It
was a bit like a lit candle on a krathong, a hand length banana-leaf
boat sent out onto waters during the Loi krathong holiday. A given
krathong would perhaps sail a hundred meters on a river before being
tipped over in waves and winds along with one's negativity and
culpability; and for this exorcism the river goddess would bestow onto
such an individual a new year of blessings. As a boy he had thought
that this universal love was so pure that it was colorless and
translucent. He believed that it was so ubiquitous and protecting like
a mosquito net around the world, but alive, sensitive, and full of
feeling; and that from it came the babies...the babies. Certainly as
the years were placed on the tables like plates of rice and bowls of
noodle soup it was harder to believe that brotherly love was equally
dispersed among mankind. It seemed that the darker the pigment of a
Thai, the more likely he was to do his menial tasks and the whiter he
was, the more such Thais seemed to own the enterprises of the country.
To his brother, Kumpee, like the father, he had existed as a verbal
punching bag to relieve stress.
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