  (who knew it was so hard to stay & study in Thailand...?!!!) well...charming, at least... and funny, warm, loving, huge-hearted, wild-spirited, kooky, curious, delightful, exasperating, one-of-a-kind, and ... batshit crazy! my friend, dinesh.  In the solitude of the past week, I have dipped and dived, rallied and reveled, and happened upon a little treasure. Such is the promise of Solitude as I know it - I may whine and thrash about in its belly, to express the moment and my experience of it, but I know I will eventually be delivered, spat up on dry land again (or pooped out?… euww…). Had I not been alone here in Thailand, I might not have received this reminder, timely and on point, particularly aligned with certain inchoate stirrings in my heart… In the bowels of my pack there is a Yoga Journal, bought at the airport in the face of some 30+ hours of travel time at the onset of this journey, and, as yet, unread. Yesterday, after a very satisfying Qi Gong class, I retreated to my A/C to wait out the mounting heat & humidity, and picked up the magazine. It was a day of Alignments; the Qi Gong class directly addressing postural “stuckness” in my body, the content of the article I read, and the very fact of reading it after all this time. A perfect trifecta, as it turns out. The article I read was about the purusharthas - “ the 4 aims in life of dharma (duty, ethics), artha (prosperity/wealth), kama (pleasure, sensual gratification), and moksha (the pursuit of liberation)”, and offered a “self-inquiry practice” to work with the purusharthas in one’s own life. As is most assuredly evident in this blog and elsewhere, I have been “in transition” for a long time now, searching within and without, for the best (most meaningful, most sustainable) way to go forward into this “new” chapter of my life; the Third Third, as I have called it. Having divested myself of “home” and most of my belongings, I embarked on a journey of world immersion, a crash course in humanity where a lot of what I thought I knew has come into question - some things have been confirmed while others have had to be tossed out the window. Anyway, the article has provided me with some clarity and inspiration - a framework for my search for the best way to go forward, and a reminder that it is really FORWARD that I want to go; not just onward but upward. In suggesting a practice to engage with in this pursuit, the article reminded me that it is work to go forward, that it takes a conscious choice and a mindful engagement with that choice to make changes in one’s attitudes and behaviors. Time alone might soften some of the edges, wear down some of the sharpest snaggy bits, but rust is rust. My mind ran with this a bit, imagining facilitating a group process where this work could be taken on and supported in community… should I again find myself someday physically in community, I may even take a run at creating this. In the meantime, though, it’s just me, my laptop, and the virtual community my laptop connects me with. In the spirit of this re-alignment process, and the honest self-inquiry it demands, I offer the following piece of writing. It is not pretty, admits things I would rather not, and gives voice to the smallest version of myself, the most stuck, the least pride-worthy… Please, therefore, consider yourself forewarned, and by all means skip it if you are moved to do so - I include it, really, for myself, as a marker, a record of where I am “starting” (again!). “time heals all wounds…” 10/18/16 Time has weaned me, certainly, from certain patterns of thought, but has it “healed” me? It has not brought forgiveness. While I have experienced states of forgiveness, of overwhelming compassion and deep comprehension, these momentary insights have not resulted in lasting convictions. I seem to have accepted the why of certain things, but not yet forgiven the ways and means of them. Unforgiving has become a mental habit, a scab I pick at quite absent-mindedly, a bad tooth I wiggle and don’t notice until the drool runs down my chin. So, personally, I don’t think Time Heals All Wounds… I think Doing The Work heals all wounds, and since the crisis of it subsided, I have not taken that work on with any consistent effort. Instead, I have left it to Time, while, if anything, actively working against that healing process. I assume the worst. So the question is WHY do I choose this - does it feel good? no. does it help me? no. What comfort does the psyche then draw from persisting in putting the most negative spin on certain things? The only answer I have at the moment is that it is my EGO that is still bruised; my ego is still in pain, and this negativity is a shooting-from-the-brainstem reflexive reaction to that pain. I have been building a protective barrier, a nest, collecting the perceived insults against me like fluff and soft grasses, to line this nest and make it Home. It’s hard to see this here, “on paper”, as it were. It is not pretty, not evolved, not something to pride oneself on… but it is honest, I think, and as such can become a first step. I have bothered to write this down because I want to change, I want to do the work, I want to evolve and grow beyond my small and selfish preoccupations… and I would like, ultimately, to be capable of rejoicing in other people’s happiness… everyone else’s… Mark this moment then, as a step toward emancipation, toward taking the helm and realigning every aspect of my life that does not support my aspirations toward freedom and growth. I hereby stand reminded: this is what i want.  Dinesh’s mom Rani - a Buddhist and vegetarian, this is a woman who has never intentionally harmed anything in her life, and has done her level best to instill such values in her children and grandchildren. She lives-and-lets-live with ants and spiders and gnats and mosquitoes, working around them respectfully as she moves through her day sweeping and cooking and washing. They crawl on her as she falls asleep, exhausted, in a plastic chair, or naps on the relative cool of the concrete floor in the living room. It broke my heart to find out that my Ant Attack episode so worried her that she went to temple, said the appropriate prayers, came back to the house, boiled a pot of water, and with a very heavy heart and eyes averted, poured the scalding water over the worst ant patch… then went back to temple, said more prayers, and spent the next week agonizing over what she had done… The woman basically consigned herself to Hell for me…what does one do with that..? Here,
after the deluge that nearly drowns the jeep’s engine overnight, and soaks everything, we climb and bump and swerve from valleys of rainforest, tea, and cinnamon up into a mist so thick there is nothing but it and the silhouettes of trees and a bit of the road to see. Here, the clouds let the mountains comb their hair. A rainbow, here then gone, like good luck, and the light has a weirdly autumnal sharpness to it that slips me into an undifferentiated blur of sentimental nostalgia and melancholy; memory, loss, and question marks hang like pendants from the sky.  I’m leaving Sri Lanka in 30 hours and 10 minutes. It’s a transition, therefore I am falling apart…so seems to be the pattern, anyway! Transitions are cracks where groundlessness becomes visible, where all the decisions loom, unmade and heavy, where all of this panics me and submerges me in a soup of inchoate emotion. Could be horror-moons, but the emotions are real enough - sad to leave D; concerned about the prospect of more heat and discomfort; fear that I will return only to discover that I am unable to hack living in the tropics long-term and will thus have to cook up yet another Plan to give this part of my life Shape and Meaning; a few old, bitter remnants that still cling to the corners of my heart like burnt popcorn to the bottom of the pot… there’s a lot in the mix right now, Even as I look forward to discovering and exploring Chiang Mai and to returning to Suan Mokh for retreat, there is a part of me that wants to be headed somewhere cold, wants to be “going home”… only I don’t know where that is, which is upsetting if not plain old Depressing. This morning, as we drove from rainforest and cinnamon and tea up into cloud forest and complete whiteout and back down again, I experienced a luminous moment where I felt like I Understood, where I saw, and more importantly, believed, that life is about just such moments, about putting yourself in the way of Magic - everything else, all the matter of our concerns and worries and preoccupations are just stones on the path to Wonder. It was truly sublime… and then day just became the day and I got worried and sad again, eventually ending up in a confused puddle of tears on the bed of this rather godawful hotel room.… ho hum…!  just a little so-long roundup - a few pics from my too brief time at AnimalSOS One week from now, I will be landing in Bangkok and then Chiang Mai. I have such slim hopes that Thailand will provide much, if any, relief from my general Over-It-ness, but I will at least eat different food and be alone for a while, which appeals immensely.
I feel like a cross between a veal calf and a trained seal; inactive and caged by the heat, all-but force fed on a diet & schedule not of my own choosing, and performing happy friendliness when all I want to do is crawl into a meatlocker somewhere and be Alone with a good book. I exaggerate, of course, as is my wont, but Oy Vey, I really do need a change. I only wish I were flying to Sweden , or the Arctic Circle, instead of yet another insanely hot & humid country with new, more, and different varieties of stinging, buzzing, biting things to plague me. I watched a nature show this afternoon, sprawled out on the living room floor under the big ceiling fan. Watching nature shows is something I do to get a little perspective when I am teetering dangerously on the edge of self-pity. The miserable, idiotic life cycles of so many of the planet’s other creatures makes me see my own “plight” in a more favorable light and I can just Get On With It. This particular show, an episode of BBC’s Planet Earth series about lakes and rivers, featured an exposition on the Lake Midge Fly, a creature even more disgusting than I am presently finding all Flying Things (well, not birds, obviously, just all those of the insect realm). The larvae are cute enough, as larvae go, just hanging out at the bottom of the lake, but then they float up to the lake’s surface and hatch into the most hideous swarms of adults flies; thick clouds of them over a million flies per, which form these massive, towering plumes of now mating flies, which look like the smoke from a thousand giant campfires burning down to cinders on surface of the the water. It’s DIS-GUSTING - made me feel sick and itchy just to watch it on a screen. I sound hysterical, nehe? Well, I won’t deny it, I very nearly AM, and I no longer care what it says about me or my character - I MUST get somewhere “safe” (bugless) very soon, or I am sure I will go absolutely postal. Good morning again. Last night I found a handful (as if!!!) of pellets of gecko poop right where I had been sleeping… did they drop from the ceiling whilst I was out peeing, or was I in bed with a gecko half the night and not know it? This morning, a tickle on my thigh that did not resolve with the blind brush of a hand under the sheet… on closer inspection, a spider… Have I mentioned yet how quite Over It I am of living in Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom”??? And isn’t it funny that with all the dangerous and poisonous animals and reptiles this place has to offer, it’s the bugs that will succeed in terrorizing me to the point of unraveling? funny…right. ha ha ha. This all must sound not only crazed but terribly whiney, to boot. Perhaps I just need to read more Simone Weil - the champion of eschewing material comforts in order to advance one’s spiritual growth and approach toward grace. Perhaps. Or perhaps this northern girl just can’t hack living in a tropical country and will have to modify her plans. Trying to accept this possibility without judgement. I think I just need a break, and to be more meaningfully engaged. The go-to mantra holds - “We shall see.” |
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