Weather: still mild.
Visited the ruins of Ayutthaya. I find it hard to reconcile the splendid city i saw in Sri Suriyothai with the poor, tumble-down houses now scattered in the formerly great city. Even sadder to know that Hongsa won the war in the end.
All i could think of, while wandering amidst broken towers of bricks, was 'Good, Lord, how on earth did they build these things?' and what sort of a war it must've been, for such a huge area to be torn down. here and there in the city you see a sudden bit of crumbling old wall labeled 'City Wall' and you know, once upon a time, these walls were the ones that kept the city's inhabitants safe within.
If modern man is great with all that he has, how much greater the man of old who made so much out of so little?
Tell me, how significant can a modern human being feel, standing next to these gargantuan edifices build by sweat and blood?
Some food for thought: the tour guide mentioned that monks (they're required to serve as monks for a certain period of time, all their men) enjoy watching sports, but arent allowed to watch ladies' gymnasticcs. too sexy. but if a monk's entire aim is to achieve the state where no earthly desires can bother him, what does it matter how sexy a woman is? why worry about temptation is you are beyond it?
On to the entertainments of the night.
Remember watching the dances of the previous night (of course you dont)?
On stage, all we see is a well prepared tale, narrated beautifully in a cultured voice, with all necessary characters and settings in place, rehearsed to run on time like a well wound clock.
This night, however, i watched not the dances, but was drawn into them; feeling the gentle rocking of a traditional barge, dancers twirling their fingers in the midst of the guests, simply adds on to the heady feeling that i'd felt as though i'd stepped a little bit back into time when royals enjoyed such entertainments. was it a little rush of excitement at watching hanuman chase after sita? while on stage, i felt a sort of detachment, as an audience watching a play, but to have hanuman prance before me, waving his, pardon me, ugly head about...
I watched those dancers slip into their costumes in a corner of the barge, simply because the barge was small and there was nowhere else for them to do so. an ordinary man and woman quickly throw on and tie different lengths of cloth, pin on trinkets, put on a mask. and behold, no longer mortal they be, but mythical princess and mighty deva.
How easy it is to switch personas. you simply step out of one into another, discarding each layer so easily. Such is the way of the stage.
But we do that in our lives, all the time, don't we?
Small wonder that we cry and laugh over what we see on stages and screens... do we recognize ourselves in art, even as it imitates life?
Or is it instead as Wilde would have it, the idea of life imitating art?
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