23. My new home - Chiang Mai

Dear friends and family,

Namaste
-click to enlarge-

Whenever I leave Chiang Mai and return I realize how much I like being here. I thoroughly enjoyed my vacation in Vietnam, but realized that I have no desire to live there, or Cambodia or Laos or Japan . . . or even the U.S. The latter realization was the hardest for me to accept. When I wrote my first travel blog in July 2010, at the start of my sixteen month 27,000 mile trip around the United States, I said I was looking for a home. I believed that I’d find that home somewhere in the continental U.S. Although I loved people and places along the way, no one place really called to me. 

I have been in Asia for seven months now, and it didn’t take long before I realized that I'm a global citizen. There is an expat world out here that I’m quite familiar and at ease with. It’s in my blood. I celebrated my first birthday in the Philippines. I went to kindergarden and first grade in Okinawa, Japan--fourth, fifth and sixth grades in Germany. I lived in Alaska for sixteen years and then Kauai, Hawaii for twenty. For thirty six years before 2010 I was always a tourist in the continental U.S.--my real home was somewhere else, somewhere far away exotic.

                                     Where shall I find myself

Tonight, waking from a hangover--

The riverbank lined with weeping willows,

The moon sinking, the dawn rising on a breeze.

Year after year, I will be far,

far away from you.

All the beautiful scenes are unfolding,

but to no avail:

Oh, to whom can I speak

Of this ever enchanting landscape?

Liu Youg, Song dynasty

Hanoi

For thirty years I have longed for a beloved to share this ever enchanting landscape with, but that has not been my fate. So, in a sense, you have become my beloved--you who read my blogs, my stories and see the pictures of the riverbanks lined with weeping willows. The best I can do is to is extend my love in the only way I know.

Lha Chu River near Mt.Kailash, Tibet
This is the scene in Part Three of my novel

When I returned to Chiang Mai I opened my arms. Where am I to be? Here? What am I to do next? Continue writing, Yes! Every time I go back to the writing of my novel Shambala it gets better and better, thicker and richer from my observations and contemplations. I will continue to edit until one day I will sigh, and say enough. Somehow it will be published, and then I hope you will want to read the 500 pages of mystery revealed on the Path to Paradise. 

Master Lek in Chiang Mai

The answer to my first question was quickly answered. My Swedish friend Erik had two studio apartments built on his Thai wife’s land, next to their home. My good friend Mark was invited to live in one unit, and I was invited to live in the other. It’s a large brand new high-ceiling stand-alone apartment, with kitchen and bath. I agreed to a one year lease--the rent a little more for one whole year than I paid each month in Kauai. There is a meditation hut in my front yard, and fountains. Yesterday we went out and I bought a stone Thai Buddha to put in the fountain. We are building a sanctuary right in the heart of old Chiang Mai city. The second answer had to do with the Thai healer Master Lek. He “sees’ more than normal humans, and invited Mark, Erik and I to join him in healing circles. He will come to our sanctuary. So I am called to stay here, leave the isolation of my hotel, and join in community--to actually literally love and serve those in need. I’m excited to see how it all unfolds.

“Make happy those who are near, and those who are far will come”  

Chinese adage.

Chiang Mai temple

Another one said something along the lines that when you’re happy there is less to write about, because you are engaged in the wonder of being happy. And so it is. I am moving into a new home, in a far away land, and being asked to practice what I preach. Today I am happy.

I continue to invite you to participate in my blog and website, in any way you'd like. Send me your picture, come visit me in Thailand, write me an email. What I imagined when I began writing my blog was a "blog"—which means participation. The water buffalo comment and apology elicited all sorts of comments, which were fascinating. If those comments had been written under "Post a Comment" at the bottom of this blog, instead of a personal email, (which is also appreciated) you could have read them all and added to the blog forum. That would be fun.

     “I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
― T.S. Eliot

I waited much longer than usual for my breakfast this morning at my Ease Cafe. I watched as the mother lay sod on the new walkway--slowly and methodically. When the ten by four foot space was covered, she watered the new grass and then placed the stepping stones in the right places. It was watered again, the surrounding area cleaned and the zen perfection viewed. She then went to the kitchen and cooked my breakfast.

Life is good.

With great love and blessings,

David Dakan Allison