An American in Asia: His Quest for Cosmic Truth (or at least a Decent Espresso)

 

The Life's Work of a Million Insects on My Floor and Billiards as Barometer

Perhaps I've been leading a less adventurous life, but this week's column begins with a tragedy of household proportions. Just about the worst disaster possible occurred in my kitchen this morning. I knocked a giant bottle full of honey onto the floor. The bottle broke into exactly a bazillion sliver-shaped pieces which shot across the whole apartment, and a giant gooey puddle of honey laced with shards of glass spread across the floor and flowed under the refrigerator.

Aside from the standard dismay over the monumental mess, the disaster was made more poignant by the fact that the honey had been a gift from the farming family I had visited a couple weeks ago. They had collected it from wild bees, strained it and bottled it and given it to me and it was absolutely delicious.

I went over the whole room (dark floors on which tiny shards of glass are completely invisible) with a broom and then took a mop to the puddle of honey. After I had finished with the honey, I mopped the room for good measure. I only realized my mistake once the room had dried: I had not thoroughly cleaned the mop and now every inch of the floor was covered with a sticky film.

In most houses in Thailand, any piece of food or speck of jam left on a countertop will be crawling with tiny ants within a few hours. I can only imagine the feast I had just presented them with. Ants from all over the region would soon be festering on my floor. It would be a lovely horror movie.

I cleaned the mop and did the floors again and I eventually managed to get it all sorted, but I had lots of time to contemplate what the disaster boded for the rest of my day and I have made a decision not to attempt anything doubtful or out of the ordinary today. Perhaps even for this week.

Billiards as Barometer

And every evening I'll go play a game of pool. Not for fun but as a test of sorts. I learned pool in university, when I should have been learning other stuff, from a diminutive Kung fu master from Vietnam. I find that the game of pool is a perfect barometer of not only my level of concentration at any one moment, but also the state of my luck. In my experience luck has little to do with randomness and is entirely determined by the extent to which one is listening to one's gut feelings.

So if I play an excellent game of pool and every ball is going exactly where I send it, but I still lose due to a pile of seemingly random accidents, I know that for some reason the connection between my guts and my hands is not transmitting, my luck is off, and I should avoid darting across busy streets until I get it sorted out.

And if I can't make a single shot due to plain ineptitude, then the problem is a simple matter of spending a little time reminding myself where my fingers and toes are and what they do.

And those times where I barely have to think about the game and I'm making embarrasing wins against much better players, I know its time to attempt the impossible somewhere in my life.

Pool is a great test for these things because, aside from tables and cues, it never changes and if you play enough, you know exactly what your capabilities are. I know after a single game whether I'm playing up to snuff and after two games I know exactly why. Tarot cards are interesting and informative but, for me, a good game of pool is much more explicit.