(Original written on Tuesday December 14, 1999, in Bangkok)
On the weekend an experimental film festival began here in Bangkok. I was pretty fond of experimental films, being a film major in the 70s, so I wanted to see what the latest offerings were like.
There was a free screening in a park to kick off the festival. That's right, in a park. It's not so uncommon here to have screenings outside at night. You just grab an old newspaper and plop down on the grass to watch a movie under the stars.
The program had a retrospective of the films by Bruce Baillie, a San Francisco film artist from the 60s. On this night they showed his classic "Castro Street", a sound and image lyrical collage about trains and that street in San Francisco.
At a break in the screenings (which were horrible--the sound went between deafening and silence-- I can't imagine the filmmakers were too happy about it) I talked to two of the film program coordinators. Both were from New York, one young woman and an older guy. I got their particulars (email addresses and stuff) and then the girl left to talk to some others. I chatted with the New York guy who is now a psychotherapist. He actually was curating the Baillie works as Baillie himself is kinda old (and from what I gathered through inference has AIDS). It turns out that the guy was Baillie's protégé in the 60s at an art college in Mendocino. We got to talking about other filmmakers and their works-- Stan Brakhage, Ernie Geers, Robert Breer, Jonas Mekas, Hollis Frampton, Kenneth Anger, and of course Michael Snow-- and then slipped into a gab about Bangkok. The guy told me he went down to check out the gay scene on Patpong and how great it was-- all these muscle-bound young men prancing around and stuff. I took it in for a while, but admittedly, I really could care less about the details. One man's food is another man's poison, as it were. So I thought I'd change the subject to other stuff about Bangkok.
With me at the screening was one of the internet shop girls, Sarah (Somchai is her Thai name) . A lovely, nice, well spoken girl. I introduced her to the guy, and we started talking about plans for after the screening. Sarah suggested we go to a temple. She told me about this the day before. As she went on, the guy got more or less uncomfortable, and declined. But we went anyway.
Wat Hua Lumpong is right near the train station. It is more Chinese than Thai in design, with dragons and that sort of stuff you normally associate with Chinese shops. It's not really one on the tourist map, although you may hear about it through word of mouth. What they do here is a service. People come to donate their time and money to collect dead people and put them in proper coffins. Sarah and I donated some money and they give you a piece of paper you can write your name on to stick on a wooden box for some person who might otherwise not get any dignity when they die.
As I was filling in the form I recalled a friend of ours who had died in a motorcycle accident in the 80s in Thailand. So, I also wrote his name down on the paper as a sort of remembrance. Afterwards, we glued the paper onto a coffin, said some prayers for all those who had passed away, and then walked around. She showed me this area of photographs of the recently collected dead people at the sites they were found. Grisly traffic accidents were the majority, but there were some very heart wrenching, sickening ones: rape victims, suicides, drug overdoses, babies, and so on. Stuff you just do not get exposed to, unless you are into those perverse exploitation videos like "the world's worst disasters" and so on. But this temple was providing a service--to collect these people and put them in a decent box until they were cremated or claimed. As the saying goes, "someone's got to do it."
And it is just so matter of fact you know. Sarah admitted she had bad dreams the first time she visited the temple. I was a little overwhelmed by it all, but amazed that people volunteer to do this type of thing. The Buddhist tradition trains one to see this part of life in an equanimous way, that it is natural to die (as unfortunate in the way that some people do, like those in the pictures), and so this type of work would be a good training to see the true cycle of life, the body, the impermanence, and so on. It's not to harden the heart, nor to scare one by it, but just to embrace this as part of the whole process.
Even at the moment of his own death, the Buddha's last words were:
handadani bhikkhave amantayami yo
vayadhamma sankhara
appamadena sampadetha
"Beware bikkhus! I warn you thus:
All concocted things disintegrate,
you ought always to be carefully alert."
I suppose by being alert, amongst other things, the Buddha meant that we should be awake to the moment—the now, that if we live each moment like it were our very last, there would be no need for regrets, guilty feelings, remorse, and so on. We would be truly living in the present and nothing can make that better or worse!
It was by coincidence too that I just found out that my uncle passed away last week. I guess I was at the right place for a quiet reflection on life and death this past weekend, passing along my wishes for all to be well: for those that are living, for those that have yet to be, and for those that have passed away.
May all beings be well. In all places. In all manifestations.
(947 words in 45 minutes)
Comments? Email Gaga.
On the weekend an experimental film festival began here in Bangkok. I was pretty fond of experimental films, being a film major in the 70s, so I wanted to see what the latest offerings were like.
There was a free screening in a park to kick off the festival. That's right, in a park. It's not so uncommon here to have screenings outside at night. You just grab an old newspaper and plop down on the grass to watch a movie under the stars.
The program had a retrospective of the films by Bruce Baillie, a San Francisco film artist from the 60s. On this night they showed his classic "Castro Street", a sound and image lyrical collage about trains and that street in San Francisco.
At a break in the screenings (which were horrible--the sound went between deafening and silence-- I can't imagine the filmmakers were too happy about it) I talked to two of the film program coordinators. Both were from New York, one young woman and an older guy. I got their particulars (email addresses and stuff) and then the girl left to talk to some others. I chatted with the New York guy who is now a psychotherapist. He actually was curating the Baillie works as Baillie himself is kinda old (and from what I gathered through inference has AIDS). It turns out that the guy was Baillie's protégé in the 60s at an art college in Mendocino. We got to talking about other filmmakers and their works-- Stan Brakhage, Ernie Geers, Robert Breer, Jonas Mekas, Hollis Frampton, Kenneth Anger, and of course Michael Snow-- and then slipped into a gab about Bangkok. The guy told me he went down to check out the gay scene on Patpong and how great it was-- all these muscle-bound young men prancing around and stuff. I took it in for a while, but admittedly, I really could care less about the details. One man's food is another man's poison, as it were. So I thought I'd change the subject to other stuff about Bangkok.
With me at the screening was one of the internet shop girls, Sarah (Somchai is her Thai name) . A lovely, nice, well spoken girl. I introduced her to the guy, and we started talking about plans for after the screening. Sarah suggested we go to a temple. She told me about this the day before. As she went on, the guy got more or less uncomfortable, and declined. But we went anyway.
Wat Hua Lumpong is right near the train station. It is more Chinese than Thai in design, with dragons and that sort of stuff you normally associate with Chinese shops. It's not really one on the tourist map, although you may hear about it through word of mouth. What they do here is a service. People come to donate their time and money to collect dead people and put them in proper coffins. Sarah and I donated some money and they give you a piece of paper you can write your name on to stick on a wooden box for some person who might otherwise not get any dignity when they die.
As I was filling in the form I recalled a friend of ours who had died in a motorcycle accident in the 80s in Thailand. So, I also wrote his name down on the paper as a sort of remembrance. Afterwards, we glued the paper onto a coffin, said some prayers for all those who had passed away, and then walked around. She showed me this area of photographs of the recently collected dead people at the sites they were found. Grisly traffic accidents were the majority, but there were some very heart wrenching, sickening ones: rape victims, suicides, drug overdoses, babies, and so on. Stuff you just do not get exposed to, unless you are into those perverse exploitation videos like "the world's worst disasters" and so on. But this temple was providing a service--to collect these people and put them in a decent box until they were cremated or claimed. As the saying goes, "someone's got to do it."
And it is just so matter of fact you know. Sarah admitted she had bad dreams the first time she visited the temple. I was a little overwhelmed by it all, but amazed that people volunteer to do this type of thing. The Buddhist tradition trains one to see this part of life in an equanimous way, that it is natural to die (as unfortunate in the way that some people do, like those in the pictures), and so this type of work would be a good training to see the true cycle of life, the body, the impermanence, and so on. It's not to harden the heart, nor to scare one by it, but just to embrace this as part of the whole process.
Even at the moment of his own death, the Buddha's last words were:
handadani bhikkhave amantayami yo
vayadhamma sankhara
appamadena sampadetha
"Beware bikkhus! I warn you thus:
All concocted things disintegrate,
you ought always to be carefully alert."
I suppose by being alert, amongst other things, the Buddha meant that we should be awake to the moment—the now, that if we live each moment like it were our very last, there would be no need for regrets, guilty feelings, remorse, and so on. We would be truly living in the present and nothing can make that better or worse!
It was by coincidence too that I just found out that my uncle passed away last week. I guess I was at the right place for a quiet reflection on life and death this past weekend, passing along my wishes for all to be well: for those that are living, for those that have yet to be, and for those that have passed away.
May all beings be well. In all places. In all manifestations.
(947 words in 45 minutes)
Comments? Email Gaga.
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