Inversions

I've worn a lot of hats in my life. For a long time, I was student. I was girlfriend, once, too. Since coming to Asia, I've been volunteer, tourist, worker, and friend; since coming to Balian Beach, however, I've retired most hats and adopted a pink tutu in their place. For the next 2 and-a-half months, I am Olivia's Nanny... and believe me, that's the only thing that matters. Just ask her.

As hard as it was to leave Thailand after my lovely time at Faasai, and as decidedly sucky as it was to have my sleepover in Don Muang Airport followed by a symphony of screaming babies on the flight back to Bali, it felt incredible to return to this island. Walking through the Denpasar Airport, I passed all the landmarks that marked my first arrival here... same men trying to charge me $20 to carry my bags 20 feet, same grammatically incorrect RipCurl advertisements... only this time, I felt like an old pro. I helped a fat German couple get through customs. I identified the driver picking me up, Yande, in typical Balinese fashion—i.e. without any sort of physical description, and without a sign with my name on it. Essentially, he and I walked around for 15 minutes mispronouncing each other's names at everyone around us until we eventually bumped into each other.

He drove us to Balian in a van full of soymilk and edamame, per Alicia's request, and just when I found myself wondering how Bali could possibly get any more beautiful, we pulled into Pondok Pitaya. Of all the scenic beaches I've seen, of all the sprawling rice fields and perfect palm trees, this place puts them all to shame. There is just something about it; flower-lined pathways, tiny huts for meditation, stained-glass windows, crashing surf... and above all, just this incredible feeling of ease all around. I was shown to the "Happy House," and sure enough, there she was: all four and a half years of her, sitting in between the yoga hardbodies, coloring on a piece of paper and munching on organic, gluten-free pizza. Olivia, my best friend for the next few months, and my reason for coming back.

For anyone who didn't get the memo, my new job is as follows: until February, I will be traveling with a couple named Alicia and Oliver, both yoga teachers, and taking care of their little girl while they lead and participate in yoga teacher trainings. In Balian, this means watching Olivia for a few hours in the morning (6:30-9:30 during asana practice) and six or seven more in the afternoon (during philosophy, anatomy, practice teaching, etc). At first, the idea of being up and 'on' at six in the morning horrified me beyond belief; that is, until I realized that it is actually possible to wake rested with the sunrise when your head hits the pillow before 9:30 p.m. In that respect, my life has taken on dramatic change. When I'm done watching Olivia for the day, in the interim between afternoon swims and dinner on the beach, I do yoga in my little loft: a room all to myself that consists of a yoga mat, a tiny bed and mosquito net, a shelf, a fan, and a vase of flowers. In the hours I've spent up there, sweating my face off, I've realized there isn't a single thing I'd put up there to make it 'better.' I don't need anything else. When I’m done with my practice, showered, and my belly is full, I fall asleep. Life is simple.

So the sun rises around 5:30 a.m., I creak over the floor and down the stairs around 6:15; and as soon as I walk out the door and see Olivia's little curly head waiting for me, it begins. Here's the thing: I love kids and have always been good with them, and although I'd never had a nannying job before, I figured my babysitting experience would be more than enough prep. What could possibly be different? In a word: everything. Babysitting, you're responsible for the happiness and well-being of a kid for six, maybe eight hours, and if you get it bathed and fed before its parents come home, you walk away with a wad of cash and relative non-attachment to the whole shindig. Travel nannying, however, is the total entwinement of your life with someone else's--even "alone" time bears the possibility (and probability) of interruption. I walked into my job with Olivia feeling relatively confident, knowing she is both well behaved and a joy to be around... and then I remembered that the last time I spent all day every day with a four-year-old was when I myself was a four-year-old. What does one do with a kid once the games have run out, the stories have been read, and the food has been eaten?

The answer is, you stand on your head. Here's where the really good stuff starts: as per YogaWorks requirements, each week of the training has a different theme. Week 4=Beginning/Prenatal. Week 3=Backbends and Twists. Week 2, the week of my arrival, happened to be Inversions Week. In an asana class, the funny thing about inversions is that it is the point when most people conveniently go to the bathroom; handstands, headstands, shoulder-stands... no matter what's standing, it's not your feet, and that's enough to make most people (myself included) freak out. Even here, where most people are advanced practitioners, there was still palpable fear surrounding Inversions Week. 

When it comes to nannying, however, fear isn't an option. Kids can smell it on you like day-old French toast. When Olivia looked at me after two days together and asked, perfectly reasonably, if "King Philip Algblado had killed the dinosaur in my living room and rescued the fairy princess," I felt pretty sure that I would puke out of anxiety. By day four, however, my answer was "of course, my fair Queen—but HURRY, we must ride the lily pad bus to the medicine woman before the fairy baby's curse becomes permanent!" Living with a kid, especially one whose imagination has not yet been spoiled by Nickelodeon, requires a suspension of disbelief. When Olivia stops abruptly in the middle of the rice field and nearly causes me to choke on my water bottle, it's not for no reason. "Invisible door," she says. In that situation, there are two options: walk around her and keep moving, or pretend to search for an invisible key. Being with a kid, really being with them, requires turning your whole world upside down... and if that world has recently been giving you trouble, all the better. In the past couple weeks, I have played approximately 60 games of Go Fish (usually altering the rules midway to reflect any measure of fairy intervention, day of the week, or underwear color); have introduced myself to complete strangers as an evil queen, baby rhinoceros, stray kitten, and fairy princess; have read at least a dozen picture books complete with funny voices; have run through the pouring rain with a kid under my arm ("PUTMEDOWNPUTMEDOWN...." Pause. "DO IT AGAIN!!!"); and have picked up countless objects, from shells to bracelets, and been forced to see them as something other than what they are. A shell, you must remember, is not only a shell: it could also be a priceless gem of Princess Jasmine, a baby narwhal, or a toothbrush, depending on the game. 

The crazy thing is, within about a week of Olivia, my yoga practice changed dramatically. When I participated in one of the asana classes, I floated up into headstand—effortlessly—for the first time in my life. I found my physical practice reflecting what I'd suddenly begun to feel in my mind: there is no backwards or forwards, upside down or rightside up, so much as there are different ways of looking at the same thing. One day, Olivia looked at me with big, globby tears in her eyes. "Don't worry," she said. "These are happy tears, not sad tears." Why, I asked her. "I don't know... because of the sky? Don’t worry. They’re not sad tears. They just look the same.”

In the truest sense of the word, Olivia is amazing. She has been traveling since she was just a few weeks old, with parents who embody mindfullness, and her imagination is switched ON. She isn't picky, whiny, boring, or shy. When we found two dead cats on the beach, frozen in an expression that can only be described as nightmarish, she simply looked at me and asked, "were they happy before they died? Will someone clean them up soon?" When she was covered from head to toe in red, swollen mosquito bites, she closed her eyes and smiled. "It will be better tomorrow." She's four going on twenty-four, and I'm twenty-two going on two; we both believe in fairies, and neither of us has any problem eating an entire coconut in one sitting. All in all, it works quite nicely. 

That's not to say that we don't have our moments. Every once in a while, Olivia will stop speaking to me altogether—I'll ask her a question, and she'll stare at my bellybutton for an hour. Sometimes, she takes off with no warning and goes tearing into her mother's arms, teary and desperate, and refuses to play with me for the rest of the afternoon. In these moments, I find it difficult not to burst into tears and run to MY mommy... only mine is really, really far away. And when I explain this to Olivia, and we look at the ocean together for a little while, it usually gets better. The moments when she takes my hand and says "let's snuggle and pretend we're princesses" more than make up for the moments when my loneliness bites me, when I forget not to take things personally, or when I am anything less than 100% grateful for the patience and openheartedness that her presence is teaching me.

Tomorrow, it's back to Ubud: the place where this adventure began, and my home for the next month before the next—and final—leg of my travels. I'll miss Balian Beach, especially the schedule my body and brain have fallen into... but in my heart of hearts, I know it's only going to get better. I've done an incredible amount of searching in the small time I've had here. I've deepened my yoga and meditation practice, spending 3 hours at a time on nothing but breathing into my gratitude, and have noticed the corresponding changes in my reactions. During a phone call the other day, when someone casually mentioned that I "always care what others think of me," I realized quite happily that that is no longer the case. I didn't even recognize it at first, but it's true. On a more serious note, when my beloved camera took a tumble down from my loft and broke, my first thought was "Oh—well, I'd been getting too attached to that thing anyhow." My camera fell, but I didn't. I have my health and a wonderful job and a reason to be happy every day: namely, that I choose to be. It's a choice. It's all a choice.

The other night, as I was falling asleep, something occurred to me. I have been lucky enough to have two distinct eras of travel in my life—first Ireland, and now this. In many ways, they have been similar: they have given me time to myself, to get to know who I am, and to live in awe of our planet’s scenery. They have been about living spontaneously and not taking things so seriously. That said, they are also complete opposites. Ireland was all about fun, about eating and drinking and going out every night ‘til the wee hours… socializing, dating, learning to take life with a laugh and a pint of Guinness. Here, my life has swung to the opposite side of the spectrum; clean food, zero alcohol and very few trips ‘out,’ a disciplined yoga practice, and lots and lots of time spent completely alone. My experience there has inverted into my experience here; both interesting, both wonky, and two radically different sides to the person I can feel myself becoming. There’s a middle way in there somewhere, and when I think about home, I feel peace in the idea that I might finally be able to find it there.

So, to conclude: last night, I participated in my very first Kirtan. We came to the yoga studio after hours, surrounded Ganesha in a mandala of marigolds, plumerias, and petals of sweet pea, and all decided on something we wanted to throw in the circle to let go of; it is the full moon, which is the perfect time for the final swelling of feeling before the new moon comes along and cleans the slate. Sitting there, it occurred to me that the Kirtan is probably many people’s version of hell: swaying and chanting to Lakshmi and Saraswati, singing in Sanskrit, and letting the spirit move us. Likewise, if you’d asked me a month ago, I probably would have said that a 3 hour arm-balance yoga class would have been MY idea of hell—and now, it’s something that I have not only done but enjoyed. Life inverts now and again. It’s good to change your mind, to go upside down and physically—or emotionally—let your heart be higher than your head. If we don’t, there’s always the chance that the Hindu goddess Kali will come by and chop off our heads, adding them to her belt, reminding us to let go of our egos and be free. Or there’s a chance that Olivia will ask us to play Crazy Eights for three hours straight, which is pretty much the same thing.

One of my favorite parts of Balian is the warm afternoon rainstorms. Around 2:00, in the middle of a sunny day, a sudden boom of thunder shakes the place—and within about 10 minutes, the entire place is coated in a sheet of torrential rain. Yesterday, as the water pounded the roof, the yogis had reached a peak in the energy of their meditation—I heard them laughing, celebrating from inside the studio. On the couch, Olivia and I were watching Alice and Wonderland underneath a scratchy blanket. Umbrella birds, cards painting the roses red, a Mad Hatter, and a floating cat all danced around in an upside-down world…caterpillars crawled backwards... and I dunno, it all looked pretty normal to me.

Farm Life: A Saga in Four Verses

Prologue: Lost in Translation

            When Bobbie and I parted ways at the Bangkok airport, she off to Cambodia and I off to my volunteer job in the south, I remember thinking: We did it! The world’s most accident-prone traveling duo made it through without a scratch! Little did I know, the Universe was simply storing up our disaster energy and saving it for the second I was alone at Suvarnabhumi. The thing is, I needed to catch a bus to Chanthaburi. Actually, I needed a bus that stopped at Nong Singha—but after that proved to be too complicated, I found a counter advertising a bus that stopped in Chanthaburi, bought a ticket for Chanthaburi, and asked at least three airport staff if the bus was, in fact, going to Chanthaburi. So, do you think my bus went to Chanthaburi?

            Of course it didn’t .

            In retrospect, I jinxed it with my overconfidence. I had found Thailand to be incredibly easy to navigate, and it felt good just to ‘wing it.’ So of course, when I walked outside to meet the ‘bus’ and was instead greeted with an oversized van, I panicked. First of all, that meant no bathroom. “WAIT FOR ME! NO LEAVE! NO LEAVE, ONE MINUTE!”—I dashed back toward the airport and peed in record time, dragging my mondo backpack with me and barely catching the van as it left. Of course, being the last one on, there was no seat for me… plus, I was the smallest. And traveling alone. That bought me exactly one spot on the front seat center console, no seatbelt, sandwiched between the driver and an extremely unpleasant Thai teenager, while the necklaces hanging from the rearview mirror smacked me in the face as we drove. I sat there, my headphones broken (aka: no escape), thinking that if we came to a sudden stop—or made any sudden movements, for that matter—I would go flying through the window. This, combined with the fact that not a single person on the bus spoke English or could help me tell the driver to take me to the Chanthaburi bus station, made for one of the most challenging—but naturally, most entertaining—branches of travel thus far. By some stroke of insane luck, and a lot of pantomiming, I ended up getting to the bus station and eventually to my new home, the farm at FaaSai Eco Resort and Spa. One foot on the soil, and I immediately knew it was worth it… but from now on, any time I feel frustrated with travel, I will remember my non-seat on the non-bus and raise a hand in silent salute: never forget.

Part Two: Swass

            Two weeks ago, if you asked me what hard work was, I probably would have mentioned the night I stayed up until 5 a.m. editing my thesis. I also might have mentioned expediting food at a busy restaurant during the late-night summer rush, or catering a wedding full of drunk uncles. In either case, my present self—the one that just spent a week clearing rice fields—would have bitch-slapped that thesis-writing complainer upside the head. When it comes down to it, there is no harder job than putting in a day’s work on a farm, especially if that farm happens to be in the tropics. There is no substitute for that kind of heat, grime, sweat, nastiness, and strength; and likewise, there is no feeling of relief, gratitude, power, and joy that even comes close. Not anything I’d experienced, anyhow. Last week, I had my butt handed to me by the farm at FaaSai; and it was one of the greatest (and most exhausting, and most enlightening) things to happen to me.

            My first two days at FaaSai, there were only two volunteers working the farm-shift: myself, and an Irish man named Charlie. After instant coffees and giant bowls of muesli, we biked to the farm between 7 and 8 a.m. in a vain attempt to beat the heat—something that, after only a few days, one learns to accept rather than try to correct. It’s kind of like walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night, or the Kardashian family. They suck, but they’re a part of life. Anyhow, on Charlie’s suggestion, I came to the farm armed with an extra shirt, a towel, sunscreen, a hat, and 2 liters of water. Chok, one of the Thai workers, also gave me a long-sleeved shirt for sun-protection…and for the next week, I was wiping my dripping face on a sleeve stained with someone else’s blood. (Yum.)

            We were expected to put in about 3 and-a-half hours in the morning, before we took a lunch break during the hottest (and therefore unworkable) hours of the day. I guess the spoiled liberal arts student in me was expecting some sort of instruction, some sort of assignment or PowerPoint detailing my daily tasks; but instead, I was handed a hoe and told to just do it. Farmer Barbie was quickly replaced by a sunburned girl in wool gloves, getting scraped by rusted barbed wire, sweating so profusely that it was actually impossible to see straight. On that first day, Charlie and I listened to Bruce Springsteen on crappy speakers and hacked away at a rice field, clearing weeds, spiders, snakes, fire ants, and occasionally massive thorns, with tools that were about as sharp as a baking spoon. It was HARD. Every muscle in my body was screaming for mercy. And yet… I found myself hypnotized by the rhythm of the work. The OCD in me was oddly satisfied by the extreme before-and-after of the areas we cleared. Best of all, I found myself flashing to images of some of my peers at Scripps—moaning over this or that paper, downing cup after cup of milky coffee in temperature-regulated dorm rooms—and taking great comfort in the fact that I was getting to experience real work. I don’t mean to undermine the type of soul-crushing psychobabble that is assigned in college, because that had me begging for mercy for 4 straight years; but when it comes down to it, it just doesn’t compare to pouring every ounce of your body into working a piece of land. I found myself wondering why, when we were at the height of thesis-complaints, Scripps didn’t just throw us all on a farm. It certainly would have shut me up.

So that was the morning; and every day, when the sun got too hot, we would hop back on our bikes—usually looking like we had gone swimming—and proceed to take the best shower, the best nap, and eat the greatest lunch on the planet. After working like that, just sitting made me want to cry with happiness.

My body was sore all over, bruised and cut and peppered with ingrown nails and mysterious infections… and I loved it. About halfway through the week, I realized that I had doubted myself; after the cushiness of college, part of me didn’t know if I could hack it on a farm. Now that I’ve done it, enjoyed it, and taken pride in my work, I feel like a new person. I feel like a warrior.

So, after those first days, two volunteers from Salt Lake City arrived—Paul and Max—and after only a few hours, we were talking like old friends. That’s the other thing about manual labor: in the amount of time it takes most people to brush their teeth, you’ve bonded with your workmates in a kind of Winnie-the-Pooh storybook way, where you’re sharing anecdotes and using funny voices and galloping through the forest singing “best friends for liiii—iiiifffee!” Or in our case, you spend countless hours pulling weeds, and occasionally hold the rice-bag while the other person shovels cow shit into it. You grab each other by the sweaty collar when one of you is about to slip in the manure-goo. Best of all, you spend the evenings drinking cold beer and eating homemade Pad Thai, laughing your butts off at nothing in particular, and lying down with your heads touching, listening to Blood on the Tracks, when it’s 8:30 p.m. and your eyelids are already drooping.

On our third day, Paul, Max, and I were so giddy with exhaustion that we spent fifteen-minutes adding the “sw-” (as in, sweaty) to every body part we could think of.

“Swankles.”

“Swegs.”
            “Hahahaha. Swellybutton.”

Finally, Max turned to us with a somewhat pained expression on his face. “Swass. I have some serious swass right now. And you know what? That’s never cute.”

Little did he know, when you’re putting in full days on a farm, even the unthinkable becomes cute. By the end of the week, there isn’t a swass in sight that doesn’t remind you of how lucky you are to be there, right where you are, on the verge of dehydration and surrounded by true friends.

Part Three: Baalack Opama

            When Obama’s victory was announced on Al Jazeera, and our spotty Wi-fi revealed that he had beat Mitt Romney and retained the presidency for four more years, our little corner of FaaSai erupted into happiness. Funny thing is, being thousands and thousands of miles away from home, I found myself more interested and concerned about this election than I was when it was in my backyard. Seeing the U.S. through the eyes of a foreign population tends to do that; the media sensationalizes the closeness of a race, and people for whom “hello, how are you?” is too much English to handle are able to convey their shock that someone as boneheaded as Mitt Romney was actually in consideration to be Commander in Chief. And yes, I know I am probably making some enemies right now (at the very least, my grandfather is shaking his head deciding that I am a ‘lost cause’)… but if that is the case, know this: every single country I have been to, and every European I have worked with thus far, has supported Barack Obama and believed he is America’s only chance at reaching some sort of peace. Plus, the guy looks good in a suit. And he knows how to deliver a speech… at the end of his acceptance, Paul and I were actually crying with relief and inspiration. “It’s nothing. I was just cutting some onions,” he said.

            For the rest of the day, the little old ladies working the property were walking around and chattering happily to one another, laughing at our glee and chanting, “Baalack Opama! Baalack Opama!”

            It was a good moment in time.

Epilogue: Ghosts

            One morning, it hit me. One moment, I was eating a bite of banana, and the next I felt as though someone had ripped out my stomach and replaced it with all the anguish, the loss, the sadness, guilt, and anger I have ever attempted to swallow down. It’s funny, because looking back on it now, my brain has already placed a band-aid over that moment, and I can hardly remember how awful it felt. Maybe it’s the same survival mechanism that allows women to have multiple children, even knowing how much it hurts the first time. (Note: I am in no way comparing my existential crisis to childbirth.) Anyhow, I felt it, really felt it, and then felt it some more… and somehow, counter-intuitively, feeling it completely is what allowed it to burn off. When it passed, I was left with something different. I felt pure.

            You see, what had occurred to me was that I no longer feel like I have a place at home in Santa Barbara. When I see photos of my friends’ lives and hear about what they are doing, I feel like a ghost that has evaporated out of their lives with great ease; everything is carrying on exactly as it has, with no evidence that I was there, or will ever be there again. After I allowed myself to feel the pain of this thought, though, it was replaced by another: maybe there is a place for me at home, a place amongst my friends, but it’s not the same shape or size as the one I left behind. If I went home now and expected to return to the self I left behind, it would be like running full speed at a wall bearing the cutout outline of Mary-Kate Olsen; in other words, I just don’t think I’ll fit through.

            On the way to the Bangkok airport, as I stared out the window at the rice fields flying by, I stopped feeling like a ghost. I don’t feel like someone who has evaporated out of a former life, doomed to haunt those who didn’t make room for me the first time around… but like a ghost, I feel weightless. I am engaged but nonattached, witnessing the events of my life unfold with respect and admiration and hilarity; the only ghosts around are the ones of my former lives, the karma I have already worked through. Last week in Thailand, I had a breakthrough. This week, I live in a loft overlooking Balian beach: I have a mosquito net, a yoga mat, an open wall, and the chance to get up to the sound of waves. I may technically be living in the attic (creaking over the floorboards each time I walk), rattling the chains of the things I’ve left behind… but with each sunrise, I throw another one out the window. With each morning, I feel a little bit more alive.

From the Ruins

When I left Slukat last Thursday, after a surprisingly emotional goodbye and a week of flashmob dancing with the kids, I was eager to spend time alone. For a month straight, I had been surrounded by people; small people yelling "HALLO, how are you too-day?!", big people sharing my room and my stash of Oreos, and medium-sized creatures scuttling under my bed or buzzing past my ears at night. I thought that a weekend in Ubud was just what I needed to decompress from my incredible month at Slukat, and I was determined to do it alone--after all, I like being alone.

Wrong.

What I ACTUALLY like is being surrounded by people with the OPTION of being alone. After spending three straight days without anyone I know, I got to thinking about how many of us consider ourselves natural-born loners, drawn to the somewhat romantic idea of quarantining ourselves away from the company of others when it feels oppressive, but secretly only want that solitude if it comes with the option of a Get Out Of Jail Free Card. During my time alone in Ubud, stereotypical as it sounds, I was faced with my demons: I met the demon who wanted me to have a cell phone to play with every time I sat alone at a restaurant, the one who believed that good-looking couples had set up a cloning laboratory right around the corner for the sole purpose of highlighting my heartache, the one who thought every creak in the floorboards was Freddy Krueger, and--most frightening--the one that told me over and over again that there was no way out. 

The interesting thing is, when there is no way out, you're forced to sit with the way things are; and now that I have spent some genuine time in the company of myself, removed from the language and clothing and food that makes me feel comfortable, I realize that things aren't so bad. And yes, I realize I sound like a pretentious idiot saying that things "aren't so bad" when I am traveling for free in one of the most desirable tropical locations on the planet... but I'm nursing a broken heart, and sometimes that makes it hard to see past the underside of my own pillow. With each day that goes by, though, it gets easier. With each stone I turn over, I find bits of my self-esteem hiding underneath. I've learned that, when it comes down to it, learning how to be stinkin' lonely once and a while is about one thing in particular: learning to like yourself. Not to 'love' your material existence, like you'd ask for a parachute before jumping out of an airplane, but to actually LIKE the person who gets up in the morning and accidentally squirts toothpaste all over the toilet paper. It's good. It's really good.

So after my weekend at Ubud Aura Retreat Centre, also known as the accommodation of the Guru who healed my elbow after I was hit by a motorbike (which is the reason I stayed there in the first place), I was ready to venture back into the world of social interaction. On Monday morning, Alicia's driver Nyoman picked me up for the airport... we made polite chatter in broken English about whether Michael Jackson was really dead or hiding out in a trailer park somewhere, listened to a lively mixtape of Tracy Chapman and Pitbull, and I lugged my overstuffed backpack through Denpasar airport. It was a long day of travel for such a relatively short distance, but I found I didn't mind so much... for me, air travel is an excuse to eat whatever I want and spend absurd amounts of money on gum and People magazine because I haven't yet figured out what the currency equals in terms of American dollars. Case in point: along with two lovely Swedish girls that I met on the flight to Kuala Lumpur, I think I spent about $14 on Hershey's chocolate. It was enough to get me to Suvarnabhumi Airport, anyhow, where--after a delayed flight and10 minutes of wandering around like a chicken with my head cut off--I miraculously found my cousin Bobbie (no telephone or pre-arranged rendezvous spot required!), and we set off for 3 days of sightseeing.

I am going to take a moment to acknowledge all of the nonbelievers out there, especially those familiar with the Paddleboat Incident of '96, who were convinced that Bobbie and I were destined to screw up our travel arrangements. It's no secret that the two of us together represent a magnet for the type of screwball mishaps that make movies like National Lampoon's Vacation seem not only plausible, but boring. I'd be lying if I wasn't worried that we would be the first people in history to wind up in two different cities with the name "Bangkok." Still, against all odds, we managed not only to find each other but to execute flawless travel from Bangkok to Ayutthaya with all our hostels booked and not so much as a hairbrush lost in transit. First of all, it was wonderful to be in the company of family... someone my own age to, you know, make words at (a novel concept at that point, you have to remember) and to drink in the scenery with. After a beautiful train ride through the countryside--for 20 baht--we arrived at our HOSTELLING INTERNATIONAL guesthouse (Woo hoo! Represent!) and proceeded to explore the local flavor. We wandered through a night market, ate our first real plates of pad thai, and I got bitten by approximately 3,000 mosquitos. I spent most of that night awake in bed, listening to a storm so intense that I was sure our little treehouse of a hostel was going to break in half. Not coincidentally, it was the night that Sandy wreaked havoc on the East coast; in a weird way, it made me feel that much deeper for all those who endured that terrible storm. Brief side note: My heart goes out to all of you who have been affected by Sandy, and I am sending lots of thoughts and prayers your way.

The next day, we ventured out on foot for the Ayutthaya Floating Market, which turned out to be one of the greatest sights I've experienced thus far. In spite of the fact that it resembles a scene out of the "It's a Small World" ride, it is easy to lose an entire day walking around the market; everywhere you turn, there is a woman making fresh Thai iced tea or Tom Yum or some sort of gutted fish-stick-thing. While the latter is perhaps more fun to look at than to eat, the vast majority of Thai foodstuffs have proven incredible; fresh fruits, creative seafood, slippery noodles. After exploring, Bobbie and I treated ourselves to Thai massage--and hands down, it was the best decision of the day. We were led by two deceptively strong women to beds overlooking the water, where for the entire hour, a breeze came in and brushed against our faces. Now, when I say 'deceptively strong,' I actually mean that these women could have easily wiped out an NFL quarterback. In case you don't know, Thai massage involves a lot of concentrated pressure and yogic stretching... which means that at certain points, the masseuse is putting the entire weight of her body on a tiny muscle in your calf or neck. It's one of those hurt-so-good kind of things that leaves you feeling like you've just been run over by a semi-truck, but it's the greatest semi-truck in the world and you can't wait to go play in traffic again tomorrow.

We spent that evening on a bike tour of the Ayutthaya ruins, led by a more-than-competent guide who was willing to brave the mosquitos in order to give us the historical scoop on each and every site that we saw. We went to about five spots in total, biking underneath the full, orange Halloween moon; it was deliciously spooky. It was amazing to see the places affected by last year's flood, and to stand inside moments of history that continue to represent so much to the Thai people. The amount of reverence that the average person has for a temple that houses a handful of ashes of a long-dead queen--famous for saving her husband's life in battle--is unmatched by anything I've experienced in America. At home, I've seen people get more excited about the new iphone than some of our country's most esteemed landmarks. (Insert embarrassment here).

Anyhow, our tourist appetites whetted, we returned the next day to Wat Maha That: the Ayutthaya Historical Park. Mainly, I wanted to see the famous Buddha-head-in-tree; a statue's head that, just as it sounds, is lodged into a gigantic Bodhi tree. In historical context, this landmark--and the entire site--takes on new significance; when you think about the fact that this kingdom was the site of mass murder and destruction, the fact that anything remains is remarkable. Walking around the ruins, there are dozens of Buddha torsos that have been stacked back together after what was a clear attempt (and success) by the Burmese to hack them to pieces during the invasion in 1767. Knowledge of this fact makes it all the more eerie and powerful to see the two or three Buddhas that still have faces. Despite the fact that their eyes are downturned in the classic meditation posture, it really makes one wonder what they have seen.

Walking around those ruins, I was met with a feeling of overwhelming awe... but also, unexpectedly, of prickliness. Here I was, hundreds of years later, imagining what it must have been like to walk around those buildings when they were painted and grand and began ten feet below the ground I now stood on. They were hundreds of years old, and they looked it--but they were still there. The bricks, remarkably, still resembled bricks. The care and dedication that was put into every square inch of that former kingdom is unlike anything I have ever known. At one point, I found myself wondering what it would be like to walk around the ruins of our modern world... and, sadly, whether there will even BE humans to walk around them. I'm not trying to be dismal, but it's an odd thought to think about the fury with which we seem to be destroying our planet. Here I was, a speck in the course of history, standing on the site of the destruction of the Siamese people, reflecting on the fact that the human race is probably going to pull a Dinosaur and evaporate from the face of Planet Earth before that Buddha head is going to disintegrate from its tree--and yet! I didn't feel upset. If anything, I felt reverence. For a brief moment, I felt that I understood the nature of impermanence; and instead of defeat, I felt gratitude. We are here for only a brief moment. One moment, it will all be gone. In the face of that kind of realization, we have a choice--we can cling onto the way things 'could be,' or we can choose to live fully in the moment that we have been given, because it is a gift.

So yes, for a whole second, I felt that I understood this. An hour later, I went straight back to caring how many calories are in a Pepsi and wondering if you could see my underwear through my pants. Spoiler alert: I'm not enlightened. But since coming here, I have been gifted with moments of clarity that have reminded me that there is something bigger than what I feel I've lost.

For the past few days, I've been thinking about ruins. Yes, Ayutthaya was the site of horrific brutality (re-enacted disturbingly well by a troupe of child performers at the Floating Market, complete with fake blood, in case you were wondering)... but now, centuries later, two cousins can nestle themselves into a Bodhi tree and talk about philosophy, take a Tuk-Tuk to the market, and fall in love with Thailand. On a much smaller scale, the life and relationship that I left at home can only be the site for growth--for someone to pick up a broken stone and think it is the most beautiful thing in the world--if they are seen for what they are: ruins. Life comes out of death, out of letting go of the idea that the pile of stones is a kingdom, and seeing it for what it is: something that used to be, something that will be something else one day. The same Buddha head that would make its sculptor say, "Shit! Three-quarters of my statue is buried beneath this massive tree!" is now a sacred relic, and costs 30 baht to buy on a postcard.

It all depends on how you look at the tree.