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? 

Caught in a Timeless Dreamscape

We were somewhere near the peak of the pass when the sky turned from a cloudless, electric blue to an ominous gray full of storm clouds. No one seemed to notice or care so we trucked onward over the jagged slabs of slick rock jutting from the ground. At the top, we stopped to catch our breath.

I had not anticipated the hike to Bottle Beach on the far northern reaches of the island to be a vertical scramble over a rocky mountain with storm clouds looming. When the path narrowed and vanished beneath the boulders, our fearless leader bounded ahead. I think this is the way, he enthusiastically shouted over his shoulder. Koh Phagnan is not a big island, but I'd still rather not get lost in its thick tangled jungles where no roads go and no clear hiking paths exist.

Near the end of our decent to the bay we began to hear the waves crashing hard on the shore. Gray waves crashing, no boats in sight, the beach nearly deserted--this was not normal, especially for high season. As we made our way down the beach heading for shelter, our fearless leader and a few others stripped their clothes and ran straight into the stormy waters.

I stood ankle deep trying not to get knocked down and watched the storm move steadily across the ocean toward the island. Something about the energy of a storm. A sensation of lifting out of time and space. Deja Vu. Caught in a timeless dreamscape.

Throughout my high school and college days in Ohio, I made countless trips to Folly Island off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. I'd sit on the beach amongst the sand dunes and tall grasses and watch storms roll over the water. Once the rain hit land, I'd run back into the stilted house where I'd sit on the porch, the house swaying in the strong wind, the thunder and lightning palpable. Fueled by the electrical charge from the atmosphere, I began to write stories here. Timeless dreams in stormy capsules.

During my first summer in Yellowstone National Park, my hiking buddy and I got caught in a thunderstorm storm hiking down from the peak of Mount Holmes, a 20 mile (32 km) hike round trip--only for the intrepid explorer, perhaps hinging on insane. Howling and laughing our way down the switchbacks, over the river, and across the fields, back in West Yellowstone by dark. Soaked, we ate so much pizza we nearly popped, never-minding all the stares. The entire experience deeply singed into by being, so surreal it feels like a dream.

California storms were rare, perhaps a reflection of the storm trapped inside me, the storms that came in other forms. Standing on the cold cliffs of Davenport, the sky dark, the waters rough, but no thunder would sound, no lightning would strike, no rain would fall. Wrapped in a flannel jacket and warm blanket, I walked down the stone stairs carved in the cliff side and waited for things that never came.

A picture of a storm hung on my walls over time and places--a storm and a lighthouse shining over the stormy waters, out into the dark sky. I surrounded the picture with glow in the dark stars so when I'd turn off the lights, the lighthouse light looked like a comet streaking through the night sky. By day, it was a storm. After dark, it became the cosmos.

I still have that picture, tucked in a box, somewhere, Santa Fe, New Mexico. But here I am now, standing on the northern edge of an island, somewhere in the Gulf of Thailand, letting stories and memories and the energy of a storm move through me.

No boats were heading back to Chaloklum so we decided to wait out the storm and hike back. I sipped on my coconut coffee and the rain blew sideways. I kicked off my shoes and talked about storms and storytelling, pulling timeless stories and memories from timeless places into the present. Caught in a storm, in a dreamscape, tumbling toward a destiny that I've already written. Because from this timeless perspective I already have.

Do you thrive in the energy of storms or hide from them? Tell me your storm stories--whether real or metaphorical!