Photos Haunt Us

In Krabi I picked up Time Asia, six of the sixteen Best Photos of 2005 were of disaster (including shots from the Indian Ocean tsunami, Katrina, and the Pakistan/India earthquake).

Time quotes Susan Sontag: "Narrative can make us understand," she wrote. "Photographs do something else; they haunt us."

There are plenty of haunting pictures and stories of the tsunami.

But the thing about photos is they are static.

What happens after the photo I wonder?

"I don't even remember exactly what happened anymore," says Phil, the Scot who lives at Woodlawn Lodge and is part-owner of Ao Si bungalows with the head schoolteacher Reena (I misspelled it in previous post).

Phil tends to clip his sentences as if I'm supposed to finish them. And surprisingly I can. He actually says more in his pauses, the way his throat catches, the glistening in his eyes.

I've seen so many snapshots and heard so many stories I don't know what to think anymore. In the last few days I've discussed things I'd never considered would be on the agenda: the mafia, domestic abuse, how money divides people, and the wistfulness of watching this island you want to preserve like a snapshot, change.

I have had tinges of grief for all of it. As my teacher says, everyone wants to be reborn, yet ironically nothing wants to die.

There are several entries in the Andaman Beach Resort's guestbook on December 25th. The next entry isn't until February 25th. Another in May 2005 reads: "I'm not the same Michael as was here in 2001."

Phil is my last interviewee last night. Interviewee? The truth is I've simply been talking to people. They know I'm a writer, but I've only gotten one: "No comment."

In the culmination as I hand Phil the change for my drink, he must note my glumness and offers: "Don't let it get you cynical."

It's the first time I'm not talking about relief efforts, and I try to explain why I truly came back.

"I'm not the same person as I was last year this time," I say.

"I'm not the same person I was last year," Phil replies. The glistening eyes are moist at the tanned edges. "You read about people in earthquakes. Now you know."

"Sometimes I come out here alone and sit. I look and I wonder," he says as I look straight ahead at the lapping shore imagining him sitting in the white plastic chair I just rose from.

"I'm not in control."

I'm not in control, echoes in my head as I walk along the beach strip in the dark between the coral rock shore and the forest edge on my way back to my room. 

Comments

[Marilyn]

This had never occurred to me until I read this post...but I suppose on some level that feeling of having no control must have taken up residence in me when a huge chunk of my little hometown was wiped out by a tsunami when I was 9. Before that, waves were just something you could hear breaking on the beach down the street on particulary stormy days...or watch them crashing over the jetty by the lighthouse...while the toughest boys in your class stood on the jetty and pretended to be brave while seeing if they could withstand the power of the waves. But once you've witnessed tsunami devastation up close and heard the stories from people you know...it changes everything. But it didn't even happen to ME...it happened to others a few blocks away. I can't imagine what you lived through a year ago. I so admire what you're doing on this trip. Holding you in my thoughts that your travels will be safe.

[Carl Parkes]

Very nicely written and I look forward to some posts and observations.

[logjam]

One small quibble...

It's "Woodland Lodge", not "Woodlawn Lodge".