Injured

Well, it's been a good run for me so far, but it's time I explained to everyone at the same time that it seems my stay abroad has come to a sudden and unexpected end. In my last post, a few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was finding ways to manage my time around the rib injury which prevented me from training, but it looks like that same injury will govern my lifestyle a great deal more than I had thought.

It has been several weeks now since I was hurt, and while I go significant periods of each day without serious discomfort, there are still no days entirely free from it, and the small amount of training in which I've engaged has been extremely unpleasant, and impossible to pursue in earnest. I have finally come to terms with what several of the staff here have been telling me, which is that with a cracked rib, any serious martial arts training is really impossible for at least a few months, and, particularly considering the nature of the training I had planned in Brazil, it has seemed most prudent to postpone the remainder of my voyage and return home at the beginning of December.

I've spoken to my parents about this a few times, perhaps unsurprisingly they support my early return, and most of the trainers here seem satisfied with the decision. Needless to say, I am disappointed, but I am continually reminded that Brazil will still be there next year, and I have already had an extraordinary experience by any standards. For now, I have been enjoying thoughts of the many wonders that await me in the furnaces and faucets of America, and of the friends and family that I'll be seeing much sooner than I had thought. I have been fortunate in easily finding a place to stay, and it seems to me now that I have had as much good luck as bad, and certainly have little cause for complaint.

For my last few weeks in Thailand, I have decided to treat myself well, and using the dwindling finances that I had reserved for my next destination, I have rented a large, air-conditioned room (technically a "villa," I'm told) at a resort down the road from camp. I now have a real mattress, hot water, and my own bathroom. I have spent several days at various markets at the towns and beaches around the island, and have found many things that I look forward to presenting to people back home, and I have hired the personal services of Prathet, one of the most able and talented trainers in camp, to give me short, private lessons in which I can learn and be somewhat challenged without risking further injury.

At this exact moment, I am sitting on a small leather couch near the bed, and I am staring out of a large double-window taller than I am. Next to the resort is someone's small house, and I can see several chickens and a rooster darting about in the open ground nearby under some palm trees. The room is filled with furniture made out of dark, beautifully stained wood; there is a wardrobe, a TV stand, and a small table against the wall with a mirror attached to it. In the evening light, the sun drenches long, diagonal lines of the room, and I can see the bits of dust and drifting lint on all the surfaces. My guitar is against the wall in a corner next to the television that has yet to be turned on, and today's clean, pressed sheets are stretched across the sprawling double bed in the center of the room.

I appreciate that here there are no ants crawling through cracks around the windows, here there is more than a lazy fan oscillating drowsily up on one wall, and even though here I am comfortable and distracted in about every way I could want to be, I must admit that it's hard not to feel as though I've somehow lost something, as though the murmuring A/C unit on the wall, or the unnervingly constant internet connection are false friends, all-too-charming acquaintances met at the funeral of a wealthy family member.

When I take a shower now, there is no intermediate walk outside, no contact with the sun and open air, and comparatively little need to shower at all now that I spend so little time sweating. Little by little I've started to see things about myself shifting back to mirror a world that I had left what seems like a very long time ago. Due to the climate control and the attitude of the staff at the resort, I have started wearing shirts every day; soon I may even recommence with shoes. I have started keeping multiple windows open simultaneously on my computer, as the internet connection can now handle that, and while I still spend a lot of time sitting still, my mind is on more tracks than it was a month ago. The scabs on my knuckles, never fully healed in the last three months, have finally hardened and fallen away, and I'm left with this soft, pink tissue that seems unprepared for its past.

As mentioned above, I've been gathering a lot of souvenirs lately, and I think that perhaps these tokens of myself will be among them. Yesterday I bought a small figurine of an elephant that had been carved by hand by an old woman who always sets up a stall at the night markets. When I go home, I will fold this up in newspaper, and put it in my suitcase next to three shirts and my habit of sticking a towel under the door to keep out insects that we don't have in North America. I will pack away my handwraps and my boxing gloves, and stick inside of them my memories of how to tie the curtains to let in the breeze and keep out the sun. I hope to keep handy my awe at air conditioning and hot water, and the guitar-string calluses on the fingers of my left hand are among the few things that show no signs of fading.

It strikes me, as I prepare to leave Thailand, that as with anything, it's the people here who have made this experience real to me. It seems hard to imagine that the tokens of this life would remain after I've left their witnesses behind, and though it may seem strange from the outside, I feel as though my body has learned as much in the past few months as my mind would in a studious year at college. My experiences here are held in such a way that I find it very hard to describe them in words, and thereby give them some form which is separate from the smiles of the trainers at camp, or the way we would stand just under the roof of the intermediate training area and watch the water come over the ridge in a solid wall during the rainy season.

I know that when I go home I won't suddenly forget all that the Thais have taught me, but for someone so used to putting things into words, it is somewhat unnerving to have the only real understanding of this time somewhere inarticulate. On Saturday night there was a party at the camp, and when I saw Nazee, I waved to him, and he walked up to me, grabbed me by the head, laughed, and kissed me on both sides of my face. When I am home, dealing with jackets, good beer, schedules, and other things unknown here, I will try to keep my souvenirs close by, and whether or not I can explain it well, in my shoulders and my neck, and in my fists, knees and elbows, I will remember these people for a very long time.