Moment-to-moment...the gift of travel

She lives constantly on a border. On the thin line held tautly between the past and the future, and it moves at breakneck speeds that can dizzies her head sometimes, especially when she holding too tightly.

This flowing solid boundary of her lives is ephemeral.  In one moment She gazes into the mesmerizing  eyes of a stranger, imagining him as her life-long lover, and in the next her hand is slowly pulled from his as the Tsungtow drives away from the pier, he on his way to the next island and never to be seen again.  In one moment she's seated on her mediation cushion over a reflecting pool complete with waterfall and koi fish, vowing to always pay this much attention to detail, and in the next she's on an plane over Japan gulping down microwaved food and zoning out to some badly made movie.

It's during times of travel that this boundary is revealed so clearly to her, as the repetition of her daily life melts away.  She is so focused on what is clearly temporary that she becomes more present to it. 

In her daily life, her friends can sometimes feel her pull away slightly with her mind, caught in memories or future dreams.  What they don't know is that sometimes she's simple trapped in the cycle of repetitive compulsive thoughts on subjects that have occupied her since she was a little girl.  The mind STILL believing it can figure it out if it simple chews harder. She had felt it too with her mother, knowing she wasn't there but not knowing how to pull her back and connect with her. So she tried to go there too.  Now it was habit whenever she felt uncomfortable...or when she went unconscious.

When her life force would ebb, due to the wrong foods, bad habits or lack of practice, she was lulled into thinking "this is how it will always be", and so didn't feel like she missed much when she drifted away. 

That is where she has been mistaken. It is how she was missing her life, or as her dad has said since time began, why "life happens to us as we are making other plans."

But now, here, in the beauty and softness of Siam, she gets the message that she had planted in her subconscious over 5 years ago.  To wake up again, she needed to start "consciously continuously showing up...moment-to-moment."

The universe had been sending her this message through Rainbow Heart, the American Peruvian Shaman, for many weeks before she left. "Love is about be firecly present," she would say. But the words had stayed somewhat remote, even as she practiced accepting and appreciating. In the subtle folds, love had become a strategy for getting what she wanted.  Now it was blossoming in her heart as a way of being, simply because it made more sense.

So she began  to surf the wave of Now.

Recognizing that the fast moving ephemeral place may be short but it is immensely wide.  It contains and endless array of potentials and possibilities. When she fully showed up on that line, magick happened. She would put lotus flowers on her breakfast plate even when she ate alone, She would find the kung fu in shoveling snow, and she would create random acts of beauty and senseless acts of kindness.  It's where she found peace amidst all the shades and shapes, moods and situations.

 "Be here now" was more than a trendy concept that elevated her ideas of knowing.  It was the way of life.  To love life...to live a life she loved...she simply had to show up.

And as she relaxed she breathed in now.  Finally noticing the cranes as they flew over the rice paddies of Siam.

I choose adventure...arriving Thailand

She wakes.  Head dull. Groggy from hurling her body through space at 500 mph for 20 hours.

Nothing is known.  Her subtle body slightly contracts as the foreign smells and sounds put her adrenals on high alert.  Anything could be a potential threat...or so her reptilian brain tries to convince her.

The sun is low in the horizon - she must have slept most the day away after arriving in the dead of night at the little Shanti Oasis in the heart of Bangkok.  Her will is ready to get this party started, but her mind is still somewhere over the Pacific.

A Thai massage.  That is what is needed.

She walks, sensed overwhelmed, to Koh San Road.  Its not what she expected, though she wasn't aware she was expecting something.  It's just like all the other backpacker roads she's seen - Mexico, Puerto Rico and New Jersey. Junky trinkets costing twice as much as they're really worth.  Here its flowery dresses, poorly made jewelry and Buddha statues.  As well as, "Get your hair dread locked" stations, fire spinning tools and the women in cartoon versions of traditional costumes selling  little percussive wooden frogs.

The frogs are following her.  Every time she turns a corner, there they are with their staccato pulse. RRRRRtttttt...RRRttt. 

They invoke memories.  Even here he haunts her.  Is there no place she can go where she is not reminded of his presence?!  He's like a ghost in her heart that will not be exorcised.  9000 miles and still no peace.  It really is true - where ever you go, there you are.

She finds nourishment from fresh papaya at Kaidee's vegetarian restaurant.  Then looks for her massage.

This journey is one of the soul...its about finding her heart again and listening to her inner guide.  So she follows her intuition down an alley, to a brothel-like massage parlor and gets ripped off...twice.  Perhaps her guides are still over the Pacific as well.

This too must be seen as an opportunity...but she's too tired to contemplate it.

Maybe protein will help, after all she's been fasting for 2 days as it was purported to help with jet lag. So far she's not convinced.  From a street vendor she orders a pancake with egg, choosing to skip the canned condensed milk topping.  The 1000 armed cook provides great entertainment with his speedy preparation.

Back at the oasis, sleep eludes her.  So she sits in the closed restaurant as the cleaning lady sweeps out yesterday's garbage.  A drunk french man is surprised when she declines his apparently generous offer to have sex with him.  He double checks, 5 times, to make sure she understands what she is potentially passing up.

The next day, alone in her room, she gets up and ventures back out into the exotic land.  She erupts in a delightful cascade of giggles when she stumbles into the wonders of the early morning Thai food market.  There's not a trinket or Farang in sight.  Instead, its the most delectable array of life giving substances, most of which are entirely unrecognizable to her.  It's all fresh, and green...and sometimes brown and red.  There is something steamed in a banana leaf and it's only 5 baht (less than 10 cents) so she investigates.  Banana and sticky rice. YUM!

Further down she finds the meat section - slabs of pork, strange fish in glass pots, dead frogs, and intestines.  Repulsed by the smell.  KAPOW!  Her soul shows up, and the outer layers of her being begin to unwind. 

Now THIS...this was her unrecognized expectation. In the midst of animal flesh she finds the passion, richness and the realness of life that had eluded her in the sterile sadness possessing her soul after the dissolution of a relationship she had unconsciously attached her dreams to.  Here, in a tight alley, filled with life, death and exuberant barter, the void of aloneness begins to fill her up.  Alive and juicy, she arrives.

And the adventure begins...
or rather begins again.