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Loy krathong

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Happy campers

At 10 a.m. today Lauren, Sarah & Jip (l2r) got in the office car laden down with spendy games, name tags, future board, twister, story books, a large yellow elephant and assortment of other items essential for a positive camping experience. If you are planning to go camping with 20, er 18 little kids bent on creating havoc and learning English in Northern Thailand that is. I wish them luck and hope they have fun.

Almost exactly 5 years ago my first mission for the British Council was accompany two other extraordinary teachers (Tash & Mark) and one other enthusiastic teaching assistant (Ju) on a similar camp but this time on Thailand's eastern seaboard.

So much has changed in that 5 years - mostly for the better (I have Wolf in real life now), but not completely. I was very sure of myself professionally then, now I am not. Although this uncertainty feels pretty scary I believe it is a necessary phase which will enable to me to move on to something new. People keep asking me what, but I have no idea - and I don't want to have any idea. I need to break free of this before I can envisage that, otherwise my that will be this in another form.

Anyway, today is my last day as Academic Manager at the British Council and here I am balanced between two camps. Balanced between the past and the future. A beginning and an end.

Poised.

Maybe that means I am ready to start the 'now', the 'being in the moment-ness' that Dom manages to do with effortless grace and I battle with continually. I have long suspected that my moment is smaller and more slippery than Dom's - but maybe his 'moment shoes' have better treads. More traction.

Yes, I need this time to work on my soul soles.

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Dance in the pain

For the last month or so, when not dragging my gimpy sciatica stressed left leg around the British Council, I have been mainly resting in bed. Me in bed makes Roso happy and here she is snuggling into my hair and telling me everything is gonna be okay. Hers isn't the only positive message I have been receiving. A few days ago a friend posted the following on the northlands:

"Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass but learning to dance in the rain".

Simple bordering on trite yet it struck a chord. I have been waiting for the storm to pass for a while now and instead the clouds seem to get darker, and more full of rain. As much as I have loved it in the past 13 years I am ready to leave Thailand. Yet emigration to the US is as elusive as it was 3 months ago and will remain so until we find a co-sponsor. In the meantime friends are starting new lives of the kind I desire - Ian (who will one day I am sure be Yorkshire Ian) in England and Richard in his poetic Portuguese farmhouse, and I look at my grey skies and sigh.

What exactly do I want? (It helps I believe to be specific when wishing, whether on stars or rainclouds). I want to own a house with Wolf. I want to live in a place without needing a visa. I want to belong to somewhere - and not feel like an interloper or a tourist. I want to work but have nothing to do with TEFL teachers (sorry guys). I want to be able to ride a bike and walk without being drenched in sweat. I want large skies, fresh air, nature, fours seasons and peaches and raspberries in the summer. I want to feel well and full of inspiration.

I also want to stop wanting. Waiting isn't the problem, wanting the waiting to end is.

In the meantime I need to get past the debilitating stress that is filling my body with pain and my soul with anxiety. I need to believe that finishing work in October and facing an uncertain future won't kill me. I need to dance in the rain.

So the first small step to dancing is to tell myself our wishes will come true. We will get to Minnesota and the second North (the first being Northern Thailand) of my imagining will become real. Just bear with me, okay?

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Hey lady, can I have my balls back please?

When we got Spike we always intended to neuter him. With the cats it had been a quick and simple decision having watched them endure several apparently agonizing 'seasons' with the attendant weight loss and yowling we had them both spayed quite young. However Spike got to the snipable age, and yet we delayed. Why?

Well he seemed to enjoy his balls, hours were dedicated to licking them - and apart from a tendency to mark his territory unless watched closely his sexuality was never troublesome. He didn't hump legs or furniture and was happy with an occasional romantic evening with Twist, his love puppy. Additionally one of the things we treasure about him is his attitude - if we cut off his balls, might he be a bit less, well - ballsy?

Then our vet, Chotana Pet Hospital, announced a half price neutering deal for the month of September, and obviously it was too good to miss. I had Spike booked in within hours of the announcement and 1st September was his big day.

Last night, after spending the evening with a sad and sore post-op babydog, I went to bed in tears having decided I had done a terrible thing. Okay so it is almost certainly healthier, and yes it is more convenient (for us at least); but the sense that my decision had been predominantly economic, and in making such a decision I had taken something that was not mine to take, was unbearably heavy. Why do I soul search so? Why didn't I feel this guilt with the cats? Has society taught me to value masculinity so much more than femininity? Am I more comfortable making decisions based on wombs as they are my territory while Spike's testicles are from a mysterious world whose land I trespassed into?

Anyway. It is done now, and I will have to learn to live with my decision - as will Spike. I am sure I will find my conscience soothed when his empty pouch looks less like an angry swollen blackberry and his eyes look less woeful and accusing. In the meantime, in remembrance of things past I leave you with... Spike (August 2009). Babydog.

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Arrivals

This isn't going to be quite the post I expected it to be when I took the photo. I snapped the doors of Chiang Mai airport's international arrival hall while waiting for Dom to return from his visa run in Malaysia fully expecting to make a post about the joys of reunion.

While I waited I read bits from The Wisdom of Yoga by Steven Cope. I am reading it a second time in the hope that exposure to yoga, even passively, will make my leg feel better; which is a revealing comment in itself about the current poverty of my spiritual and physical health. I was reading about Duhkha, the cycle of suffering that we experience through continual craving, aversion or delusion. The author gives an example of longing for a banana muffin, getting and eating the muffin and mourning the fact that the pleasure is lost as soon as the last morsel passes our lips. There is so much pain around this experience - found in the longing and mourning stages that it is not worth the scant pleasure of eating, especially as we rarely eat with full attention to the pleasure anyway.

This is relevant just wait.

So Dom left on Tuesday and from the moment his taxi drove away I longed for the moment when he returned. Longed. Painfully. I hated every minute away from him. And as far as I know he felt the same. I took a photo of these doors as they were where I would see him first. I didn't want to capture him walking through them - then I would be in joyful reunion mode not blog mode. I wanted to share with you my anticipation.

This could have been titled Anticipation.

It could have been titled Anticlimax.

As I got my first glimpse of him he gave me a big beaming smile but behind that smile I could see tension. "What's wrong love?" I asked as soon as he released me.

And so began the mourning for the moment.

He was tired; he'd been up since 5; his flight was delayed; he'd been given a centre seat; the lazy cabin staff hadn't given out arrival cards and he'd had to queue (or scrimmage) for them upon landing. Not wishing to be outdone I joined in, I bitched about work (I won't elaborate... too many of my readers work with me and don't need to know what I complained about but my list was as long as his). By the time we were sitting in the taxi we were each staring out of the window rather than at each other and getting lost in our individual dissatisfaction with the world and our crappy experience of it.

It was then I realised I had passed the moment I had been looking forward to for 72 hours. It was over. We were together again but instead of celebrating that moment joyfully we had slipped effortlessly back into the trough we have been sinking in for months now.

This isn't a relationship thing, with regard to each other Dom and I are as happy as we have always been - it is just the world we are out of sorts with. We are beyond ready to leave Thailand and held up by things out of our control. Dom especially needs to leave as I have seen him change from a joyful and vibrant embracer of life to an angry and critical grouch.

I won't go into to why we are at this stage right now, this post is long enough. I just wanted it on record. We too have dirty laundry.

Damn, I need a muffin.

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Bye Rob

As a teacher you try not to have favourite students and as an Academic Manager you try not to have favourite teachers. If I were the kind of person who was to flout this very sensible guideline and pick a favourite, I could do worse than Rob (pictured, left). He is one of the most talented teachers I have ever had the good fortune to observe, and one of the most laid back and self-reliant staff members I have had the good fortune to... well sit back and watch him not need me.

He also has fab taste in music and cool tattoos, so it is very lucky that any temptation to stick a gold star on his forehead and make it official has been removed by his leaving to go and work in Poland. The staff room at Chiang Mai is a little poorer for his absence, but I am sure the one in Poland is much richer for his presence. Sharing the love is important too, isn't it? Good luck Rob, enjoy life and embrace new experiences.

In other news, this photo was taken in such poor lighting conditions that I felt the need to throw all of my meagre in-phone photo editing skills at it in order to render it even marginally useable. Apart from tweaking the light balance, I added a "painting" filter. I just adore what it did to Max's eyebrows!

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Someone to watch over me

There is nothing like waking a bit earlier than your loved one and watching them sleep to make you realise how blessed you are. It doesn't happen to me very often, I love my bed and Dom usually has to drag me out of it by my feet, but this morning - thanks to a powercut that woke me up and set me worrying about a range of things from the water pump to the third world debt - I got my moment. I also discovered I was not alone in my watchfulness. Lily is very much a daddy's girl and I found her nestled in the crook of Dom's arm, leaning against his chest and enjoying the rise and fall of his sleeping body as the morning sun warmed her whiskers.

That's cool, I can share the moment.

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Sick wolf

Dom enduring the hardships of hospital life. The nurse on the left places an ice pack on his forehead, the nurse on the right gets ready to take blood samples while he chooses his meals for the rest of the day.

Yeah, Dom got a bacterial infection that had him Chiang Mai Ram hospital for just over 24 hours (the time it takes to absorb 3 bags of saline solution). We were worried for a while that it might be the dreaded H1N1, after a night of fever and chronic diarrhea, alarming blood pressure and high pulse rate. The doctor however reassured us that it was probably bacterial and once in hospital tests confirmed that. He was badly dehydrated though which is why they opted to keep him in. Luckily I got to stay with him as Thailand hospitals are very reasonable and our health insurance allowed him to have his own "VIP" room on the international ward though, as you can see from the picture, the bed is Thai sized. Poor baby.

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Um Klim Kalika-yei Namaha

Rather than uploading an image from my phone today I thought I would share something I painted and then manipulated using a simple hue colouriser. Kali, the best goddess in the world for when you are having one of those "don't mess with me" moments - and every spiritual journey has those moments I am sure.

She has been sitting neglected on my draughting table for some months now. So I dusted her off finished her and took some photos (photos of paintings are always a bad idea unless you have good lighting, but I wanted to capture the essence rather than a faithful reproduction so I am willing to ignore the glare of the flash if you are).

I have an interesting relationship with my artistic talent, I neglect it horribly and yet I am proud of it. Proud at least of what it could be and too afraid of failing to really explore what I am capable of producing artistically.

Anyway today we have a glimpse of a side I usually keep hidden. Be nice or I will set my 'Goddess of Don't Mess' on you.

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