Hmmm...

It is funny how writing about something brings another memory of that moment. It was October, the end of the rainy season and it hot and sweaty, imagine hot and sweaty and then multiply it by 100 times. I was standing on that balcony in Thailand looking out over the Mekong River, thinking how beautiful it was and I thought of Michael. I had not thought of him in a long time and it seemed appropriate to think of him there. I cried a little that evening standing there, thinking about him in the jungles of Viet Nam, so many years before. How I was dripping wet after taking a shower and just standing there. How must he have felt, a pack on his back, scared, barely able to breath. I won't say Michael was a saint before he went to Viet Nam, he had problems before he went. But I did know that this place had changed him. He came back even more broken and he was never ever the same. How could someplace that was so beautiful from up on this balcony have been so ugly. But then looking from far away is usually much better than looking at it close up.