The last little while has been stressful as the country is torn apart from within, a situation that is affecting much of the way I think about what it means to be an American. I see people protecting their fellow community members and not backing down in the face of threats of more force.
My own work seems meaningless at the moment, but yet the items I write about would not be known to others if I didn't do my job. I fear I may be hurting my health by working too much and this day is one in which I'm allowing myself to think about the possibility of movement.
There are two cameras poised on a particular street corner on Koh Samui off the coast of Thailand. I've been switching back and forth between them for a while now. Maybe a week or so?
One of the cameras is trained on the intersection and allows you see to the whole of the side street. The other one looks up the main road. There are other cameras that look at vantage points somewhere in there but I'm not sure where they are. So far, this corner is the most interesting to me.
I decided to look at these sorts of cameras when I put a television in my kitchen to support a second workstation. I've been watching rail journeys as well, excited at the prospect of pretending I was on a trip. I got the idea from putting on YouTube videos for my parents either when I'm at their retirement home or remotely.
The country is torn apart because sometimes they want me to put on Fox News and I get angry because I know watching that channel has affected the way they think. They've been divided away from so many people, part of a way Americans communicate with each other.
I work so hard because I want to imagine a different way of discussing conflict. Yet, I'm always worried the anger will crash down on me, the way it did at times in the past. I've rebuilt since then but I'm still not sure I'm in the right place.
So today I'm imagining I can escape.
I found a flight to Koh Samui from Washington that would cost about $1400. I'm not going to go, but I want to imagine that a place like that is real. I want to know who the people are who go there, who the people are who work there, and could I relax in a place like that?
Why am I looking at this? Why I am listening to a music station that's from there but seems to only play American music? What would it be like to so and stand on this street corner?
What would it be like to be as far away from Charlottesville as possible?
And do I have to even really travel to go there?
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