There Are Still Unknown Places by Ron Morris
Once — okay, more than once — when my thinking on a matter of personal consequence was going astray, a dear friend advised me, “Don’t get caught up in your own movie.”
Translation: We all are inclined to inwardly dramatize our lives as imagined scripts navigating our daily grinds and emotions.
In this context, it is fitting that in the opening “scene” of Ron Morris’ absolutely brilliant There Are Still Unknown Places (Villefort Publishing), there is John, a young man who has just arrived in Thailand to conquer his demons and find success for which he couldn’t in the States, walking through a central park at night and stepping over the masses of people who have come to watch a free movie (from a corporate sponsor, by the way) being projected on huge screens.
What John and his entourage of fellow characters, most of whom teach English at the Come Rich Language Learning Center in Bangkok, come to realize is that life is nothing like that which we are led to believe in the movies.
The Unusual Venture in “The Movie” of This Protagonist’s Life
As E.M. Forster’s classic tale of prejudice and misunderstanding, A Passage to India, is the consummate novel of that land, maybe someday There Are Still Unknown Places will take its place as the unmitigated literary anthem to Thailand. It’s that good.
Morris is an expert on the land (heck, his website address is www.2bangkok.com). That becomes clear as he weaves through his compelling story, taking in virtually every aspect of Thai life: the history, terrain, climate, traditions, politics, language, religion, influence and the ways of business — whether legal or not. And he does so in such a magnificent voice and writing style.
In describing the locals watching the movie: “These were the brooding unconscious forces … that conspired to make that which must be come to pass. These were the inexorable events from every direction — the missed appointment, the torn shirt, the misplaced key, an avalanche of minutia working to align men with their destiny.”
“Seemingly arbitrary, they troublingly suggested to the mind that there must be some Byzantine plan to create a story of each man’s life full of farce and irony out of the most random of events.”
In John, I’m reminded of the iconic Paul Simon line, “They’ve all come to look for America”— except John seeks his American dream far from America. Frustrated with his homeland colleagues following the common course of marriage, kids, wealth and happiness, John believes he is up to it as well — only in Thailand. Here he can – he will, he convinces himself — make his mark. He envisions (his movie) reporting back to them of his accomplishments and fortune.
But selling Christmas trees?
That’s the business venture to which John ties his future: bringing the holiday and one of its iconic symbols into the homes of thousands of Thais. They will love it.
He contracts with a Thai lawyer, who brings in a Thai businessman to sit on his company’s yet-to-be-established board as his native representative, who is working for a so-called Thai “big man,” a wealthy titan of commerce who controls businesses, people and their ideas — in any manner necessary.
“I’m going to eat the world,” John thinks. “And when I’m done, there’s just going to be a rind left. You better hope there’s not too many of me.”
But again, there’s the matter of separating reality from Hollywood fantasy, and realizing that perhaps Thailand is not the panacea after all. Oh yes, John acknowledges he is naïve – just less naïve than everyone else.
“This was not the place for such a person who could not see reality,” writes Morris. “It was dangerous being too far from those who can check you. Yes, being so far away is the opposite of the freedom everyone thinks they want.”
Teachers Still Learning To Chart Their Own Course
The supporting cast of teachers at the Come Rich school are intriguing in their own right: Peter, who never met a drink he didn’t like; Guy, in a near-impossible search for his long-lost father; Winston, who seems grounded to the school as fellow teachers come and go; and Laura, not shy about speaking her mind and seemingly oblivious to the consequences. Each one puts a different slice of life on display.
What a marvelous written description of the character Porn, a Thai office girl at the Come Rich school: “She knelt on her mat to meditate. Immediately beside her was the little desk that her father had bought her when she went to school. She studied as she should, as everybody was supposed to, and she, right then, was a thing of her place and time, in the mountain of life, blind to the whirling stars above or the eternity before and after that she never knew. No one knew what things she held in her heart nor would they ever, but she did not know that then. She was right there, kneeling on her little mat, untouchable, the perfect and imperfect thing that she was.”
In There Are Still Unknown Places, Morris makes sure that everything matters and he leaves it all on the playing field. If it isn’t the story, it is the characters. If it isn’t the characters, it’s the culture. But no matter what, it’s always about the writing, a beautifully crafted work of language, land, intelligence, insight, observation and philosophy.
To put it another way, Morris delivers a portrait of people grasping for hope but shrouded in an air of fatality.
“We are not just animals, monkeys in clothes. We are so dangerously complex that we must wrap ourselves in sentimentality to be able to comprehend. We must create neuroses to shield ourselves, to handle the four square inches of neurons packed in our skulls. Living and growing and being and perceiving – this unleashes the tightness of thought, the dread of enduring.”
Cut. Print.
Ron Morris is a writer, broadcast journalist, political analyst and traveler. He started life in the United States, later attending the University of Southern California, and after a stint in the Hollywood film industry, began a lifetime of travel. His writing spans Thai politics, The That Book, A Field Guide to Thai Political Motivations, to his literary memoir of living in Southeast Asia in the Asian Tiger era, Last Century. There Are Still Unknown Places is a new novel of Bangkok life told from the perspectives of both foreigners and locals grappling with changing times. His upcoming, as yet untitled, book is the true story of a dangerous adventure in an unnamed Southeast Asian nation and an attempted coup d’état. Visit www.2bangkok.com.
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