When one is at the crossroads of experience or between life changes, the Thai, Christian and Buddhist, go to a fortune teller. Well, it can't hurt to hedge your bets. As for my writer's block, I was able to get the stopper out. You take what comes when the Muse is ready.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Dear Ones,
On a lark, Andy and I decided to take our house-guest, Jan, to a fortune teller. The sister of Andy's client, "Mr. Dealer" told him about this fortune teller she knows in Pahonyotin Road in northwest Bangkok. She said the Maw Duu (literally "Doctor See") is very good. Andy made an appointment to see her on Friday evening. Before I get on with this story, I have to tell you a back-story, and of course, it includes golf.
Jan (pronounced Yaan) lived in Thailand for 20 years before retiring back home to Holland two years ago. Jan, Andy, Kishore, and Dan golfed every Saturday morning for years. Once in a while they would include us wives and their families. As non-golfing partners, I believe our presence was meant to forestall any domestic crisis since the aim of a get-together was dictated by proximity to a golf course. In town, we would go out to dinner occasionally, and spend a weekend at Hua Hin, as you may remember from one of my letters from Thailand about Andy's night adventure. At the end of the year, Jan would invite us to his house for his annual New Year's Eve Crazy Whist parties with the Dutch expat community.
Jan is an imperturbable sort, a Dutch giant among short Thai people, with a calm good humor who meets all kinds and accepts them as part of the parade of humanity. Two years ago, he introduced the Dutch Consul to Dan and Andy at the end-of-year Netherlands Thailand Chamber of Commerce golf tournament (Where else should one meet the Consul?). Now, the Consul was newly posted to Thailand and had not met many Thais. Dan, however, is the atypical Thai in that he has blond hair and blue eyes and fits in quite well among the Dutch, physically. However, he is Thai and proud of it.
The Consul was puzzled by Dan's appearance and inquired, Are you Dutch? Dan, who can be waspish, couldn't resist the opening and quipped, I wouldn't be that stupid! Jan had a good chuckle about it in private so the following weekend at golf, he agreed to go along with Andy to play a joke on Dan. Just before teeing off at the first hole, Andy told Dan that because of what he said, Jan had to write a letter of apology to the Consul. Now, because these guys bet on their game, he and Jan watched in amusement as Dan's game got sloppy. It was only at the second hole that they showed any mercy at all and told him it was a joke. It's a wonder that Dan didn't kill the two of them or at least cuss them out. Not long after that, we all met again at Jan's for the last Crazy Whist party before his return to Holland. I was with Dan and some other people when Jan's wife Anne Marie introduced us to the Consul. A big man, though obviously dim when it comes to foreign relations, the Consul looked inquiringly at Dan, and asked again, quite innocently, "Are you Dutch?"
Dan's reply was the anti-climax. I thought he showed admirable restraint when he said merely, no. There were no fireworks, other than the New Year's celebrations. Both Jan and Anne Marie returned to Holland for an inconspicuous retirement. But retirements are never the end of the story, for as you know, life goes on. Since then, Jan and Anne Marie have become grandparents. They still entertain, Jan says, and Anne Marie likes to cook Thai food for their friends. Since then, Jan has been back to Thailand three times, the last time he came with Anne Marie to help out the Thai economy. For this trip Jan came with orders from Anne Marie to bring back some Thai curry paste.
As it is with back-stories, they show you how we live here. Not quite expat, not quite Thai, we walk in a narrow alley between two high walls, Thai culture on one side of the wall, and "western civilization" on the other. The connector is us. We bring our Selves with us to the one or the other side, and the meeting with the second culture is an invitation to the Self to accept the Other. In those terms, there is nothing quite so alien or as beguiling as the encounter with the Maw Duu.
Because the traffic can be very bad on Friday evening, we parked the car at the Onnut Station and took the skytrain to Ari. We walked about a block to the top of Pahonyotin Soi 7. Andy flagged down a tuk-tuk and negotiated with the driver. For Baht 30 (about 88 US cents) he agreed to take us in. I bent my head and clambered into the back. Jan got in next, folding his spare frame almost in half, then sat down with his knees up to his chest. Andy got in last and the tuk-tuk lurched into the soi. As we got deeper into the lane we noticed that it was a changing neighborhood. It seemed to be a conduit from one busy street to another busy street so the traffic here has altered the character of the neighborhood from a quiet street of houses behind high walls, to a pastiche of restaurants, shops, and home owners stubbornly clinging to a tranquility that no longer exists in the neighborhood. We got stuck in a mini-traffic jam outside a restaurant called The Lobby that Andy said got good reviews in the papers. The tuk-tuk driver switched off his engine to conserve gas and peered around the tops of the cars to see what the hold up was. Another tuk-tuk driver, less patient than ours, left the queue and drove on the opposite side of the road (luckily there was no oncoming traffic). Since I was seated on the far side, I could see a car turning out of some street or driveway up ahead. After that, we were on the move again.
Andy consulted his directions--we are going to the Romanian Embassy and from there to the Maw Duu's house. The tuk-tuk driver spotted the building before we knew it. He did a swift u-turn and dropped us off at the Embassy gates. Of course, it was already closed for the weekend. The embassy building was a two story house surrounded by a high white wall with rows of iron spikes across the top. The windows were tinted so it presented a bland enigmatic front to the street. Jan observed, if you wanted to get a visa to visit Romania it wouldn't be easy to find the Embassy. Most embassies in Bangkok are closer to the central part of the city, where the rents are higher and the real-estate pricey.
Andy spotted the sign next to the embassy, in Thai I can only imagine it must have said the equivalent of Fortunes Told, Tarot Card Reading. The Embassy was on the left overlooking a small driveway, a shop at the corner opposite. We walked down the driveway between the high walls of the Embassy and the shop towards a house with two cars parked in a gravel yard in front. There was no other place to go. Behind the shop there was a small house, a large dog house out front partially covered with wooden boards. Nevertheless, its unseen occupant barked at us. Andy said, another Mutt. I thought of Gigi and wondered how she was doing back home. How long does it take to know the future?
We came to the compound at the end of the driveway and there was another sign outside a low building with a door in it. There was a house to the right of it; the low building we saw from the street was actually an annex connected to the house. Four cars were parked in the compound; the two we saw from the street, and the two around the corner in front of the house. Andy opened the door to the annex and we went into what looked like a kitchen with an eating area. Off the eating area was the Maw Duu's office. Two women were just leaving. There was no one else there.
The Maw Duu was a woman, thirtysomething, with a kind face framed with short dark brown hair that touched her shoulders, and a brilliant toothy smile. She sat behind a desk with a computer on her right. There was a low orange daybed in front of the desk with a single gray-green cushion on it. I wondered, Do clients sit or lie down? We managed to sit three across on the sofa, with me between Andy and Jan. There was a fan on the floor next to the Maw Duu that stirred the still air. Over by the long narrow window was a sheathed knife and a paper strip with Chinese characters on it glued to the window frame. Behind her was a bookcase dominated by a gilt Bodhisattva about 2 feet high, a Buddha altar on the left and an altar for Hindu deities on the right. There was a photograph of a holy monk, and pebbles and quartz crystals on the altars, and of course, a crystal ball. I recognized the elephant headed god Ganesh and the eight armed goddess Durga or Kali. She reminded me of my guardian Goddess, the eight-armed Jao Mae Tuptim, the Ruby Goddess Mother, and wondered if she figured in my future, too.
The Maw Duu sat in front of us with a stack of square papers in front of her, and three felt tipped pens in red, black, and blue. On her left was a red book, its binding broken, with little scraps of paper tucked between the cover and the fly leaf. Jan and I were nervous, so we let Andy go first. First, she shuffled the tarot cards and laid them out in a fan-shape. Andy picked 12 cards with his non-dominant hand, his left hand. He gave her the 12 cards and she laid them out in front of her, 1 at the top and three in a row beneath them. He told the Maw Duu his real birthdate (For some reason, Papa hadn't registered Andy's birth until October 14) and the time of his birth. She consulted the red book and made an X and three tic-tac-toe squares in red on a sheet of paper. She wrote some numbers in black pen on the figures and some numbers in columns below that. After that, she spoke in such rapid Thai, interrupted by Andy's questions, that I lost all track of what she was saying. After awhile, she laid out all 12 cards in four rows. Then she concluded the reading by clicking on her computer screen. There was a whirr and she produced a CD-Rom from beneath the desk. With the blue pen, she dated it 23-03-50 (Buddhist Era 2550, by Thai reckoning) and drew a magical symbol above the PRINCO label. She had recorded her session so now Andy can play back his fortune at his leisure. Fortune telling has become high tech. I was impressed.
Later, Andy told me what she had said. He'd be married twice, but since she told me the same thing, the Maw Duu said as we're both together still we cancel each other out. We live in very separate worlds, Andy and I, so we get along. He should be cautious, as this is not his year, and not commit to any course of action. There may be family problems in which he'll be called on to mediate. However, things will get better by April next year, and he'll go on working until he's 66.
Then we agreed that Jan should go next. Andy translated, since the Maw Duu said she was not that fluent in English. The Maw Duu put the computer microphone in the middle of the table and laid the cards out. She told Jan that he would travel often, he'd work for a charity, and he'd work until he's 79. Jan said his father worked until he was 80 so 79 is good enough for him. She also told him that he would face a crisis after his birthday this July. She also said that he has a very strong moral sense and that he would do the right thing. Whatever he decides to do, she said, he has to resolve the coming crisis. It would be up to Jan to decide which way to go; she would not tell him what to do.
As she read my cards, the Maw Duu seemed to me an astute reader of human psychology. She said a lot of complimentary things, but I won't bore you with the details! Andy told her I am a teacher. She said I should teach and share that knowledge with others. My job is stable but I shouldn't make any drastic changes, because like Andy, this is also not my year. Unfortunately, the eight-armed goddess in the cards was Kali, the Hindu goddess of time, so I will have to be careful. Therefore, I should take care of myself and tamboon or make merit.
Andy paid her Baht 1500 (About US$44.00) for the session. We stepped back out into the soi, and saw that dusk had deepened into night. The air was humid and still. It seemed to me as if time had resumed. How long had we been inside with the Maw Duu? It's hard to measure time without a clock and harder still to guess the future before it happens. Outside in the real world, rationality returned. We tried to guess how she did it. Besides being a psychologist, she must be very good at reading body language and gauging our expressions and reactions to know whether or not she was on the right track. But there are things we'll never know how she knew. Later, over dinner, Jan told us that the Maw Duu wasn't completely off base.
So the mystery merely intensifies. Could the Maw Duu be right? I don't know. Between the desire to know the future is the knowledge that it might not happen the way she said it could. Between what is knowable and the unknown, there is truth, with a small "t" but not a grand Truth. It's better to deal with little truths, and it is far easier to see other people's truths than one's own.
Walk good,
Jo Anne
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