that maybe we trot out on our holidays. I still think on thanksgiving here. It used to be my favorite holiday. Then I would cook a whole turkey on a Weber grill. Watch American football. My ex wife would call her family. Sometimes some would visit. Seeing all that now with the then filter on means some sense of loss. Like I really enjoyed those things. Dusty little things I trot out. But seminal things changed. I still see them but they seem inverted or colored or live in little synapses that I dust off. They stopped being the things and became a memory. And I think it’s ok. We cannot live either past memories only. So when we go like it or not we choose new things. The old slide away.
Sitting with coffee this morning and seeing the dark blue sky of a rainy season seemingly on its last legs. Maybe a final cloud burst some evening. Everything of that is the same. The sense of the rain hitting the porch. The little puddles down our street I zig and zag around walking. But yet…
Nothing feels like it did and it’s best to have it that way. What we need to have is our own mix. Our mongrel times where we combine and maybe slowly let things go if we feel we should. They will disappear in life’s rear view mirror anyways as we go. New things become larger than they appear. Our mirror is clouded and perhaps we slowly unravel and repack our Saturdays. Write in a journal or a blog post. Let it become because it’s going to become anyways whether you let it or not.
That’s this Saturday of meanings that came to me after some beer and time downtown. Now I’ll enjoy the coffee here at Coffee Bean. Write the little things. Then share them how I do. Right here. Write now.
☕️ 4 min read