Kinds of Luminescence

Khanom beach is on the mainland and, thus, isn’t very popular with tourists who have come 1000s of miles to find the perfect beach paradise in Thailand; they will settle for nothing less than an island, the more remote, the better. Khanom, only an hour away from two large cities, with a small town of its own, seems to be the antithesis of remote. I think it reminds tourists too much of the local beaches they probably visit at home; the dim shores of lakes about half an hour from where they live, where the sand is mixed with mud or an old Atlantic boardwalk with cold gray waters, sun burns and teeming crowds. No one wants to risk visiting the local equivalent, so they pass over Khanom, but, being no connoisseur of beaches, I went.

I was planning on making it a day trip, but places are never as near as they seem on the map and I knew that hour-long journey would become two before we got to the water and that the last bus back would leave early. I was tired from working all week, but not so tired that I couldn’t muster the energy on Friday to walk up to the bus station and catch a bus out of town.

The moment we walked into the vicinity of the bus station, people began asking us where we were going; shouting the question out from the anonymity of the storefronts of ticket agencies. I tried not to meet anyone’s glance and walk independently toward my destination. I could see the sign for Khanom, I knew where the buses left from, and having multiple, seemingly unconcerned persons yell ‘where you go?’ always feels like being catcalled.

I finally just told someone where we were going and had the ticket counter pointed out to us. Unable to trust anyone who shouts at tourists, I got in line, but told Gina to go and see if there were any buses on the other side marked Khanom. She left me to stand in line and contemplate how difficult I find it to trust people in tourist-contexts. I thought of a time in Romania when a man had been outside the train station, obviously looking out for tourists. You read about scams and tourists getting ripped off so often that places like Romanian train stations make even the most jaded traveler wary. When this man approached us, describing his new hostel and offering to give us a lift, I waved him off. Looking straight ahead like I hadn’t really noticed him. I was cagey, a few days before, in Sofia, we’d gotten stuck with this official-looking bastard hounding us all over the station asking for money. I skipped the hostel and the ride, paying instead to take the bus into town. We had no place to stay and once we got downtown I had to run around and check the five or six places for prices. When we finally threw our stuff down in the spare room of a nice Hungarian couple and got back out to the square, everything was closing. We had a nice walk around the shuttered town, climbing up vistas and overlooking the main square of moonlight and snow.

It was when we were walking through a churchyard that we came across the man from the bus station. He recognized us and waved like we were old friends then pointed out his hostel, which looked very handsome: all carved wood and Transylvanian gabled roofs. He gave us some tips on things to see in the area which, he seemed genuinely excited about. After saying goodbye, I kicked myself for not trusting this guy who was obviously very friendly and well-meaning, but I can’t say I learned my lesson.

At three o’clock we piled onto a minibus and set off down the jungle-lined highways of southern Thailand. A storm blew up from the horizon and pelted the van with drops about the size and consistency of large marbles. When they hit the roof and the windshield, they cracked open. The road sizzled with their falling. Above the windows of the van, the clouds stretched and clotted in doughy configurations, lightening passing between them, synaptic firing, the system spread to the limits of the sky, only the tree-obscured horizon showed any blue. Moving further east to the coast, this blue gradually rose up and eclipsed the storm-gray clouds. After half an hour, the pavements were dry and the sky nearly clear. We entered the town of Khanom on a shimmering wave of afternoon heat; it didn’t look like any rain had fallen there in days.

Gina woke up, having fallen asleep as soon as the van had started to move and, uncertain where we were, we tumbled out of the van in shorts, sandals and sunglasses looking like an advertisement for sun screen. No one tried to ask us where we were going—perhaps it was too obvious—and we started down the first road that led away from the town, not sure if we were walking to or away from the coast. We passed two places that offered tourist information, but they were both closed.

The small town quickly fell away and was replaced by a jungle canopy struggling to cover the road and blot out the sun, which, given the intense heat, I welcomed it to do. We crossed a bridge and I figured we couldn’t be going in the right direction if we were perpendicular to the flow of the water. A man on a motorcycle waved, slowed and turned back. As he came putting up to us asking ‘where you go?’ I blurted out that we wanted to walk, figuring, as always, that he was offering a taxi service. He ignored my dumb comment and asked if we were going to Jam Bar, a reggae-themed bar-cum-hostel popular with local expat teachers. I’d read a lot of good reviews about the place and was considering heading over there. The man said he had a lot of English teacher friends who went there. As he gave us directions, he looked up in a dreamy way like he was remembering the nights he’d spent at Jam Bar and the good times he’d had. We thanked him and he drove off, still with that peaceful look of nostalgia on his face.

We followed the man’s directions through a coconut plantation with a few scattered huts. In one area, the grass was cut right down to the ground, like a golf course. A cow and her calf lifted their heads to watch us pass. The calf losing interest almost immediately and returning to the vine hanging from his mother’s mouth, parrying and biting at it like the way kids eat Twizzlers. Two big dogs sped toward us from a nearby yard, both of them bulky and barking in a raspy way; they’re so accustomed to motorbikes, they only do that when people have the audacity to walk by. The road narrowed and split and I wondered if we were still going the right way. The directions we’d had were vague; all we knew is that we were to follow this road. Gina noticed sand in people’s yards and, looking to the left, I saw were the horizon dropped down to meet the flat line of the ocean through the trees. We kept walking until we came to the beach.

We greeted a woman standing by the public beach entrance and asked her which way Jam Bar was. She thought for a moment and told us it was to the right, not too far. I was happy to hear this as the sun was starting to set and I hoped to get into the water before it got dark. Not that it mattered; I knew the temperature wouldn’t go down much once the sun set. We could go swimming at 3 am and the water in the Gulf of Thailand would still be like bath water.

We passed a few small resorts that looked like beach houses in the States, places that would accommodate about 10 people, with bars and kitchens open to the beach. There were no foreigners around. Everyone, apart from one lady with stringy blonde hair, was Thai. The only people in the water were children and they stayed in the shallows jumping and splashing while their parents and grandparents pulled in heavy fishing net or collected hermit crabs which they smash with a mortar and pestle for som tam or papaya salad. My feet were making that rubbery sound that dry feet on loose, warm sand sometimes do when struggling for purchase when the sand and the soles of your feet rub together. It a sounded like a clown quickly tying balloon animals at a birthday party. There was no breeze; everything was still. We tried to catch the attention of the fishermen to say ‘hello’ but it was like we lived in entirely different dimensions. They were like projections of our expectations—a Thai idyll. For them, we were so irrelevant as to not exist.

Jam Bar had no sign. There were a group of Thai men sitting out by the beach, drinking Thai whiskey and talking in a noncommittal way in the way people do when any minute one of them might get up and leave. The sun was on the water and looked to have melted—orange sherbet into water the twilight colors of a bruise. My feet squeaked as I walked up and asked “Jam Bar?” Asking a question in the English way, raising my tone at the end of the word which may have made it incomprehensible to them, changing the word from one to another even if it was a foreign word. Most of them men stared at me, but one said ‘Jam Bar, yes’ and I knew we were there. Behind the men, there was a small bar and a few foreigners were parked there with that burnished look white people too long at the beach get, like a piece of glass that has been clouded by years of ocean tumblings. They wore tired expressions that radiated more fatigue than contentment. Their hair was salty and clumped; their eyes squinted against the sun; their faces red and creased. There were only three or four people at the bar, all of them seemed to be alone, but no one made an effort to notice us as we ducked under the palm thatched enclosure.

As usual with these places, it wasn’t clear if anyone was working; patrons sat on both sides of the bar and everyone had a beer in front of them. After the morning at work, the bus station, the ride over in the back of a minibus and the walk over, I was ready for a beer, but I didn’t know who to ask and didn’t want to make a fool of myself by asking the wrong person. So, we sat down at the bar and looked expectantly at the cooler of beers, asking each other, what kind of beer we would order, despite them all tasting the same in Thailand. A Scottish guy came over and asked us in brogue if we wanted something. We ordered out beers and looked around the sandy bar. It looked like an Island of Lost Souls and almost immediately, the humid air began to stir with the currents of the guests’ lamentations. An Indian man in a turban and a long beard asked a very-tired looking man with the florid complexion of someone who drinks in the sun where he was from. The man looked at his beer and I noticed that his hair was still wet from the ocean; each strand slowly dripping with water like a candle dripping wax; the drips had taken on the gray color of the man’s hair. Everything about this guy seemed exhausted. “I’m from near Canada” he told the turbaned man. I pricked up my ears at this, usually people who talk about being from near things are from small places no one’s ever heard of. Was there a nation near Canada I’d never heard of? Some sovereign Prince Edward Island nation? Was this guy a separatist Quebecois? I had to butt in. I told him, being born only about an hour away from the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit, I was from ‘near Canada,’ too. Then I noticed the weariness in his eyes, that look that people get when they’re tired of explaining something. “Seattle” he said to me, like I’d pried it out of him. “Ah the Emerald City” I said, hoping to steer the conversation to the places all us intrepid explorers had been. But no one took the bait, least of all the wet, exhausted guy. The turbaned guy took up the Lost Souls discussion again. “I’m from England” he told the crumpled-looking dripping candle guy from Seattle. “I had to get away,” he shook his tall red turban, which was columnar enough to be more Rasta then Sikh. “I was a programmer,” and here I stopped paying much attention and just caught bits and pieces. The two men had turned to each other to tell their stories of dissatisfaction and alienation. The turbaned guy had lost his job, wife and kids. The dripping/melting guy was on a pouting jag and didn’t seem to be interested in anything. I didn’t realize what it was until later when we were down on the beach and Gina said, “stop trying to talk to that Seattle guy.”

“I know,” I said, glad that someone had noticed the way he’d blown off my invitation to talk about Seattle. “He didn’t seem very interested in talking.” I still wasn’t getting it, so Gina had to tell me.

“He’s one of those guys from the States who puts a Canadian flag on his backpack. He’s annoyed that we’re here because he can’t tell everyone he’s Canadian.” As soon as she said it, I realized how true it was. He’d grumbled the thing about being ‘near Canada’ like it’d been pulled from him. He could barely manage to tell us he was from Seattle without choking on clumps of his own bile. Which of course was why he’d changed the topic so quickly.

Not everyone in the bar was so curmudgeonly. The Scottish kid was friendly and his brogue was a joy to listen to, although difficult to understand at times. He responded with alacrity when I asked him about the Hebrides and showed no interest in pretending to be from somewhere else. When the topic turned to whiskey and I contended that perhaps whiskey was from Ireland he could say no more than ‘come oan, mahn’ like I must’ve been joking. He mentioned something about trying Jack Daniels once and I found myself apologizing for the world domination of our sweet southern bourbons that most people mistakenly thought were supposed to be whiskey. I’m sure the washed-out Seattle guy would’ve been happy to back me up on that one.

Another guest was a girl from Taiwan. All she did was smile and nod. Compared to the rest of us blabbermouths, she seemed incredibly profound, but there was something illusive in her quiet nature. I realized if I were to act just as she did, I would look more petulant than contemplative. I can’t explain where the sense of politeness comes from, perhaps it is long cultivated and, thus, subtle, but it’s there. Such politeness seems to come from a wellspring of contentment and among all the malcontents at the bar that evening, this girl radiated contentment and tranquility.

We went swimming and took a long walk down the beach in the dark, listening to the distant barking of dogs and the loose key sound of crabs running across dried and empty shells the ocean had tossed up onto the beach; unable to see these crabs in the dark, the noise they made had a haunting quality, like a poltergeist flitting around, jangling a ring of janitorial keys and then swooping back into the palms.

When we returned from our walk on the beach, a lanky kid from Virginia was behind the bar, holding forth. I’d heard him talking about teaching English before, so I figured we’d order a beer and get into some shop talk, but I was tired from a long day and teachers are garrulous people. The Virginian and a Filipina who worked with him, we deeply involved in a conversation about where they parked their motorbikes at the school where they both worked and who was guilty of stealing their parking place. I was amazed they were able to converse on this seemingly limited subject for what felt like hours. Eventually the subject turned to less-specific points and I was able to throw in a few words here and there.

Apropos of I-don’t-know-what, Gina mentioned the luminescent plankton that could be seen in the water on Khanom from time-to-time. Having noticed no luminescence when we’d taken our walk along the beach, I assumed we’d have to come back another time to see the light show. “Oh no,” the Filipina said, “they’re out there now. You just have to find a dark place and move around; they only light up if you agitate the water.”

We quickly finished our beers, changed and headed back to the dark shore and the bath-warm waters. Two other bathers from our hostel were already down at the water about three feet out walking parallel to the shore and looking intently at the water. Gina and I walked down the beach looking for the darkest spot we could find. We came to an area where a row of tall, glossy leafed trees stood between the beach and the road blocking any stray light and here we walked carefully out into the water, as if walking into an unknown substance, waiting to see if it would be safe. I wasn’t seeing anything. The water was as dark as you’d expect it to be on a moonless night, behind a row of trees, but Gina called out that she could see them. I bobbed over to where she was repeatedly running her arms through the water like she had a shirt she was trying to wash. Under the water, her arms shone faintly green. It looked like there was a light, dim and distant that caught the undersides of her arms.

“That’s all?” I said. “Eh, that’s not too impressive. It’s cool, I guess but—” and while I was complaining about their abilities I was swarmed over by a cloud of the plankton. The impression silenced me. I could do nothing but watch the marine fireflies flicker their aurora borealis white-green color in trails behind my arms. When I was still, there was no light, but when I moved my arm, sparks of phosphorescence trailed through the water like the discharge of static electricity from a dry blanket in the dark. Moving my arm through the water gave the impression of creation. From an empty dark ocean, the light came crackling and flashing like my movement was the reagent in a chemical reaction. I spread my hands out, moved my fingers and tried new ways of moving my hands to make the sparks brighter, to gather them up in a marine lantern and let them scatter back into the still dark waters.

Gina and I hardly talked, the light had flung each of us into a unique sensory world. We splashed and stirred the water muttering exclamations more for our own benefit that for communicative purposes. Something about the way we were moving and the flat, impressed tones of our voices was familiar. I stopped playing with the plankton for a second and tried to think. I watched the way Gina was swaying through the water and I thought of my autistic sister flapping her hands around, cocking her head to an angle to get a better view of something no one else could see. Muttering astonished sounds into her hand, like she was trying to keep them for herself. The isolated way we splashed through the plankton reminded me of the movements of all the autistic people I had grown up with, skip-running, whispering, holding onto door frames and quickly leaning in and out of a room all these movements which seemed to indicate they were chasing after a fleeting vision, something subtle they were trying to gather and rattle into a conflagration. Perhaps these visions are more real to the autistic person than the everyday world they see around them, including the people in that world. Here in the water, gathering handfuls of light and throwing them up into the dark, it was easy to understand. There was a world behind my own experience, but it was dark and distant. It seemed to have little bearing on what I did. I was alone with what I was creating, but the world ‘alone’ had been stripped of all pathos. The water could have been full of other swimmers, having their own interactions with the plankton, but they could be no more than ornaments on my solipsistic horizon. I didn’t care.

The garlands of drowned light could only entwine our attention so long and we began to feel tired. We left the water and that isolating world of light, color and motion behind. I told Gina I thought I understood more about what it was like for my sister, for all autistics; how it would be hard to break through that sort of trance and become something visible and relevant for a person living between the coruscating lights and colored shadows of a newly born galaxy. As we talked about this, I noticed a shadow ahead. Someone else had lately been down in the water and was now returning. The form was lanky and moved slowly, weighed down by the peace of the experience, probably. We all moved slowly to the lights of the bar and in the growing light I noticed the tangled, dripping hair of the man from Seattle only now his face wore a beatific expression. He asked us with the excitement of a kid if we had seen the plankton as well. We nodded. “Wow,” he said, beaming. “Wasn’t it amazing?” We nodded and agreed that it was and then he spun away in the dark to his own room and his own dreams.

We reached our own creaky hut, showered and got ready for bed. I read for a few minutes and thought about my sister. She would experience something like what we did in the water, but afterward, there would be no one to share it with, just another experience to tumble into, another fog of light and motion and no one to affirm that it was amazing; just you and leagues of empty ocean. Falling asleep, I wondered, ‘if your whole life had been like that, could you even be aware that something was missing?’