Does it take an event that I deem interesting? Perhaps. I'm sure if I jotted down more of my thoughts, you'd be reading your own autobiography, picking up threads of this experience that sew us all together, and as we discovered last time, it is that fabric from which we glean meaning...
But you'll have to raid my journals for that.
I've seen the poles of ways in which we entertain ourselves in the past 2 weeks, and realized they aren't so different after all...
2 weeks ago I ventured into Ang Thong Marine Park--a beautiful delegation of islands chosen by Mother Nature or the humans who inhabit her to be a place of calm, of restoration, of reflection.
Until we discovered we could make money from this archipelago and built speed boats and cameras and snack shops.
BUT for its still apparent faults, it has been the least inhabited place I've seen yet in this fair country of the East (well, west of California...you may find a theme: everything is the same depending on how we look at it...). A place where the park ranger joins you on the beach at midnight to sing Bob Dylan and blow into a harmonica...
And I spent my days doing...nothing. Reading East of Eden mainly (a true masterpiece of American literature!), getting extremely tanned, and thinking, growing, contemplating, not yearning to fill up the spaces of my solitude...
These silent moments add inches. They make you feel taller, or full, after a good meal. And yet...they left me longing still, grasping--which brings me to my next point:
It is hard to be alone. At the fundamental root of us, all of us, we simply seek love. We look outside of ourselves but that well is only so deep. And because we've been so generously bequeathed with such egos, that self-love can be hard to come by. I am a confident man. And yet I possess the same insecurities we all do. And I am ashamed of this! To think that I am not perfect!? How can I accept this??? Why does everyone struggle with this???
We were given this body. That is it. So it is yet another way to progress--it sets the path of our lives, this underlying search for self-love, and the way to it..........to stop searching and experience ourselves, wholly and purely, as we are. We know this though.
I haven't been perfect. I've indulged in the pleasures of tobacco, high fructose corn syrup, and television. I've run miles and miles to try and mitigate these aberrances. I judge myself harshly. But I celebrate the small victories too.
Yesterday, I did not pay for sex.
A little background: I traveled to Pattaya on Friday, Las Vegas Thai Style, replete with hordes of members of the world's oldest profession lining the streets from dusk til dawn and til dusk again, offering you "boom boom," showing their skin, grabbing your genitals, brandishing menus of all sorts of acts surely to shock the newcomer and perhaps even please the seasoned vet. Where in human history did we reach this sort of entertainment? It is bizarre and simultaneously totally understandable--we reach limits so we transcend them.
And I was tempted, enticed! I'm only a man after all.
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I entered one of these Houses of Degeneracy, ubiquitous as flies on rotting fruit, partly curious and partly...seeking. I guess that's the best way to put it.
And oh the circus I witnessed! A gaggle of old men from all corners of the world pumping their fists in the air surrounding a ring of unsmiling bedraggled Thai women sticking various objects inside of themselves and doing silly tricks with them--smoking cigarettes, blowing horns, drawing pictures...and it was very fucking bizarre to be honest! Spectacle, certainly.
Then the sickness sets in...the compassion, the questions...why are they here? What are their lives like? Why are we paying to watch these creatures suffer?
So I left. But also, because I was quite bored.
(Oh, I realize I didn't tell you why I went to this port of disillusionment--I was in Pattaya for an NA Regional Service Committee meeting. Ha! Ha ha!)
What does all this mean? Take what you will from it. Come see it for yourself. Or don't. But the point is--we can exploit the wonders of the Earth--trees, islands, and bodies. We can remain blind and accept their pleasures no matter the expense. Or, we can come back to ourselves, experience the inherent lonesomeness of the soul, and let it grow into self-love.
I spun the Beatles for hours upon hours last night, all during the long trek home. What a fantastic thing to happen to the world. The chemistry of 4 (or 5 if you include the 2nd George) individuals coming together to change the world through music...the evolution you see in 6 years is utterly breathtaking, tear-inspiring, sublime. John Lennon died before I was born, and I still miss him, and here is why:
Can't you see, can't you see??
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