[joe-frank-list] 'White elephants'

[rbell at alumni.caltech.edu]

	Joe tells of visiting Sri Lanka, describes the poverty, tells
of a beggar boy, Ali, 8 or 9, who tries to sell him sex.  When Joe
won't buy that Ali sells him hashish.  When the first hit doesn't
work, Joe swallows the whole thing, goes to dinner in the hotel, trips
heavily, barely makes it back to his room.  Joe realizes life is
meaningless, wants to share his insight.  The next day Ali tells him
he wants to go straight, to go to school.  Joe finds this so absurd he
gives him all the money he has on him.  (re-used, in an
slightly-expanded version, in 'A landing strip in the jungle')
	9:00: Joe tells of the harried mother with a dysfunctional
family: husband a codeine addict who spends all day in the bedroom
studying Plato, the oldest son who dropped out to become a carpenter
in Oregon, the next-oldest son a hopeless schizophrenic she has to
dose with Halidol in his breakfast eggs, the daughter who had run off
at 16 with a 36-year-old man, the adopted Vietnamese orphan who didn't
learn English.  She tried to leave, picked up a hippie couple, asked
them to drive because she was tired; they ended up stopped at an
intersection, stoned, watching the light.  She let them off and
returned home.  (re-used in 'Stories for nothing')
	14:00 Joe tells of the relentless beggars in Sri Lanka.
	16:10: Joe tells of the fellow who claims to be Dutch who
claims the Sri Lankans mistreat them.  When the doorman challenges him
the Dutchman runs off.
	18:30: Joe tells of walking in Berkeley Hills park with a
bunch of other stoned people.  They walk behind an archery range but
no one says anything because they don't want to seem paranoid.
(re-used in 'Stories for nothing') (There's one in Denver, not
Berkeley; it has no archery range.)
	20:20: Joe tells of professional beggars in Nepal and Tibet.
	21:20: Joe tells of meeting 'an Englishman, obviously upper
class.'  who tells of his family wealth but appears to be a fraud.
	23:50: Joe tells of a friend 'He ran an alternative
working-class high school in Somerville, Massachusetts.' that tried to
raise the class-consciousness of poor blue-collar kids.  It failed and
'he went to Bombay and became a famous guru's disciple.'
	25:50: Joe tells of the Temple of the Tooth
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_the_Tooth) a shrine in Sri
Lanka that has one of Buddha's teeth, the festival performed in its
honor. (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kandy_Esala_Perahera) 
A fellow gives him a tour of the nearby Roman Catholic Church.  Joe
plays the organ.  He gives the fellow money.
	28:50: Giving money to someone in the 'Far East' reminds Joe
of Graham Greene, the mystery and paradox of faith in his novels.

	http://jfwiki.org/index.php?title=White_Elephants


	The second set of stories set in Sri Lanka, after the
distraught housewife, are similar to 'A landing strip in the jungle'
but different.  In fact those happen in southern India, not Sri Lanka.
	I thought Joe made up the Temple of the Tooth - I was wrong.
	It's a good thing the stoned hippie couple didn't drive
anywhere.


russell bell