The Odyssey Thailand
Siamese Thepahmom are a lot like Calypso’s Nymphs. Thepahnom guard the temple. In “The Odyssey” Calypso and her Nymphs beguiled and mesmerized Great Ulysses, keeping him from answering the call of the gods to return home. In Bangkok, Thepahmom guard the front gate.
You may be like me. When your ninth grade English teacher told you to read the Homeric Greek classic “The Odyssey”, you may have just browsed the cliff notes. Or perhaps you were a college freshman when you received the reading assignment.
In that case when you were in your dorm smoking dope and listening to music, “Eric Clapton and Cream” may have alerted you to “Tales of Great Ulysses” when you should have been reading “The Odyssey”. Ulysses, aka Odysseus, is the main character in “The Odyssey”. Odysseus and Ulysses may be tricky names to remember or pronounce (unless you are Greek). So in The Odyssey Thailand, I will call our hero Chuck.
In the Greek classic the hero, living long abroad, wishes to return home. Calypso “the bewitching nymph, the lustrous goddess, held him back, deep in her arching caverns, craving him for a husband”. Calypso also had a gaggle of assistant nymphs at her command.
It was four moons ago that Chuck, living a decade long Oriental quest, heard the gods warn of impending Asian plague. Well, it was actually the US Secretary of State saying if you were an expat and did not want to be stranded because of COVID, you had better come home. Thai Calypso and her minions sang a siren song few mortal men would resist, keeping Chuck captive in Krung Thep Mahanakon, the City of Angels, the land of Siamese Tephanom: Bangkok.
(Thai Calypso delivering breakfast, really)
Calypso also made sure Chuck’s old ass did not get sick and die from the flu. Practicality and seduction are not mutually exclusive.
Ulysses longed for home, his beloved Ithaca, back with his comrades, old brothers in arms now getting fat back home.
Chuck is a Brooklynite, Brooklyn, NY that is. There is an Ithaca in New York too, close enough. Chuck has a bunch of old Firemen buddies back in New York City he’d like to go have a drink with as well. But now sequestered in a Grecian castle, held captive by a Thai Calypso and her minions, Chuck experienced a catharsis (gotta keep the Greek theme going here).
“Fuck me! My life has turned into a Greek drama” mused Chuck.
The gods like Chuck. He was once a warrior leading comrades into battle, a Lieutenant in the New York City Fire Department, Engine Company 5 in Manhattan’s East Village. For twenty years Chuck and his Boys beat back the Red Devil. They were a hearty crew, true brothers in arms.
Chuck hung up his helmet, retiring on September 8, 2001. The Lieutenant who replaced Chuck at Engine 5 perished along with three-hundred forty two other good men three days later. The gods did indeed smile down on ole Chuck.
After ten years of traveling about The Orient, Chuck was ready to return to the city of his birth, the canyons of Gotham, near the place of past glories, and hoist a glass with his brothers. A conspiracy of Siamese Thepahnom, plague and mothballed airplanes blocked our hero’s passage. Chuck humbly awaits for intervention from “sparkling eyed Athena”. Surely the gods have not abandon him now.
Actually, Chuck can leave Thailand. But if he did, He could not come back. Chuck is not going to abandon Thai Calypso. Ulyssess was kind of a dick. Chuck isn’t. Chuck will stay put until flying tubes with wings can once again transverse the clouds over the wine dark sea. New York and Bangkok are no where near as difficult to move between these days as were Ithaca and the caverns of Calypso. Ole Ulysses got around on heavy boats with bad sails. You often had to row the damn things.
Whenever the airports are back in business, “I can live in two places these days” says Chuck. I suppose the gods will help once again. That intervention will likely be Fauccian, sparkling eyed Athena in the form of a vaccine.
