Tales from Thailand 2020 #2
Hello again, dear readers. And full-moon greetings from the Green Tara. (It was fun to wait for the moon to rise to just the right spot.) Thanks so much for your heartfelt response to my Tales. There are many Zero Waste Warriors out there, who have been responding with consciousness since long before my nascent attempts. I often fail to avoid single-use plastic: people give me bottles of water, or I buy something that is otherwise unavailable without wrapping.. And I’m still learning about impeccability from Captain Zero Waste. Here (below)...
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Hello again, dear readers. Yes, this time I really am in Thailand, and back home at my retreat center, where I am the official International Volunteer. I can’t seem to resist featuring this fellow (above) that I found while gardening today, though he’s actually double that size. And below, little Maechee Pim, age 9, is showing me the onions that she waters every day. I was given a royal welcome and taken to “my” house, which is always saved for me. (I still don’t understand why or how I am given these absolutely unique blessings…. but I’ve...
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Hello, dears. I suspect that at least some of you are thinking: Hmmm, they have saguaro cactus in Thailand? The answer is: No. I spent twelve days at the tip of the Baja peninsula in Mexico, before heading out to SE Asia.Last winter, I spontaneously made a reservation at an airbnb in Cabo San Jose, on the un-touristed side of town (I hoped). Never been there, don’t know anyone there… I’m going to re-print parts of a letter that I just sent to a few friends, because it seems to encapsulate the journey that I have been on this year:My darlings,...
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Hello, dear readers. I’m sorry to leave you hanging for so long, especially after suggesting that my health wasn’t robust. (It is now) The photo below is from two weeks ago, at the new S.D.S. organic farm, far south of Bangkok. The land was donated by Mei Oo, the woman on the right. She is also the leader of the Dhammachat Bambat/Nature Cure program, who will be fearlessly leading our expedition into rural Cambodia next week. Soon after we arrived at the new farmland, this woman came to pay her respects to Venerable Maichee Sansanee. She told...
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Hello again, friends. Thanks so much for your insightful and heartfelt responses to these Tales. Though I’m not able to respond personally, they are definitely appreciated, dears. Today, I have time to start the fifth Tale, even though I sent #4 out yesterday…because I’m sort of hiding out in my beautiful little kuti/house today. The truth: I haven’t been present for alms-walk or Kitchen Zen or my afternoon gardening sessions with Chom for three days now. I’m QUITE hesitant to admit it, but I am sick. Tales #4 was originally going to be about...
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Hello, dear readers.Honestly, I’m not sure where to take you, at this point in my journey. I’ve had too many adventures to relate them all…and I’m acutely aware of how easily I can sway your opinions just by turning my camera or perspective one direction or another. I’ve just returned from seven days in a rural orphanage in Kanchanaburi. It was pretty much pure chaos, since the staff and the director, MC Jutipak, were all away at a conference, leaving a struggling skeleton crew to maintain the 85 children. I don’t know if it was because of,...
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Kitchen Zen! A truly humbling experience…What a wonderful opportunity to fail so blatantly, on so many levels e.g. hand-slicing tarot chips with a simple grater for an hour. They’re supposed to be consistent…no two of mine look alike! And I keep switching hands, cause I’m a wimp! Or peeling hundreds of friggin’ quail eggs, until I’m cross-eyed. (Actually, I was the last one standing, in that particular event) Isn’t life fascinating!… (from a note I wrote to my pal Chef Tuesday last week.) I’d like to dedicate this issue to the many millions...
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Hello again, dear readers. This is probably not the image you expected to see in my second Tales this year. But I must credit Winnie-the-Pooh as a major inspiration behind my current mindscape . Or rather, Pooh was best able to sum up the advice given to me by my teacher Anna Cox, right before I left on this adventure. Anna told me: Effortlessly let go of any work….and see what stirs, into the light. Pooh told Christopher Robin: Doing nothing often leads to the very best of something. I usually do not watch movies on airplanes anymore,...
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Greetings, dear readers. I’m home, again, here with my heart family in a heart-centered community, doing what I love. Not that my life is any less wonderful in Fayetteville or out at Wattle Hollow. It’s just another flavor. My dear friend Nawng Joy met me at the entrance to S.D.S. and unveiled the latest miracles here at the center, too many to recount in just one Tale. But for openers: There are now a couple of caves that are constructed entirely out of pink Himalayan salt blocks (!), and heated with light bulbs. I’ve never heard of or...
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Greeting, dear readers. I would love to introduce you to one of my oldest companions: the Sugar Monster. He travels with me everywhere, anytime. This tile depiction is situated right around the corner from my refrigerator, in Fayetteville. Sugar Monster is eternally trying to get back into my kitchen. So time is on his side. Just when I think I have the upper hand: sufficient maturity, comprehension and determination..BAM! Sugar Monster grabs the wheel, albeit only for short episodes. Well, mostly. And why do I reveal this rather ignoble and...
READ MORE / RegisterTales from Thailand (2018) #7
Dear Friends, Uuuuh, happy springtime, from Wattle Hollow. I have often been greeted with big loving hugs, and then, immediately: What are you doing here? You haven’t sent the final Tales From Thailand yet. True. I wake up every morning, wondering and hoping Will this be the day I finish up the Tales? Read more…. CLICK HERE to view/download the full newsletter (pdf) Tales from Thailand #7 And SCROLL DOWN for a treat of imagery from this final newsletter post from Thailand:
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Hello again, dear readers. I have a tricky topic to entertain this time: Saints. They seem to come in all shapes and sizes. I probably miss quite a few of them, because of my busy, windy” mind. But still, I can describe a few that I met last week, at the “Inner Dimensions of Climate Change” Global Youth Conference at S.D.S. Forty young eco-activists came from all over Asia and the Pacific islands to support each other and examine the internal process of “cooling” our own minds, within the fiery blasts of environmental decline/disasters we...
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Wattle Hollow is a relatively small retreat center (40 acres of woodlands on a mountainside in Northwest Arkansas) with capacity for 20 - 25 folks.