move

The last week in Thailand just disappeared... Back to the States. So strange. So exciting and yet so so strange. Even though we knew the end was coming and both Emily and I were actually looking forward to the change, it was hard to process how fast it arrived.

Naturally I became broody, and spent the better half of our last week battling my anticipation for home and my resistance to leaving. It was touch and go there as I did my best to stay in the moment rather than with my thoughts flitting around to the future and the past and back to the future again...until the last day when we arrived in Phuket. An insane drive through the city. One of the sharp turns and narrow misses we made in that van threw some sense into me (or knocked some sense out of me, depending on your views of that whole sort of thing) and I was absolutely present in Thailand. The sun was going down behind heavy wet clouds as the neon lights of the citystreets illuminated a smoky dome of neon glows and tourists and locals and bumpertobumper and a whole lot of bass, all rising from the streets under the tires of our windy ride. I felt nostalgic for the familiarity of that chaos.

The Phuket drive was a total throwback to a specific taxi drive in Bangkok, a moment that stands out to me now as one of things I love most about Thailand. A taxi drive making that much of an impact? It might not make a whole lot of sense, but the crazy spirit of the drive was full of everything I loved about being there. It caught me off guard and made me appreciate the present (which, I realize time and again, can change its tone from moment to moment).

We were stalled for thirty minutes in the middle of Bangkok waving down a taxi, while our time to catch a bus was slipping away with each denial. We were getting increasingly desperate for help. The guy who finally gave into my pleas, Buddhist bow, and promise to be the best passengers of his night (despite his reluctance to brave the traffic en route to the southern bus terminal), he was my favorite random friend. He swerved and sped and created VIP traffic lanes out of thin air, all the while filling the car with the best soundtrack for the spirit of our rush. He was the first guy who didn't try to get more money out of us than was fair (so we tipped him 50%). Fate denied us the other drivers who brushed us by.

And there in Phuket with another driver who took his soundtrack seriously but laughed at life in general, shouting out his windows, veering around cars in a way that should have made me fear for my life but instead assured me that we were in safe hands. It brought the whole Thai experience full circle for our last night there and I couldn't stop smiling.

But of course we realized only minutes after my romantic revelation that our real last night was the night before because, somehow, we had remembered the dates wrong. Our flight was in 6 hours. Ah well. 

We concluded our travels with an Indian dinner, a harried departure, and then an excruciatingly long day of travel. (Longest day of my life--no exaggeration--December 18th will have lasted for 31 hours for us when all is said and done. I consider this further proof that Time is no respectable unit of measurement and hours, minutes, and seconds as we know them are merely fantastical constructs of the human imagination.)

....I am currently in the 20th hour of December 18th and on the second plane, this time traveling from Seoul to Tel Aviv. (The flight paths laid out for us are just as nonsensical as the hours.) To think that only days ago I was simply worried about mini buses and ferries. 

In fact less than a week ago, Emily and I were squeezed into the umpteenth mini bus of our trip, traversing the jungles and en route to another island. The islands of Thailand were languid and delicious but molasses-slow, slower than anything else we saw in Thailand (and slower than anything we're getting into now, on our way home). There was also the rainforest, and that was a world away from anything else, a destination outside of Thailand, deep in Thailand: tree temples, hidden stone chambers, sparkling walls glossed by watery sheets pooling into a rushing stream on a cave tunnel floor. We trudged through mud and over fallen logs, until we were waist deep--chest deep--neck deep in chilled water from the jungle. Another world--and we were only on the edges.

But no matter where we were, the trip always moved on before we were settled, much too little time for all that we wanted to see. Emily and I ended the rush and noise of the trip with a quiet oasis of an island, bringing everything down into a low hum. Maybe it's because Koh Lanta was our last destination, but our time on the island felt much longer than any other portion of our trip. Time swelled into a silent calm. We rode bikes down the main street (as far as I know, the only street) of the island, slicing through red puddles of mud as the rain soaked our clothes through to the skin. What else is there to do when a warm rainstorm is crashing your plans? It was exhilarating to surrender to the elements and another opportunity to laugh at our misguided planning. After so much excitement, our closing ceremonies took place with books, wine, and rain.

In retrospect, better to end on that sort of note...the rain washed away anxiety, the stillness prepared me for the silent meditation of transition, and then hours later...still writing on the same piece...I'm seamlessly in another country in another time zone (and in hours I will be in yet another). The transitions are neverending, but the most important movements are happening within. Words seem a bit superfluous at this point...

Keep walking, though there's no place to get to.
Don't try to see through the distances.
That's not for human beings. Move within,
but don't move the way fear makes you move.
--Rumi

want

We have less than 2 weeks left in Thailand....the countdown has been strange. We realized we only had 2 weeks to go while we were in the forests of Northern Thailand, visiting a hippy backpacker bubble where we easily could have stayed for a week. We left the next day because of how much more we want to do while we're here. There's just not enough time. Whenever one of us says out loud, "only two weeks," there's a mix of nostalgia, sadness, and a touch of relief at the prospect of returning home.

To be home will mean getting to wear more than the same three outfits over and over again. We can reintroduce simple steamed vegetables, Mexican food, and Italian food into our diets. Bike rides and grocery shopping on the weekends. Having weekends. And at some point, I'm going to take a bubble bath again. I'm thinking now of the hand-held shower heads fixed above toilets for showering, but also that cold bucket shower I had in the hills which wasn't honestly all that bad, since I did feel refreshed....but Oh, to have a bubble bath. The word "heaven" comes to mind.

It's easy to get caught up in these kinds of fantasies when I'm sitting in a cold, pale-blue and naked-steel bus station at 4:30 in the morning, after a 6 1/2 hour drive and awaiting the next 5 hours of travel. There's only dark around the silent station. We could be anywhere or nowhere (but hopefully somewhere close to the ferry station--they did tell us to get off the bus). I'm not uncomfortable right now so much as spacey and timelost, turning my thoughts elsewhere, like to how the money I've been saving by cutting corners will ultimately help me out in New York. Having a little extra in New York is worth the grunge in Thailand.

New York in 2 weeks...crazy.

Christmas time in New York, New Year's Eve in New York...I'm so happy we had the insight back in September to know how exciting it would be to end on that kind of note. From genie pants and muddy TOMS, tuk tuks and Thai temples, the smoke and steam of the tropics...there will be scarves and leather boots and my fantastically impractical lace gloves, champagne and the Soho art scene, ice skating and the vintage of Brooklyn...and of course, the people I care about who are spread across the United States and who I'll get to see again first in New York and then eventually in California...

I will miss Thailand, but I am also looking forward to what comes next, both in heading to all those things back home (more than just the small comforts) and to all that I want to start up--and continue--once I am there. The groundedness of appreciating all that I have and can nurture and sustain in my connections to people and education and opportunities for my future. I can't help but think about the future, even living as much as I am in the present moment (but I think my futurethoughts flourish the most when the present is something like this, a bleak bus station).

It is actually in realizing how I miss home and in discovering what can ground me, that makes me realize why this trip has been so important for me, beyond the opportunity to see other ways of living and stretch my perspective through the changing scenery. The missing, itself, is what I'm talking about.

Missing somethings or someones is necessitated by their absence, and--taking a small leap here--what is desire, if not a byproduct of absence? You can only desire what you don't believe you currently have. Desire--thirst and attachment--is an issue I wanted to explore on this trip, which made going to a place like Thailand, where Buddhism is the predominant religion, particularly attractive. As long as I have admired Buddhism, one of the principles I have found most intriguing is the intention to overcome desire. I have tried to wrap my head around that and to embody it in myself, because I believed that it was a higher mode of consciousness. Letting things go, letting go of my attachment, my wants, etc.

Suffering arises when thirst arises. Suffering ceases when thirst ceases. These are the second and third of the Buddhist Noble Truths.

But right now I am in a Buddhist nation, wondering if desire is one of the most important gifts I have in this life.

Longing is the core of mystery.
Longing itself brings the cure.
The only rule is, Suffer the pain.

Your desire must be disciplined,
and what you want to happen
in time, sacrificed.

--Rumi

Yes, discipline is important for growth, and yes, all things in time are sacrificed, but--can't desire also be productive if you nurture it and think about it in the right way? Missing something, wanting something doesn't have to be frustrating or painful. If I am patient with my desire, if I understand it clearly, it can serve as an empty space for fire to burn: when I desire something, the mindful attention I give it has the potential to lead to action. There is something beautiful about the suffering of thirst...

Think that you're gliding out from the face of a cliff
like an eagle. Think you're walking
like a tiger walks by himself in the forest.

You're most handsome when you're after food.

--Rumi

Before I came on this trip, I was not writing as much as I wanted to, but I desired it. I wanted to practice writing regularly and the craving of something missing from my life motivated me. It's a small example, but my desire gave me the spark I needed to start a blog.

In a truly inspiring example of desire at work, I think of Lek, the creator of the Elephant Nature Park that Emily and I visited in Northern Thailand. She saw the suffering of supposedly holy animals (the brutality that elephants often suffer at the hands of humans is tragic), and her desire for their salvation motivated her to dedicate her life to the cause. She says that she will work on saving elephants until the day she dies. There are so many animals that she cannot save; her desire for their healing and safety is an unquenchable thirst. But it has turned her life into something awesome and beautiful. She has 34 elephants at her sanctuary and that is a staggering number considering how much work goes into their care. First of all, they each eat 200-250 tons of fruits and vegetables a day. They also go through the same issues of illnesses, neuroses, and injuries as humans do, which makes a full-time medical staff necessary.

Yet the interactions between humans and elephants in this lush valley does not feel laborious. It is a place full of love. I could see the evidence of old suffering on the elephants' thick skin, dark scars cutting into their deep wrinkles, some of their eyes long-ago blinded, punctured ears and the marks of hooks that went through the tops of their heads...but here, they finally had their own piece of paradise. They were given a second chance at life and at creating unique little tribes amongst themselves, through the desire of one tiny woman whose happiness depends on their happiness.

Maybe desire is a gift when you see it as a function of the divine quality within us all, love. If your thirst is a heartfelt desire born out of love, then it has a certain energy and truth to it.

Love is the way messengers 
from the mystery tell us things.

Love is the mother. We are her children.
She shines inside us, visible-invisible,

as we lose trust or feel it start to grow again.

--Rumi

Throughout my travels, I have thought just as much about love as I have about desire...the blurred line between desire and love...the way love moves me and moves everyone around me, whether I can see it or not.    

I definitely haven't met a single traveler who hides his or her love for life...there is little room for apathy in exploring the world. Perhaps that is much of its appeal for me. The travelers I have met love trying new things, they love adventure, and even if they don't love all the places that they have seen, they love something about their experiences there. As humans, we are all captivated by whatever in life feeds our cravings and fills our hearts.

It has to be love that has kept me engrossed in the last few days of jungles and elephants and buses and schedules. It is certainly not sleep (I am truly exhausted). I simply love what I am doing. Especially with the time restraints (the urgency of temporal reality is a great motivator as well), I am trying to absorb all that I can from my experiences before they shift yet again.

Lanterns and fireworks and cracked city sidewalks, giant tree canopies laden with vines, soft-footed elephants floating like dark storm clouds over grassy seas...

And the people, the fusion of generosity and greed, of reverent and rude, and everything in between. People really are people wherever you go, but--I don't know, maybe it's because there is a glittering, golden temple on every block, and all the fireworks we have seen, and I can literally taste the spices in the air--living with Thailand's people reminds me of being at a big festival every day of the week. Every day is a carnival. There is just such a raw madness--good or bad--with every interaction, in every facet of daily life. Even getting a taxi leaves me feeling like I've just gone through something...like last night, however many hours ago, just getting a ride to the first bus station was such an event. (Unless you have tried to get a metered taxi in Bangkok on a Friday night, there is really no simple way of explaining this one....it's just mad mad mad.)

That taxi episode was only hours ago...and the bus chaos that followed...here I am, absorbed first in Rumi and now in my writing...I really don't understand how I feel so wide awake and settled here in my seat on the ferry (there was a spacial transition sometime in my entry that did not seem important to note). I'm pretty sure we're supposed to be at the island, Koh Tao, in an hour (or two?) but all I see around us is a flat steel blue ocean and a clear sky on the horizon. Only a moment ago (or was it an hour or two?) I was on a dock watching the world shift into day with the dramatics of a painting. Pink blush on the horizon bleeding into a feathery gray curtain, rising above, and there, jutting at an angle right through the middle of the opposing shades, like a searchlight coming out of the ocean looking for the moon, was a streak of cerulean. Mystical Thai Madness.

There's a strange frenzy in my head,
of birds flying,
each particle circulating on its own.
Is the one I love everywhere?

--Rumi

rawr

It is so hot right now, I can barely think straight. Thailand is a whirl of sensory experiences....I've been caught coughing on spices floating in the air; I have practically devoured every sugared and fried banana set in front of me; I lost skin on the sidewalk (there's a violent body-soul integration sort of thing happening for me on this trip) and I was assaulted with a close-range firework; I have woven through crowds of motorbikes and ridden my own down crowded city streets that for all its heated stillness still whips wind around your face when you're flying on your own set of wheels...Chiang Mai is a vibrant sauna of smells and lights and glittering temples. The days have brushed the threshold of my melting point, but today, our last day in the city, my hair is damp against my temple and I haven't left the mild coolness of a hotel lobby for the past couple of hours...I feel like a cat that has been in the sunshine so long, I have lost my will to even pant away the heat. Melting. Hmm but since my thoughts are now trailing into this more defined direction, of the qualia of cathood, I will go ahead and take advantage of the sense of purpose that is now possible in my writing....please bear with me....

When my mind is muddled as it is now, I am more aware than ever of my own animal instincts, the energies that ebb and flow on the primal levels of consciousness. Perhaps that sense of oneness with all other sentient creatures who are subject to life's elements is the source of my anxiety over animals' suffering when it confronts me. It's easy to say that animals are less evolved than humans, that they do not suffer in captivity in the ways that humans might imagine...I've always had mixed feelings over zoos and wild animal domestication. Cats are domesticated animals, yet they seem perfectly content as kept creatures. But what about their distant relatives, the bigger and wilder felines of this world?

One of the experiences I was told I had to take advantage of in Thailand was visiting a place with domesticated tigers. There was one in particular, Tiger Kingdom, that seemed like the most humane option--it boasts of no drugs and no abuse, providing tourists with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to spend time in a cage with tamed wild beasts.

I didn't really know what to expect before going, but to finally meet those beautiful beings--touching them and looking into their eyes--felt simultaneously awesome and forbidden. They were far more perceptive and powerful than any house cat; the comparison is laughable. To look into the eyes of a tiger is to see something mystical incarnate, more energy and strength and natural instincts than any human--and yet reduced to an object of entertainment, locked into a life of exhibitionism and submission. It was a confounding experience.

Emily and I walked amongst the cages and saw impatient adults struggling with their limited space and the constant demands of their attention. An endless line of tourists awaiting picture-perfect moments. What a life. I honestly felt ashamed to be a participant and guilty for the excitement I felt at meeting the babies. We had all this time to await our turn, and I spent most of it working myself into a guilt-ridden meditation.

But then we went in the cage and I let it all go to just be in the moment...because controversial as it might have been, this was still a spectacular experience. The cubs were amazing. They were too young to anticipate that this was the only life they would know (ignorance is bliss) and their compliance was startling. They were noticeably sober, these beautiful, energetic bundles of velvet fur and muscular grips and baby roars, all tumbling over each other and across the laps of humans. I held a baby's paw in my hand. Soft, warm, tar-colored pads and much too big for the little one, but small enough to fit in my child-sized palm. For a moment that existed outside the confines of time, I played with baby tigers.

Of course, once Emily and I had exhausted our turn and were moved on to the adult cages, we were once again confronted with the reality of the situation. The babies were playful and carefree, but the adults were painfully tense. They had known years of the same routine. The adults didn't seem to suffer anything violent from the human trainers, but they had obviously come to realize that life would always be this small and boring and sad. Moments before, Emily and I had been put under a spell by the absurdity of rubbing baby tigers' bellies; then suddenly we were shamed by the angst of these adults. Pacing animals with low grumbled roars. We asked to leave early and were answered with surprised shrugs.

What a strange experience...stranger, still, when our taxi driver asked us if we wanted to see the "long-necks" after the tigers. Right. Because after our conflicting sentiments regarding the "humane" treatment of tigers, we really wanted to see a village of persecuted human-beings. The drive back was silent as Emily and I were completely lost in our own thoughts.

Traveling so far from home has opened up my eyes to certain shadows of capitalism I didn't know before (oh boy, and now I'm really sounding like a modern skeptic). But the supply-and-demand of tourism goes beyond simple exchanges of money and goods. There are always living beings--human or not--that are directly affected by globalization and tourism in ways that are not necessarily beneficial to the natives.

The backpacking world, itself, is an alternate reality where certain things fly--the commoditization of the "authentic" (I always wonder), strange, and wonderful--all under the pretense that we are expected to participate, because how many opportunities does a person get in one life time to pet a tiger or see an aesthetic oddity. But where does the money go and what are the true effects of our tourism? Who really benefits? There are entire streets in cities like Bangkok and Chiang Mai that are dedicated to the throngs of visitors with cameras and money to spend. But the underlying attitude of live-in-the-moment doesn't really make sense to me when I think of how many people spend just a moment in any given place. The locals must be worn down with the efforts of a neverending performance put on for a paying public....and then on the other side, there is the fast-paced life of the travelers, especially the forever-backpackers I meet who embark on neverending journeys and somehow sustain the energy (and funds) required for such a life.

And yet from a different angle (there's always another angle) traveling creates an atmosphere of heightened sensitivity, simplifying existence to the necessities that fit in a bag. You meet friends and lovers and travel partners who might very well stay in your life forever. There is also the added brilliance of seeing the world through a kaleidascopal lens, as long as "living in the moment" really means living with an open mind and an open heart. That mode of living, that sort of "be here now" mentality, actually is translatable from a life of backpacking to a more stationary life. As much as I have recently been questioning tourism and backpacking and all the rest, there is also an intention in my traveling that I value more than anything else I could possibly get from this experience--I am very awake. I want to stay this awake when the traveling is done and home is back in California.

I keep thinking about home and all its implications...right now, "home" is the hostel I'm living in at any given time, "home" becomes the rituals I keep wherever I go (like running, running is home for me). Of course, home is also California and the people and places who make up my personal world. I think my two realities of home come together when I meet people in my travels who I know I will meet again in the United States, thus extending my present journey in ways that will hopefully lead to a more solidifying effect from all the lessons and experiences I gain here. My current conflicts about the world of tourism...my preoccupation with living in the moment and ensuring that this experience is, in fact, grounding for me....I am simply in the throes of a wild ride and feeling rocked by my transience. Perhaps I should be less focused on finding security in this experience and instead embrace the entirety of Backpacker Land, the invaluable and the beautiful and even the corruption too. What would this world be without shades of gray?

At least I am staying awake. Opening my eyes and heart and mind to the madness of this world, catching glimpses of perfection and beauty along with my understandings of the darker sides to things. Besides, if I wasn't aware of the ugly, I would not appreciate the beautiful as much as I do. Falling in love with with life happens in the moments when I see the world more fully. Tiger Kingdom was an opportunity for me to understand humanity better. It was an opportunity for me to understand my own sensitivities better, and to contemplate the entire backpacking experience from a new perspective. Up and down, up and down, riding the currents of revelation and emotion tied in with each new experience.

Hours after Tiger Kingdom, settling down from one adventure and entering another, Emily and I were rushing through a new type of madness. Sitting on cushioned seats screwed into the bed of a truck, we danced to the music blasting through the cab's window and watched the streets light up with fireworks and all the lamps from food carts bursting with steam and aromas. There was screaming everywhere and laughing and excitement. Loy Krathong, the festival of lights, was in full bloom in Chiang Mai, and we were blessed to be a part of it. Even in the 3rd night (boy do the Buddhists love celebration), there was still an upwards falling rain of burning lanterns and floating wishes literally papering the sky. Emily's and my lanterns had risen into the sky's parade the night before, when we joined the ceremony with child-like fascination and determination. Chiang Mai became a fairyland for locals and travelers all celebrating life with the same fervor and joy.

Then continuing the party into the third night, my sister and I danced with new friends, spinning circles with each other and total strangers, bursting open and pounding the floor with total abandon as we lost ourselves to the beats that shook the insides of our ribs. In an ecstatic celebration of lights and traveling and the unknown, what we could all clearly see--what I perceived--was that this moment was human and pulsing and impermanent and perfect. Life as a beautiful mess.