It's Bohemian

The waves crashed more violently than just a couple weeks before against

the rocks that I sat on. Enormous clouds seemed to swell in the bluest

of skies, appearing too big to remain floating as they were. Hanan was

sitting at his usual place, at the table outside his tour office,

drinking his nightly Chang and smoking when I decided to join him. "Two

Thai. One boy, one girl. Water take away." he said as he pointed out

toward the ocean with his chin. "lifeguard save them." he said after so

long a pause I had begun thinking about how those same waters I was

entranced in meditation with had taken two souls; how one persons peace

could be holding hands with another's loss.

It's been some time since I've written, not for lack of material, but

possibly it's abundance. After leaving Vietnam we realized how beautiful

it actually had been, though we may not have been ready for one another.

It's hard to describe, as many things are here, how each place has it's

own song and spirit, often unfamiliar and in its mystery somewhat harsh

at first, until you step back and realize you'll never be in a place

with that same embrace ever again. In Vietnam it was the coffee (ca phe

sua da) and pho, the pagodas and the countryside. In Thailand, it's the

feeling of being at home with the mangos and jak fruit and sticky rice,

and the quest for 30 Baht pad Thai, not to mention the iced tea with

milk, the waters, the sky, and the smiles.

This last Full Moon Party was intense, more so than the last. Often I

felt as if I was one huge organism caught in the beat of life beyond

reality; often witnessing itself and oneself as if in a reflection,

knowing you are a part of a whole and somehow that whole at once.

Koh Toa was beautiful. Being able to dive and dolphin swim among fish

around massive white domes of coral, and seeing your friend float above

hundreds of fish as a crackling sound streams around you, the sound of

them feeding audible in the water, is like landing on an alien planet.

You sometimes even feel as if you're lost in space.

Koh Samui - home, in spirit at least - someday, soon, a reality.

And tomorrow, moving south, and into Malaysia within the week.

How do I tell the story of having thought I was kidnapped by my taxi

driver, finding myself in a small cage with a matress on one wall and a

machettie on another, only to realize he was offering me a peace pipe?

Or how, with a backpack pulling me backwards I sat on a motorbike as it

went speeding up and down the slopes that hug the Andaman Sea as I was

taken to bungalows that had closed for the night, and how, knowing where

the girl who runs the place lives, I go knocking; a head pokes out

behind a curtain, slightly scared, mostly confused and shocked to see

me, responding to my knock with "sorry, I naked!" These are the things

of life, my life, and not a tourists journal of sights to see.

And then there is the reunion with Moon Bedi, after 23 or so years, not

having had a clue of his whereabouts for all these years, only to

reunite on Phuket.

How does one describe life? I guess one lives it, and shares what one

can.