Is happiness really a refridgerator?

A salesman at the base of my apartment tells me with his billboards and persistent greetings that "happiness is a refridgerator." Somehow as I walked to school this morning I almost became convinced that happiness was a refriderator, or more to the point, that it could be my happiness if I didn't know of an even greater happiness. This thought in mind, its amazing how quickly life can just completely turn around and offer an entirely different experience. Suddenly its all just very clear. Suddenly the most daunting beaurocratic VISA problems in SE Asia are nothing. Suddenly I feel superhuman and happy and ready to take it all on. Everything. The challenges, the victories, the defeats. I'm ready for it all and I know what I need to do, "Inshallah." I know who is right for me to hold onto and what is important to release, if it is mirrored back. I know how I hope to do it too! It has all come together these past few weeks. Is love enough? Yes. Is happiness really a refridgerator? No. Certainly not. But occasionally I do enjoy a frosty beverage...

...She is coming to India!

Ultimate Wisdom

"Trust is Allah, but tie up your camel."
- from Three Cups of Tea

... now over? just beginning?

Everyone has their heartbreak story. Now I have mine. Am I proud? Never. Would I love her again? I do still and have ever since I left. So how to tell the story of a broken heart? In fact, why tell it? So many have had it before and so many will again in the future. I wonder if that’s why I hyperventilated when I cried. There is perhaps an infinity in the sorrow where too many have lost their lives or lost their time… and I felt like I was breathing rapidly for all of them. Did she hear me screaming into the thunderstorm last week in south thailand? Am I justified and honest with my feelings? Completely and always. A sadness was with me from leaving other girls, but not nearly so much or for so long as with her. It’s the last comfortable thing I remember in my life, and now abroad, it’s hard to see beyond the thing you last recall with any degree of happiness. All you want is to go back there but there will never be that place again though perhaps a new one.

I recognize that It takes a higher perspective to see beyond my immediate reaction and I know I can’t regret my decision to leave; I can’t change my life to be what it would have been if I stayed; I can’t be in love from the other side of the world (yet I am); finally, I can’t stay the way I am now. I will sooner die than live another week with this feeling of heartache. I can't sleep or eat or anything and haven't been able for weeks.

The matrix of these "can not’s" hardens a sharp painful reality in my heart and mind, making clear the first priority of my soul: to focus on what I "can" do. I can focus on the future; I can be myself again despite how much pain I am in right now; I can remain hopeful that the right path emerges, perhapt back home; I can finally focus my energy on studies; I can figure out the first chance we will have to be together and just make it happen; I can meditate again (a useless proposition to-date); I can run; I can read; I can learn new things and be happy with the simple feeling of breathing again.

My time to rise above this thing or into it is now. The tide is high and I cannot regret my year abroad any more… it might be time to go back home. Yet, I am here trying to do the things I have always thought important. But the most important thing isn't here. maybe its home? Incomplete still, I am trying to build meaning into my "life again," in the words of Kipling, "with worn out tools." I want to be cured now, but only time will bide me clarity. There is no cure for love, only places where it can get stuck. I want none of my love to get stuck… I want it free and in the world, matched and mirrored by another. I have never felt this pain so badly before.

And until I have known the pain of a love forsaken, how did I even pretend to know what I pursued? Love killed me today; now cure me. I forgive you; do you forgive me? Let me give and feel your light in my life again. I am struggling. Seeing this place and this Asian world on fire for a chance, just a chance... I should be so lucky just to breathe and be here. I need to remember this fact. I am lucky just to be here.

You feel it, don't you?

There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.

There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.

You feel it, don't you?

- Rumi

Africa Rising... (Part II - Photos and Reflections)

I know that I will never be able to fully describe the three weeks in Africa with the family, but its worth trying. The family all came out to surprise Perry on the last leg of his journey. We spent 9 days on a safari in Kenya... Kenya is a wonderful and scary place. Many stories for the books... our vehicle got stuck in the Sarengeti and the entire Masai Mara tribe came out to help us push it free (these are the very tall people with the wonderful earlobes down to their mid-neck). We happened upon a water buffalo kill from a lion pride. Their bellies were so full and it was so hot that they were trying to get shade by the carcass, but when we drove up they just ambled over and sat under our cars. Perry and I climbed Mt. Kenya together after the parents left. That was amazing. Nairobi is nicknamed Nairobbery for a reason I won't go into... and when it was all said and done the whole family parted and headed back to thier respective sides of the globe. Perry went to London. Parents back home, and I headed back to Thailand just before classes began (literally got off the plane and went to school).

Above you see a photo of my brother with some of the kids in Nanyuki town. We are at the hospital near town - really an open air building with some antibiotics on lonely counters. On the far right you see a boy, Timothy, who you might able to detect, has an absese in his right jaw from an infected tooth. His condition was serious and could have been fatal. Many infarctions in the atrial valves can occur with some of the plaque built up from a major absese infection. But just the pain of an infection like this would be almost impossible to overlook. My brother and I took him to the hospital, a few kilometers from town. His troop of buddies all came along. Timothy joins several others who pridefully resist the temptation of going to school, instead opting to beg off the streets (how we met Timothy). We entered the hospital with the intention of paying for his medical expenses to have the infection taken care of, but to our amazment there was no cost for the treatment. He received a shot at the doctors, and a percription to go to the dentist the next day. I was stunned and had to ask the nurse some questions. Apparently the services are not always regarded well in the community. She told us that sometimes they have to chase kids to treat them. The parents meanwhile seem to be a cause for this reluctance to use western medicine. They doubt, for example, if vaccines work at all because the still gte sick. This of course is to be expected. (Even some people might contract the disease the vaccine was hoping to prevent!) Without being given the full information about some medical service, it would be easy to lose faith. The tragedy is the impact it has on kids like Timothy. His smile was mugh brighter the next time we saw him.

Kibera. The largest slum in Kenya and second largest in Africa, resides centrally off the highway in Nairobi. The community of Kibera number 3 million and span every one of Kenya's 42 tribes, though most are from central Kenya. I spent some time in Kibera before my family arrived, visiting a school and walking the streets. I saw two children dying from AIDS. Made me cry. Making the request to visit Kibera was met with shock and fear from the pot-bellied, greedy safari agents of Nairobi. Why would a foreigner go there? Even my driver, Joshua the "cousin of Barack Obama," would not get out of the car for fear of getting mugged or something. But the people where more than peaceful. They were exceptionally warm and welcoming. At no point did I have reason to fear. My only fears were for the damn thieves of Nairobi who come in the form of "professionals" trying to scheme some way of snatching a couple bucks. I never felt fear in the midst of little kids like the ones I met at the Kibera school, but for some reason, I had so much fear in Nairobi. I am sad not to have had the chance to stay there longer and make some inner peace with the place. I believe it only takes time to come to trust a place, but Nairobi for me will always be a place where some impending threat looms around the next street corner or sidewalk shop.



































And from the journey overland here is an entry from my journal:

Tuesday March 6, 2007
"Actually the day has been a beautiful expression of life, writ-small to find all its elements within the passing hours of an emotional experience through east-central Africa. Here, now, in this place, Lake Nukuru, my family and I find solace in the silence of a modest roadside hotel. All I hear in my mind is the chatter of children and the sounds of my family playing and chasing them around the area where our safari van broke down. Where one student came and initiated conversation, suddenly and magically there were 63 children! My family played every sort of game with the children: sang songs, had sunning races, taught them John Denver lyrics, face masks that only my mom knows how to make, magic tricks....it was all in good fun...!"

Having car troubles actually brought about the best cultural experiences for us. When we got stuck in the Masai we were just all smiles as we pushed and pushed to get the van out of the mud. Of course, the most useless person in the whole mix was our Nairobi driver who refused to get any mud on his shoes. So funny how people are...

We visited Lake Naivasha, Hell's Gate Canyon (1 night), Masai Mara (2 nights), Lake Nukuru (1 night), Samburu (2 nights), and Mt. Kenya. It was a good profile combination of everything Kenyan.



































Above is a photo of Wangari Mathai's "Greenbelt Movement" in action. Last year she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in Africa to plant trees. She actually came to Bowdoin once for a Sustainability Conference that Noah Long created and developed. Hers is an inspired story of continuation despite adversity. The other photo is of a stork on Lake Nakuru. Do you see the pink in the background? Yes, those are flamingos!


:)

The Philippine People of Mabul Island (Malaysia)

The Philippine people of Mabul Island (off the east coast of Malaysia) are small in number but create more community that villages and city's of thousands of people. Why? Because they depend on community for survival. Interdependence is what it was: an essential element of human life and livlihood. They are at core happy people, with a unique system of cultural norms. For example, you cannot come aboard any boat that is not part of your families. In fact, this is like the Burmese people who live in the coastal areas. If a foeigner mistakenly boarded the wrong boat (as sometimes there are many in a single harbor), he could face a serious clash with the leader of the boat. The women and children are traditionally gatherers of Sea Urchins, small fish in harbor waters, and at low tide a whole variety of species.






This young lady is surprisingly experienced with the world of Mabul Island for her 13 years. She has taken over the care of the four other small children in the family, and is a significant supporting arm in the gathering of rocky intertidal foods for the family.

Eating Rice with Chop-Sticks

Dusit Park, Northern Bangkok

April 1, 2007

For me a few things initiate the feeling to write. Right now it is the slowness of eating rice with chop-sticks, three grains (or a small clump at a time). Its my birthday today. Twenty-five years ago my mom brought me into this world, and as sit now with my plate of rice at a quiet park in the middle of 12 million people, I became impatient with my rice. I want to be done with the rice and onto other things. I had a thought of frustration at its endlessness, like life these days, and with distraction I reach for the pen and paper. Sometimes I do this. I take refuge intermittently with small things on the side, jumping from one thing to the next and causing all sorts of distractions for myself. But I like this refuge! You can't grab rice with chop-sticks!, just like you can't grab life or any of its "experiences." Instead you must be gentle and patient, able to sit awhile with the thing of life and let it be... even if it be frustrating. You must be gentle enough, I mean, to lift from beneath for some better foundation under the thing, and slowly, ever-so gently, lift (with intentful, yet impartial eyes), and smile.

Smiling makes it easier to eat rice with chop-sticks. In fact, rice wants to clump and join with the bamboo transporters. Life and its bamboo transporters are the same... it takes patience and diligence and seeking attainment without a grasping for attainment. You cannot aim at a target; you may simply ascend upon it (Hesse, Siddhartha). For in committment to the false single target, full committment, you will surely miss ... because you miss the whole. And the paradox is that there is nothing to attain. What is attained isn't the thing, its the usefulness found in the empty space.

"Many spokes unite to form the wheel

but it is the center hole that makes it useful.

When you shape the urn

it is the space within that makes it useful.

From the material, profit.

From the immaterial, usefulness."

- Lau Tzu

____________________

Besides, who eats every last grain of rice anyway? Okay I admit it. Today, sitting by the river with my journal and a book, I ate every single grain of rice happily with this goofy smile on my face...

If there were one thing we could do...

"Tell us, if there were one thing we could do for you village, what would it be?"

"With all respect, Sahib, you have little to teach us in strength and toughness. And we don't envy you your restless spirits. Perhaps we are happier than you? But we would like our children to go to school. Of all the things you have, learning is the one we most desire for our children."

- Conversation between Sir Edmund Hillary and Urkien Sherpa, from Schoolhouse in the Clouds

"Elliott" is hard for Thai people to say...so I have a new name: "Scott"

Today in class the most amazing thing happened. Usually we are just hacking our way through a variety of Infectious Diseases or topics regarding the status of current Global Health efforts. But the other day we all talked about 9/11. It may seem hard to believe but I believe this event, more than any other in our generations history, shaped the world. Suddenly the big, impregnable America became vulnerable. They have huge compassion for the New Yorker. One girl was crying when I told the story about the downed flight over Pennsylvania with the men and women who charged the cockpit. I cried with the whole class actually. Its been interesting. This feeling of vulnerability and representation. I am "the American" here more than I am a name or personality, and as such I feel like I have to hold something up... its very strange, and constructed entirely by the society. "Thai" means "free" - therefore Freeland - has the deep founding in our own constitution. Yet today their stability rides on the backs of these military guys who descided to take over the Government last fall. Right now these military jocs are writing their constitution over and nobody has seen a draft yet. People are very worried and the situation isn't good. But more than any other philosophy, they embrace the Jeffersonian ideals of our country's founding. Many of the Thai can verse selections of the Declaration for you. Yet...they can't pronounce my name (nobody can), so my name here in Thailand is actually "Scott." Before my name or my personality, though, I am "the American."