It's taken 3 years for me to feel at home in Colorado Springs. I'm happy no matter where I am-- there's beauty and perfection everywhere and I'm always exactly where I need to be. It just took me a while to settle into my niche. So now it's time to pack up and leave-- and I'm really going to miss all the amazing people that I've met recently. Gather no moss, but try and pick up alot of friends along the way I guess.
On the morning of May 27th I board a plane which will take me to LA, then another plane to Taipai (blargh) and then a third which will land a haggard, backpack-laden version of me in Bangkok at 1:05am on May 29th.
From there on out, I'm completely on my own.
The plan from there is: pick a hostel, sleep for a day, go buy clothes and get a thai massage.
Then I'll decide: North or South and start going.
How the hell am I lucky enough to have this freedom? Good karma I guess, that and a Colorado College Award in Literature. My previous portfolio of writing and my proposal to "write a collection of non-narrative, meditative lyric poems which reflect the impact of buddhist practice on my life" was good enough to get me $3,500 of freedom.
A good chunk of that change went towards my plane ticket, thai visa, malaria medications, shots, water purifer etc. While I'm there I will live for less than $20 a day and I've decided to commit to being there all three months. So, although I planned to come back on July 23rd due to visa restrictions, it's effin Thailand. I'm staying until at least August 20th. I'll change my ticket at the airport in Bangkok.
So here's the million dollar question: why Thailand? I wondered that more than anyone else. Here are a few reasons, and the real reason.
-The Buddhist community
-The beauty of the place!
-the Remote nature
-It's cheap
-the friendly history
-The Real reason: ready for this? It's pretty weird. I think most people would give me a sideways glance for it.... (Promise to still be my friend?) Answer: a voice in my head told me to.
Explanation: Last summer I lived on an organic farm on Maui. There I practiced all forms of insight meditation. We did formal sits and yoga asanas in the morning. But, really the whole silent day spent out in the fields were a meditation. Weeding, planting, hand-tilling, all of it a meditation. My favorite activity was sifting the compost because it was this amazing moment when the dead and discarded became the valued and revered. Because I had been constantly meditating for a few months, my mind had become so quiet and still, that I could finally hear my own insights. Some of them had been very faint, but this one was booming-voice-of-god loud and clear. But it wasn't a booming voice. It was a soft, gentle and understanding voice that simply said, "Thailand. The next step is Thailand."
Before that day, other than a fundraiser I did after the tsunami, I'd never thought twice about Thailand. India? Sri Lanka? Tibet? Bali? Absolutely! But never Thailand. Then, in 2 seconds, Thailand was the most important place in my world. I was living in maui for chrissakes, why was I thinking about Thailand? It boggled my reason, but I knew deep down that it was true. I was going. I realized that whatever force landed me so unexpectedly in Maui could and would get me to Thailand too.
Weirdly enough, that same serendipitous force had a detoured route to do it. I was supposed to go to France in the Spring to study film. I had my French visa in hand, my language skills at their peak and my stuff packed up---- and I got mononucleosis 2 weeks before my flight, wound up in the emergency room for extreme exhaustion and dehydration, and was not approved to fly out of the country.
My life completely disintegrated from underneath me. I had no classes to be taking, no job and no apartment to be living in. I already had a leave of absence approved, so, without signing anything I could have dropped out of school, gotten a real job and taken up my boyfriend's offer to move in with him. Before that happened, however, I found out he'd still been sleeping with his needy, obsessive-ex, which made him equally as needy and I'm too independent and have too much self-respect to subject myself to that situation for a minute more than necessary.
Instead, once I was healthy I decided to rejuvenate my life by breathing creativity back into it. When I was sick I could hardly even muster the energy to sit up or stand, much less write or draw. I slept for about 20 hours a day and began to slip into a depression due to the worthlessness I felt.
I came back to C Springs jumped into Stop-Motion Animation and made 6 films in 11 days.
Then I took Beginning Poetry Writing with the remarkable writer Jane Hilberry and really focused on my writing for two months. At the end of the class my professor invited the 12 of us over to her house for a party. She asked that we each bring something meaningful that we were willing to part with. I really don't have meaningful objects so it took me a long time to come up with one. I ended up bringing my hospital bracelet from the emergency room two months before. We each gave our objects to a member of the class-- I ended up giving the bracelet to my professor, who helped fan a creative spark back into the fire of my life. With the portfolio from that class I applied for the award in literature.
And I won.
I'm going for several reasons.
-Because I feel there is something there for me, but I don't know what yet.
-Because I want to experience a culture where I cannot communicate with anything other than a smile and my humanity.
-Because I want to wander without itineraries or plans.
-Because I want to write in a momentary way which is different from everything I've ever written before.
but really, the truth is: -I want to spend some time in a monastary and deepen my buddhist practice in the hopes to regaining the stillness where the voice of insight can be heard. It was the most loving and kind voice I've ever heard. And it was mine.
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