Diggin' The Beach Life......Plus

I have to say that I'm grateful for our time here at Thung Wua Laen Beach. Nancy and I both, independently, have made it a routine to get out onto the beach in the mid morning for long walks (of about an hour and a half in my case). I sing to God chanting the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra (there's always almost no one else on the beach at this time, or very few people, so I feel free to sing out loud in this way), feel the great blessing of being in the thick of this natural setting, respond joyfully to the negative ions, and by the way get some enjoyable and moderate exercise in the process.

We think we'll be getting a one year visa extension around March 21, which will allow us to come and go in and out of Thailand until end of April 2017. Whether or not this pans out, we'll be returning to the States around the 22nd of April, flying to NY to spend some time with my mother and some friends, and then to Florida to house sit and person sit, MaryAnn's (Nancy's sister) house and Aaron's newly USA-ified spouse while he's in Japan teaching drumming, for a month or so. We're planning to be in NM around late June.

Just me at home, writing the blog

Along those lines, we would love to find a house sitting gig in Santa Fe for anything including say July, August and September. So if anything possible comes across your awareness, kindly keep us in mind. At this moment our plan is to return to India and Thailand starting in October again, assuming our house is leased, or........................sold? or ............................?  Still leaving it open.

This suggests that I will be retired after all. When we left last October I was saying that I was taking a six month sabbatical. When I talk about and think about it now, I usually say  something like: "I'm probably retired"; or "I may be retired".

Well, I'm off to our friend Du's little beach side place for a cuppa and maybe some of his home made bread-toast, while I read (The Sense Of An Ending by Julian Barnes; or Willie Nelson's autobiography, It's A Long Story. Hooray for ebooks!) and wait for Nancy to finish her practice and come on over.

Catch y'all later.

The Journey Turns, As It Must And Inevitably, Inward

I suppose the initial blush of enthusiasm for blogging has faded, so my posts are less frequent now and I'll have to push past the inclination to ignore writing altogether. It isn't that we aren't having a good time, or that we aren't continuing to meet wondeful people and have delightful and interesting and meaningful experiences. It's more a case of settling into what is perhaps my more natural inclination towards silence. At a recent spoken word open mike event at Art In Chai, a cafe in Pai, there were two people who shared themselves via stories about their intergalactic friends and lives and experiences, or their rambling, seemingly endless and in my opinion pretty self indulgent soliloquy about the wonders of the realities of love and bliss and happiness and joy, etc. etc. etc. In speaking about this later with some friends, I offered that in my opinion and experience, along with that of the The Bard's, most of the hubub and chatter and noise that people make about this and that and the other thing is so much sound and fury signifying, after all, nothing. This also reflects a particular kind of mystical view and experience, which leans strongly toward the primacy of silence as the closest approximation of the experience of It, and for certain personalities, in which group I include my own, this bias is not of small importance.

Along with this is the oft repeated line that I find myself uttering in conversation these days, when exploring the experience of traveling, with other travelers, that my interest isn't in visiting this place and that place, or looking for the perfect or most wonderful or most amazing beach or temple or city or town or destination or for the most wonderful and friendly and generous and welcoming people to be found in SE Asia, for example...........but in settling into a specific place that we already know we like, more long term and more deeply, developing relationships in this place and with this place. A corollary to this premise is a “good enough is good enough” approach to being in the world. It pre-supposes a more realistic, I think, view and experience of people and of places, rather that the more fantastical, I'd say, approach of gobbling up quantities of experiences in the belief that this will somehow translate itself into real satisfaction or happiness or accomplishment, or even enjoyment.

Chillin' at Art In Chai, Pai

Our surprise anniversary party at Pai Laguna, provided by "Charlie", the owner and new friend

Charlie, philosopher owner of Pai Laguna

Floral peacock tail at TWL Wat festivities

So “counting” blog posts (is this anything like counting coup?), as it were, has lost its interest for me, and as I settle more deeply into the experience of being on the road, away from “home”, imagining being away from “home” more often and for longer periods, imagining “living” in other places – these other places would, based on our current thinking and explorations, be in Thailand primarily, and some in India – the nature of my relationship with writing about my experience is changing as well. I'm no longer interested in publishing a travelogue, so to speak, highlighting reports of our experiences and meetings with nice photos and videos and commentary on what went on where. Maybe, if I continue to write, it will be more about what it's like to live in a foreign country day to day. I don't know, really. Maybe I will continue on the course I'm on now, which is to say, not writing much or often, and I suspect that what I do write about will be of considerably less interest to people who may have been primarily interested in keeping up with our “travels”.

Back at Thung Wua Laen Beach

Mathematics and philosophy "professor" Sydney, retired to TWL beach from...Long Island!

Or, maybe I'm merely in a different cycle of things at the moment.

I have also been taking far fewer photos than I was initially, but herein are some that I'd like to share.