I had an easy walk through immigration and my luggage arrived with me as hoped. Earthwatch's directions on how to avoid the shills in the airport and get to the legit public taxi stand were accurate and helpful, with just one adjustment as to doorway number, which I thought remarkable given that this airport was occupied and closed less than a month ago, well after those directions were published. I could see no signs of the recent turmoil.
My taxi driver spoke some English, and clearly recognized the name of my hotel, a 30 minute drive away, easy enough in the middle of the night, without the infamous Bangkok traffic. He had a bit of the spirit of Tony, our favorite tuk-tuk driver in Siem Reap when I travel there with student groups. So, while I couldn't understand everything he said, I did learn about his family, and that he had worked in Saudi Arabia for 14 years as a driver: this when his children were young, and his wife stayed in her native village in the north and raised them. He worked for a good company, he said--they paid his salary every month, unlike other companies that said they would but didn't--although he lived in his car for at least part of the time. Now that the Thai economy is better, he is back home, and driving jobs in Saudi Arabia are filled by people from the Philippines and India.
Mr. Taxi Driver also gave me, with my encouragement, some basic Thai lessons: how to say thank you and I'm sorry and good morning and good evening. He was even willing to coach me in the women's word for yes, which is different from the men's word, as in many Asian languages. Apparently, everyone uses the same word for no. My ear is good enough that I can mimic well in the moment but retention is another matter entirely! As a largely visual learner, I am severely hampered by not being able to decode the written language. The same is true for me in Khmer, Cambodia's language.
My hotel was expecting me, and so by 2am Sunday morning here (2pm Saturday afternoon, EST) I'd washed off the travel dust and was headed to bed, just as the BBC channel on TV broke the news of Israel's ground incursion into Gaza.
I slept most of the leg from Seoul to Bangkok, and another 4 hours or so once arrived at the hotel, so I awoke Sunday morning refreshed and with some hope that my body clock had reset to Thai time. The hotel is fairly far from city center, and since I know I will have three days for sightseeing once I return from the archaeological dig I am doing with Earthwatch, I have elected to spend today, Sunday, within sight of the hotel, with no particular ambition, on R&R: a preliminary go at what the Buddhists call 'non-doing', something at which, in plain language, I suck.
'Non-doing' is part of what I am doing here, if that makes any sense. Those of you who are averse to psychological/spiritual talk may want to skip the next 6 paragraphs. (I know: yikes! She's a wordy one!) The leave of absence I've taken from my teaching job is designed to give me time to recalibrate my inner workings so that I can recover from long years of laboring long hours. I know that I need to build a different approach to my job for the future, one I can sustain as I age and my energy level--which has always been quite high--begins to subside. I am seeking a more 'middle way', again to borrow Buddhist language. Solo travel confronts me with my essential self more than most other activities I know. (Backpacking in the wilderness is another activity that accesses this inner realm for me, but I am no longer in physical shape to pursue that avenue.) Away from the easy distractions of home, surrounded by strangers who expect nothing much of me, I am thrown into my own interiority in a way that is profound and useful. I speak less, for one thing, and getting away from my own outer voice makes the inner one stronger. (It's OK, you can smirk!) I understand the pull of silent religious orders, though I doubt I am headed there.
Some of you know my art quilt work. Quilt #1 in a series I call Journey of the Self is called 'Taking the Plunge.' It hangs over the couch in our living room. Quilt #2 in the same series--which I've been working on in one way or another for a good 15 years, no joke--is called 'Pushing the River.' I am, I think, nearly done with it, in outer reality and inner business. I've long known that the next quilt in the series has to do with floating with the current, in a much more contemplative and less busy mode. This trip is part of a conscious effort on my part to acknowledge, honor, and engage in that transition.
Some of you close to me know or have sensed all this. My sister Linda gifted me with Jon Kabat-Zinn's book WHEREVER YOU GO THERE YOU ARE, which I am reading slowly over this month. My friend Sandy knew in a flash, with the uncanny insight good friends provide, that when I said that Earthwatch had asked me to bring a kneeling pad for the dig, this also had to do with prayer.
A third gift, quite unexpected, came from an old friend who was an AFS exchange student in Thailand the same year I was an exchange student in Germany, before we met as frosh at Wesleyan. Matt sent me a digital copy of a tape he'd sent to his family back then, having to do with his decision about whether or not to spend a month as a novice monk in Bangkok--something almost all young Thai men do. I listened to it today with great interest. I am not Buddhist, and though drawn to some Buddhist concepts, I question how far I, with my deeply Western training, can expect to go adopting Buddhist ways. Culture matters, after all. For one thing, I suspect I am way too caught up with the notion of self to access much understanding through Buddhist practice. So for now, I recognize that I use Buddhist concepts in somewhat the way I use scientific theory: as elegant metaphor for scientific processes I recognize, or choose to believe are central to the way the world works. Jungian thinking is another analytic tool I find helpful in digging through my inner layers.
In arriving at how I might best spend my leave, I came to understand that I wanted to do service in SE Asia without teaching, since I knew teaching would keep me in talking relationship with others when what I really need to do is study myself. The eventual goal, I realize, is to do both at once, but for now I need to indulge in my own affairs rather exclusively. I don't know what the dig will be like, but I'm hoping I can be quiet, and think about time, and maybe piece pottery shards together occasionally, since piecing is part of my aesthetic, whether it is in fabric or theater works or jigsaw puzzles. What this adds up to is that I hope, over this month, to build mindfulness, especially around issues of non-doing and doing too much.
I'm almost done with this spiritual talk! Forgive the overshare, if that's what this is. I do it because I believe that we are all made up of the material and the spiritual, and because I can only speak of it indirectly when I am in proximity with you, but find it easier to be direct when I am a distance. (What's that about? Some of you with greater wisdom in these matters will know. I think it is the spiritual equivalent of why you can only see faint stars at night out of the corner of your eye, not straight on--see what I mean about metaphor?) I said when I invited you to read this blog that I believed in reciprocity, and I do. So this is also meant to prime the pump, a bit. Some of you know things through your conscious pursuit of your own journeys that I might benefit from hearing at this juncture in mine, though I question how much learning is transferable in these realms. But consider yourself invited to share back, if you wish. Know that blog comments are public, so that musings you want to keep more private should come to me a k_bovard@yahoo.com.
Back to the material front! I took an hour's stroll around the hotel's neighborhood today. Out my 8th floor window I can see a 10 story Veterinary Teaching Hospital, part of Kasersart University--it says so right on it in big English letter. Down at ground level, this is a well-off residential neighborhood with 2 story connected row houses, fairly modest in size. Most have an accordion gated carport in front with the house entrance behind and a second floor above. Almost all the cars I saw were Toyotas of various sizes, though I did spot one Isuzu, one Mercedes, one Honda, and two vintage VW bugs within a few blocks.
Since today is a Sunday and a holiday, most restaurants in the area were closed. So I was thrown back on the hotel restaurant, which had a prix fixe dim sum lunch, so I was OK with that! It went on for multiple courses--which I wish I had time to describe in detail for my foodie friends out there, but my internet session is going to time out shortly. Suffice it to say that I don't need any more food today!
Tomorrow, Monday, midday I rendezvous at this hotel with the rest of the Earthwatch gang and we head by van out to Phimai, near the dig. So I suppose that means I am going to work, though not in the routine way. I know that many of you are also heading off to work on Monday, often on one side or another of the teaching podium. May our various labors be meaningful enough to sustain us.
Rest assured that I won't be writing at this length very often. Know that I don't expect to talk a lot henceforth about my inner journey (I have a lovely journal for that purpose) but I did want to name it, both to myself and to you, my friends and family. There is power in naming, and if I am going to change deep-seated habits, I need to call all the power into the process that I can.
Off to poolside, with reading: THE BOOKSELLER OF KABUL, to keep me in travel mode. Maybe I'll swim a few laps, too. Or maybe not, in service of non-doing.
Thanks for listening.
Karen
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