No Map Needed

"There was a map of Vietnam on the wall of my apartment in Saigon and some nights, coming back late to the city, I'd lie out on my bed and look at it...That map was a marvel especially now that it wasn't real anymore....That's old, I'd tell visitors, that's a really old map." ~Michael Herr

Wandering the Old Quarter of Hanoi, the streets narrow and fill with picturesque alleys and railways and images ripped from history. No stop lights or stop signs, weathered buildings, muted colors, people and motorbikes fill every inch of space. I look down at my phone and see a blue dot. You are here. 

I slip into a cafe complete with a piano, a floor to ceiling wall of books, and soft jazz music playing in the background. Immediately, the Murakami section catches my eye, and I pull a book from the shelf--Hard Boiled Wonderland & the End of the World. My entire existence in Vietnam has bordered on the surreal from the start. I've not read any Murakami lately so I hadn't considered the Murakami factor, but it could explain a lot.

If you've ever read Murakami, specifically this novel, perhaps you'll understand how a couple days later I ended up in a unicorn themed cafe sipping coffee while wearing a pastel unicorn onesie. Or how seeing pieces of a B52 jutting out of a pond in an upscale neighborhood seemed the most natural thing.

I first read Murakami in a tent somewhere in the interior of Alaska camped out on the median of a deserted highway. The nameless narrator slipping between worlds--one of secret labs and tunnels running through underground Tokyo, the other in a magical realm full of unicorns and stolen shadows. Somehow, an accumulation of all the choices I'd made in life had lead me to that moment--in a tent, somewhere Alaska, reading Murakami. No map needed.

Perhaps we wind up in the most interesting places by not following any sort of map laid before us, but a built in navigation system that we create by tuning into the divine and allowing guidance. Allow the magnificent and surreal and wild to fill your essence and watch it become your reality.

Toss your maps of yesterday away and create a new one. Old roads destroyed, new ones created, boundaries always shifting. There are parts of me that no longer exist and parts that I have created and parts that I have refined. Looking into my past, like a map, in awe at where I've been--a marvel, now that it's not real anymore.

How do you navigate your life? Was your map laid out for you by society or do you create your own as you move through the world? Tune into how you feel about where you are and where you've been. You are here. Look down on that blue dot. How you feel about it will tell you all you need to know.

Ten weeks in Vietnam--stunning, indescribable landscape, shocking, war ridden wounds, and an intense energy unlike anything I've ever felt. It feels good to be back in Chiang Mai, back in the jungle, but I look forward to creating more Vietnam adventures down the road. 

What is a Miracle?

Entering into September, things slowed down considerably for me here in Vietnam. I traded in motorbike adventures for a week of detox and moving slow. And in these slow movements, I can focus on those new routines that I'm cultivating in my writing life and yoga life.

But amidst my attempts to focus, I can't stop thinking about the story my amazing soul-sister Sadie told me recently. After sitting in meditation with her dad, she asked him if he'd had any insights. What's a miracle? he asked her. And she told him about me.

What is a miracle?

According to dictionary Google, it is an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws, in other words, a divine event. It's something external that we can witness. Whereas this can be true, I believe most miracles are far more subtle and work deep in the folds where we typically aren't looking.

When my entire life as I knew it in California crumbled around me into something I couldn't make sense of, miracles were at work. They were helping to restructure my world so I could realign with my soul's path--though at the time, it seemed like the opposite was happening in every direction I looked. Only now can I see how obvious they all were.

According to A Course of Miracles, a miracle is a shift in perspective from fear to love, when that "tiny, mad idea" that we are separate from each other and God dissolves. This perspective shift is not one that you simply think in your mind because it does not come from the mind--it comes from the heart, and it must be felt. This can only happen through complete forgiveness, compassion, and gratitude. It happens through surrendering and letting go--sometimes leading us to places where we are forced to face our deepest fears and buried emotions.

I have learned that miracles are those things that move us closer to our core values and soul alignment--even if it means ripping us from the foundation we've spent our life building. Because the more aligned we are, the more at peace we are, and the more at peace we are the better we are able to process emotions and the world around us. And the better we are able to process, the more fine tuned our intuition becomes and the clearer we can see everyone and everything around us.

The miracle is being able to stay fully present with a profound understanding and knowing that we are sovereign souls meant to live in alignment with why came here--and those reasons will be different for everyone as we are unique, energetic expressions of source.

A miracle is coming into the awareness that the past and the future do not exist and that only our minds give them life. It is the ability to re-frame our past and the stories we tell ourselves. It is the ability create our future with the present. And that, my friends, is a powerful miracle!

What do miracles mean to you? Have you experienced any in your life? Tell me your stories!

The Great Unlocking (or Lessons from the Hanged Man)

Each night long after dark I walk down the wide, expansive beach until the city noise and light pollution fade into the distance and all I can hear is the ocean roar. I need a sign. I need this energy to move. I needed a sign on what to do about my dilemma. I had planned to be in Da Nang until the end of August, but within the first week, my nervous system was already shot.

There is a sense of urgency and unrest that permeates every facet of Da Nang, and it unnerved me to the core. Each passing day became a test of patience and tolerance from the non-stop jackhammer outside my apartment window to the blasting music around every corner and relentless horn honking down every road. I expected this in the big cities and even in the city center of Da Nang, but here on the beach?

My life in this coastal city was not unfolding as I had planned. I had envisioned digging deep into my novel revision and the new practices I wanted to cultivate. But like the saying goes, make plans then allow something better to happen. Maybe that's not a saying, but it should be.

On my walk back to my apartment one night, I got my sign--literally. It was the sign outside of a bar on the street where I live. Lit up and glaring--the Hanged Man.

If you practice Tarot, you already know where this is going. The hanged man represents a clear sign to stop trying to control situations and to slow down and listen and let go and allow natural shifts in perspective--allow the universe to keep you suspended in mid-air, upside down. And from this perspective, where parts of the mind unlock that would have otherwise not, is where light can shine in the dark and the unknown can be discovered.

There was nothing I could do about my environment, not right away anyway so I allowed something better to happen. I got out of the city and discovered Vietnam in a way I might not have had things unfolded as I planned.

Driving around the Son Tra Peninsula for hours, taking long coastal routes all the way to Hue, hiking into untouched, magic jungles--this is where time stops and the infinite power of the present lingers, this is where egos diminish and all that's left standing is the soul in awe of its sovereign existence.

From the road, taking in the landscape--the inescapable beauty of deserted jungle roads, breathtaking coastline views from mountain passes, quiet, surreal villages--this is where clarity resurfaces, visions crystallize, and my soul remembers why I was brought here.

There is something about the expansiveness of the ocean and open road that bursts me open to receiving messages and gifts and energy. It puts me at ease and fills me up so I can go back into the world and live and write and simply be.

When we stop trying to force things to happen in our lives or even wish for things to be different is when the better path, the better plan presents itself. It is an alchemical process of co-creation with the infinite that can't so much be explained but only experienced. I know this lesson all too well--it's what got me here, on the other side of the world, following my curiosity. It's what keeps me moving forward in a perpetual state of awe and gratitude.

Have you had experiences where instead of forcing your life to work as you planned you simply surrendered to a new perspective and allowed magic to unfold? Tell me your stories!

Fear & Loathing in Saigon

Relentless traffic, hard stares, unforgiving intense energy that curls itself around your body and squeezes--this is Saigon. I don't feel unsafe. I feel uptight. I feel the weight of war and devastation and extreme poverty. There aren't many places here in the deep south of Vietnam where it isn't in your face. The doors to this country have only been open to US citizens since 1995. And from what I've seen and felt and experienced, I'm surprised they were opened at all.

You can turn a blind eye to it like you can most anything and find the charm and beauty behind the pain and tough exterior. The comforts of a soft bed in a cute city homestay. The picturesque charm of the villages throughout the Mekong Delta. The architecture of the tall, thin old buildings squished between new, shiny skyscrapers. The pieces of light escaping through the dark scars.

Within my first 24 hours in Saigon I got crazy lost, locked out of my homestay, and for the life of me, couldn't communicate with anyone--google translations as foreign as I was. And for the first time in my 2 years I've been in Southeast Asia, I actually felt like I was in Southeast Asia, a foreigner in a very foreign country. The Western world kept at an arms length distance hasn't infused its way into the culture here like it has in other places. Or it has, but not in a way that makes you all that comfortable. 

I stared at the pictures for a long time--real-life once-removed by a camera. Hanging on the walls of the War Museum are pictures of freelance photographers killed or long gone missing because they were chasing a passion for adventure not one of war. Romanticized characters filtered through the lenses of writers and film makers. That's all I know. That's all I can know. All roads lead back to literature.

None of these writers or visionaries paint a pretty picture of Vietnam so what is it that gets lost in translation from real life to page or film? Michael Herr's memoir reads more like a drug induced walk through the jungle than the story of a man caught in the throes of war. In the novel the Beach, Richard's obsession with Vietnam and war hinge on the delusional. Walking carelessly through an armed area of a Thai jungle Richard can only think: the only missing element was a Doors soundtrack. 

All roads lead back to literature. The horror, the horror. It doesn't seem to matter when you're so far removed from the horror. It becomes art. It becomes the source of light escaped through the dark scars. Richard never did get the reference the horror, but he reminds us at the end of his story that he's left with a thousand-yard stare and a lot of scars.

I think about the horrors I've witnessed and experienced in my life, and I often wonder how they will come across when I begin to write about them. Ultimately, you can't control how others will interpret your story though you can certainly try to manipulate how they will. Perhaps luring all the magic and miracles from the heart of darkness instead of the horror is simply how I've learned to deal with human life.

My last night in Saigon I stand on the corner at a busy intersection where the sheer volume of people and traffic and noise is dizzying, where homes and closed businesses hide behind cage-like gates and people watch you through the thick bars. I walk back to my homestay along the Saigon River and through narrow, winding alleyways that dead-end. Lost again. A woman steps out from the shadows of her home, and I show her my map. She smiles and points left, straight, left again, and I find my way back.

This post does not end in the horror, but in a peaceful walk along the river, the kindness of a stranger, and in a cozy homestay nestled in a narrow alleyway offset from the intensity that is Saigon.

How does art and literature skew your view of reality? Are you able to see the art, the light escaping through the darkness of the subject matter? 

Jungle Life

The jungle is far louder than the city though it's not as noticeable. Sounds that put you to sleep, sounds that wake you up, sounds that belong. The crickets, the roosters, the frogs, the bees, the wild dogs, the geckos that live in the walls, the mice that run across the roof. I rarely hear human voices though I have a number of close neighbors. Thunderstorms sweep through and the monsoon brings rain that lasts for days and days and days.

I've nothing to do most days except learn to listen to my inner world until it is louder than the outer world. And from this space is where intuition strengthens and the heart knows better than the mind. Moldavite dreams and timeless memories, jungle greens and crystal blues, boundless and ever present.

My birth chart is so full of water I've spent a good chunk of my life nearly drowning. I never did learn to swim, but to simply move in sync with my soul, to feel my way through indecision and tough questions instead of attempting to think my way through them. This is where lightness resides, a lightness that allows me to float and see with a new kind of clarity.

Perhaps I've become an antevasin, one who lives at the border between village and forest--not quite a conventional householder, not quite a hermit. Or in my case, living with one foot in the modern world, the other at the edge of the jungle, ever moving toward the unknown, the mysterious, never letting it out of my sight. Or in the words of Liz Gilbert, "...this is a border that is always moving...the mysterious forest of the unknown always stays a few feet ahead of you, so you have to travel light in order to keep following it."

Perhaps I've always been an antevasian, never quite getting a grip on how to live in the world, yet never quite letting my head to go so far under I drown, my eyes always on the horizon of the new, the unknown, the mysterious. And the deeper I sink into this existence the more it feels like the true path of my soul, the more it feels like home.

Are you living the path your soul came here to live? If not, what would it take for you to align with it? 

The Blue of Distance

"The blue of distance comes with time, with the discovery of melancholy, of loss, the texture of longing, of the complexity of the terrain we traverse, and with the years of travel...Blue is the color of longing for the distances you will never arrive in."  ~Rebecca Solnit

I had been dozing in and out of consciousness and finally came to when I heard a voice. Take your time, the voice said. The last thing I remember was pointing to a lawn chair in the distance and saying something like I'm just gonna go lay down for a bit. Apparently, I had wandered from the small poolside cafe onto someone's bungalow and collapsed. The result of walking 5.5 kilometers midday in the equatorial sun to the only bookshop in Amed.

I'd like to think this is an isolated story of misfortune or bad planning, but as my track record shows, this is just how I function. There are countless examples here in this blog and throughout my life in general (some of which will never be discussed outside of the small circle of folks involved). The point isn't about the incidences themselves, but the miracles and lessons and stories that unfolded from them. And from this unfolding, something unknown and new emerges. The result, I'd like the think, of being curious, my compass always pointing toward the blue of distance.

I landed on Bali with no plan, too much luggage, and an urge to get lost in the magic of the island. I wasn't out to repeat any of my experiences from the months I had spent there in 2016, but to find something (as I mentioned in my previous post) that was completely unknown to me.

In four weeks time, I moved across the island from Canggu to Ubud to Amed to Sanur connecting with old and new friends along the way--some of them completely unexpected, all of them surreal as though we were all plucked from our lives and brought together on an island that only half exists in the real world. In these moments of connection, I learned a little more about the dynamics of souls coming together and sharing stories and energy. Sometimes what we give or take away from a place or another person isn't always obvious, not at first anyway. It's that lingering feeling that something has shifted, that we have somehow stepped closer to those very things we never knew we needed.

I've been back in Chiang Mai a month now, but it's not the Chiang Mai I left. I wasn't returning to my old job or my old apartment in the city, but to those things far more important to me--only when I returned, those things weren't here waiting for me at all. They had drifted out over the horizon where everything fades to shades of blue, but never completely disappears. I had somehow landed in a Chiang Mai completely unknown to me.

I stepped off the plane onto what I thought was familiar solid ground only to find myself swimming in the open ocean of possibility. Over this past month, my life here slipped from one of the most dynamic and busy existences to one of ungrounded solitude. But those new (and until now unknown) things and people emerging from this space are those very things I need to move in unknown directions. If this blog is truly about chasing miracles and following curiosity, then I need to allow the unknown to flourish and release all those things I've come to associate with Chiang Mai into the inaccessible blue of distance where memories and dreams live.

Here in a small teak hut in the jungle pressed against the base of Doi Suthop I awake each morning to a surreal life that feels like a new chapter has only just begun. The monsoon wind and rains wash out everything that no longer belongs. What is left? The glistening deep jungle greens and the blue of distance. Everything that keeps me chasing fireflies and miracles.

What is it that keeps you moving forward? Does something need to give you a push? Or does it come from a curiosity, a longing for the unattainable, the unknown, the blue of distance?

South of the Equator, East of the Past

I am driving down a dark, desolate street in the village of Penestanan just west of Ubud when I abruptly stop and look up at the sky. It is not the sky of my Ohio childhood full of fireflies and telescopes, nor the sky of my post-collage Wyoming summers nor of my Big Sur and Clearlake midnight escapades chasing meteor showers and miracles, but it is the sky here on an island 8 degrees south of the equator, somewhere east of everything that came before.

I first came to Bali two years ago and planted myself in the heart of Ubud whose intense energy un-grounded me and un-nerved me and forced me to surrender to it before I short circuited. And in surrendering, I found a stillness and peace that lead me to getting lost in the energy and finding the unexpected mystery and magic of not only Ubud, but in the raw and wild energy spread across the island.

Two years later I've eased my way back. I started on the west coast in Canggu then headed east toward Ubud, but not quite Ubud, just west of Ubud in the quite village of Penestanan where I can look up into a dark sky and see stars and forget where I am, where I can get lost wandering through rice fields or driving through the jungle, where I can lose track of time, lose track of place, lose track of everything that came before.

I have been on Bali for two weeks now, and I cannot stop thinking about Rebecca Solnit's book A Field Guide to Getting Lost. The book begins with Meno's question: How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you? And like a meandering and haunting guided meditation, Solnit lures you into her ever shifting world of personal stories and historical landscapes, leading you to those unexpected things you find while lost in the unknown, terra incognita.

I first read the book in March 2012 during a thunderstorm on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. Then I re-read it on the flight back to San Francisco after having been stuck at JFK for over 24 hours. Somewhere in the sky over middle America moving at hundreds of miles per hour west, I intuitively knew that coming back to California was walking into certain unknown doom. I had left California living one life; I would return to live out a completely different one. Losing everything that came before is where I began to find those things whose nature was at one time totally unknown to me--those things of strength and forgiveness and grace and ultimately freedom and serenity.

Perhaps getting lost is the only place where we find those things we never knew could be found--those indescribable moments and scenes and feelings that cannot be captured by words or a picture. That point of transformation you never knew could be possible until you surrender to losing everything that came before.

What does getting lost mean to you? Like Solnit, do you see it as a point of transformation, finding those things totally unknown to you? Or something else entirely?