“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”  F. Scott Fitzgerald

Early morn in the low-slung dampness of a busy open-air eatery along the river Tonle Sap, an earth-borne day when the thickness of the humid river air was just gaining movement….

The French baguette, warm and crunchy, the coffee, piping hot in a short whiskey glass-- condensed milk adding sweetness and body to the morning brew….

Phnom Penh was only just beginning to perk as the roosters of an unsought malaise were awakening and crowing within bright streaks of sunlight through open slats of shuttered French windows.  Contentment, yet uncertainty, a daily unfolding--so was it always, or so it seemed….

Somerset Maugham must have met the drizzle of Asian morning dew and the heat and spray of Asian musk.  That busy café where he sat in Haiphong with an English chap he happened on, the revealing candor of their conversation, a rising tide of tales and narratives he so often filled with tragic love and twists of human deceit and ‘bondage’….

There is an iridescent mood of anonymity in approaching a stranger in tow, and playing a loose card may break down the ramparts only partly, just as dipping crunchy French bread into hot, milky coffee and munching along hungrily.  My new friend Quinn patted hard butter onto his baguette and slathered strawberry jam over top, nodding his head in approval. The day was getting off to a fine start…..

A transfixed gaze out into the light-brown morning where dripping shadows lurk--only slightly shading the shifting contours of a wooden journey, so abruptly and readily dispatched, coining an inviting passage back to where we’ve both floundered and sparkled…..

”So we beat on….” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Somerset Maugham

 

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald