We're carrying on with daily life, now at our beach haven near Chumphon. Terra has been with us for 9 days, leaving tonight on her two day trek back to San Diego. Of course it's been good to share our experience with her, and hopefully she may begin to appreciate why we're here.
We went with her to one of the islands off the east coast, Koh Phangan, for just a couple of nights. My intention was to get some first impressions, just a taste, to see if it was anything like Pai, but at the beach, which we were led to believe it might be, in which case we would have an additional location that we might like to spend some extended time in. I'm not sure why we even thought about additional locations, when really, we're quite happy here, but we did, and the notion of a Pai at the beach had a certain appeal, even though in the last couple of days I've realized that, for all of our appreciation of what Pai has to offer in terms of feeling like some part of our "tribe" is there - that 70's hippy thing - we have no community there at all, while I've realized more strongly that we do in fact have a community right here at Thung Wua Laen.
Anyway, life goes on, daily enjoyments and joys, including my long morning walks on the beach, meetings with new friends, adventures driving a motorcycle with an elaborate side car contraption that accommodated all three of us on more than one outing, hanging out, going to the little town or the "big" city for bicycle shopping with Sidney and Gail, eating, newly riding bicycles and imagining expanding this endeavor (we did buy a bike for Nancy, and I'm now borrowing another one to find out if I might like to get more involved - I already expect that I do), visiting local areas of interest like the "monkey temple" with John and Helen from Oz (I was duly reprimanded by a self appointed lexicographer farang woman when I referred to it as the "monkey" temple: "Not monkey's! Lemurs!"), etc.
All this goes on, and in the midst of it all, simultaneous with the joys and the laughter and the fun and the calm and the everything, my heart remains heavy with the pain, grief and sorrow of what people are capable of doing, and not doing. In a profound emotional and psychological way my world has been turned upside down. Nancy shared a very good article by Ken McLeod, about whom I know nothing other than that he is some kind of well respected Buddhist teacher, writer, scholar(?), translator(?), and apparently publisher of a newsletter called Unfettered Mind: Pragmatic Buddhism, in the December 2016, Number 29, issue of which appears this piece talking about "difficult feelings". I recommend it, and I assume it can be found online, but if you try and can't find it, let me know and I'll send it to you.
Part of my upside down-ness is this experience of heavy heartedness. You'll be aware for example that I'm not publishing photos of our experience in the last few blog posts. I haven't been taking many photos of things and people that I could well be photographing. No motivation to do so. And I haven't been posting nearly as much of anything as I was. No motivation to do so. I'm living my experience, but I'm not motivated to display it, or share it much, or document it in the way I had been. It seems a bit irrelevant, or of considerably less importance, in light of how the world, and my experience of the world, has recently changed. I'm subliminally preoccupied, in the midst of my blessed daily life in our beautiful, happy, comfortable bit of tropical paradise, with digesting and integrating what it all will mean, or already means.
So here's a little update, just because I do still want to be in touch, and I do still want to express what I'm up to. I'm just up to something very different right now than I was before November 8, 2016, and I suppose I will be up to this something different for a while yet, time being what it is, and leaving it open being what it is, and the relatively unstructured life in retirement being what it might be.
Until next time, then.
We went with her to one of the islands off the east coast, Koh Phangan, for just a couple of nights. My intention was to get some first impressions, just a taste, to see if it was anything like Pai, but at the beach, which we were led to believe it might be, in which case we would have an additional location that we might like to spend some extended time in. I'm not sure why we even thought about additional locations, when really, we're quite happy here, but we did, and the notion of a Pai at the beach had a certain appeal, even though in the last couple of days I've realized that, for all of our appreciation of what Pai has to offer in terms of feeling like some part of our "tribe" is there - that 70's hippy thing - we have no community there at all, while I've realized more strongly that we do in fact have a community right here at Thung Wua Laen.
Anyway, life goes on, daily enjoyments and joys, including my long morning walks on the beach, meetings with new friends, adventures driving a motorcycle with an elaborate side car contraption that accommodated all three of us on more than one outing, hanging out, going to the little town or the "big" city for bicycle shopping with Sidney and Gail, eating, newly riding bicycles and imagining expanding this endeavor (we did buy a bike for Nancy, and I'm now borrowing another one to find out if I might like to get more involved - I already expect that I do), visiting local areas of interest like the "monkey temple" with John and Helen from Oz (I was duly reprimanded by a self appointed lexicographer farang woman when I referred to it as the "monkey" temple: "Not monkey's! Lemurs!"), etc.
All this goes on, and in the midst of it all, simultaneous with the joys and the laughter and the fun and the calm and the everything, my heart remains heavy with the pain, grief and sorrow of what people are capable of doing, and not doing. In a profound emotional and psychological way my world has been turned upside down. Nancy shared a very good article by Ken McLeod, about whom I know nothing other than that he is some kind of well respected Buddhist teacher, writer, scholar(?), translator(?), and apparently publisher of a newsletter called Unfettered Mind: Pragmatic Buddhism, in the December 2016, Number 29, issue of which appears this piece talking about "difficult feelings". I recommend it, and I assume it can be found online, but if you try and can't find it, let me know and I'll send it to you.
Part of my upside down-ness is this experience of heavy heartedness. You'll be aware for example that I'm not publishing photos of our experience in the last few blog posts. I haven't been taking many photos of things and people that I could well be photographing. No motivation to do so. And I haven't been posting nearly as much of anything as I was. No motivation to do so. I'm living my experience, but I'm not motivated to display it, or share it much, or document it in the way I had been. It seems a bit irrelevant, or of considerably less importance, in light of how the world, and my experience of the world, has recently changed. I'm subliminally preoccupied, in the midst of my blessed daily life in our beautiful, happy, comfortable bit of tropical paradise, with digesting and integrating what it all will mean, or already means.
So here's a little update, just because I do still want to be in touch, and I do still want to express what I'm up to. I'm just up to something very different right now than I was before November 8, 2016, and I suppose I will be up to this something different for a while yet, time being what it is, and leaving it open being what it is, and the relatively unstructured life in retirement being what it might be.
Until next time, then.
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