Before the Storm

I love that moment before the storm.

The world is a grey, gloomy mess, the harsh, excited wind stirring up dust and debris everywhere, allowing the curtains of every house to flap around like raging idiots. The trees are alive, swaying around like menacing beasts int he sharp tug of the wind. The grass is a like a crowd on crack doing the Mexican wave.

And then the rain comes.

It slams its loud, demanding presence down onto the earth in torrents, wiping away any last sign of that raging debris in the air, weighing down on the suddenly fragile-seeming trees that buckle under the immense weight of the pouring rain. The world is still gray - only a lighter, hazier hue, like rapidly moving fog in the air.

My world is crisp, clean and comfy, and as the world is seemingly ending out there in the demanding harshness of the rain, I am here in my room, watching its familiar menace like a fascinated stranger.

Traffic and Rain

I was driving through Phnom Penh at 5:15 in the evening, and suddenly it was as if I was looking at the city for the first time.

It was that dim moment just before dark, when the sun had long since disappeared behind the new cement buildings of the city's outskirts, and the sky wasn't a dark blue - or a dim light blue - it was the color that came in between. It was the typical rush hour time - after 5:00 and before 6:00, and the whole city was on its way home from work. The air was thick with smog and engine fumes, and, just like on every day in the rainy season - there were soft raindrops falling from the darkening sky, pattering down onto the car rooftops, splashing off like little explosions of water. The wind was tugging at my hair, stray raindrops dampening it pleasantly, and despite the 25-degree weather, I felt the gentle chill of the wind in my clothes.

Everything was in this grey hue: the bright colors of the city made less intense by the darkening evening sky. The irritating red brake lights of the vehicles pierced through the colorless shades of the evening, making my my eyes ache, their bright luminescence slightly blurred by the rain.

The Cambodians around me were staring, just as usual, right at me. They didn't care whether or not I felt uncomfortable, or about the fact that they looked like complete idiots looking at me like that. Their curious looks seemed to cover me in a blanket of self-consciousness, and I tried to ignore them. Nevertheless, their questioning eyes never left me, or my body, my hair, my purse, my everything. I knew it all too well. I could practically hear the whispering, judgmental prejudice blitzing through their minds. To them, I was a rich Western woman, going to meet my rich Western husband at home, where I was perfectly content and always happy because nobody ever cheated me or lied to me or was cruel to me. To them, I was all that, and nothing less.

My eyes shifted to the traffic ahead, to the people who weren't staring at me. Rather, they were caught in up in their own daydreams, alone on their way home from work. They were completely oblivious to the world around them. To them, it was an ordinary day, an ordinary evening; just another few minutes in an endless life of trying to "get by".

You can hear all kinds of things on this simplistic adventure: the whining distant sounds of karaoke bars in the city, the drumming vibrations of the vehicles around you, and the all too constant blaring or car horns. I've lived here my whole life, and so I have learned to shut out these all-too-familiar sounds. So all I heard was noise - blended together in a messy, unorganized pile, something that I never learned to love and will forever find I hate. It was a messy, endless maze of traffic: thousands of motos, cars and tuktuks; pushy, rude and intense.

And in the middle of it all: me.

Beach House (English assignment: descriptive writing)

Last night I dreamt I went to the beach house again. I appeared to be standing just outside the white wooden fence, wearing nothing but my bathing suit and a damp towel around me. It seemed strange to me that I was cold, and that the wind was crisp against my bare skin. It wasn’t the usual balmy, humid breeze. Instead, it was biting cold against my nose and cheeks, sending goose bumps up my bare arms.

The wooden fence was white, but the paint was chipping everywhere. It was like the popular shabby-chic style gone totally wrong. Some areas of the fence were void of white paint altogether.

My gaze wandered past the fence, peering above the splintered wood into the sandy yard of the beach house. The sand was a grimy grey-brown color, small tendrils of it whispering away from each little pile, dancing in the air and disappearing into the gloomy shaded hues of the evening. It seemed alive in the sharp tug of the wind, waltzing around like an uneven cluster of dancers, leaving behind the dirt and lint that polluted it so.

I was suddenly aware of the fact that I was climbing over the fence, driven by curiosity and the need to move some warmth into my body. I landed less-than-gracefully on the filthy sand, grains of it sticking to my wet towel. Like in all dreams, the gentle pain from the fall was vague and surreal. I got up and dusted myself off, the damp grains of sand brushing off of me, carried in swirls by the crisp wind.

I turned towards the beach house, and was surprised to see that it was suddenly masked by a row of palm trees that hadn’t been there before. The leaves of the trees seemed to sag eerily, bending and swaying in the tug of the wind, rustling softly. Usually the sound would have been calming to me, but instead I felt a nagging heaviness in my stomach, pulling at my chest in uncomfortable nausea. My knees felt weak, and I realized what the feeling was. Fear. I was all alone, with a line of dark trees swaying in unison in front of me. They felt like a wall of demons defending their lair of fire, large and intimidating, ready to pounce at my every movement. I found myself shrinking back protectively, never taking my eyes off of them.

I moved forward slowly, cautiously, until I was right underneath the giant trees. They were even more frightening from beneath. Towering high above me, they continued to sway, leaves spread out like menacing claws of doom, threatening me, forcing me to a halt. Every nerve of my body was on edge. I felt the adrenaline coursing through my veins, my brain screaming at me to run, run! But I was completely frozen in place, numb with terror. I couldn’t move a single muscle, despite my mind’s persistent yelling. My muscles were fighting my will, twitching indecisively and complaining about the constant strain between choosing to move and choosing to stay rooted in the same position for all eternity.

Just like in like in all dreams, it seemed to me that I stayed there for hours, waiting for wind to calm down and the trees to finally disappear. But they never did, and so my nerves eventually released their rigid tension. My muscles were vaguely sore from the long battle with my mind, but the pain was pushed aside quickly as my subconscious turned me around to look at the beach house.

It stood there, alone, barely four meters ahead of me, yet it seemed so much further away. It was as if I was looking at it from a distance, watching it grow smaller and smaller and more alone, surrounded by a vast expanse of murky sand. The fence was gone from my vision, as well as the pillars of demons that I had already overcome. The house was alone.

It was not how I had remembered it. In fact, it seemed to me as though I was seeing it for the first time. The sand just before the front porch steps was uneven and bent with dozens of footprints. The steps themselves seemed to creek just from looking at them, splintered edges jabbing out on all sides, threatening to harm any intruder of the house.

Was I an intruder? Confusion covered my mind in a hazy blanket. Of course I wasn’t. This was home, wasn’t it?

My gazed raked over the rest of the house: the wooden pillars of the front porch, weakly supporting the broken structure of the cottage; the veranda itself, chipping white paint everywhere; and the pitiful set of rocking chairs, swaying back and forth as though an eerie figure had just gotten up and left them a matter of seconds ago. The roof of the house was a mere skeleton of splintered wood, bare of any straw or shingles that used to keep the rain out. The windows of the house were dark rectangles of shattered glass, betraying no glimpse of what was inside the house, broken shutters of chipped blue paint thudding incessantly against the sides.

My fear of the place was gone by then, substituted with surges of inevitable melancholy. It wasn’t nostalgia I was suffering from – I knew there was nothing to be done – but somehow I still knew that this place was not the way that it should have been. It should have been different. It was supposed to alive with laughter and color, but instead there was only brokenness and misery.

By then, the last of any spare light from the sky was gone, replaced by a dark, moonless expanse of dark clouds. The wind was colder then, and I wanted to go home. I looked to my left, for the first time catching a glimpse of the sea itself: dark, colorless water, glistening in the limited starlight.