Under a Full Moon and the Golem Tree-9 & 10-End

[Central Scrutinizer]

 

Under a Full Moon and the Golem Tree--parts 9 & 10

--The End

 

Under a Full Moon and the Golem Tree--part 9

 

 

The ritual starting of the BBQ is the herald of good times to come in the village. Thais love to eat! When food is cooking they are happy and festive, any excuse for a party with these simple village people. The evening meal is an event, a focal point for each community of family and friends to gather about to feed and drink, and discuss the day's happenings. In Isaan every meal has the feel of a party actually, the evening meal more so though.

 

I had started the new BBQ's as I had been taught by the wife and Sis. Once they were deemed to be of a sufficient temperature for the cooking of the chicken, pork, and shrimp I was relegated to the 'sit and drink beer and give instructions' mode, of which I am becoming expert in doing. I was a bit out of practice from so long a stay in the land of 'equality of the sexes', but once again took to the experience as a duck to the water. I sucked on my beer Chang and gave the occasional hint as to how I wanted these fares prepared to my satisfaction. God I love being a man in a village setting in Thailand. It just all seems so natural and right. No nagging, harping, loud mouthed bitching and moaning from the ladies. Just charming girl-ish laughter and cheerful banter as each goes about their duties. It has a calming effect on a man's heart and soul. I thrive on it, and it brings me back to the times in my past when it was once the same way here in the USA.

 

Mostly when my Grandmothers were still alive, and holidays were spent in their homes as resplendent meals were prepared in the kitchen by the ladies, who could be heard chattering good naturedly and happily away about womanly things with the women, as the men sat about smoking their tobacco and drinking their beers and liquors and talking sports and politics and world events, or maybe the hunting this season, or some funny fishing tales. Alas those times are gone it seems for the most part. Progress it seems, but not for the better in my humble opinion.

 

I have recaptured these moments of yore once again in the present time here in the Isaan village. It soothes my spirit and quiets my soul, and here I intend to remain for as long as the peace and charm remain intact.

 

As I sat out back of the house in our open, yet roofed, kitchen area I glanced over toward Sis 2's shop area across the side yard of our home. I noticed the brooding silhouetted presence of the hulking Golem Tree hovering above the festivities next door. This sight of this ugly dead tree always gives me a chill for some odd reason. It is a twisted mutated looking caricature of a dead tree, and quite eerie looking in a haunted graveyard, horror story-looking, type of way.

 

My mind began to wander back through time, to another place, another Golem Tree. Fade out to 1967.

 

There used to be a gang of us, retards and reprobates all. Friends. Musketeers, hooligans, pirates, and potential juvenile delinquents. Our favorite weekend pastime being drinking whatever we could get our hands on, and smoking, ingesting, or whatever, whatever illicit and illegal drugs we could purchase for a few bucks. As it seemed to be most everyone else's in the country's past time being spent at this time in history as well. We were nothing if not the products of our times, the fifties and sixties.

 

We were high-spirited, not mean spirited, though trouble could arise during our pursuit of pleasure. To decrease the chances of our being spotted sotted and drugged we had a favored hangout secluded from the prying eyes of the police, and the nosy old ladies of the neighborhood who usually called them and sicced them on us whenever they could. Old ladies haven't much to occupy their time it seems, and god knows we were in need of a locking up. :-)

 

One friend, a silly drunk named Matty, had found this small densely wooded place central to most of our gang's homes, and one day showed the place to us all, describing its advantages of seclusion and privacy to us as we strolled down the summery concrete sidewalks of Ocean Street, Lynn, Mass. Matty expertly rolled a joint as as we walked along and railed on about this cool place he had found.

 

He called it "Golem Forest". "Where the fuck did you come up with that name?" we asked him. "Is that it's name really?" we queried as we passed along the "joint", taking our hits respectively as it passed, or "J-bar" as we hip young pothead 14 and 15 year olds called it back then. "Nah", said Matty mysteriously, "I call it that because the place is haunted, and in the middle of the forest is "The Golem Tree". It's where we can hang out and no-one can see us or will hear us in there." As I sucked down a lungful of pot I noticed a distinct chill down my spine as Matty said the name "Golem Tree", and wondered what the hell that was all about.

 

"What the fuck is a Golem Tree?" I elocuted eloquently, in a squeaky voice I might add, as I held the smoke of the evil weed deep in my lungs as long as I could.

 

Matty turned to me, his eyes behind his thick glasses looked huge, like an owl's, his long curly wavy hair was in disarray, giving him the air of an Ian Anderson in concert, Aqualung, a maniacal look it was. His brilliant blue eyes, which all the ladies who could stand his wild drunken ways over the next few years absolutely adored, had a bloodshot cast from his maryjane imbibing of the day. He said to me, grinning like a loon, "What is a fuckin' Golem Tree? Well let me tell you Mike..........."

 

And he was off and running on another of his fanciful stories, which we all loved to hear, especially when we were buzzed.

 

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"Youth is wholly experimental."

 

Robert Louis Stevenson

A Letter to a Young Gentleman

 

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                  Part 10-The End

 

Under a Full Moon and the Golem

Tree--part 10--The End

 

 

Now, Matty was a crazy bastard, full of stories and antics bound to amuse and titillate one and all. Like most of the rest of us he was a mutt, an American mixed breed. Unlike the rest of us half Irish, and half whatever, English, Italian, Polish, German, et cetera. My friend Big Wayne would say we were, "a box of mixed donuts". Matty's mix was a bit stranger than most. He was half Irish, and half Jewish! A rarer mixed breed than the rest of us he was, and the possessor of an esoteric education most of us had never had the benefit of. He went to Catholic religious schools, AND Jewish school too for his Hebrew education a couple afternoons a week! He was a smart fucker, and an entertainer to boot. You had to love the guy. His one major fault was his inability to hold his liquor.

 

Matty was a silly, sloppy, drunk. Four beers and he would be rolling around on the floor, or ground, or middle of the street in a snowstorm, or where ever he happened to be when the alcohol took hold of his brain, doing his imitation of a baby seal. Comical the first few times, but sadly this was his one and only act once the liquor overcame his senses. He needed watching from the rest of us. We counted his beers. The joints were definitely better for him. This day Matty told us a story about the Golem.

 

For those who don't know, and weren't there, basically a Golem is a Jewish legend about an image or form that is given life through a magical formula. (I guess any image or form, even a tree.) Usually a Golem takes the form of a robot or automaton. In the Hebrew bible and Talmud the term refers to an "unformed substance". It's present meaning developed in the middle ages, when legends arose of wise men who could instill life in effigies by the use of a charm. The creatures were sometimes believed to offer special protection to Jews. The best known of the Golem stories concerned a Rabbi Low of 16th century Prague, who was said to have created a Golem that he used as his servant. (Got that from the encyclopedia. :-)

 

Matty's Golem story was funny, and scary, and well told, from what I remember of it, I was pretty stoned at the time myself. He made us laugh, and also gave us the chills. He explained that he found this tree in the middle of this small forest when he was trippin' on some brown mescaline, and it, the tree, seemed to have a life of its own, and scared him a bit. So he decided that maybe it was a Golem, and he named it the Golem Tree, and the surrounding wooded area he dubbed Golem Forest. It was ours, and we took to it right away. Golem Forest would become our hang out for the next couple of years, until we all had cars. Our secret hiding place. "Meet us at the Golem Tree" was an oft heard cry.

 

When we all saw the tree itself we were amazed. I knew this thickly wooded lot fairly well, having walked past it a million times probably, but only Matty had explored the thickets of trees thoroughly, and discovered this bizarre freakish tree right in the center of the two or three acre lot. The bole of the tree was as thick a twenty men, and it's branches were easily reached, the lowest being only maybe four feet off the ground, and themselves as thick through as a fat grown man who loves his beers.

 

Standing under the tree its circumference must have been a good twenty feet around from its trunk, and the leaves so thick on its limbs that once you climbed up a few feet you were damn near invisible from the ground. We built wooden benches between the thick branches with planks about 15 feet up in the tree, made a storage box for beers and such in the crutch of the trunk where some branches diverged. It was an ugly tree. It was a gruesome and frightening tree. It was great! It was the Golem Tree, and it was ours.

 

Many an evening was spent in its branches by myself and my friends. We discussed life, love, and the world as we saw it in our young drug and beer addled minds. We were all tight friends, and saw each other almost every day most times. Surfing buddies, musicians, band members, the original skateboarders, athletic hippies, like minds, kindred souls. Drugged out Stonie Burkes enjoying the 60's and early 70's free love, rock and roll, and experimentational and changing society.

 

Never once did the cops find us in the Golem Tree. It worked a charm. That tree was sacred and haunted. It's spirit friendly to us though. A Golem protector for us all, Jew and non-Jew alike.

 

I loved those guys back then. Now they are all gone, as is the original Golem Tree. We were scattered to the four corners of the globe, well me a corner of the globe, they a corner of the states, a couple are dead, one in war, one in traffic, most are married, or now divorced, with children, fat, bald, and happy .......hopefully. I wish them all the best in life. I only see two of them now-a-days.

 

The original Golem Tree was cut down a few years back and mulched to make room for some more houses for the yuppies. Fuck. I hate so-called progress.

 

I was startled from my reverie by some questions from my wife Waen about the cooking chicken and such on the grill. "You think finish darling?" she asked me. "Huh? Oh, yeah. Maybe another minute. Turn 'em over again for a minute and take 'em off.' I instructed. I swigged on my beer and hovered over the flames to see to the finished product. Then we gathered all the foods and wandered over to Sis 2's shop, to sit under the new Golem Tree. Thais would defintely believe in Golems, the Golem fits fine here in Isaan along with the other ghosts and goblins.

 

There we sat, happily stuffing our faces and chattering away. Next to me is a woman I love dearly. A Thai woman. Who woulda thought it. Surely not us young mutts as we sat in our Yankee Golem Tree all those years ago. My second wife. Haha! Family and friends surround us now here in Isaan. Our young daughter runs through the twilight, playing with friends of her own. Their shrieking laughter and teasing arguing and whining fills the air.

 

The full moon glows whitely as it slowly rises through the tropical foliage around the houses nearby. The shifting shadows play games with the Golem Tree and contort it into awesome and ghoulish configurations, all quite frightening and Halloween-ish. A feeling of contentment fills me fully, as it used to on occasion as I sat with my friends in that ugly haunting tree when we were so young. We were happy then. I am happy now.

 

As I sit here, under a full moon, and the Golem Tree.

 

The end.

 

 

Cent

(The Central Scrutinizer)

 

-------------------------------------

 

"Our todays and yesterdays

Are the blocks with which we build."

 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Builders

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[Guest]

good stuff Cent!

 

Gave me a chill at the end.

 

 

 

 

[Central Scrutinizer]

Pasathai,

 

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for telling me so. It's appreciated. Truly.

 

I have a new one called "Grandpa Comes for a Visit" which Khun Sanuk may be taking for the pay site exclusively. It's a true Isaan ghost tale of something strange that happened to me this past August. Creeped me out!

 

Later,

 

Cent

[Guest]

Cent:

 

I can't quite place it, but I am sure I heard reference to

golems in some sifi stories too.

 

I am looking foreward to your next writings. ( as we all are I'm sure)

 

be sure to get ur thai wife to tell you why the Ox hates the Horse ( thai story)

 

be sure to ask lots of questions. ( a few drinks help too)

 

just dont laff too hard, you may get slapped.

 

 

 

[Searcher]

CENT,

Great story. Once again you bring the village to life for the rest of us. Glad to hear you found yourself another Golem Tree. I reckon that's what alot of us are looking for.

 

Thanks for the stories,

Searcher

[Guest]

Golem is also the name of a creature in J.R.R Tolkiens "Lord Of The Rings". He is a lonley repulsive creature who lives in complete darkness in an underground cave . He lives on a large rock surrounded by water underground where he clutches "The Ring" of the famed classic !

[Central Scrutinizer]

Pasa,

 

Yeah, I've heard the word golem elsewhere too, but can't place it exactly.

 

Thanks. I'll have to ask the wife to tell me the why the ox hates the horse story. Sounds interesting. You're not setting me up for trouble are you? :-)

 

I'll do it one night just before going to bed for the evening. Good idea? Thanks Pasa.

 

Cent

[Pom_Jao_Choo]

Thx again Cent! ::

One question how did those marinades work?

[Guest]

Cent:

 

best heard in a bar setting ( or with some friends)

 

just keep the thought "inquiring minds want to know)

 

( farang minds that is)

 

snauk

[kamui]

Hi Cent,

 

I am envious, you seem to have found your way of living you like and thanks for the wonderful story!

 

There is a silent movie from 1920 "the golem" (original german title: Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam). The movie tells the legend of Rabbi Loew and how he created the Golem out of clay to save the King, but Golem finally went amok and destroyed parts of the jewish Ghetto.

http://www.german-cinema.de/archive/film_view.php?film_id=262