My Static World: Angering the Forest Spirit

So, yesterday Pee Kai comes up to me and he's really excited about something, as usual, I have no idea what. He reems off a whole bunch of Thai words that I've never heard before, as he often does when he's had a couple glasses of Hong Thong, then waits for my response. I reply with my quintessential "mei khao jai" (I don't understand). After some deliberation he mimes the act of holding a chainsaw and then makes a buzzing sound with his mouth as he waves the imaginary machine in front of him. Following his drift I mime holding a camera and make a clicking sound. He knods, I knod; the communication gap has been bridged. It's all smiles and laughter from then on and he explains to me in words that I understand that I will come home from school tomorrow at 10 and we will go...somewhere. That's my quite literal briefing.

Today, on my way home from school I bump into Pee Kai at the gas station and we ride out together. We travel down winding side roads and muddy dirt paths on our motorcycles until we arrive at a beautiful spot overlooking a shallow valley. There is the skeleton of a house on a slight ridge where Toto (his son) and another man are sharpening the blades on some chainsaws. It turns out that we are clearing the land in front of (what will be Pee Kai's cottage), for planting coffee. They spend the next couple of hours cutting down innumerable trees while I snap pictures. They even let me use the chainsaw to chop a couple down myself. As the spinning teeth dig into the bark churning up sawdust, my residual hippie sentiments kick in and I imagine a giant black ooze demon emerging from the heart of the tree, voiced by Tim Curry and singing 'Toxic Love' to me while it feeds off of the fumes of my smoking chainsaw. Yes, I probably saw Fern Gully too many times, but unfortunately, in real life there are no hot little faeries to appeal to my forgotten sense of morality.

As I walk over the remains of the trees we felled I think a little more. Is it worth destroying the habitat of so many creatures just so that humans can turn a profit? It is moral to harness nature solely for your own benefit? I think back to the coffee that I drank that morning, to the coffee that I had the morning before that. I remember the thousands of cups of coffee that I've seen clutched in the hands of so called 'hippies' sporting reusable coffee mugs as they flutter off to another philosophy class. I think about that and I realize that if we really love coffee so much, Pee Kai has every right to chop down a couple of trees to feed our need. He has every right to expand his enterprises and provide a good future for Toto, who skipped school that day so he could learn the practicle skills being applied there. I realized that it's easy to condemn people for chopping down rainforests and other natural habitats to plant crops. It's easy until you actually meet those people who aren't evil at all. In the end this was no tragedy only an allegory of human morality and empathy. Oh, I saw a giant centipede today and pointed out to Pee Kai. I thought it was so awesome. He immediately chopped it in half with his machete. Apparently they are really dangerous; allegorical allignment? Maybe a little. Now for some 'Green Police mugshots'.

Pee Kai lights a fire to keep mosquitoes away while we eat breakfast, I hope they all starve!

Look at this evil bastard! He's itching to destroy some natural habitat. You can see it in his eyes.

Getting down to work (don't worry, I cropped the dead baby birds out of the picture)

Taking a break to sharpen the teeth on the chainsaw and discuss how much we hate all animals. We decided on the middle ground between 'a lot' and 'just enough'.