Behind These Jet-lagged Eyes
Meetings with Memories and the Guardians at the Gate.
Behind these jet-lagged eyes, soft oozing flows of magenta merge into shimmering blasts of iridescent blue. The unnatural hue of modernity’s pressure to rush rearranges me vibrationally. I have done this for years. Journeying through avionic corridors virtually blindfolded, muscle memory managing madness. Odd how normal this has become. Air cluttered with loud grids of rapid flight. Nonchalantly boarding iron birds, soaring through unfamiliar skies. Growing evermore accustomed to disembodied states.
When traveling this way, the body moves more quickly than the soul. Had we arrived into my wife’s village in Thailand, a skilled shaman would have surely greeted us and carefully called back our kwan, our spirits. As we landed not there but here, in the City of Angels, where it’s hard to know what anyone truly believes, where anyone is truly from, what trees originally grew here, what songs ought be sung to sing this Place into life, we were met instead with fearful guardians at the emperor’s gate, masterfully trained in the dark art of being certain that foreigners’ only reason for coming here must be to take something, as if this country wasn’t itself stolen from a people who did remember the origins of belonging. The angry brutes offered us no kwan return ritual. No flowers and incense were given to the Sky. No ancestral hymns asked permission on our behalf for entry. Instead, we were met with rapid, militaristic separation of mother from child, husband from wife.
The lights behind the eyes continue to swirl. What seemed like eons later, finally reunited, we hail a taxi and check into the most affordable room we can find. Everything reeks of cheap cigarettes, cheap booze, and the amnesiatic haze of industrialized marijuana. Sirens drown the sounds of birds. Sloppy sex echoes through the halls. Memories still fresh of orchids and fruit, my daughter is hungry. Unsure what to make of the $15.00 cellophane wrapped tuna salad sandwich imprisoned in the motel lobby’s vending machine, I feel like Ishi, lost between worlds, pressured to surrender to the ways of this strange new realm. I say a prayer and put my coins in the curious contraption. She needs to eat something.
Not surprisingly, my wife seems to be doing much better than I. Women are stronger. Of this, I am certain. And, I suppose in not having much of a history here she isn’t processing the strangeness of it all in the dizzying way in which I am. Jet-lagged, tired, and oddly nostalgic a part of me reverts to who I was before I left this land decades ago. I was a different man then, with different desires, different views. I was more attuned to the ways of Babylon back when, more able to mold with modernity’s violent patterns of constant flight.
Phish, the rock band I loved so much in my younger years is performing in town. My god, how I used to love them! Maybe dancing is the cure for these anxious feelings that permeate. I consider changing our flights and sticking around a few days before heading to Colorado. A very kind and generous new friend we recently met in Thailand offered us a room to stay in at his place in Hollywood. We could ground down there I think, walk through the hills covered in golden superbloom. But considerations of but even a half hour drive through the city seem daunting. The hoops I’d need to jump through to rent a car, activate a SIM card, navigate parking, etc. overwhelm my softened skull.
Life away from the chaos of capitalism has certainly changed me. Hard to imagine now, this all use to be my reality. And I was pretty good at it. I even liked it! It seemed fun somehow. I had no issues then with invasive corporate logos, the loudness that hails from debaucherous weekend efforts to medicate from mundane daily routines. The general excess of life in the so-called “first world” didn’t then seem excessive at all. It seemed normal. Now, after living for years in a tiny, simple Thai village, the mere thought of attempting to get my family across town nearly throws me into panic.
It's not as easy to connect with natural cycles in worlds like these. Yet my gut-brain informs me we’re now immersed within a great churning of crucial celestial shifting’s. As we boarded the plane back in Chiang Mai the Moon passed between our Earth and the Sun, partially obscuring the brightest being we know of, making it more challenging to see clearly. It’s time to let go. I have known this for years. But how?! Living between worlds offers unique views of polarity. America bombards me now with memories like a beaded string of forgotten dreams, reminding me of who I once was. I embrace the riddles. Yet they are not easy to understand.
My culture doesn’t appreciate aging. Or silence. I find it hard to properly define here what an elder is supposed to be. Or peace. I am older, yet seem still adolescent somehow, incapable of making decisions with confidence. A meme informs me, “If we try to hold on to youth forever, we will never grow up.” Observing the world here before me now, I sense that never growing up seems to be far more disastrous than Hollywood would have us all believe. Painful as it is, I cut the cord.
I can still smell the wildness of the jungle. Yearning for something real, something more than unfathomably extractive productions, pretty lights, processed foods, and electronic hypnosis, I place my bare feet on soil. I kneel and kiss Earth. Dancing would be good. I’m sure of it. But not in the same way as before. Something more ancient is whispering from the Deep. “Be gentle.”, She says. Don’t turn this into another “experience”. The Northern Lights dance overhead. But we can’t see them. Los Angeles has decided its arrogant glare is more important than God’s.
Nearly a week passes. I am still jet-lagged. Rising each morning at 2:00 A.M. I wonder where all the ants have gone, all the lizards and baby scorpions. I miss the mud walls, bamboo, and that ever-present subtle fear that a snake might be under the bed. Buildings here keep everything out. I used to prefer this. Terrified then as I was of insects and dirt. Now any separation from the warm embrace of the Great Mother seems suspect. Why has the civilized world chosen to be so cut off from Nature? When did this trend begin? Modernity suffocates our once strong ability to think with our bellies, feel with our dreams. I open a window and let the bugs crawl in.
Toilet paper seems so wasteful and doesn’t clean as well as water. Cooking on electric stoves seems unnecessarily luxurious. I miss the smell of coals. I can’t believe every home here has a car. Some, have several! I opt instead to walk. In Thailand it’s ok to have the whole family crammed on one motorbike, baby resting in mothers hand-spun sling, dad driving the bike with one hand, holding a chicken with the other. Somehow this feels perfectly natural to me, but L.A.’s highways? No way. Too many rules. Not enough cows. I’m sure I’d get pulled over for something of which I was unawares. I have forgotten how to speak cop.
I close my eyes and envision the Moons passing. Our Father Sun is warming up. Beltane has returned to the high country. And so have I. Change is again afoot. I bow before that which I knew before, seeing Her with new eyes. Approaching this return not for my benefit but for Hers.
Weary, our beloved old friends carry us. Overwhelmed, we feel like strangers from a far away primitive galaxy, arriving into a rich kingdom of the future. This country is vast. So enormously complex. Hard to believe now that mere days ago we were met at the border with cruelty. Now, kindness overflows. Slowly our rhythms realign with the movements of this thawing land. Snows fall and bring great joy to our daughter. We break bread made of wheat grown by the hands of those who now embrace us. I remember the imprisoned tuna fish salad sub and offer a prayer that her extended family of sliced white bread and factory farmed little fishes might one day be as free as the wild rainbow trout and gloriously fresh, stone ground loaves resting before us now.
It is just as important to learn how to receive as it is to learn how to give. Having little to offer now we express gratitude with tears and tales from afar. Our generous hosts prepared a cozy little home for us, complete with photos of our family already hanging on the walls. Seeds we will soon plant in the soil here are lovingly arranged on the table in a geometric, flower-like orb. The care that went into our arrival offers another form of overwhelm and I wonder, might we one day teach this, instead of fear? Might we overwhelm guests to our country with this type of acceptance instead of overwhelming them with brute strength and unnecessary intimidation? Oh, how I am inspired by the possibility of such things! And I don’t forget our new friend, whose generous offer to stay in his home back in California I declined because of my own insecurities. L.A., like everywhere else, is filled to the brim with beauty and chaos.
As the new day dawns, I offer another prayer for those less fortunate than us, turned away at the border, unable to discover the kindness this country offers beyond the threshold. May they too be welcomed home and be well fed.
The world is not a cold dead place.
Song (Album) of the Week: The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place, by Explosions in the Sky
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+wrold+is+not+a+cold+dead+place&atb=v337-1&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DveMONQwn7W8