2014
Dankwean Dinpaw , the sales area on the road is hurting. Based on quick appearances……..There has been an incredible building of sales malls. People are still building them despite lots of vacancies. Perhaps, hopefully, people believe that sales will improve. The old large potteries are falling into disrepair. Umdang is closed essentially and the business that they do is via phone sales and visits to sites where they design installations, murals and bas reliefs. The have almost no road sales except perhaps tiles.
Chao Din (people of the earth) seems to still be producing murals, but the bustling stream of visitors and buyers seems to have ended. Its once immaculate display area is getting funky. The fish pond is full of algae and the air and water pumps not working. The koi are oblivious, but as a visitor it is not nearly as nice looking.
The old professors are dead. Ajahn Pit who was always welcoming and nice to me died a few years ago and his daughter and son took over for a few years. I am told that they are now in the US. Like Chao Din the once brilliant and organized display of Ajahn Pit’s Din Phao has seen better days. Eddie McGrath wrote that there is a tendency in restaurants to rather than keep up on maintenance to just “let it go” and sell out to someone who wants to sell cheaper food and build a newer restaurant. The tendency may have some similarities here, but it is not working, Only a few nik-nack shops across the street seem to be doing well with street-side sales. I have seen several places packing work up for sale elsewhere.

Ajahn Wirot from Din-Dam has been dead for some time and his once chaotic display and museum is hard to see among the weeds and behind the distracting buildings. It would surprise me to find out that any sales at all were going on there.

Across the street from Umdang there is a place where tour busses stop because the displays are clean. They sell espresso there for 45 baht and about 100 yards away it is only 25. There apparently are people buying little nicknacks still.

The hand skills on the “traditional” carved surface Dankwean pots have continued to improve. There is truly some incredible carving going on. I hope that the scrafitto workshop really takes hold as this would help create an opportunity for these skills to translated to fired surfaces. That said the painted surfaces look better and better every year I visit.

2014 Prep

I am preparing to go to Thailand. I have lists and even a list of lists. I have packing lists, lists of paperwork to duplicate, lists of people to contact, letters to write, and files to transfer to the laptop. Oy.

But there are other preparations I have to make. They may be more important. I must slow down, remember the Thai manners, the cool heart – jai yen, slow, controlled not too excited. I have to remember to slow and greet people properly, the smile and the ability to let things roll off my back with a smile on my face. It is not just smiling that I need to do, but the smile state of mind.

The idea that desire is the root of suffering, that grasping creates disappointment, is at the heart of this change. It is a part of Buddhist philosophy but, it is so widely accepted and implemented in Thailand , that you have to succumb or find yourself swimming upstream. I no longer can swim upstream for months at a time. I have to smile, go with the flow, allow the troubles, the hurry, frowns, worries, to flow away, to touch perhaps but never stick. I have to learn to “mai pen rai” . To activate the phrase “its not a problem or worry” you have to make it a verb.

I have a huge agenda. It is work. It is too much. It would be good if I could get it all done. It is almost certainly undoable.  An agenda like this can add an off flavor to everything. It can prevent months of work from being productive, too much stress on doneness not enough flex to contemplate, think, digest,,,. I have to start by doing “mai pen rai” by turning off the worries and allowing the future to come. You can only swim upstream so long.

I  have to even stop my little social concerns. Did I fail to slow down and say Sawasdii, did I remember to call them “elder”, was I polite enough. I have to do this because really the first politeness in Thailand is to mai pen rai. It is a necessity like air. When you do this, the little stuff comes easy, and the hard stuff is easier.