mmmmmmmm, tropical islands...Koh Pagnan, Thailand

I sit before this machine in touch with my heart, home right here. right now.
three times in the last 5 days I was so struck by natural beauty I was brought nearly to tears. 3 days on Koh Pagnan in the Gulf of Thailand. 72 hours of doing only what I wanted, and nothing I didn't. mmmmm, hiking alone in the jungle over steep-sided granite mountains. Sleeping in hammocks under mosquito netting, steel roofs, massive thunderstorms, and the stars. Swimming alone in a secluded tropical cove at dawn. Honoring the display with sun salutations, stretching my body and my soul. Walking coral-strewn white sand beaches bare foot. Diving feet first into a sacred waterfall. Snorkeling around Koh Ma and swimming with baracudas; herding, observing, and playing preditor poking "holes" in a school of at least 100 yellow-striped silver fish, each 8-12" long and 4-5" tall.

I want to clarify Ode to Those I Left Behind. I don't really want the first to fly here and be with me, the second to leave his beloved, nor the last to wait till I return...those were the desperate clinging wishes of my loneliness in the moment I was writing. I was writing from a dark and lonely place and was incapable of seeing myself clearly and understanding my own heart.

Many of my decades old assumptions about tons of things and people and interactions on so many levels have been turned on their heads. For the better.

I am gaining clarity in my heart, groundedness in my body, connection to my soul. I feel pretty well on track for 26. Yesterday, in the midst of my 26 hour journey from Koh Pagnan to Phitchit via boat to night bus through Bangkok to train, I sat for about 40 minutes at a picnic table by a river and drew a brainstorm with myself in the center. I surrounded stick-figure me with written phrases that are important to me right now. I am trying to piece together the meaning of life, and particularly where spiritual practice and ceremony fits in that. There is beauty and power and grace in acknowledging growth. Marking progress. Looking back once in a while to see how far one has come, instead of looking always forward at the seemingly endless road ahead. The milestones we reach plodding along one step at a time remind us that the journey ahead will also be covered one step at a time. Gives us strength to take that next step when maybe it looks too hard or too big.

Tomorrow is my first day teaching. I am very excited about it. It is also a very important (perhaps the most important?) buddhist holiday--the anniversary of Buddha's death/passage into the final Nibbana (Nirvana). The family running the school I'm teaching at here is going to take me to the temple to walk three times around it and offer candles and inscense. Interesting that my personal thresholds have co-incided with bigger thresholds in the last few years. More on that when it happens.