Developmentitis

Phnom Penh: June 16 – 22, 2024

let's not begin with the punctuated laugh    but
        with the smallness of the underprise, its
        variance with the line and its underbelly

of memory     that which goes deeper than the
        I of sink, that which goes softer than the
        blue of see     as surely as the mad are free

---

1. It’s a familiar work travel routine: plush hotels, bucket list food, occasional novelty, less-than-yous glossed over by the exotica, faarigh goras and uss se bhi faarigh local goras. In short, ‘D’evelopment ballay ballay!’
2. And then there was this ambivalence to Development – perhaps even resistance – we witnessed in the Chitral valley just two weeks back. And I don’t think it a coincidence that the smiles in Chitral come from a place diametrically opposed to where modernity lies, smug in its well-mannered solitaryness.
3. Flying over Bangkok, the symmetric geometry reminded me of a similar european city flyover years ago. At the time, there was awe; now, not. Holding on to what is all-too-human is a challenge after such vivisection.

---

what is differentiable is not duality but the circumference
          of the possible     how the two taos can intersect without
          exchanging DNA   how the commingling of variables

are born into fear and the opposite of fear    the dance of
          undifferentiated duals cringing at the prospect of 
          being set apart     by prose, by war and their priests -