Today I took my first 3rd class train ride in Thailand. Getting on at the beginning of the line means I got a seat, which is apparently a 3rd class luxury. Windows down for circulation, my neighbor says she's cold(!). I barely remember the sensation.
The train's gentle rocking and rhythmic clackety-clack soothes me. I remember a time when Amtrak bored me, but my travels in Europe in 2003 kindled a love of trains that burns still today. Something about them is conducive to reflection. I imagine, though, that the roar of the smoggy diesel engines is not so pleasant for Bangkok's third class citizens in their corruguated steel shacks lining the tracks, some literally 10 feet from the car as I roll by.
Mangy dogs wander the dirt yards and streets and lounge on the tracks (I see now why rabies was sometimes recommended by WHO), garbage burns in piles beside each family's little coal or wood fired cook stove. Interspersed among the shanty-towns, new brick tract homes and apartments are springing up. Which is the weed?
Entrepeneurs are everywhere with food carts and price-negotiable tuk-tuk or taxi rides. The thai people I have met seem to work very hard. Many work 7 days a week from sun-up to sun-down, perhaps with a nap in the middle. Could I hack it if that were my place in life? I have trouble with 40 hours/week back home...
Home. I miss Utah. I miss AA in Bicknell and my field staff friends and kirtan and meditation and salons and the beautiful red rocks and the sage and juniper of the desert. There are no coyotes here. I miss the community and connections I made in Utah. I struggle with this emotion, because I feel it does not serve me right now. Home is where my heart is, and my heart is right here with me, always. I am here, on this train, writing this reflection...Thailand is my reality right now. Yet my soul is tired of traveling alone.
No pen and paper, my love?
Write poetry with your body.
Lost your voice?
Sing to me with your eyes.
This place, this place! you cry.
A mirror of your soul.
