Lumphini Loop

I have been reading the latest Murakami, a monstrous 1100-page 'thriller', thus far with neither irritation nor boredom.  I am a Murakami fan.  Like much of his work, there is a fantastical edge to it; reality and people are curiously bent, and  otherwise agreeable characters are rendered oddly.  Time drips like a Dali clock.  One of the main characters asks herself if the world has subtly changed without her having noticed.  She goes to a library and searches back issues of the papers to discover where the time-warp appeared. 

In Bangkok now (as I am often at the moment), my own time is not quite right either.  I go to sleep too late, and leave the drapes open in the hope that the morning light will help my system to understand that it is truly time to rise when the alarm goes off in the mornings.  I like to run early, ahead of the rising heat, down the road to Lumphini Park.  This morning my own perceptions are also affected somehow, by Murakami or by jet lag I cannot say.  I stop reading and set off, running easily enough.  January is cooler and dryer than most months -- it is after all Bangkok 'winter'.  But things look strange.  A street vendor fixes me with a cool and penetrating stare, as if something was wrong.  Three blond ladies with identical baby buggies wait outside a US Embassy compound for the gate to open, in silence.  Further along, Chinese ladies in the Park, doing their morning Tai Chi in synchronised elegance, wave wooden swords seemingly directly at me with menacing sweep, in slow-motion.  A policeman on a bicycle stops, crosses his arms, and watches me pass.   Everything is framed in a morning glow as the sun rises, sounds muffled.  I hear only my own breathing, and my heart thudding.  As always, at precisely 8am, invisible loudspeakers suddenly blare the national anthem, and everyone in the bustling park freezes to attention.  All the chatter in the cafes ceases.  I stumble to a stop, facing a flagpole. 

At a secluded and shady bend on a Park pathway where I often stop to stretch, a solitary lady is exercising at precisely my accustomed spot.  I cast about for another suitable space, and settle myself for some sit-ups in the grass under the trees.  Two cats are facing-off against each other across a paper plate of rice laid at the foot of a little shrine.  They freeze suddenly, and turn towards me.  At the same moment, the fallen leaves around me rustle sharply and something prompts me to twist and look, with the cats.  There is a meter-and-a-half-long lizard, its gaze fixed on me, tongue flickering.  The cats are wary.  So am I.  The lizard is familiar to me: he often hangs around this bend in the path, perhaps collecting the rice offerings. 

Carefully, I rise and jog away.  But as much as I feel I am going faster through the bends and over the ornamental bridges, my high-tech watch seems to say that time is slowing; the kilometres accumulate with excruciating slowness.  I do not accelerate.  Occupied and spooked by thoughts of Murakami, I finish my circuit of the Park and sidle my way out through a breakfast market on Radjadamri, nose assaulted by a riot of barbequed meat smoke, piled spices, diesel fumes and fetid water in the drains.  A sudden breeze summons a blizzard of tiny fallen leaves around me and they glue themselves to my sweaty bald head.  A traffic light goes green, I surge ahead, and suddenly it seems urgent that I get back to the quiet sanctuary of my hotel lobby, where the Concierge knows me, smiling with a wai. My watch suggests I have achieved a return to standard time, and the regular world.  The lobby is full of chunky ladies in sky-blue uniforms, a KLM aircrew waiting to leave for the airport.  I am strangely reassured.

Bangkok, January 2013