June 1, 2010

Washing = Meditation

Next morning, I woke up to find something was weird. Hmmm, a little bit warmer than it's supposed to be? And, where is the wind???

I was sure that I left the air conditioning and fan on when I went to sleep. (You won't be able to sleep if you don't leave them on. It was really really hot. I'm sure you can die!!) However, both of them didn't seem to be working. Even the fridge was not working.

MAYBE...

I had an idea. I've heard such a thing happens often in that country. It was around 6:30 in the morning; the time everyone wake up and start using electricity!! Since they have poor source of supply, it's sometimes gone especially in the morning and evening. However, I've heard that places like hotel that foreigners stay have generators, so we don't feel it however the it happens. OK, it was not my case then. Buy I was not gonna complain about it because where I stayed was not a "good hotel" but a "cheap GH", lol. I woke up and started preparing for going out. While washing faces and doing stuffs, I felt the temperature was getting higher in the room. The electricity never seemed to be recovered...I went downstairs to reconfirm my flight to HCMC today (I tried to do it yesterday but the hotel girl told me she couldn't because the office was already closed at 5PM!!), and asked her to make sure if the electricity was gone. Yes, it was gone. She told me it would be recovered in an hour. Since I had to leave for the tour in 30-40 minutes, I had to give up using it. DAMN!! I wanted to blow my hair with a hair drier!! Lol.

Since it didn't seem like I had a time to go out for having breakfast, and honestly, I was not that hungry as well, I ate biscuits I had brought from Japan and kept preparing for checking out. I remembered that there was something that I had always felt every time when I washed clothes there:

It's more like a life itself if you compare with trip when you travel alone.

Yeah, actually it was. However I haven't lived by myself, the impression existed in my mind as an idea that never swayed.

During this trip, I searched for a place to stay over almost everyday. Went somewhere to eat alone. Sometimes I bought food at a stall and ate at a park. I bought fruits at a market and peeled them with a knife at hotel. Every night, I washed my laundries with a soap at the washstand, strained a rope between somewhere in the room and hung those laundries with pinches. I felt like keeping living like this forever. Washing clothes at night was actually the time for meditation. It let me erasure thinking about regular life I have in Japan which I spend most of the time at workplace everyday. It made me miss the days in the past sometimes as well and I wondered if there was another way. But the answer was always same: Maybe not. I think I've tried my best at that time.

There are a lot of things on my mind that I want to tell if I think about something. However, it doesn't make sense as the situation doesn't move. I know there is nothing I can do by myself being in the small empty room. I have my key taken away and the room is locked from outside. All I can do is to wait and take advantage of the situation if the key man comes. I don't know if he comes and don't even think I can react well however he comes. But at least I know myself in the room is just a part. I can't kill her, but maybe I can live even though I miss her. Honestly, recalling is tough sometimes. However, I felt the time saved me from some negative feelings I had like sadness or loneliness while washing clothes because my heart didn't sway but stayed neutral.


Web album: A Trip to Vietnam

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