Fabulous Day

Things that are awesome about today:

1.) It's the last day of NaBloPoMo!!!!!!!!!!! No worries, I'll be back tomorrow with more bloggy goodness :)

2.) I have discovered that morning glory, sauteed with garlic and peppers in an oyster sauce, is the most amazing thing ever. EVER. Plus, I love eating something with the name "morning glory." It makes me feel like a magical fairy.

3.) I spent three hours in a chocolate shop, where I wrote in my journal the entire time while savoring two (two!) cups of rich hot chocolate and several creamy truffles. Chocolate+writing=perfection.

4.) I had an amazing two hour massage where my brain turned off and I was transformed into a completely relaxed puddle of goo.

5.) I am learning to meditate and speak Thai. I practiced both of these things today.

6.) I'll be back in the U.S.--after a YEAR away--in less than two weeks :)

7.) Thailand is more than a little behind the times when it comes to music. The soundtrack in most stores and bars and hip restaurants features songs from about 1996-2002. However, I did manage to hear a small clip of this song today, and it's rather catchy. I downloaded it immediately. It's called New Soul by Yael Naim, and it is my new favorite song. I can't help but find myself relating to these lyrics:

I'm a new soul
I came to this strange world
hoping I could learn a bit 'bout how to give and take.
but since I came here,
felt the joy and the fear
finding myself making every possible mistake.

AWESOME. Mistakes are wonderful, wonderful things sometimes. I am finding a ton of joy in my mistakes lately. Nothing is ever wasted.

Peace out, November!! You were QUITE a month!

Arc

There's a story behind this poem, which I'll write very soon in another post (though you may want to look at these pictures for some context). For now, enjoy!

We could both feel it
Fear--chemical and rich
Like lemongrass being crushed underfoot
The hairs on my neck
Like down on the throat of a bird
Standing upright--undotted i's
The hairs on her head
Like broken violin strings, curling like fingers into shy fists
Curving around the wakes of my fingers
And then
Around the bend came two slices of tusks
Framed in green, in gray
Like broken moons, like fenders
And from deep in her belly, a scared growl
A groan
An apology
And I cocked my ear, listening
My minuscule ear bones straining like baby wings
My knuckles whitening around the leathery flaps of her ears
And then,
A message
A transmission...
Her head was an arc between past and future
Her movement, my movement
A strange dust rose as she shook
Mud and roots and growth filled my mouth
As I hit the ground
Gasping, laughing
Safe
And the face of my Teacher
Bent, creased, parched with knowing
Smiled with tusks instead of teeth
And the space between danger and safety,
Known and unknown
Was paved with air
My skin was left behind
And the mud was a deeply lined palm
Breath stopped, then started again
The trees and the minutes were elephant ears
Mapping the future in folds
Filling the dark caverns with a simple, timeless faith.

Soaring to the top of the self-help bestseller list......

This has been a grueling, grueling, grueling, GRUELING month. And the next two weeks are going to be the hardcore cherry on top of my workaholic sundae. While I've pretty much just resigned myself to the fact that I will most likely spend the majority of my remaining months in Thailand working 12 hour days and continuing the somewhat solitary existence that I lead over here, I am strangely at peace with this information. However, the big goal and priority when I return after my three weeks in the States (and when my freakin' foot is finally completely healed and I can walk without a spastic limp again) will be to get back into the habit of taking a trip once a month. I'm so lucky that I've had so many wonderful opportunities to travel, but it still needs to remain a priority.

I feel productive. I feel a sense of accomplishment. Sadly, I am not feeling terribly creative at the moment, but some things are starting to stir and some voices are starting to emerge from the deep. I just have to be a little bit patient.

The big thing that I have to also continue to do?? Stop taking work "things" so personally. I throw my entire being into my work. It is my passion and my love and to say that I am driven is an understatement. BUT....even still, I am learning that there is a choice in whether or not I allow myself to be consumed entirely by whatever workplace drama or change or interaction or criticism or imperfection or unfinished task happens to be at the forefront of my mind. And it's empowering to know that, in any situation (be it with family members or friends or significant others or that plant that is slowly dying and your can FEEL it judging you....), even if someone else wants you to feel like shit because he or she just needs a dog to kick, so to speak, YOU DON'T HAVE TO TAKE THAT ON. You can just shrug, smile, breathe it out, and be on your merry way, leaving the other person (or plant!!) to simmer in his or her own putrid eau du issues/insecurity/unhappiness.

Wow. I think I may just be one step away from writing my own self-help book. Ah well....I'm learning SO MUCH every day, and I'm grateful for these lessons. While they may be practically unbearable to read at times, I hope that they can at least be helpful. I've wasted so much of my life worrying about what other people have thought of me/are currently thinking about me/might think about me in the future, and so much energy beating myself up for not being perfect. And, well, I think I'm done with that now. And while it's strangely difficult to shut the door on who you have been, for better or worse, and on certain unproductive behaviors to which you have actually become addicted, just knowing that it is POSSIBLE, and that you CAN change your entire life in small moves and shifts means that suddenly the unproductive energy becomes shifted into a fertile energy. A breeding ground for so much possibility.

Double wow. This self-help book would TOTALLY be a bestseller. "A breeding ground for so much possibility?" Awesome self-help speak.

Bob, in all of his wisdom, left a wonderful comment on my last post about being most thankful for the "choices I have yet to make." Here, here.

Happy Sucksgiving

Alrighty...in spite of the title, let it be known that I'm staying positive, and I am just accepting things as they come. Sadly, my Thanksgiving plans (which consisted of going to a pub with an amazing Thanksgiving buffet all by myself and trying not to feel sad and pathetic) have been quashed thanks to an alleged curfew, which is due to a possible military coup that is expected to happen tonight. The airports here have been closed for two days as a grand gesture of protest, and there's a simultaneously quiet and frantic energy in the air tonight. I have opted for the delivery of my Thanksgiving feast, which I will eat on my bed while watching old episodes of Six Feet Under.

Peter lost both of his parents in June, making this the first Thanksgiving that he would spend without them. Or without any family at all. Never one to throw himself a pity party, he instead hopped on a plane bound for the Bahamas in order to enjoy a few days of contemplative relaxation. We spoke briefly yesterday after he arrived, and he said that it was a ghost town down there. Due to the economic downturn, people are not traveling to exotic destinations to celebrate the holiday. The thought of him sitting on a deserted beach all by himself makes me cry.

So we're both spending this Thanksgiving alone with our thoughts, without friends or family or acquaintances or fancy silverware or football. And mark my words: This will be the last Thanksgiving that I will ever voluntarily spend away from Peter. My partner in crime, the other half of my heart, the love of my life will never ever have to sit on the beach alone, without a belly full of turkey, without me by his side.

So many changes, all in just one year.

I hope that the political drama that is about to unfold, which will happen when I am nestled in my bed after gorging myself on my Thanksgiving Feast for One, is bloodless and painless. But I guess that is wishing for the impossible.

There is precious little in this world that we can control. Really, truly control. We can control our actions and our love and our words. We can control our perspectives and our nourishment and the ways in which we nourish others.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the U.S. Savor the peace, savor your loved ones, savor this loving and lovely tradition.

And Happy Thanksgiving to my baby. A year from now, this will be but a pinprick in the vast constellation of our wonderful life.

Wordless Wednesday: Hooray for Hefelumps!!

These pictures were taken at the Maesa Elephant Camp in Chiang Mai, where I did a three-day mahout training course (see here and here for previous entries about that....the entry about day three is coming soon!). This is Wanpen, my elephant. Isn't she beautiful? I fell madly, madly in love with her!!

Sitar

I met Cayla and JJ rather randomly. Yay for happy accidents! I was at a health food store, and Cayla invited me to sit down with her and one of her coworkers while we ate our spicy organic mushroom curry. I liked her instantly, and in fact had to stop myself from doing an impromptu happy dance after meeting this awesome new friend. I met her boyfriend JJ a few nights later when the three of us went to an art opening. They rather quickly became two of my favorite people, and frequently invited me over for home cooked meals and Cuban rum. We had conversations about environmentalism and teaching and art and anything interesting that you could ever imagine.

Cayla is a ridiculously talented artist, specializing in printmaking, and JJ is an amazing photographer. I bought a piece from each of them when they had a show in Bangkok, and they are most definitely my favorite pieces of art that I own.

One night, after a meal of vegetarian quesadillas and mango salsa (all made from scratch), JJ rolled out a rug for me on the floor, and I sat in front of him, completely transfixed, while he played the sitar. And, well, it was transcendent and unforgettable.

I wrote this in my journal the next day.

The song starts out slowly, filled with longing, filled with notes like an absentminded humming. The kind of humming used during cleaning and hair brushing and before sleep. And the room is filled with furniture and rugs, and the sitar is filled with knobs and fingers, and the music starts to carve a space inside of my head like a fingerprint in coconut paste, and my thoughts are pushed to the very back where they start to buzz like panicked moths who are millimeters away from electric death. And the notes emerge in a crystalline exhalation. Auditory incense and sacred breath. And the furniture and rugs are coated in it like a sparkling, whirling dust and suddenly the boundaries and angles and corners and doors are blurred and united. The moths in my head start pushing and flapping and flipping until the music gets faster and thicker and they are stunned into a devotional silence and fall to the floor of my brain stem, still crackling with electricity but as powerless as leaves. And I'm trying to write a poem in my head but the notes come through me and carry the words away like seeds and the sitar no longer has knobs and fingers but has become a windpipe and vocal cords, a conduit of Divine Voice.

It is the Throat of God.

The strings are a map of the cosmos and they speak and declare their truth as a love song to Emptiness and Creation and I am no longer just listening but my entire body has become the sound, is absorbing sound and speaking a stillness and the Throat is singing faster now and the cosmos whirl inside of me until my organs are bleeding light and my pores have become a million mouths agape in exultation and there is no more furniture or rugs because this room is everything and nothing, swallowed whole like fire, and my mind cannot grasp or clutch or hold onto anything and each second is an entire universe and I think and hour passed before I realized the music had stopped.

And my senses slowly rediscovered themselves, and the barking dogs and Thai conversations peppered the air once again, and the pattern of the rug found its way back to my retinas, and the smell of the khlong came back through the window, and my lungs started breathing on their own again.

Namaste.

Yum!

I have decided, after seeing a street vendor cart full of 'em, that I simply cannot leave Thailand without first consuming some crispy, cooked insects. Crickets, to be exact. I am going to keep my eyes peeled for carts selling them, and when I find one, it's sooooo on!! I'll keep ya posted....