ON THE BUS -- BANGKOK TO SURIN (March 2009)

[Post Script: I had absolutely no idea when I wrote the notes below, that these experiences would turn out to be a vital dress-rehearsal to surviving the physical and transformational upheavals immediately following open heart surgery just 12 months later  There are no accidents......]

I am a stranger here.
Leaving the land of my birth
At age 66, I have come to live in this beautiful land,
A country that has no niche with my name on it...........
I feel like a homeless tourist,
Welcome (up to a point)
And alien.

I have no control;
I am suddenly so very ordinary
And lost.
I feel my physical and mental well-ness
Being stretched and stressed with such rapid changes in locale.
My mind's reaction is to find and attempt to restore
Something familiar --
To retreat from this locale
To a country more familiar
Into rituals of familiar normality.
But I can't;
There's no-where to escape to.
I feel isolated, fearful and un-well.

I can feel myself creating this moment.
I must accept whatever comes in the next,
Moment to moment
On its terms, not mine.
Here, barreling though picture-card rice paddies
Populated by alien people
Whose lives are filled
With their own concerns,
Notions of my self-esteem and meaning
Have no currency whatsoever.
They have lost their former power
To define and control this experience.

There's something I can do, though
And I'm doing it with all the focus I can muster --
I'm sensing into the the energy of each new locale --
The airplane, the stopover terminal at K-L,
The Bangkok customs hall,
The bus station booking counters,
The lunch-stop markets.......
And maintaining a sense of balance in each place,
Observing and recalling "How it's done here",
And being appropriate to that.
Balancing at that level.
Making it deeply OK to be shifted and swept about
By the unfamiliar currents and eddies of a new environment
Where few of my old rules apply;
Going along with the flow,
And creatively harmonising with it as much as I can.


Surrendering to just this much;
It's all that I have
To hang onto.
Then let go of this, too;
Let happen
Until there is no more resistance.

When the current slows and allows,
I'm opening carefully
Exploring everything gradually
Allowing uncertainty, fear, sadness and loss
To rise and fall --
And allowing a new energy to flow over and through me,
Dissolving the old boundaries between "Will"" and "Won't".

I've been blessed at just about every check-in counter along the way
With reflections from people who bristle with  self-important "Won'ts";
People who resist the way it's happening for them.
Thank you.
You remind me
That's not the way to do it.

...... I'm learning a lot today
About transformation.