and so, the best of intentions shatter in the torrents once again...taken up by the hill temple from the other day as i, for once with correct clothing, attempt yet again to find my way to the palace and beyond to a hill village and a summit...but ten minutes of scooter through veils of lancing water, cold against the self imposed windchill, offered only a pause which stole the sun and promised only moments leading to a dodgy darkened downhill drift...the sunset clasped by the clouds, my camera showing the weariness of these last months in lens and body struggled in the low light...

later an influx of b52s against with another small group of variations from the tiny bar as dawn arrived reddened cloud above the moat and another failed sunrise ride...

and sudden visa thoughts from an englishman, two weeks, two times, it doesn't quite work with the latest of places and return....and so to ventiane with either an application at the thai embassy or a flight back here...and odd days which fail to fit...something there is here which works as magnet, as there was all those years ago....the cavalcade stream of images, of bones for further scribbles and possibilities for scribbles flawed upon page, changes recur, a schizophrenic eye placed upon centre and periphery....and part of an answer to an old cloak and question of why do we travel...maybe part of it is to find these places, here, pai, varanasi, wien, mein liebling stadt...where iis another and where drifting time parades reckless and the road is, awhile, silent in it's siren song...four days of visa left, laos upon the horizon and beyond that the echoes of something, somewhere lost in the mythologies of other pasts...

and so i return for the third time towards dreams of the mountain...in the words of dylan....one more cup of coffee:-)