Pack Light

After completing a one-year English teaching-facilitating job with Devina as my mentor near Jakarta, Indonesia in 2009 I returned to Nam.

Farewell to the tyranny of a private school with dusty clanging Catholic church bells. Devina guided the educational program with unconditional love and compassion.

Omar advised: Travelers need to remember when packing for adventures like going to the grocery store or the eye doctor to see clearly, because eyes lie…or walking across rice paddies to see friends  ... break bread, have sex, visit neighbors  ... greet strangers, marry aliens and burn or bury relatives whispering GOODBYE  ... I’m off to join the circus maybe forever  ... because one never knows if they’ll return, to pack their sense of humor.

Why do people look back at their bamboo shack, camp, home, village, invisible city or continent as their stone cold empty lost eyes see & remember with terrible clarity?

They are Visceral Realists.

They need to remember it because they are afraid they’ll never ever see it again.

They need to burn the image into their heart-mind memory in case it’s potentially, probably, possibly their final chance. In other words Don’t Look Back.

Nothing behind, everything ahead.

Are your needs being met, Rita asked Tran.

Yes, I have a prosthetic limb, I get around.

Omar walked the walk and talked the talk. Many travelers forget to pack their sense of humor. Perhaps they don’t consider their sense of humor essential on their super serious adventures into foreign worlds.

Worlds are filled with transcendental borders, beauty, humans, languages, sensations, smells, sights, sounds, dirt, dust, sweat, mirrors, and reflections without a GPS, compass or app.

It’s a long walk.

You’re never lost, there’s only healthy uncertainty about your position, said Rita, speaking of landmines, rice paddies, napalm, orphanages and terrified acid scarred abused girls and women.

Strange, said Omar, You’d think they’d remember to keep it light, stay calm, focused, let go of ego and expectations and enjoy their travails, I mean travels with a sense of humor… packing a sense of humor means less baggage and less fear.

Before you swim past a wand man/woman at airport security you don’t need to put your sense of humor in the plastic box so it can roll through the x-ray machine, said Devina, You don’t see travelers collecting their sense of humor after passing through security, intuitive travelers keep it with them  ... Many forgot it at Home Sweet Home where Serious lives.

After you pack everything cut it in half. Caress your sense of humor. After immigration laugh through the Nothing To Declare green zone, said Omar … Walk into freedom.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Walk

"There are some good things to be said about walking.

Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life.

Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting.

You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated and anyone can transport himself anywhere, instantly. Big deal, Buckminster.

To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me."
- Edward Abbey

face dust

Greetings,

Walk outside, feel the dust beneath your feet.  Walking is a luxury.

The street blends into the prayer circuit. Two large chorten furnaces breath fire, sending plumes of gray and black smoke into the sky. Figures of all ages and energies, sellers of juniper and cedar. Buyers collect their offerings, throwing sweet smelling twigs into the roaring fire, finger prayer beads and resume their pilgrimage. They flow and shuffle. Feel the softness being with the ageless way of meditation, a walking meditation.

It is a peaceful manifestation of the eternal now. The sky fills with clear light. 

A Cambodian man sits in his WW I wheelchair. His torso ends with two mid thigh leg stubs. 

A young boy in tattered clothing stands on a log. He throws a large girl doll in the air. It spins, performing somersaults. It crashes in the dust. 

He poises on the log, flexes his muscles and jumps. He lands on the doll's face. He smashes his feet dancing on the face, laughing in rising dust. 

At a different ground zero called Tahir Square a young girl referring to Egypt's backward pubic education system that depends so much on repetition holds a sign urging Mubarak to leave quickly, "Make it short. This is history, and we have to memorize it for school."

Metta.

A memory travel story

Greetings,

A Cambodian orphan said the NYT was looking for stories from readers about their worst travel experience in 2010. The kid suggested I send them a memory. Here it is.

This year was all about first class travel. While climbing into a volcano in Iceland it blew up.

I was blasted into the stratosphere where, fortunately, my cargo pants offered me ballast. The jet stream meandered over Europe in incredibly clear skies because there were no planes. Then, south of Yemen, the air pressure dropped and I drifted toward the Mediterranean. Using my polarity navigation device I located a highjacked Russian cargo ship loaded with weapons and landed among Somali pirates. They were very cordial.

We sailed the seven seas. Eventually they transferred me to a Turkish boat heading for Israel. We were forced to divert to an unnamed northern port where I hitched a ride with a camel caravan going to China. We visited markets in Bukhara, Samerkand and eventually reached Kashgar on the Silk Road where we traded with local merchants.

Over butter tea and tsampa (a hard rock cheese) Tibetan traders invited me to Lhasa, so we drove yaks to Shigatse, and then Lhasa.

From there I walked to Yunnan before crossing into North Vietnam to help Black H'mong friends in Sapa harvest rice. Laos was next door and the northern rivers connected with the Mekong, so I sailed south into Cambodia where I volunteered at an orphanage.

I told the kids this story and they were amazed to learn about volcanic activity.

Metta.

barefoot

Greetings,

early dawn streaks orange skies. two barefoot mendicants are walking down the cambodian broken dirt road. one looks well fed. he wears simple tattered white cotton clothing. a red and white checkered kroma scarf is knotted around his head. 

he carries their possessions in three white rice bags on a simple bamboo pole balanced on his shoulder. he is followed on the dirt trail by his friend, a tall gaunt man. they are talking.

man #1. these bags are heavy. i am tired of carrying them. you carry them. 

he drops the bags and stick on the ground. they crash on the dirt. startled birds leave leaves. a river changes direction. he walks over to a large cistern filled with water. he splashes his face. he drinks deep. 

his friend stoops over, adjusts bamboo through twine and hoists the stick and bags onto his shoulder.

man #2. where are we going?

man #1 (muttering to his feet in red dust) down this road.

Metta.