the night is lovely as a rose.

If you're reading this blog, you won't really be able to interpret it correctly without plugging in a pair of earbud headphones and listening to the second half of the album "Tallahassee" by the mountain goats while you read. start with the track "Peacocks". Bonus points to the person who actually does this and tells me which track I lifted the title of this blog post from.

I'm finding that I blog best when my room is filled with noise and I can plug headphones in. Most of what I hear is Bob Dylan singing "Desolation Row", but whenever there are silences in the song I can hear the faint exclaimations of one of my roommates in their native english, portuguese, thai, or khmer. I share a room with 8 other people. Abraham, Austin M., Taylor, Josua, X, Art, David, and Tearith. Every day this room is filled with laughter and plenty of other indiscernable noise and music. our collections of day-to-day items, meager by western standards, bulge at the seams of our bedposts and drawers.

in the first few days in any new place, there's this glossy matting that the human mind applies to a place. there's no nuance; you're either entranced or horrified by any of the given details of a place. but as the time and experience grows, and the cells in one's body begin to become more populated with the nutrients of fruit from the local market and water from the local aquifers, one begins to notice the subtle details that make a place what it is.

When I got to Ramsong (the name of Ramkhamhaeng university's Bang Na campus and the surrounding area, which is where I'm living), it was easy in the first week to view it all with the lens of excitement and newness. Even the darker things about the place that would make themselves visible could be accepted for the kerouackian thrill that poverty can bring. but as the time begins to linger and the faces of the neighbors become familiar, those things that make a place human begin to have a humbling effect. the gunshots heard at night, the men who make a daily practice of digging through trash cans looking for food and things of value, the stray dogs brawling in the back alleys. Poverty doesn't announce itself here in Prawet like it does in the heart of the city, there aren't enough of us pharongs here to make it economically viable. But it is here. and it's humbling. it makes a pharong feel spoiled, from your waterproof shoes that keep your feet warm and dry to your conspicuous white skin that guarantees you no fare-taker on the 48 bus will ever check your fare receipt. I'm getting used to the stares. Part of me wants to use my camera more; I try to avoid that sort of thing, trying to blend in, but I'm not really kidding anyone, am I? Besides, you pull a camera out and you're guaranteed a smile from most, although I have the nagging suspicion that the laughter is the sort of laughter we in america use out of nervousness or at the secret expense of others. The asian culture puts great importance on saving face, but when you're white in asia you don't have any walnut-shell-colored face to save. My camera is half-broken, anyways. if I use the zoom more than halfway, it has to be turned off and on again. Part of me is hoping it'll get stolen so I can muster up the moral relativism to spend a few thousand baht on another one.

The first week of actual lectures was wonderful. Each week we get a new teacher to teach whatever topic is at hand, who flies in for the week, and afterwards heads off to some other school of kids like us in some other subdivision of the world. which means that not only do you get to be taught by people from many walks of life, but the people themselves are filled with a past of adventures. Our first teacher taught about the ways God speaks, intercession, and prayer. The week has been really healthy for me, both because I'm adjusting myself to a decidedly non-trumanesque academic experience and because it really humbled me. I'm used to having a study environment that is built around a rubric and a syllabus - with very clear expectations and assessment mechanisms. this is different, because it becomes completely up to me to get out of these months of lectures what I want to. I won't be able to get to the end and hold up one of the first four letters of the alphabet as an oversimplified quantifier for my experience. What I loved the most about her teaching style was that, trying my hardest to make use of my liberal arts education, I was only able to make about 10 book-sized-pages of notes in a week's worth of class time. the content of those notes is GREAT, but I'm not being taught of the rise and fall of the roman empire. So much of what she taught were stories. Every little principle about what makes prayer effective or how God speaks was paired with anywhere between ten minutes to an hour's worth of our teacher's life. stories from when she was young and insecure in her faith, stories of when God called her to things she didn't want to do. Stories of God's grace and of his goodness. As the stories mounted I began to feel like I knew her, as her stories connected me to her life in the way that only shared experiences can do. 

The other thing about my M-F is that it's very structured. it begins with a team workout at 6:20, and needs to end by 10 or 11 in order for the next day to begin. 15 of my meals each week are shared with the other members of the DTS. I'm convinced that in order to truly love community, one must begin to practice the art of losing to oneself an inherent attribute of man. We're buggable. we let things get to us. when you share a room with 8 other people, a shower with 10 other people, and a house and most meals with 27 other people, every little detail begins to reveal itself. It makes you better, shows you things about yourself that you wouldn't know otherwise because you see it in someone else and it drives you crazy. A microcosm of this is the bed I'm typing this from. I'd type this out from the desk, but there's one desk and nine of us, so it's always taken. the bed is constantly draped with wet clothes that aren't mine, and the bed often shakes from the movement of someone else's body. its' underside is stuffed because the drawers are full. and there's a part of me that wants to revolt. run home to a place where I have 800 cubic feet all to myself. OH, that sounds like a mansion now. but I won't. community bugs me, but the problem is that I absolutely love it. it's the most honest interpretation of beauty that humans are capable of. We become conditioned to love one another because without love there's no logic to all the inconveniences we voluntarily accept. It's the love that sustains our patience, that makes this whole crazy life worth living anyways. I would speak more eloquently about this, or provide pictures to accentuate my point, but I have to wake up in six hours to make breakfast for 24 people. Life is beautiful.