I've even said to other countries - I've said, "Listen, you're charging us a lot. We're going to charge you the same thing. " They shrug their shoulders. They can't fight it.
The first I heard of the beach was in Bangkok, on the Ko Sanh Road.
There are one hundred glow-stars on my bedroom ceiling. (. . . ) Glow-stars are strange. They make the ceiling disappear.
Dream life, I realized, was only confusing when you were awake. It was from the perspective of waking life that dream life seemed fractured and lacking consequence, lacking any certainty that one thing led to another. But from within dream life, the world was generally coherent. Not exactly an unconfusing world-just no more confusing than any other.
By the time the plane was airborne I'd forgotten England even existed.
I knew my affection for the Philippines was equally as telling: a democracy on paper, apparently well ordered, regularly subverted by irrational chaos. A place where I'd felt instantly at home.
Every dream that anyone ever has is theirs alone and they never manage to share it. And they never manage to remember it either. Not truly or accurately. Not as it was. Our memories and our vocabularies aren't up to the job.
People say it takes 10 years to change your life. It's bullshit. It takes a moment, a second. But it may take you 10 years to get to the point of finally saying, "Enough. "
I remember an old Singer sewing machine at home that belonged to my grandmother. It had a pedal. My mom taught me how to use it when I was 12 years old. I used to find it so intriguing, how a flat piece of material could be made into an object that had so many uses.
I'd always have it (grease( in at least two places, in case the umpires would ask me to wipe one off. I never wanted to be caught out there with anything though, it wouldn't be professional.
I hate partying. If I'm forced to go to a party or a social gathering, I go in at 9:30 and leave at 10 P. M.