So I have been finding this day by day and I don't know how I hadn't seen it before. Thailand has been awesome and I am evermore excited, hopped up and ready to go whever the land calls for me. Its hard to sleep at night, not hard, just that I don't want to miss a single moment. I read a lot and cant get enough, I feel that I cant get enough. I have been slowly writing in the "thailand journel" but have also started a sketch book of day to day sights and feelings, pocket size, and last weekend when I was at Ko Sichang, there was a crowd of tuk-tuk drivers watching me drawl one of the tuk-tuks, laughing and all excited like school children when they have a a guest speaker that turns out to be a power ranger or some cosmic hero. ha, I was so embarassed but i pressed on and got a good ink sketch to be proud of. the people are acutally people here, not reserved and truly natural, you can know them through their laugh in an instant. so this is Thailand.

Speak you of YOU?

Where doth it all come from
If you can laugh at life, do you know it
If you cry at night, can you feel it
This is it all
All it is, is this
An intimate portrayal, a baby sucking its thumb
And a wild bull running in the pasture
The synchronicity of flowers blooming with souls
And fairy tales of tall days coming to save
We wonder why the world doesn’t greet us in the morning
And why we are never invited to its merrymaking
When was the last time you called upon life at tea time,
Or to remember its birthday
Not asking for a teacher, but reminiscing with an old friend
If I think myself separate from space I walk
Then what will support me, and where should I travel
So I am, we are, just a leaf on a tree
With a stem we choose not to see
Our roots ask nothing but recognition
To be free is to recognize necessity

Gone

Flapping in a foreign land
Wings are working
But I think I’ve lost my head
What a day it is
When everyday I wonder why
If I wake up and feel normal
Something must have happened
For I am not alive
If I don’t see a new sun
If I’m not amazed
The situation had torn
What I once thought of my own map

A Disposition Seeking Deaf Ears

What a mess to make of the shining one
You say you want to reach the stars
But what do you know beyond that?
-
When we start off in a direction
Is it densely calculated?
Crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s
-
Is there a theory to explain chaos
Or chaos describes itself
In infinity mimicking its fathers
-
Now it begins to rain, this is true
Do you proclaim that it is falling?
We speculate about repeating history
-
Details describe yet can not speak for themselves
And then we know- and then the next thought replaces
For years the ocean will slowly consume the shores
Until nothing remains but what was always there
-
The essence of science, diagramming a soul
Who wants to hear it from a foreigner?
Someone only knowing while insignificantly yawning
The truth comes with the cat’s meow
Sounds out of bounds and nothing to hold in your hands
-
Yet we have it even if we don’t hear it
And all the molecules in the world
Can never ask the wind to carry them home

When It Comes In Sight

When it comes in sight
It is golden and bright, but easy to miss
I found it pollinating on top of a lotus

What’s it like to not be like
To not be in order to be true
I do not guess for the mind would question itself

To be in this place is to be nowhere
Like the center of the universe
Don’t blink in samsara again

So you feel this, right now
Don’t believe it but don’t turn back
Let go of the desire to let go

Is there a purpose to that foot step?
Try again but don’t try this time
Keep in mind what you mean to do

Quotes from Buddahasa Bhikkhu in a book that I'm reading:

“The expression ‘insight into the true nature of things; refers to seeing transience, unsatisfactoriness, and non-selfhood, seeing that nothing is worth getting, nothing is worth being, seeing that no object whatsoever should be grasped at and clung to as being a self or as belonging to a self, as being good or bad, attractive or repulsive. Liking or disliking anything, even if it is only an idea or a memory, is clinging. To say that nothing is worth getting or being is the same as to say that nothing is worth clinging to. ‘Getting’ refers to setting one’s heart on property, position, wealth, or any pleasing object. ‘Being’ refers to the awareness of one’s status as husband, wife, rich man, poor man, winner, loser, or human being, or even the awareness of being oneself. If we really look deeply at it, even being oneself is no fun, is wearisome, because it is a source of suffering. If one can completely give up clinging to the idea of being oneself, then being oneself will no longer be suffering. This is what is to see the worthlessness of being anything, and is the gist of the statement that being anything, no matter what, is bound to be suffering in a way appropriate to that particular state of being. Any state of being, if it is to continue as such, has to be made to last, to endure. At the very least, it must endure in one’s mind in the form of a belief in that particular state of being. When there exists ‘oneself,’ there are bound to exist things which are other than that self and belong to it. Thus one has one’s children, one’s wife, one’s this, that and the other. Then one has one’s duty as a husband or wife, master or servant, and so on. All this points to the truth of the statement hat there is no state of being such that to maintain it will not involve struggle. The trouble and struggle necessary to maintain one’s state of being are simply the result of blind infatuation with things, of clinging to things. “
“If, however, we are not yet in a position to withdraw completely from having and being, we must be mindful and wide awake, so that when we do get or become something, we do so without emotional upset. WE must not be like those people who, turning a blind eye and deaf ear, go ahead brainlessly and inexpertly getting or becoming with the result that they fall right into the pit of their own stupidity and attachment, and end up having to commit suicide.”
“As soon as any individual has come to perceive the emptiness of all things, there arises in him the realization that is not worth getting or being any of those things. This feeling of not desiring to get or to be has the power to protect one from falling slave to the defilements or to any kind of emotional involvement. Once an individual has attained this condition, he is thenceforth incapable of any unwholesome state of mind. He does not become carried away by or involved in anything. He does not become in anyway attracted or seduced by anything. His mind knows permanent liberty and independence, and is free from suffering”.
-Buddhadasa Bhikkhu-

i just realized that maybe i am being a little selfish, or maybe i feel like no one actually cares about what i write...so i could make up some lavish stories of mermaids and magicians from cambodia...but would that make me any more interesting? i am searching for the part of me that wanted to write and share my experiences but i think that it might have stayed on one of the islands, swinging carelessly in a hammock tied between two coconut trees. i shall return

i have since stopped writting a "journel"...its too much to recall, or maybe im lazy, but i feel like I have better things to do. i am trying to enjoy my time here, but there is so much that is so much. but i realized i feel better after my thai boxing class, and i even stayed after an extra 2 hours kicking and punching the bags, the teacher also stays after and helped me out one on one...so after sweating vigoursly for 4 hours i was able to sleep more comfortablely. anyway, you should try it. i am going to kancanaburi for a few days, there is a national park there and also some ancient ruins, so talk to you all soon.

The battle for illusion
brings back days past
they wear armor made from memories
and yet I can't attack