“I love you the first time I saw you.” My husband Ka has told me several times over the years. “I drive back from working at Coconut Island Resort.” The man who was welding the fence for Noom’s new business idea at my expense was a friend of his who had invited Ka in. “You were walking around smoking bai jak and yaasin.” He was referring to the local tobacco rolled in dried banana leaves. “You drink laow khao and you were eating koi khom. I never see farang same you! I love you then.”
I didn’t remember that I was eating koi khom, a raw tartare, not rare, Isaan dish prepared with beef and cow bile, but it was then and remains now one of my favorite foods. It is one of Ka’s favorite dishes as well. I was indeed smoking bai jak and yaasin as the regular cigarettes and 1 liter of Hong Thong whiskey I had bought for the outdoor party were gone in 20 minutes as Thai men came to chat me up, grabbing a cigarette and taking a shot or more each on their way out. I seemed to have as many friends as I was willing to pay in drinks for. To fend them off I bought the cheapest, lowest class rotgut whiskey and rolling tobacco, as this was generally considered too trashy for Noom’s crowd. I therefore could be left alone to drink and smoke in peace.
“I’m sorry about Oh.” I told him a few years back. I was also sorry that my first words to the man I nicknamed Shy Handsome that night were “Jesus Christ Noom I don’t think this guy speaks any English! Next!” I continued. “But there’s no other way that it could have happened but the way it did. You were too shy and would have never made the first move. If it hadn’t been for your brother I would have just gone back to the USA nursing my wounds.”
“I know that.” Ka told me. I assume that he told his younger brother about the crazy farang woman and they both eventually determined that I was often hanging out at the motorbike shop owned by the friends of the family. Perhaps things would have been different if I had flipped into some slutty aggressive mode that night and decided to spend some time alone with the only guy out of dozens who had caught my attraction at that party. Here and there those wild gambits work out, but I wasn’t really a swipe right hookup type of lady like that. I’d have to assume that the child created with Oh would have never been born on that timeline either. Everything happened as it was meant to happen. I was simply too used to aggressive Scorpio men making the first move at that point.
In early November of 2016 I decided to take a trip to Mexico with Oh and our daughter. That was way back in the day when I sometimes went on trips to places that weren’t directly related to complying with a stupid human visa trick or with visiting family members who I had been seperated from because of visa delays. My 94 year old grandmother had recently died after a protracted downhill slide, meaning that my caretaking needs for her were no longer an issue, and my editing job had come back saying that there would be no more work. As toddler Eliza slept I drove in the middle of the night through the California and later the Baja desert. As we got away from the light pollution of Las Vegas the stars began emerging in the sky on this perfect constellation night.
“This is same same as the stars when I was born.” My husband Oh told me. He began explaining the positions of certain constellations in the sky through the car’s front windshield, which he insisted that his mother had talked about when he was young each year around the time of his real birth. He mentioned the placement of Andromeda, and the Seven Sisters, and the V shaped one known as Pisces.
I had never paid the slightest attention to the stars in the sky, despite my interest in running love matches by birthday for friends. I was amazed that the positions of these constellations were so recognized by Oh from Mexico. I suppose both Thailand and the Mojave desert are in the Northern hemisphere. I was more amazed that Mar, a semi illiterate migrant farmer from Laos, apparently knew a whole heck of a lot more about stars in the sky than I did. I’d never even thought about the way the constellations in the sky would change each month and circle back year by year. With all of the light pollution in Las Vegas I rarely saw them at all.
Astrology is an area that is highly believed in by some of my substack readers and completely ignored or even ridiculed by others. As I told Sage Hana once I’m in a position where I have to believe in it. I think God put it directly on my path. Those who ignore it entirely tend to fall on two extreme ends. On one side is the atheist or secular types who seem to put it down as superstitious nonsense widely disproven by science (as though science is totally uncorruptible). On the other end is fundamentalist Christian groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, who believe it is a sin akin to withcraft to pay the stars in the sky any heed.
I’m more amazed thinking certain aspects of astrology would not have any influence at all on people. In ancient times when the vast majority of the human race was born, grew up, lived and died in the same local area as their forefathers did clear seasonal patterns would have come into play. Why would there not be a difference in temperament between a child born in the glorious green height of summer and a newborn baby who survived the darkest days prior to the Winter Solstice? Those things would have an energetic pattern associated with them which would resonate with each anniversary of birth.
Even in areas without four seasons there are still seasons. Certain flowers bloom at certain times of year, things are planted before the rains and certain creatures seem to come in patterns. If you don’t believe that try finding a mosquito in Ohio in January. Holidays of some type are celebrated everywhere on Earth as well and may become closely tied to the birthdays of those growing up.
I remember the first year I stayed with Oh I tried to surprise him on his birthday with a bottle of whiskey and a few small gifts. My first husband seemed taken back this.
“Nobody ever give me anything for my birthday. It’s so close to Songkran (the Thai water festival April 13). I think everybody forget.”
“So you’re like same same the Christmas baby!” I joked with him. “In America if somebody is born too close to Christmas on December 25 everybody forget their birthday too.”
I guess I sensed there was more to it than that even from the start. I haven’t even gotten to the stars yet, but if the powers that be have misled us about everything else, why would they not also have done so on these things? Are we truly just random or was there a directed intention?
“The hospital tried to induce my labor with you on March 9.” My mother told me one time. She explained that it was known by doctors that I was very likely to have life threatening rH incompatibility with my mother at birth, so they wanted to closely control the circumstances and timing under which I was born. “I checked myself out of the hospital. You just weren’t ready to come yet.” I was born nine days later.
Much of it is based on whether you believe it or not.
I have been reading a bit about Aether, the magnetic phenomena proposed by Tesla as the energetic glue which binds all life together. If the military and others began reverse engineering this, could it have been to subvert free and zero point energy while also holding all of the secrets as classified? How did people way back when make this? Or construct the pyramids for that matter?
It was discovered that the unexplained rock formations on Easter Island are often 30 meters deep, adding mystery to their placement and how they were created and by whom.
Enough with my deep musings. Sometimes it’s better to know that you don’t know. Let’s go back to the real world of our enlightened and oh so advanced modern times. For those who don’t know I am going to let my sarcasm run free tonight:
After that whole nobody is above the law statement I am just shocked.
This seems like a great use of taxpayer money. Let’s just pay them to fight each other and take out a bunch of poor people in the middle in our modern day sacrifice to the sun gods…
But our food is so much more advanced!
I’m sure the multinational corporations are really working in our best interest:
Our policies towards migrant workers are working out great:
But we have all of this great entertainment!
I’m not liking Trump’s pick for the DEA. Come to think of it can we just DOGE the whole DEA?
But our schools are raising the best and brightest, right?
But our thought leaders are doing great!
Our medicine is state of the art
Our monetary system is sound and fair:
If there’s some little hiccups surely some more laws will fix the problem
Maybe the AI can save us from our downfall?
Or perhaps the answers always lie in ourselves?
At this point I think we could just DOGE the whole thing. But then how would people make money? What they’ve really taught us in modern times is that financing on their terms is the most important thing in our lives. Can we really continue paying the bill for this?
I thought I’d hit the jackpot with Ka. I don’t think any other woman on Earth would feel that way about him. That’s perfect for me. I think aspiring to live to be at least 100 years old and dying three hours apart from my spouse sounds like a great success story. Let everyone else live and let live free in their own beliefs as long as they do not harm or victimize others.
Peace to all in this season…
Come in, handsome woman.
Good to know it's not just us men who are so easily suckered.
The question about believing in astrology is absurd. Most people think the question means do the planets and the stars influence my life, and that is an absurd belief indeed. Do I believe a clock tells time? If I can read, and it is properly synched up, it can tell me the time in a serviceable manner for my timezone. But the clock does not make the time.
The solar system is a system, and the positions of the planets relative to the background tell me something about the state of the system. Now, are we able to deduce something about what those conditions mean in our lives? How useful is our interpretation? Some people are better at it than others. Most of the people who don't 'believe' in astrology have no idea what it even is, and evidently they have never met a good astrologer. My father was a psychiatrist, and on a few occasions he was stumped with a patient, and he had an astrologer friend who from time to time did very good charts for a few of his patients, and he accepted the fact that this was sometimes an avenue to opening up a course of therapy with a patient. He did that maybe once or twice a year, if a patient was open to it. Astrology would not have survived if there was not something to it... but it is not what most people think it is and there are definitely good astrologers and bad ones.