Beirut Explosion

9 August 2020

[Above photo: Kelly in a trishaw, heading into busy traffic at night with no lights. ]

I am assembling my talk for the AACAP meeting. Photos will enhance it, give it context. This week I walked to, and circled, the Shwedagon Pagoda. It is currently closed because of Covid but I wanted to get a good photo of it. It is the most prominent and recognizable Buddhist site in the country. Note that Buddhism knows no bounds on numbers of images; certain caves will have thousands of tiny images stuck to the ceilings. There are stupas everywhere in this country, some in the most unlikely places, such as at the top of deserted, [nearly] inaccessible peaks.

The Shwedagon is surrounded by beautifully manicured gardens where families can rest from the bustle of the city. Across the road on the eastern side is a small lake with a park around it. The day I walked was the Full Moon of Waso holiday, the beginning of three months of Buddhist Lent, so the parks were accommodating families. The women here, as in Malawi, always are dressed beautifully; the men are less attentive to this. Children were playing on the grass—this isn’t France where grass is treated like flowers and you don’t play on it.  It was wonderful for me to walk among the greenery and I realize how divorced most city dwellers, myself included currently, are from the soil.  Just as I completed my cirque, and I had been able to snap some nice images, le deluge. I immediately hailed a cab for Junction City, where I bought a few groceries. Seeing the rain continue to flow, I had a cappuccino and brownie at Gloria Jean’s. Thus fortified, I entered the stream and walked home, soaked and pleased.

A 15yo boy was sent to see us from a city 11 hours away by bus. He had written a love letter to a girl in his class and his teacher intercepted it. The teacher then made him read it aloud in front of the class and, after completion, beat him with a stick. This happened 5 months ago; the boy was teased mercilessly by his classmates and he transferred schools. Then Covid struck and schools closed. He continued to feel bad. He is a star student, has had good friends, and likes playing soccer (“football” here). I’m not sure why his parents made this lengthy trip to see us.

The boy refused to come into the clinic, so we went to him. We left the hospital and crossed a busy highway in the rain to enter a dark tea shop where the youth was sitting with his father. A sturdy, handsome fellow with excellent eye contact, his nervousness subsided as Lin Htet and I spoke with him. I volunteered that what the teacher had done was wrong, terribly wrong. That Lin Htet and I had each written love letters when we were his age and that the world would be a better place if more people wrote love letters. He smiled and relaxed. I wondered if he thought that seeing a psychiatrist meant you were cuckoo? Yes. Far from it, although psychiatrists do help people who have lost contact with reality, as well. We understand he wants to be a doctor? [Medical school is the most difficult university to enter in Myanmar so many of the star students apply, even if they end up being politicians, as in Latin America.]  Perhaps he would consider becoming a psychiatrist. Myanmar needs smart, compassionate psychiatrists and we think he’d make an excellent one. Not your usual consultation but I think a fruitful one.

Last night Kelly and I met for a beer. Irene was out of town at a yoga retreat and Jose was alternately cleaning their home and writing a paper due Monday. I selected a bar, V Hangout—you can imagine we bachelors had some fun with the name—-and I walked there from home. It was about two miles from my apartment and in the middle of the port, surrounded by shipping containers stacked 5 high. The approach passed the Botataung Pagoda, which is a golden, glistening miracle in the late afternoon sun following a rain. I often trick myself into thinking that if the sky has been emptying for two hours, when it stops that’s it for the day. So I take my tiny portable umbrella as insurance and 5 minutes from home it resumes in earnest. Even clouds need a little rest at times. Oh, well, it’s warm and kind of like a shower with your clothes on.

V Hangout has a ground-level bar/restaurant area and another nearby that is thirty feet in the air. Both are on the Yangon River bank, next to the V Hotel. The latter is a megayacht, probably 250 feet long, permanently moored and used as a hotel and dining facility. It is pretty spectacular, along the lines of an Aristotle Onassis or Larry Ellison toy. For $70/night you can have a stateroom on the river side; for $50 on the land side.

Anyway, Kelly and I got into the spirit and chatted away, sitting in the elevated portion, while the sun set and the river breeze cooled us. After a couple of beers we set off to meet Jose at Green Gallery, a hole in the wall Thai restaurant with the absolutely best food. Passing a group of trishaws, Kelly said he’d never taken one. I said, “Let’s.” and soon we were in two, being biked down the wrong side of streets, cutting across busy traffic, and hoping that this wasn’t our last ride, since it was also our first. We arrived safely and I must say it is a lot nicer riding in a trishaw, danger aside, than a cab. Smooth, quiet, comfortable, constant fresh air.

Jose was waiting for us at the restaurant and, after chiding him for choosing house cleaning and writing over a beer with us, we feasted on green tomato salad, Pad Thai, a green coconut chicken curry, and a seafood salad. With mango and sticky rice for dessert. You know how in the US they bring you a bowl of sticky rice and a few slices of mango? We each had a large complete mango, beautifully sliced. It was all over the top and made me want to run to the kitchen and embrace the cook, a middle-aged Burmese woman who lived in Thailand for several years. I resisted the impulse. It would have scared her.

The Beirut tragedy could happen to the world on a larger scale.  He is vengeful, impulsive, and determined to be uninformed. He is the Commander-in-Chief, god help us, and controls the most powerful weapons on Earth. And distraction is his central ploy.

I don’t have the heart to rehash the mess that is Mafia Don. Happily, he has pissed off Sheldon Adelson, a strange, greedy 87yo zillionaire and one of The Don’s major donors. Has there ever been an election with this much at stake? With this much tension and apprehension? Not in my lifetime. The most exciting two were JFK and Obama, both with their faults but both smart, decent men. Now we may get a woman of color, we may get a dictator. It will be a long 3 months.