David Prater of davey dreamnation and Cordite Poetry Review wrote a poem about Pai, Thailand, where I’m currently living and working and where it is currently raining in the dry season.

It begins,

pai bursting through the fog to fly in low

which is exactly what Pai was doing this morning when I rushed into town, late for a deadline, and continues here.

Curiously, the poem resides in a directory of his website called ‘happy farang’. When I edited the URL to get a peek at this directory, hoping for a bevy of so-categorised poetry, I found a 404 error stating ‘Sorry, the page you were looking for could not be found’.

Funny, given how many farangs are here in a state of self-imposed exile, unwilling to be found.

But David’s about as fond of irony as I am, which is a lot fond, so maybe this ghost directory is part of some jibe I don’t understand.

I haven’t ventured into the territory of writing about Thailand myself, but if I did and I wanted to lace it with meta-data irony, the ghost directory I’d create would be ‘stupid farang’ because, no matter how hard I try to understand this place and its people, there will always be gaps and my ignorance weighs on me heavy here, mostly in the form of the constant threat of faux pas.

I mean, shit, I’m a self-confessed ‘stupid Australian’ and I was living there for nearly 27 years. I don’t even fully understand this ‘Australian’ poem. It seems kind of sinister, but maybe that’s because I know even less about Burma.

O! Ignorance! You devilish mistress.