Liminal Space

Between sunset and complete darkness, the half moon hiding behind clouds, Jupiter and Saturn were the first to pop out of the darkening sky. Planets always are. I sat on the beach and witnessed their paths cross so close they looked like one big, bright object in the evening sky. 

I swear this happened back in July, I told my friend. You probably did see it, she said. You probably time jumped. There you have it folks. I have come unstuck in time. 

Upon my return to the island, I kept having visions of this café--open air, precariously perched on a steep cliffside hill, overlooking the ocean. It popped into my mind on my flight back, and I couldn't stop thinking about it for days. How strange. It's not even a place I go often. Not even back a week, and within two days, I met up with three different friends at said café. Like a vortex, they each chose the place, pulling me back again and again and again. 

And then nothing.

Fires burnout too easily here, I told another friend. Nothing sticks. Never have I lived so long in one place and witnessed so many communities rise and fall, catch flame and burn out. And I have lived in some pretty transient places in my life. Too much air, she said. 

And so I recede, and I continue down my path.

One of my cards for 2021 is Temperance. Balance. Alchemy. Being grounded here in the present, yet still allowing myself to live in the liminal space--where I'm unstuck in time, where vortexes form, and where the stories I write live. I'm on a mission to create, and I cannot lose sight of that. The unseen forces guiding my life will not let me lose sight of that. I am always presented with who and what I need in every given moment. To accomplish what I've set out to do, I need to keep myself in both worlds. 

I can't ground myself in air. Friends and communities will come and go as they always have. But I can walk bare foot in the sand, swim in the ocean, and ground stories to this plane. I can remind myself that life is a beautiful unfolding. I call friends and remind them too. I send them pictures of planets and tell them to watch for meteor showers. 

Colors of sunset fill the sky. Jupiter and Saturn drift apart. The full moon rises. The year ends. 

Mid-December. Sprawled on the dark, desolate beach at 2am, no moon, no light pollution. Just me and the beams of light shooting across the sky. Time has taught me that the most magical moments are never the ones I chase, but given as unexpected gifts.  

Many unexpected gifts came out of this year. And I welcome more of them as we shift into 2021. 

This year was also full of unexpected chaos for many people. Perhaps that's an understatement. But hidden in the unexpected, buried in the chaos of life, is where many gifts and blessings are found. What unexpected gifts or blessings did this year bring you? 

For the Love of Astronomy, Lucid Dreaming, and...Goats

 I.

Angela and I had just sat down with our drinks when I lapsed into some sort of hybrid fit of crying and laughing about everything and nothing at all. But I normally feel good, I vaguely remember saying through a bunch of incoherent rambling. It was my last night in Chiang Mai after all, and because this is my life, the night took a surreal turn. 

Strange melodic music erupted from Angela's phone drowning out the horrid rendition of Puff the Magic Dragon that had been drifting from the small stage throughout my mental collapse. 

"What's that sound?" I asked, now alert and present. 

"I am lucid dreaming," she said and peered at me over her drink.

"What?"

"My lucid dream alarm. You know, to remind myself."

I leaned back in my chair and look up at the tree above us. The lights strung through the branches were no longer lights--they were stars, fireflies, beams of magic caught in the space between, where all else falls away.

"You're in the portal," Angela then said to make the moment even more unreal. I focused on her, and she pointed over my shoulder. Behind me was a scene that I swear was not a part of our surroundings when we arrived. The entire backyard of the property looked something from another planet, a dream world--complete with a neon portal, a telescope, and abstract art installations. 

"Genius," I said. My life tends to hinge on a lucid dream like quality anyway so why not push it as far as I can. And because this is my dream, all of my Chiang Mai experiences simultaneously converged at the only moment that has ever existed. Now.  

II.

No tourists, no sky lanterns, no pending doom as failed, flaming lanterns fall and snag in trees and power lines. This year Loy Krathong collided with Halloween--a potential for insanity of epic proportions, but alas, no such insanity ensued. Not in this lucid dream anyway. 

Angela, Taan, and I put on our cat ears and devil horns and slipped into the café. The subdued lights and soft music and delightfully, fun costumed bodies a contrast to my unhinged morning--in which I lost my motorbike key and got locked out of my apartment. When the landlady's spare key refused to work, her husband simply took a hammer to the doorknob and latch until they fell off and the door swung open. 

My motorbike key was not in the room. I had been in Chiang Mai less than 24 hours. I hadn't taken the key anywhere without the bike. As I stood at the end of the drive waiting to cross the street and make my way to the rental shop, the parking lot attendant approached me and dangled a key in front of my face. My motorbike key. He didn't speak. He only smiled and placed it in my hand.

Angela, Taan, and I toasted our drinks and talked of manifestation and synchronicities, of voids and how to stay in them. This year I lit candles and made wishes. I did not release a krathong or lantern like all the years before. Instead, I released expectations and dreams. I created space for magic to flourish. 

III.

I stood in awe in front of the Thai National Radio Telescope in Doi Saket. The telescope towered above the trees, and to my left, a Billy goat chewed on the grass in the surrounding field. Not far from the site is a goat farm that sells fresh milk and yogurt so it wasn't too surprising. 

The telescope pet--it lives here, he paused to tell me in a breathless side note between his enthusiastic explanation of building the telescope and how it works. I wasn't entirely sure who was more excited about this excursion--me, the writer who needed some inside information on radio astronomy, or him, the guy on the research team who gets to tell me about it. 

When I started writing this novel 10 years ago, it was all character sketches and scenes with no plot at all. The evolution of this book and where it has led me has been like traveling through a lucid dream--one full of mystery and synchronicities. The process has been far more than working out a plot in my mind and telling a story. It has pushed me to follow the strangest of curious pulls, to travel and research, to make new friends and go beyond my comfort zone.

Writing this book has led me from exploring remote areas of New Mexico and Lake County, California to studying everything from radio astronomy to schizophrenia and multidimensionality, to sleep paralysis and astral travel. It led me to reaching out to a complete stranger (the one that Angela, master lucid dreamer, met in a tiny, obscure coffee shop) and asking him to read my novel--which led me here, standing in front of the Thai National Radio Telescope (site still under construction, closed to the public) and allowing him to help me clearly see and refine my main character and his story in ways I'd never be able to otherwise. 

Being a writer has given me purpose to explore beyond my everyday life, to jump down rabbit holes (or maybe black holes) that perhaps I wouldn't even consider. It satisfies my insatiable curiosity about the world and the people that fill it. 

To round out an already surreal day, we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon and evening in what appeared to be a hobbit house, drinking craft beer and sharing stories and pictures of all the radio telescope sites we've visited and hope to visit one day--also, vibrant sunsets and tangled wires. 

We shared memories of the Bay Area, Lake County, and Hat Creek (what are the odds we both spent time in these places only to meet on the other side of world because of a book spawned from my imagination). I asked a lot of questions and filled in missing details, breathing even more life into these characters and story. And somehow the conversation inevitably wrapped around to the fairy tale Three Billy Goats Gruff because lucid dreams involving astronomy inevitably will involve goats. 

IV.

The days between were not any less dream like. Dawn and I got lost walking around Huay Tueng Tao and stumbled upon a zoo of giant creatures made of straw. I went to an acupuncturist and had my stomach electrocuted for 30 minutes straight. It seemed to fix the issue in question so I'm not too concerned. One night, I went to visit an old friend and somehow ended up learning how to make fresh pesto, got an unwanted crash course in the latest ongoing conspiracy theories, reminisced on long forgotten memories and songs of another time, another life, and laughed until I couldn't breathe. 

One dreamlike scene gave way to the next. Gazing through the telescopes at NARIT to distant worlds too far to fathom. Everything was in Thai, but there are no language barriers when tuning into the stars. Playing pool for the first time since leaving the US. Pool is a skill you never lose, especially in dim dive bars where drinks are cheap and there is only one usable cue stick. Seeing angry and/or bored clowns in deserted lots is a thing that can and will happen more than once in a lifetime. Familiar smiling faces of market venders I haven't seen in a year wave and ask where I've been and what I am doing and will I stay, please. 

V.

To be in a lucid dream state is to become fully conscious while the body still sleeps. In my lucid dreams, I'm always taken by surprise at the portals I've walked through, where I am and what I see, always an observer, never an active player. Ever wonder if you are just a part of someone else's lucid dream? Angela had asked at one point. 

But here in the so called waking world, I am still lucid dreaming. And no matter the portal I step through, I can play and co-create and interact with the places and people around me. Like Angela, I just need an alarm to remind myself sometimes. 

Do you ever lucid dream? Maybe you're in one right now. Tell yourself: I am lucid dreaming. How does it change your perspective? I'll leave you with a mantra. Repeat it until you remember. It's that simple.

"Suddhossi buddhossi niranjanosi, Samsara maya parivar jitosi, Samsara svapanam, Traija mohan nidram, Na janma mrityor tat sat svarupe." 

"You are forever pure, you are forever true, and the dream of this world can never touch you. So give up your attachment, and give up your confusion, and fly to that space that's beyond all illusion." --English translation 

Seeking Answers, Finding Questions

This year for my birthday I fully intend to live the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. In other words, I will probably come out the other side of this year understanding far less than I do now. And with a lot more questions. Perhaps that was Douglas Adams's point all along. 

And how will I go about seeking to understand less and finding more questions? By digging into life more. 

Since my last update, I have started playing ukulele again (ask me to play you a wildly out of rhythm rendition of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah), driven to remote areas to eavesdrop on conversations in languages I don't understand (laughter and emotion never lie), and started attending Mooji Satsang on the veranda of Grace's beach front bungalow (watching Mooji's face flap in the wind on the projector sheet never gets old, plus the message always relevant to my life in eerily specific ways). 

Each week after Mooji Satsang, I walk home along a dark stretch of beach where lightning strikes out over the Gulf and the warm air sticks to my skin. The season is changing. 

Monsoon has finally hit the Gulf islands full throttle, and everyone is fleeing. Sideways rain, high tides, and crashing waves move in. Pleasant sunny days give way to overcast sky and muggy, humid air. I've just finished the 4th draft of my novel and sent it off to an array of beta readers. It's time for an adventure. And as we all know, adventures are the best ways to seek answers and find questions. 

Next week, I head back to Chiang Mai--my first venture off island since January. All those traffic lights and stop signs and people and bookshops. Imagine the possibilities. Meetups and road trips and book buying are on the horizon. I hope I don't short circuit. 

What sort of adventures should I dig into this year? What sort of answers should I seek to discover even better questions? 

Until next time friends. Stay mostly harmless. 

Equinox Mood

5am and curled in a ball on an old freighter ferry making my way to the mainland to see some officials about my long term stay here in Thailand. The air so frigid, my body so tired, I'd forgotten what it was like to make long uncomfortable trips. The glaring sun, the bitter taste of instant coffee, an ache in my foot from an old injury. Mix in some unforeseen chaos involving lots of paper and confused people and hours of waiting and waiting and waiting. One mad taxi ride and sixteen hours later I'm home, and I'm unsure what it was I actually accomplished, if anything. 

I trudge up the path to my hut and collapse in a pile of elation and comfort that I never want to end. 

In the weeks that followed, a few significant days have come and gone--one year since my Ubud accident (scar faded, bangs intact) and 4 years since Thailand became my home base (from city, to jungle, to island). And, of course, the equinox and the shift in season (autumn, my favorite). Each of these days slipped by nearly unnoticed. My mind light-years away, in a fictional world with fictional people having all kinds of strange experiences. 

That's when Angela's text came through. I met a guy who works in radio astronomy. He's interested in reading your book. This is what happens when you live in make believe worlds. They start to come to life. 

Trust me, Maura said, and I followed. We drove north past Chaloklum until we could drive no more. Then we walked down a cliffside, along the beach, and over boulders. Weathered by north coast storms, the huts that sit on the rocky cliff seemed from a dream. And in front of them, a painted sign somehow precariously wedged into the rocks: 0 miles to paradise. Boats bobbed in the bay. I'm going to live here one day, I said as we wandered back down to the the bar to drink coconuts and pet the giant pig lounging in the sand. 

I've tapped into something, and I want to hold onto it for as long as possible.

But I know that I can't.  

In these moments that feel so magical and surreal, all I want to do is grasp and hold tight, like fireflies in jars. The reoccurring theme in my life (and in this blog). Life long lessons that remind me surrender is key to magic. The only way to keep these moments alive is to release them. 

Tell me about a moment, an event, a thought that once released took flight and unfurled into something amazing! 

Midnight Sky

Mid-July, after dark. On the hike up to my hut, the brightest night sky object I'd ever seen caught my eye. Brighter than Venus. Brighter than Sirius. Could be Jupiter, but why did it look so huge? I pulled out my star tracker and saw it was not just Jupiter. It was Jupiter and Saturn nearly aligned, creating what looked like one massive glowing orb to the naked eye. And for the first time on this island, the dark, moonless night so clear I could see a faint, dusty brush of the Milk Way band stretching across the sky.

Not too many days later, the night sky still clear, I crossed the island on the single two lane road that cuts through the jungle hills. No lights near the peak, only stillness. My eyes locked in wonder. As above, so below. The axiom, an ancient echo, a whisper of truth. I continued down the winding road to a beach on the far northeast side of the island. One of the few remote beaches accessible by road. Faint, unrecognizable music drifted from one of the seaside cafes. A few dim lamps lit the beach. Empty and dark. And much like those nights I spent on that beach at northern tip of Borneo staring into the darkness above me, the world fell away. 

From here, nothing remains except the motion of stars across the night sky. Suspended in timelessness, tapped out and tuned in. I want to stay here forever, but I can't. 

Daylight breaks and I'm back in the world again. I maintain my practices and diligently stay focused on my work. The urgency to anchor and focus lets me know something is happening. To be here on this small tropical island, away from the intense energy and general madness of the world, is not something to be squandered. I write. I make progress. I breathe. I take steps in the right direction. 

Connect with the cosmos and anchor down. As above, so below. To stay vast and light in a heavy world is the only way I can exist--it's the only way I can write and connect and know. Uncertainty may reign (as it always has), but at least I have a compass. 

My posts are few and far between these days, and that's okay. I know this phase won't last forever. More adventures are on the horizon, but for now, it's a season for anchoring and focusing. 

What does as above, so below mean to you? Do you ever connect with the cosmos and anchor it to earth? If so, how has it served you? 

Untethered

Sitting on the beach waiting for my friend to return home, I'm hit with the sudden urge to start walking across the sand. The tide so low it feels like I'm crossing a barren desert. A post-apocalyptic world full of sand, abandoned huts, unnecessary bridges, and no people at all. Until I see him--a man hobbling over a bridge, cane in one hand, a small backpack slung over his shoulder, wearing nothing but a speedo. On the other side of the bridge, he makes his way toward the distant water and plops onto the beach, arms and legs stretched out, face to the sun. What a strange planet, I think.

Back at my friend's hut, we make smoothies and eat cake. This place brings me too much peace, she says. I've stopped thriving. What a conundrum. Like a zen koan. My mind can't figure out what to do with it. I've strived to create peace in my life for as long as I can remember. And once I had it, I wasn't letting it go. But was it causing me to become lazy, to not thrive, to perhaps even block things from my life? A wave of panic rises then fades to dark.

The next day I swing by Grace's house to say hi. I accidentally stabbed myself in the leg, she says and shows me the wound. Out of control art project, she explains and shrugs. We exchange stories of scars and accidents and the angels who helped us. And all I can think about are scars that can't be seen and invisible angels.

My phone pings. A friend stuck in another part of Thailand has sent me a picture. He's shaved his hair into a mohawk and tie-dyed it rainbow. Cabin Fever, the caption says. Stay wild moon child, I respond. Three weeks later he calls me from an airplane. I'm leaving Thailand. How do you feel about that? I ask. Bad, he says. I get the strange feeling people are going to start losing it very soon. Or they already have, but I've not been seeing it that way.

I social distance from social media, attend close knit improv sessions, and meet with friends to talk and write. The thing about Koh Phangan, someone says one night, is that no one asks questions. Leaving too much room for assumptions, I think. As intriguing as it is dangerous, I can't shake the thought for days.

Life on a nearly deserted tropical island in the strange year of 2020. I attempt to ground into it as much as possible. But the harder I try, the more untethered I become, unbound and tumbling into the ether. I grasp at fleeting moments as they slip away, leaving me longing for solid connection and questioning their purpose and lessons.

I call my friend in California at 3am. I'm losing it, I tell her. She sighs. She's been putting up with me for lifetimes. I'm supposed to be in Vietnam. Roadtrip around Ha Giang and Sapa. Head south, explore, research, open portals. I start to ramble. And....she says. I tell her more. And...she says again. She doesn't stop until I purge every last thought and confession. Then she fills all the empty space with wisdom. I'm taking a picture, she finally says. My eyes are bloodshot, I tell her. No way, your eyes are oceans. Yeah, oceans of blood.

Late night drives across the island through the jungle, starry skies above me, a quiet darkness surrounding me. I find my way to the beach--no people, hardly any lights, an empty tree swing, fireflies. Surreal. The lightness I've been missing. Freeing and impermanent. Releasing the questions, embracing the mysteries. Untethered and tumbling into the night.

How are you staying grounded these days...or are you untethered and tumbling? What's keeping you thriving? What's keeping you at peace? What fills your days and nights and all the spaces between? 

Collapsing Timelines and Other Curious Phenomena

"The sun was shining on the sea, shining with all his might....and this was odd, because it was the middle of the night." ~Lewis Carroll

Not too long ago my friend Maura called asking me to meet her at a tucked away stretch of beach on the north shore of the island. "The timelines are collapsing," she said. "Bring cake."

Bare feet in the sand, we walked the long, empty stretch of Mae Haad toward Koh Ma--a sometimes island, sometimes peninsula depending on how high or low the tide is. On that particular day, at that particular hour the tide was so low we could walk all the way to the small island.

From across the sandbar, the overgrown, dense jungle didn't seem penetrable. But as we approached, a rocky path appeared that lead us along the edge of long ago abandoned jungle huts etched into a hillside. Dilapidated, graffitied, abandoned huts choked by vines and smothered by dead fallen palm fronds.

Eyes wide and drinking in the surroundings, we were two children loose on a deserted, tropical island having adventures, traipsing through the jungle to find treasures. The only things missing were our khakis, fedoras, and bullwhips. All my childhood dreams come true.

We poked around the remnants of what looked to have been a reception area or maybe a swim up bar--which was odd because at low tide the ocean waters didn't come anywhere near the structure. Shattered porcelain and coconut husks lay at our feet, and through crumbled concrete, small vines and flowers emerged. Energetically magical and ominous, light and dark, alive and dead. The longer we lingered the stranger it got. Probable timeline, Maura whispered. A chill ran up my spine. I glanced back over my shoulder to make sure the path was still there.

Our conversation meandered around esoteric theories and blurred realities, but it always lead back to the collapsing timelines. Amidst a global phenomenon, people are not just having different experiences--they are experiencing different realities, conflicting ones. Each reality existing in a surreal bubble that doesn't just brush against the others, but spills over into them, tangled and contradictory, creating a strange friction--like a bad Sci-Fi story with too many plot lines going at once.

In other words, our everyday observational world slipped from one of classical physics to quantum mechanics--a world based on uncertainty, fluidity, and probability. Everything is and isn't all at once. All potential possibilities slipping in and out of each other, each as true as they are untrue. A surreal perspective outside of time and space. The implications chilling and exciting.

Heading back toward Mae Haad, I stopped as we passed the eerily, empty hillside of huts and listened. When confronted with what no longer exists, collapsing timelines, and splintered realities, you can't simply listen with only your five senses. Everything becomes an extension of you. Feel into that. Soak up the stories. Imagination stems from where we put our attention, after all. 

As we made our way back across the sandbar and the long, empty stretch of Mae Haad, a storm brewed in the distance. Dark clouds hung over the sea. We paused and watched in awe as the storm moved across the gulf, over the scattering of fishing boats, barreling toward us, charging the atmosphere with surrealism and electricity.

Lifetimes of factors set our souls in motion to put us exactly where we are meant to be at this time and place, to align with a specific timeline, to have specific experiences. Move with awareness and caution through this wilderness. What are you exposing yourself to these days? How are you reacting to your environment, to all the input? What timeline are you gravitating toward?

Life in Strange Times

"A little knowledge withheld is a great advantage one should store for future use....It is a game of secrets in which one must show and never tell." ~Amy Tan

I fall into a deep fever dream on a Wednesday morning. The kind with restless images, indecipherable codes. Somehow, by late afternoon, I'm completely recovered. My teacher here on the island invites me to a private resort for yoga class, dinner, and sauna detox. My last night of normal.

The fever returns and it lasts for days. I sleep and sleep and sleep. Oddly, around the same time each evening, I lapse into a moment of clarity and energy, just long enough for daily Sadhana. I move my body and gently raise my energy. Pranayama, mantra, meditation. Powerful techniques that existed long before humanity. I've carried them through lifetimes. Like second nature. Even sickness cowers away.

And each night, I crawl back into bed where the fever dreams live. I don't eat for three days. On the second day, I wake with a craving for a spicy chicken noodle soup from an Asian restaurant over 8000 miles away. Nothing else will do. So I ponder the irony and go back to sleep.

I dream I'm falling through realms. The seer back in Chiang Mai had told me to be careful of this. That I had a bad habit of slipping. Pay attention, he warned. I awake in this reality, on a tropical island, in a hut in the jungle. Everything is so quiet at certain times of the day. Years before I moved here, I told a past life regression therapist about this vision: I'm lying on my back and staring up at palm trees. No one can find me. My safe place. Perhaps there's a connection. How do I know what's real?

Early morning drive to the Thong Sala Pier. Fresh air in my face, I almost forget where I'm going and just want to drive and drive and drive. Then I remember. I need to get to Koh Samui to extend my visa. I sit on the upper deck of the ferry, close my eyes, and let the cool morning wind remind me I'm alive. This is real.

I've never seen the immigration office so crowded. It's never taken so long. Sweat drips down my back. I'm so hungry I might pass out. After an hour, I step into the small air conditioned office. My retired friend, the one who lives down the hill and across the road from me, beach front, calls to lament. I'd rather be on the island than anywhere else in the world, I say. You're right, he says after a pause. We really are fortunate.

Over a week later and I'm fully recovered. And in some mysterious twist of luck, I'm sleeping better than I have my entire life. Long deep sleeps where I wake well rested and light. Where have you been my whole life? I say to sleep. Sleep doesn't answer.

I catch up on Gigi Young videos. She speaks a truth no one wants to hear. I digest her messages and stare at the stars from my hammock. How did I get hooked on this channel again? Oh yeah, research on those bouts of sleep paralysis and thrashing I use to have as a kid that lasted well into college. But that's another story.

Days pass and I binge watch Sky Life and make a list of all the experiments I want to do on my body and mind that I've not yet tried. Some of them will have to wait. Others I start immediately. How is it that my body and mind seem to always know what they need? Like a memory trigger set long before I was born, they just know what to do and when.

The world has slipped into strange times. Some places far worse than others. Some call it upended. Some call it an awakening. Some people are going mad. Some are dealing with life just fine. Some people are being productive and experimental. Some sit with anxiety and fear of the unknown. And all the extremes and everything in-between. Ignore anyone who tells you that you're doing it wrong or that you are in denial. We are not all meant to have the same experience.

Throughout my unconventional childhood and life thereafter, I've gained this ability to adapt to the insane, to process life and emotions at an alarming efficiency that leaves me feeling suspicious. Like secrets whispered through thin veils that aren't really for me. Like a forbidden blessing I shouldn't question. I fall to my knees in gratitude. When I look up, all I see are palm trees.

Days tick on. Sadhana, reading, editing, walks in the jungle, swims in the ocean. Surprise calls from friends. I sit on the beach and watch the sun dip below the horizon, spreading colors and rays of light. I snap a picture. An illusion of stillness. The rhythms of the earth never stop. Effortless and magical. It whispers its secrets all around us, always. But who is paying attention? Stop, it says. Be present. Tap into the infinite. Eyes wide open. All the secrets you've ever wanted to know are right here.

Where is your mind these days? What is your experience in these strange times? Are you paying attention? What secrets are revealed when you stop and tap into the infinite?