Silent lies

I visited my old hostel two days after returning to Edinburgh - the one which for three years had been my base in Europe - the one where the owner had banned me. It's a long story and short one. His manageress had joined me on the island of Mykonos for a 10-day holiday. That must have had something to do with it. I walked up to the counter and heard her voice. She was speaking on the phone. I didn't call out. I didn't need to. She could see me on the CCTV monitor. That's what it's there for. The camera stared at me. Her voice became agitated, impatient— The owner emerged.

"Hi. I don't know if you're still keeping my post, but I'm here to collect it if you are."

"Yes. We have some of it," he said and went back inside.

"Thanks. I'll change my postal address as soon as I find a new place to stay," I said it through the doorway. She would have heard my voice.

Her call must have ended. She was silent. He returned with a small pile of letters, far less than usual, and went back inside without another word. The letters had been hastily collected. I was later to discover wrapping paper, a postcard to him, and his motorcycle insurance policy (I threw them away). I spent another second or two straightening the pile and listening to the silence back in the office, long enough for her spontaneous emergence, should it occur. It didn't. I turned around and left with a small expectation that she would follow. She didn't.

I reread her last email. I had dismissed it as soap-opera, expecting to resolve it when next I saw her. Yes, there it was - she didn't "hate anyone on principle." It implied she should hate me. I had had a feeling of some closure, but the previously ignored implication weighed a wordless sadness into my gut. I got to thinking of how people believe what they want to believe, or what they need to believe. Almost everything in that letter is a response, not to things I had said but, to what he claims I did... and to whatever speculation ensued. Who knows?

Truth exists only at the moment it occurs. Even then it's uniquely filtered by the perception of the observer. Thereafter it's transported via motives of recall into something quite distant; a lie constructed then consolidated by repetition. It's the lie which is most adamantly defended. It's the lie which is preserved. It is lies which become what we call reality.

Distortions like his are spoken lies. Truths unspoken are lies of silence like hers. When hearing something which alters our opinion of a friend - it's a lie of silence if we don't confirm it. When we know of something which will be to their detriment and don't tell them - that is a lie of silence. When we could help them to understand our situation and don't - that too is a silent lie. Each one is a betrayal of precious friendship, until there is nothing but a shell drained of truth and filled with a poisonous fiction.

That's the short story. There's a long one too. Too long to end like that, too long for me to remain. I was trying to be a writer. The only way I knew how to write a story was to live it. It was time to start a new one.

The red-shirt protests were getting ugly in Thailand. Governments were advising their citizens not to go there. The air-tickets would be cheap. The cheapest flight was via Lufthansa believe it or not. I booked for the Friday evening. Edinburg to Frankfurt, then to Bangkok, then to Chiang Mai. It's in the north-western corner of Thailand, west of Laos and south and east of Burma. Apparently it's mountainous, beautiful and very cheap.