Sweet little Laos

So now I finish up with my last stop (aside from 10 hours laid over in Bangkok, then 8 in Korea...blech). I am in Vientiane, Laos and have just returned from the South where I was visiting some projects. The area, Salavan, is full of numerous hill tribes living in the mountainous uplands. These ethnic groups each have their own language, spiritual traditions, and belief systems. Their populations are small, numbering only a few thousand each. They have been extremely isolated from the outide world (a 10 hour truck ride along the bumpiest possible "roads" helped me understand why.)

In fact, this road is the former Ho Chi Minh trail, and was bombed every day for 8 years during the U.S. Secret War on Laos during the Vietnam conflict. Considered a "threat to national security" by the geniuses in the U.S., the peoples were bombed to hell and their mountaintops destroyed with Agent Orange. To this day, no trees grow on the vast, poisoned lands.

The biggest irony is that the people had absolutely NO idea why they were being bombed. The word communism means nothing to them. They still don't know...most of them don't think of the world as a big planet like we do...don't think about how it is round and multicultural and crazy. They are just hungry and spend most of their days searching for food in the forest, as well as for scrap metal from bombs, which they sell to Vietnamese traders and loggers who come to illegally sack Laos' still-abundant timber.

When our Laos director came on a speaking tour of the US this year, she asked the villagers what they wanted her to ask the Americans. One man said, "Can you ask them to drop more bombs? We are almost out of metal to sell to the Vietnamese, and that is our only income." Yet these are the people who were thought to be a threat to the American way of life, for whom so many young soldiers and civilians died. Cultural misunderstanding kills us!

Puja

When I visited Subiksha I was taken down down down into the deeps of real Indian worship. Twice actually. A puja is "the act of showing reverence to a god, a spirit, or another aspect of the divine through invocations, prayers, songs, and rituals." Basically, any intentional spiritual act. An essential part of puja for the Hindu devotee is making a spiritual connection with the divine.

This photo is of a village holy man, who led me and a temple full of women in a long chant where we continuously chanted Om Shakti-e! (power) between his verses. The chant started out slowly, light-heartedly enough. Naively I looked around the room, smiling to the women staring at me, trying to establish visual connections and alliances.

Eventually, the repetitive chanting grows louder and hypnotic, trancelike from all the repetition. Some voices begin to crack...hands shake....eyes squint...I stop taking pictures and join the collective mood overtaking the tiny temple.

This photo is of the other holy man and the women lighting candle after candle after candle. the more candles in the puja, the better. The flickering lighting is calming and secretive, reminding us devotees that the gods we worshipped were whispering to us and we only need listen.

The other puja I was part of happened in a woman's house, in her tiny common room. It was organized by a self-help group of women. The groups are organized by Subiksha, and which I help find support for. They take part in microfinance activities, local leadership, empowerment...basically anything to improve their communities! So inspiring, I am so honored to witness Subiksha in action. Anyway, this particular self-help group of 30 women decided they wanted to do a semi-fast for 30 days, for peace, unity and to honor Muruga, the rain goddess who was having her festival at that time. For Muruga one wears yellow and saffron, bright as the sun. Each night they were holding puja at a different woman's house, then eating a light meal together.

These are photos which I was graciously invited to take. Privacy is not much of a concept in crowded India, and having sacred moments photographed is, in my experience, seen as an honor rather than an intrusion. So I was able to save the images and share them now.

To the left you see the Amma, the mother, the spiritual leader of the group. She was leading the chant, Om shanti, om shanti, om shanti (peace)...Again things started lightly...women and children coming in and out, smiles and chatting arising casually. But sloooowly, the chants became more urgent, more real. Amma's voice took on a strong, soulful quality as the other women's faces contorted with the look of not just faith and devotion but of the invoked spirit itself taking over, displacing their composure and making them stand up and sweat and weep. Amma arose, swaying, and went to the altar to greet the gods. Her legs buckled and other women held her up her collapsing body.

And then boom! Like many things in India it ends abruptly. Amma comes right back to us fully composed but with a lighter expression on her face. The women clear their throats, smooth their saris, and ask me questions, thank me for coming. I attempt to express my incredible gratitude but they say no, no, thank YOU for visiting. Namaste namaste and goodbye.

These invocations are commonplace here.

Preserved thoughts

After a week in an airport graveyard, my pack decided to pick itself up and come find me. I know it wasn't such a big deal to lose it, its just that I was feeling like a snail with no shell. So I'm glad it decided to return.

I can't blog fast enough to keep up with my experiences. I've already trundled out to a far corner of the bumpy Earth and back since my last post, but I'd like to memory-capsulate India first.

Here are some thoughts I trapped with my thoughtnet. Most slipped out but these were the fattest ones, so I saved them:

...Like one who looked wiser than he really was. Like a fisherman in the city. With sea-secrets in his eyes. (From Arundhati Roy's beautiful and sad book The God of Small Things)

Then there is the hardened heart's confrontation which each bump on each bumpy road...infinite patience-testing...and the shouting, Indian men bellowing from behind their mustaches. I do not know if one can bellow out of a kind place. But they may be.

All words take on different, sometimes opposite meanings in a country of strange speakers. Realities reverse similarly.

Then there are the distant, almost non-existent women but for their ornaments, who show up just to prove their servitude, then tiptoe away as if they could ever go unnoticed with anelts jingling like that. They speak too softly for me to hear, and smile too demurely for me to comprehend.

But indeed, here there are the brightest smiles in the universe, which can blind you because you know the despair they disguise and the pain they override, crowd out.

People here are unkind and loving. Loud and gentle. Aggressive and non-violent. Fat and hungry. Exhausted and still dancing. I hate India and love it and do not understand it and notice every little clue but miss many of the big details. Except the ones that explain and paint the ways in which this is the land of the soul, the spirit, the Om Shanti!

I am the foreigner but this is the strange, specific land where a billion people all follow the same obscure traditions, the random ones which still stand because no one could find reason to reject them. Culture's natural filter. There must be rhythm to the randomness but what, and how can I learn?

Flowers and coconut oil in the hair. Spot on the third eye. Head wobbling emphatically. Burping loud and proud. Pissing anywhere. Wiping ass with hand. Eating food with other hand. Small clues.

G.O.D. Generation, Operation, Destruction. I am living in the O and trying to stick around. I invoke Os big and small. Ds can wait for me, though they push through quickly in places where quickness and agression are expected from everyone, including the cousins of death.

Losing the anchor

When you spend months traveling with only a backpack to accompany you, strangely intimate connections develop between you and your possessions. So when you suddenly lose all of them, it is uncomfortably uprooting, like losing part of your diminished travel identity. Not to mention the painful pang of knowing that all the sentimental little items and memories you have painstakingly collected over the last three months are gone, vanished.

I guess this is the universe's (or Bangkok Airport's) way of telling me, "You're moving too fast, at a faster pace than your tired old pack could keep up with. Now it's just you kid, no inanimate backpack as a buddy, no comforts to pad your heavy, constant landings. You get to keep your wallet, passport, computer - all the important, costly stuff. But you lose everything you could cuddle up next to."

So this is my newest obstacle on a challenging course. I am being challenged to cut those materials bonds, which only exist because I am privileged in the first place. I can increase my weightlessness and its wisdom, which unifies in solidarity with the possession-less masses I encounter on this assignment. It is out of my hands so I have to figure out how for it to be a blessing, this dangling in the empty-handed from a wire over the middle of the planet.

And wow, oh yeah, damn, I am in Laos. I love this quiet country. 5 million countrypeople now, not 1 billion. The silence confirms the lower number of lives. Here is one of the few non-overpopulated places on the Earth, where one doesn't get the feeling that humans have totally conquered and where drastically beautiful birds, frogs and bugs don't feel quite so endangered. My org's work here focuses on enabling tribal people to protect and manage their precious traditional lands, as greedy Chinese business men and toothless Vietnamese loggers encroach daily to rape some of the still-bountiful resources in vulnerable little southern Laos.

I will visit these places for the next few days and collect stories, information, songs. It hurts that my voice recorder, along with the legends and melodies it has been capturing in so many tongues, is gone. Sorry, but they will have to live in my memory and in the mouths of those who still speak them and keep their flames alive. I'll write to let everyone know how the visit goes. Just me, no junk and no trunk.

Then there are bumpy roads and head pats...

And I feel degraded...patted on the head, my ass sore from torturous roads not meant for vehicles...

Photo journey

I am finally able to upload some travel photos!

This one is from Battambang, Cambodia. I was visiting a project where university students get to stay with villagers and learn about the rural life.

This next one is from the beautiful area in Andhra Pradesh where tribal people live...the whole area is going to be dammed to power a steel factory, including this gorgeous site. This area is also where I got severely depressed and almost had to come home....(but didn't)

This third one is a movement class at Bob's House of Rock, where we have a project for kids vulnerable to pedophiles to come and get creative. I have to get on a plane now but will try to post more photos in a couple days! I am going to the land of good (better) internet connections...SE Asia.

Rural celebrity

It's been a long week of signing autographs, being generally worshipped, and shaking hands with the cheering masses. Such is the unintentionally glamorous life of the NGO worker. I work to raise money for grassroots Indian NGOs, which work in some of the most remote villages to be found. When I visit, I am taken out out out to the countryside to see the projects being undetaken by the villagers.

It's amazing work -- organic agriculture, household biogas production systems (scoop in the poop and capture the gas, then cook the food!), small businesses started by women finding personal and financial freedom (who were previously rarely allowed out of the home, many didn't even know the name of their state or country)...

Many times, I have had the honor to be the first foreginer to visit. I am greeted like this: I am approached as I enter the village by 2 or 3 ladies holding a tray of red liquid which is lit on fire and the smoke blown around my head. Another lady comes up with two little cups, one with a yellow turmeric paste and the other a bright red powder. I dip my finger in the yellow cup, touch my third eye, then do the same with the red to give myself a colorful bindi. Then a lady or little girl comes up with a lime, or two or three, and hands them to me. Then yet another person comes up with a rose and puts it in my hair.

I should mention that this happens even when my organization hasn't found any funding or anything for their projects - it's just a random visit! I am brought inside the school or temple and made to sit in the one plastic chair behind a table which bears a tray of flowers and fruit with 10 smoldering sticks of incense stuck in a banana. All the villagers sit on the floor while I sit facing them. I am introduced by my local NGO partner in Tamil, and asked to address the village. By this time they have usually presented me with a shawl or plastic flower or some other trinket and everyone claps wildly every time my name is mentioned.

I have to stand up and think of something to say. Mostly I complement them on the beauty and peacefulness of the village and say that I am actually a normal, average person in my country. I say that I have come because I admire what they are doing to strengthen their community and that I hope my community can learn from it, for we lack such beautiful organization. They love that and clap and smile hugely. I ask them questions and finally it is time to go. I standup and the whole crowd of 200-300 women and children races towards me, holding out their hands to shake and pens to get autographs. The NGO partners act like my bodyguards and get me in the jeep to take pictures of the village projects (necessary to document for my job), go to another village and repeat.

I have to repeat this torturous proces up to 8 times a day. I loathe it with my whole heart. The race/class barriers so enforced, my inability to interact with people on a human level, the overly-ceremonious circumstances which are totally uncomfortable. I don't really want to visit India alone again - this kind of work would be a lot better with a partner because at least we could commiserate and laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.

But I am alone for now, and have gotten through it in one piece. I hate being treated like I am special.

Emerging...

Well I think I was having an extended, minor anxiety attack for a while there. I am fine now, in fact I feel stronger than before as is often the case with hard times. No single thing happened to trigger my uneasiness, but a few factors piled up. First there was Brian leaving and being suddenly alone in a strange place...then the harassment in Hyderabad, then it got even crazier when I was least able to deal with it. I am now in Chennai, happy and breaking down some of the barriers that I put up around myself when I couldn't trust the world.

Here's what happened...I arrived to visit one of the projects I needed to do an update for. The director of that project had lost his wife last year, suddenly, and I was to stay with him at his house (usually nice for me, since I have been in hotels for over 2 months). I arrived to find the house covered in huge photographs of her and the home still very much in deep mourning. My co-worker could not stop crying and would collapse in grief on me regularly.

It was so sad- he loves her so deeply and she was not even 50 years old. He is absolutely heartbroken. But I was of little help, already quite depressed myself. In India the concept of privacy doesn't really exist and it was not at all strange for him to have me in the house during this difficult time, but I couldn't handle it. I obliged as well as I could, for example by looking at 200 photographs of the dead woman in her casket, which had a perverse window built into its face - for her to see out or for us to see in?

He took me to visit projects for a day - to see the land reclamation being done in tribal areas overly-silted from the tsunami and extreme flooding this year. It was OK, but I was wondering if I could handle spending the scheduled five days there. Aside from the challenge of consolation, I was overwhelmed by the way I was being treated as a little girl, my preferences and free will totally over-ridden by he eccentric, grieving man, who bellowed out commands to his servants and ordered me to eat huge amounts of food, do this and do that.

It was simply not conceivable for him, a well-off, middle-aged, rural Indian man, to consult my opinion on matters affecting me. This was totally weird to me, a strong willed and able woman, and I felt completely suffocated. I don't know if this makes any sense to my readers but it's how I felt. I knew something was up when I arrived early in the morning to find one of his many servants picking his toes for him. YOU GOTTA PICK YOUR OWN TOES! Really.

So I was itching for a way out, couldn't imagine five days in this situation. What cursed mental powers did I trigger? For the third morning of my stay, he received a call that his mother died at the same time as I was sobbing my heart out to Brian, who helped me see that I had to get out of there. I had to leave this sad, sad situation. He tried to get me to go with him to look at her dead body but I said sorry, I gotta leave on the next train. I hope I don't sound too callous but the truth is that I did feel kind of callous. I am imperfect and it's OK.

Anyway, when I got to the station I found that one of the servants had relieved me of all my money. I probably would have done the same if forced to pick toes. That was the final proof that I had strayed from my path of sanity. Luckily the train ride was easy and I listened to music that rocked me back towards mental health.

And Chennai has been good to me. I am staying at Hotel Comfort and the name suits it perfectly - it is healing me swiftly. And the joyful eccentricities of travel are coming back into my awareness - such as the 2 foot tall Indian midget (seriously) wearing a huge sombrero who works as the doorman at the Tex Mex restaurant where I dined last night! So all is well that ends well. My strength is restored.

To be honest

I shouldn't only write about the rosy stuff. The truth is that Hyderabad has been HARD on me. It is largely Muslim and mayn of the women wear full black burquas, making them rather difficult to socialize with, and the men just ogle my boobs and hiss heeeyyy baby. There doesn't seem to be a Western soul among this status-conscious, conservative city of 4 million, and I have not really interacted with anyone for the past three days.

The truth is that I have been weepy and pitiful. Every auto-rickshaw driver I have had here, every single one, has tried to cheat me in one way or another, usually by demanding payment for more than we agreed on. I am fed up and don't know how to be aggressive enough to defend myself without getting totally out of line. So this morning, when some stupid teenage driver tried to take me for all I'm worth, I yelled and scolded and demanded, drawing quite a crowd. As much as the men holler back and forth, it is uncommon for women to do the same, but I didn't care. I was able to get rid of him, but the trauma of the confrontation made desperate tears come to my eyes that just would not stop! I wandered around the Golconda Fort ruins, teary, snotting and muttering to myself. I had partly come there because it is the biggest tourist attraction in town, but it was just me and a couple field trips of fourth graders.

This is my low point. A journey like mine is akin to a symphony...sweet in the beginning, intensifying and coming to a dramatic climax in the middle, and (hopefully) gently slowing down to end melodiously. I am in the thick of it now, and I believe it will pass as I leave town tonight to resume my project visits. I will get out of the city finally: it is a cruel fate to visit Bangkok, Chennai and Hyderabad back to back. The honking and noise pollution has been ringing in my ears for many days now, and my lungs feel the burden of endless diesel pollution.

All I long for is connection, interaction. I never realized until now just how precious it is to be surrounded by friends who can relate to my experiences on a daily basis. I feel vulnerable to write these things and cast them out into the middle of the unknown cybersea, hoping they will be caught and well received. Life requires faith and hope, and I know that my trials will soon fade into mere memories.

Finding purpose

I am comforted when I remind myself that I am here alone in the middle of the world with a purpose, which I don't exactly forget but which can elude me at times. I have spent most of the last two days meeting with the movers and shakers of the Hyderabad IT business world, so basically I have been totally out of my element! But in a good, non-alienating way because everyone at least knew why the hell I was there.

Hyderabad is making lots of money off IT and Indian philanthropy is on the rise. My main contact here has been Mr. Krishna, a friend of my father's, who knows everyone here and wants us to throw a fundraiser here for the "100 Club" of the CEOs of Hyderabad's 100 biggest IT businesses. He is excited to promote the concept of philanthropy here and the time is ripe. We visited a school for children of day laborers in the slums here, which is interested in collaborating with Village Focus partner SEEDS, who I am going to visit in a few days.

SEEDS works with all tribal people and has established a small school for tribal children in the remote mountainous West Godavari district. The large foundation that runs the school we visited is interested in collaborating and making the tribal school excellent and modern. This would be great and important because the tribal communities in AP really need educated local leaders to emerge and defend the communities' survival, now threatened by deforestation and moneylenders to whom indebted villagers sign over their land deeds (legally protected by the government...) So I feel good that I made a potential connection that could be very beneficial. That's what I came to do after all, be the bridge. Tribal communities are awesome and have much to teach us so we have to help them in their struggle for survival!!!!!!

Now I am in the mall in Hyderabad, claiming my space in an internet cafe otherwise dominated by teen boys playing complex computer games. One just asked me to get off my computer so he could check his email. I told him that I am in the middle of writing an email! He said, so can I use your machine? I repeated myself and he went away...I wonder, would a local girl defer to him or is he just a punk?

Interesting item:
Someone told me that Chinese and Korean parents who hope for their children to be future business people are sending their kids to personality school so they can learn to smile, relate and socialize like Westerners, increasing their chances of globalized business success! I guess they feel as awkward as others sometimes perceive them to be. Anything for the money, I guess...

Alone now, ruminating...

Purity of knowledge
Maharishi says, knowledge must stay current to be pure. The current is the river's flow, it breathes freshness into water so that it does not stagnate. We drink from the stream of knowledge but are poisoned by the still ponds of impurity from which the elders try to force us to drink. Our intentions made toxic, we wage wars and jump off buildings, invoking purity to rise again. What does this mean for India's wisdom and Portland's new age knowing and all the dull simplicity that lies in between? The Rishi is Returning, guides Deepak Chopra, this time not in the souls of a few special sages and seers but in each of our hearts. Equality is not ours, but we do have access to learning like never before. Will we listen to the rising shaman burning in our core?

Collective consciousness is like a laser, says Chopra. It gathers photons of the human heart's allegiance as a laser attracts and arranges photons of light, into a brilliant, piercing ray that can heal organs and cut diamonds, reach other universes and change minds. For this, we must inject positive and healing thoughts into every last drop of our society and our Earth. The mere act is revolutionary, spinning our wheel back to purity and flexibility. We must find fresh knowledge and respect tradition, but only in order to improve upon it. Few would not argue that we can do better.

How strange it is to be anything at all
Before Bangkok bursts into showers of jasmine flowers and yellow turmeric dust, the tastes of grilled squid, shopping malls and red chilies still spices the mind's reflections. Big city Bangkok means seeing a girl sobbing on the sidewalk, bag of clothes in tow, and stopping to pat her on the shoulder but fully embracing her shaking body as she collapses instantly into your able arms. Personal space is invaded and conquered upon a sloppy morning kiss on the cheek from a book vendor already on beer seven. A thrilling moto ride reminds the hardy traveler that Thailand is the big leagues, and horsepower is a function of national wealth. I avoid the tourist masses in favor of throngs of Thai teenagers, I take in sensations, I indulge myself with not only haircut (as a desperate attempt at a professional look, which I only feel I need to compensate for how young I look) but massage.

Deep in the parlor den
The Thai massage parlor...an enigmatic place behind closed doors that caters to the sore, the lonely, the blissed out. She washes my feet and leads me to a room where others are being worked on. I enter the room whispering a silent intention to myself to relax and accept this massage for what it will be, not to fixate on just-a-little-to-the-left as I sometimes have.

The massage ladies in the room form a singular wave, their bodies undulating in unison as they lean into the clients' bodies with each pulse of their strong hands. Some are singing along with the romantic Thai ballad resonating in the air. Intention meets intention: just before I close my eyes, I see my lady briefly fold her hands in prayer, close her eyes and slightly bow towards me, blessing the hour-long union between her hands and my body. Our separate invocations are heard and resound ecstatically through my legs, which she spends most of the time rubbing in ways I have never thought of. She is doing my yoga practice for me, twisting my legs around and pressing gently but perfectly, reinvigorating me as though she knew I had come more for energetic healing than physical.

Eventually she works her way up and it is time to massage my shoulders, neck and head, the wonderful finishing touches of Thai massage. She rubs my neck so gently that my muscles are unaware of her presence; only my skin realizes and it kind of tickles. She rubs, so lightly for so long, gradually slowing down to almost a complete stop. Her touch is so tender, I wonder, does she love me? Wait, is she falling asleep? I shift my weight to alert her; the light touch continues. Mistrust flares: Could she be nudging me towards the *other* Thai massage from which not even female travelers are safe? Is she tired and doing this to pass the time?

My blissful mind strays from grace but then she moves on and firmly presses into the crown of my head, releasing crown chakra awareness up and beyond. She presses on my third eye and forehead, opening me to faith and compassion once again. Was it part of her master plan? She strokes my face so softly that I suspect she sees a trace of a long-lost lover in my countenance. Then she is done, pats my leg and announces OK! Sank you! And rushes out of the room, leaving me half in, half out of her spell.

Four hour delays provoke reflection
I am pacing the Bangkok airport with four hours to go. Why is the flight so late? I ask. They need a rest, replies the girl at the counter. I am halfway to India though still in Thailand, surrounded by beautiful Dravidian folk whose smells and sounds are a foretaste of the sensory feast to come. I go to the toilet and it occurs to me that I will soon be in the land of poop-touching. Poop-touching?! Yes, but only with the left hand so take caution. That prompts me to stuff my pockets with toilet paper, as if I would have anywhere to dispose of it.

I am just as scared as last time but more confident. I feel legitimate and relatively experienced. I know I will bounce around, and not stay in any one place long enough for it to really matter. This is both my blessing and my curse, and I know I must return to India when I can stay a very long time. Years? Going to India feels much more huge than going anywhere else because it is not just a new country, it is an entirely different cultural galaxy. It will deeply reward me as long as I stay open. Last time I feared death and therefore everything else more than I do now. So it goes - this is akin to confidence.

The wide-eyed wanderer wonders

Solitude feeds the lyrical - maybe that's why I get spiritual
Thoughts left alone waiting to die - my other breathes to keep them alive

Mirror-less, un-partnered: The mirror-ess finds that the writer consoles her
Though this hard machine shell is soulless, it obeys enough to delude the hopeless

Words themselves are the one present friend - electrode whispers, also heaven sent
Silent sadness is merely delayed for me, the sole speaker of my language today

I suspected that those words might escape me, for my helmeted head was blowing through the wind, defying breeze's smooth rhythm headstrong, bumping and jerking down an oft-violated path on the back of two spray-painted wheels with a motor attached. With my arm twisted around backwards to hold on, I learned and recalled that in these days, my waking life has become synonymous with my dream-scape. Tiny puppies rest on one of my large peachy fingers, licking up my palm-sweat. I am so parched that I gasp for water only to find that my bottle is filled with sandy mud which offers no relief. I choked and awoke, or did I swoon? I pace around reservoirs built by chain gangs under the heavy hand of deathly regime. I am sternly advised not to stray from my path, should dynamite surge up to remove my limbs.

It suddenly becomes fall and I am taken through fallen yellow leaves up a mountain, up and past golden Buddhas hiding in its caves, to a simple-seeming rock upon which my guide perches. He hits it with a stone and it resonates deeply, making a music not unlike the sound of the oldest gong of the oldest temple in China ringing in the new day. We guess that there are riches hidden inside, which if extracted would sit gloomily upon the finger of a spoiled fat lady, and this rock's seldom-heard song would never again be sung.

I witness epic legends of wandering and find myself a member of a strange sort of fellowship, though it is one with no destination. I question a quest and once my thirst is quenched, my inquisition's query is quietly quelled. Thirst for water and knowledge and legend and adventure blend into a thick banana milkshake charged with the stealthy power of a coconut, marvelously complete with juice milk and meat. I am led blindly through winding dusty trails into deeper and greener garden-jungle, where I am taken to age-old trees whose goddess-ly fruits I have never seen but have tasted before, though only in my dreams.

Feathery leaves topped with ethereal purple flowers blanket entire fields yet prove shy to the touch and recoil inside themselves upon sensing my unassuming touch. Other trees bear fruits that taste like biting firmly into a battery when you have braces on your teeth, and a companion urges me to smell a very nice leaf from a vine that turns out to perfectly replicate the aroma I dispose into a Cambodian toilet, on a bad day. This provocation rocket-fuels my weary legs with an honest laughter that carries me almost all the way back home, but not quite. After all my partner is gone now. I find comfort from this asphalt reality where I can, especially in the rice and among the stars.

I am discussing collective consciousness with my fellowship comrades, and we know what is true and what is possible when we sketch out connections that become swiftly painted by the colorful shades of our common understanding and compassion. Finally I know that my waking life remains solid, if only because my laughter is pure and my tears are salty, and I am grateful. I remember that I have no complaints, and that for now my sleep is full of shadows and peace.

If you should deny love, you will laugh but not all of your laughter, and you will cry but not all of your tears.

Emergent Global Culture

This post is a version of the email I wrote to my girls, most expressions come out best the first time around so I'm just copying it to here...

Holy crap. Brian and I went to a 3 day psytrance party in this rubber tree grove outside of Krabi, Thailand. It turned out we would save big money by coming this way anyway, which we took as a good sign. Ohhhh wow...The music was amazing, so diverse and varied and funky as all hell. The decoration was splendid and the rubber trees created a full canopy for constant shade and coolness. The food vendors sold fresh, cold coconuts and banana pancakes and Thai food. The weather was perfect, we glowed radiantly but didn't wilt in over-exertion.

But it was the crowd that made it mind-blowing. We met so many people and had so many of the connective, lucid conversations which we crave but which are sometimes elusive, so that was special enough, but the magic was that each connection was with a group from a different country and culture than the last. I probably connected with people from 25 countries. There were only about 1000 people so faces became familiar and a family vibe emerged gracefully and effortlessly. It was as if language was irrelevant, for it became easy to connect even with the Japanese kids who couldn't speak any English. The freaks of the planet converged to laugh and dance our butts off.

At one point I shrieked in delight to see two dready Japanese boys standing in front of the groovin German DJ with their tongues wagging out and enormously bright grins on their faces as teeny Thai girls carrying psychedelic parasols paraded around them and drunk Belgians rolled in the sand in front of the speakers where a black man was shaking in full tranced-ness and tattooed, wide eyed Israelis jumped up and down ecstatically and a tall British man whirled his blond-with-neon-streaks seven year old daughter around on his shoulders. (By the way the universal essence of cuteness resides in the hearts of Japanese trancer girls.)

As I danced I was overwhelmed with emotion many times, realizing that our generation does indeed have a soul, and this is it, our music is innovative and powerful, and our spirit can't be taken away from us. We were all people who don't care much about our nationalities and were instead feeding an emergent global culture based on dancing and peace. If more were like us our world would have peace. It was sad to leave last night after dancing and socializing for over 30 nonstop hours. But I feel renewed and my body feels floppy and light from flopping around so much on the dance floor. Now we will spend a couple days busing it back to Cambodia and get back to work, refreshed and charged.