He considered pulling a few thousand baht from his wallet to give to this Laotian. Then it occurred to him that he would need to give the same to all of these marathon contenders, but he did not have that much money in his wallet nor was he so inclined to give what he had to one let alone the countless many. If it were unethical to know the suffering of an acquaintance and be unmoved to assist him, he rationalized, giving special favors to one with no regard to the masses did not seem any more ethical. So, as always, he horded what he had; and indeed he was one of those who had an abundance being a purveyor of turpitude as well as art which together was popular with both wealthy intellectuals and idiots alike. Such a trivial dabbling of philanthropy, he further argued, would more likely than not be money thrown into the whirlwind of drugs, liquor, or other exacerbated vice from which a self-deprecating fool more easily annihilated himself. And if he wanted to believe the false presage that such a nominal act would cause perpetual kindness the way a rock thrown in a creek begets one ripple that begets another it would not matter. He would not be able to successfully delude himself for long; at best he would be engendering a short time of ever diminishing ripples.
"Besides," he thought, "if this guy is so badly off, he should not be riding in an air conditioned car." It was a rather harsh judgment given his knowledge that the poor sometimes treated themselves to a bit of middle class opulence to make themselves connected to the society that they served and to sense that they could thrive rather than merely live. He repeated to himself that he would not pull out a few thousand baht and give it to a stranger who would resent him regardless of what he did or did not do. This was his conclusion in a sleep-deprived head that had too much crammed into it.
He then considered that sleep was a diminishing reduction of memory (a zipped file in a computer) but one where the zipping weathers away the details. He considered that, given enough hours over a period of evenings, sleep could even dilute the memory of Noppawan repeatedly swinging the frying pan against his arm--an arm that was still throbbing and itching in the cast.
