a lot goin' on these days....

The Epitome has officially launched a website. The focus of it is based on all forms of media, photo, film, and essentially anything and everything that I can dig up that I feel should be shared with everyone. It's a bigger soapbox to shout from in hopes that others will shout back and contribute ideas and things they feel are important too. The Epitome will be updated and added to on an almost daily basis so you can visit every time you're online and find something fresh that just might make your day.  Check it out and spread the gospel.

www.epitome27.com

Also, I'll definitely continue to write about life and everything in between on this site so don't forget about it. There's a link to it at the bottom of The Epitome home page.

Have a warm holidays.

Big Love,

JW

Do what you can do with what you got

I’d like to set the stage a little bit here, in attempt to explain why it’s been almost a month since I’ve come through with a decent update. It’s got a lot to do with getting established in our new setting and accustomed to our arrangement of unordinary weekly activity, as two happy go-lucky “forang” in a lesser-known town in southern Thailand that has proven to be more resourceful than we ever could have expected. We seem to be blessed with what I would call the Kramer effect; fifty percent instinct and fifty percent dumb luck allows us to fall ass backwards into some groovy situations. I’d also add to that, an extra seventy-five percent factor that we’ve got both of our mom’s looking out for us from beyond.

Like every new world of discovery, there are characters in place to make you feel not so far away from home and others that make you feel like you’ve landed somewhere in a realm of time you could only read about in old, faded issues of Rolling Stone.  Since arriving here, Charlie and I have experienced an interesting privilege of communal living on the property owned by the Thai family we rent from. We often eat together, cook meals for each other, exchange language lessons, and they take us on field trips to orchards and mountains to meet their friends. There are 3 other houses of characters involved in this peacefully eccentric union. The first one I met was Peter, a witty old Englishman who spends most of his days drinking and watching European football, of course. I made the innocent mistake of asking him what he does here and he told me he’s just waiting for the lord to take him. I know he’s got some crazy stories, but so far he hasn’t mentioned much about the past, which leads me to believe he’s definitely killed someone with his bare hands. He’s still got class though, and I look forward to drinking with him and shouting at the television.

In the far house, there lives a group of boat-builders from Germany, Finland, and somewhere I’ve never heard of. We’ve only hung out with them on a few occasions as they work long, dirty days for nothing but food n’ booze. We often catch them for a quick conversation at night as they head off to the Rama 2000, the town’s one and only discotheque, which can pretty much fit the population of Chumphon inside it. The boat-building days are almost over now and the crew is ready to set sail for the Gulf of Thailand. The owner of the boats has commissioned me to write an article about his company.

Our immediate neighbors, Bob and Oh have become good friends. Oh is a beautiful Thai woman who is somehow in sweet love with Bob, a parrot head from Oregon. Bob should have been a game show host in the 70’s but instead he and his brothers owned a meat packing plant that was somehow involved in overthrowing the communists in Chili, during the revolution. I can’t make this shit up. He talks about it often on the many field trips we go on. They stick Bob and I in the flatbed of the truck and let us bring booze for the ride. We talk about writing and Dylan albums and stories from back home. Bob opens up about the possibility of leaving Thailand one day and the horrible reality that Oh will most definitely slit his throat if he tries to leave her. He’s helped me to realize that Buddhists are very calm, very kind and fearlessly crazy. The four of us have gotten in the habit of going to the beach every Sunday where Bob gets drunk and I drink Kratome tea and get elevated. I don’t take any chances here with smokin’ ganja. I blazed with some local Thai-rastas in Chiang Mai and that was it. When I arrived here though, I was introduced to the Kratome tree, which has leaves on it that produce a Tylenol 3 type buzz when boiled and consumed as tea. If you eat them straight up, your mouth will go numb. I’ve learned that every Thai family is granted one Kratome tree for the use of its’ leaves to cure cough n’ cold symptoms. Unfortunately, the tree on the lot that we’re on got hacked down about a month before Charlie and I made our debut, so every week or so, I venture of with one of the helpful ladies to pilfer leaves from nearby trees in other yards.

There’s no uncertainty now that I need to become a known writer, and if I ever reach that level of success than this period of my life will be proudly recalled as the birthing grounds of the possibility. Everything seems to be leading to this in my head. A writer needs a place with endless inspiration and very little distraction. More importantly, in my case, a writer needs a place where he can take his time to perfect his craft without going broke in the process. Thailand seems to be the answer for all of this, provided you get off the tourist-beaten path and into some real culture. As I write this, a skinny cow is chewing cud loudly in tall grass, not even twenty feet from me.

Writing will be my number one focus until mid-February, when the new school term begins and I’ve pretty much been guaranteed a full-time job, but I’m damn sure gonna follow up on that before the date. Until then, I’ve teamed up with Joy, the best English-speaking girl in the family. We are hoping to arrange some part-time private lessons for this month, which will give me enough money to run-around with when the onslaught of brothers from back home arrive in the new year.  I don’t think I’ll truly realize how lucky I am to be living here until I see those familiar faces from a place and time I left behind.