IN THE DARK

Written in ink (no pc) about a week ago after one of those sleepless days that I’ve being having.

I have been awake since 1 am which is now 20 hours ago and I don’t feel tired. Just finishing a cup of tea and sitting on the veranda. It’s warm but pleasant, still a little sweaty but I can’t do this at home in April...and I’m just wearing a sarong ( ladies..no swooning please).

In the mid distance a wedding band plays and the bass guitar carries in the dark playing a 3 chorder in Dm with a slight hint of a female singer.

The cicadas keep their continuous drone going against the music.

I can see about a half dozen lights dotted in the distance but its dark, dark in ways we have forgotten in Ireland with all our lighting, and still the dogs bark. (bark in the dark)

I’m finishing my cup of tea having had a few Cambodia beers and a dinner of beef, veg and steamed rice (common here).

Every so often a motorbike passes by in front of my house. Here they are ubiquituous, the sound of Cambodia and even the cicadas must take 2^nd place to them. A bird who should be asleep chirps briefly while in the distance the dogs continue their dialectical barking. It is too early yet for the cocks to crow.

With the lights off I can no longer see the ballet like gecchos on the veranda roof feasting on flying food.

How much more clearly one hears in the dark. ( lose one sense, do the others compensate)

I am writing using the wind up torch so a few insects can’t resist coming to see what I am writing.

Although a brave few are biting at my heels. The page I am writing on is becoming a forest thick with the bloodly blighters.

The wedding band which had become silent is cranking up again ( and again in Dm).

And inspite of the trials and tribulations being here is good a times...times like these

AND LIKE GOING TO ANGHOR WAT

AND GETTING TO SEE SOME APSARA DANCING  (spot wally , out of focus shot taken by chinese engineer...ahem, way to go)