~12:30pm So we are embarking upon our "jungle trek." Just now sitting down for lunch - fried rice and watermelon. There are roosters and baby chickens all over - so much for being careful about the avian bird flu! There is an interesting collection of folks here - Norwegians, Australians, Brits, maybe some more. And of course the local Thai people... It is interesting to remember my first travelling experience in Ireland, and the meeting of other people, and now how I feel... It feels so good to be out here (that is, out of America I guess). I really do feel like I have developed a world consciousness, the kind I really had been desiring - truly feeling America as only one of many places on this planet... it is hard to describe actually, but I think I feel more tied to the world, less afraid of it. I feel I better understand the globe as a whole place with threads which run throughout all of it. Other countries, other lands feel not quite so other. Like Thailand, right now, sounds so exotic, and in many ways it is, but also being here, it is real, tangible, not a totally different reality but rather threaded into the same reality as California, as Morocco, Spain, Ireland, Poland, Mexico... Yesterday afternoon Abe and I caught a taxi up to a wat high high above the city. I got SO sick on the insane windy mountain road. On the way down I seriously thought I was going to throw up. Incredibly, I didn't, but it was just ridiculous how awful I felt. But anyway, the wat was incredible.... high high up, many stairs to climb framed by mosaic dragons. But up there, I felt such a deep peace. And I always feel that to some extent in any religious place. But this one struck me deeply. I felt a calming and a settling, a quiet deeper than sound which encircled me and pulled me in, feeding me a strange sort of beautiful energy. I would have liked to spend many hours there but we were already late for our trek meeting and darkness was falling fast. The monks began a chant to carry the light on home to the other side of the earth... So many details I'm sure I won't remember. So many little parts of Poland and Morocco I am only now recalling sparked by things here, but I wouldn't know where to begin in recording them, so when I am home, they will slip away again, perhaps never recovered from my subconscious. But I feel this place slipping into my bones, my marrow, my soul, as I take in this food, this air and these sights. A place penetrates your whole being - its smells, sights and sounds and emotions. There is no escaping, you are surrounded by them. And the names too seep into me, and I fall asleep with the music of this language and these words in my ears - "Sukothai, Chiang Mai, Kuap-coon-ka, Sa-wa-di-ka"... There are many sweet smells here. The day in Sukothai we found flowers on the ground and Abe put them in my hair and I smelled of flowers all day. Then, like Poland, there is everywhere the smell of wood smoke. And unlike Poland, there is the smell of warmth, though it is not so hot, nor so cold. I have seen a total of 4 homeless people here. That's it! So much better than the U.S.! This place is a 3rd world country, but so gentel, so less harsh. It does not have an edge to it, a bite, the grittnes. It does not feel deep and painful or intense. It feels smooth, a little sweet, with no variations ever feeling too deadly. |
 |  Map and Photos for Thailand in December |  |
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