Pollyanna the Peacemaker

I received the following e-mail from one of my oldest and dearest friends, Betina, in reply to the newsletter I wrote about staying in such a peaceful environment on a fruit plantation over September 11th:

“Oh my God Rafito I just finished reading your Yang Tone Farm newsletter and I got so much into it that after I finished I had to rub my eyes because I felt like I had been watching the most wonderful and beautiful movie ever in a dark theater. What you said about creating peace in our midst was so powerful. Yes, I also agree that terrorism is very much a part of our news media and in the mouths of our politicians, but it doesn’t have to be a part of our souls.

I try to combat terrorism in my little space here in Manhattan by always approaching others with love, no matter what. As an example, my “awful” landlord, Gary, didn’t want to renew my lease and was ignoring my sober letters to him until I wrote him a “love” letter that must have blown his mind because within two days I got my lease. No it wasn’t a letter of sex and hot kisses...none of that slurpy stuff. I just told him how much I had appreciated all the repairs that he had done on the building through the years and that I didn’t want to have to take such a considerate and law abiding landlord to court. Yes, I know I acted like a wimp and a Pollyanna, but that’s who I am when you come down to it. It’s always worked for me. Love always works. I also meant every word that I wrote to him.”

Betina has been living in the same building near the West Village in Manhattan for almost 4 decades now. I know, because she took over my first apartment there when I left for cheaper digs in Spanish Harlem in 1969. (That’s another story, but I won’t tell it here.) I was so proud of that bachelor suite because at 22, just having graduated from university, it was the first time I had ever lived alone. With a mattress on the floor, a few pieces of low furniture, and my two kittens that I rescued from the SPCA, it felt very homey.

I had met Betina several months previously. We had both started work the same week at the New York City Welfare Department, and were in a training program together. We became instant friends, with our friendship continually having grown deeper over the decades. Betina is one of those rare human beings whose deep sense of spirituality, compassion and gentleness comes from deep inside. And if you meet her, don’t let her mild mannered personality fool you. She may act like a female version of Clark Kent, but I think of her as Super Chutzpah Woman.

Betina is of Mexican origin, having grown up in Arizona. Coming from a very religious family, she entered the convent as a young woman and became an ordained nun. The walls and rules of the convent were too restrictive for her spirit, however and shortly before I met her, she threw away her frock and moved to New York City. Think of the courage that takes.

Several years after she took over my apartment, she moved downstairs to a one-bedroom apartment, where she has lived ever since. Stability, however, has not prevented her from living an amazing life. Her jobs have included being a bi-lingual teacher in the New York City public schools, where she calmed down some very tough Puerto Rican children by teaching them to meditate, and later being a teacher for children with terminal illnesses in a New York City hospital. She traveled alone through the hills of Mexico looking for the grave of her great grandfather, who had been a soldier in the Mexican Revolution, and went on another trip by herself into some of the out of the way places in the Amazon. In recent years she spent time at an Ayurvedic Clinic in India, and from what I understand, her spirituality touched many of the people there, who were certainly no strangers to spirituality themselves.

So I couldn’t help but deliciously laugh when I read the above story of writing a love letter to her landlord. Can you imagine trying to evict such a beautiful person who has lived in your building for 37 years? But more to the point, I think of Betina being able to see the good in everybody, and the power that has when it is expressed to someone who has taken an adversarial position against you.

Can you imagine if we all wrote love letters to our so-called enemies? ”Dear Osama.
I really respect the way you care so deeply about your people. I just can’t let you keep hurting my friends. I really don’t want to have to hurt your friends in retaliation! Nobody wins that way. Why don’t we get together for lunch sometime soon and figure out our differences. We’re two good and intelligent people. We can work it out.
Love, George.”
Now wouldn’t that be a different world!

But we don’t have to wait for our politicians to figure this out. Each one of us can do this on our own. We all have someone we are in conflict with. If each of us could stay strong within ourselves, see the good in that person and communicate it to him or her, can you imagine some of the results that we could accomplish? And as we did this, why would we not be touching and influencing other people to try the same. How could Gary not be different since he received his love letter from Betina?

Betina, in her modest manner might think of herself as a wimp, but I think of her as Pollyanna the Peacemaker. And I can’t imagine a better or more powerful way of being in this world.

Muchas gracias mi amiga linda.
(Thank you so much my beautiful friend)

Doi Inthanon

A lovely day was spent with several friends on Doi Inthanon, the highest mountain in Thailand, less than a two-hour drive southwest from Chaingmai. Standing by a fabulous waterfall in the middle of a glorious jungle, and later in the middle of these virgin woods at the top, these words came to me.


Thick green jungle opening to water falling, falling, falling.
Water thrashing to the cacophony of deafening sounds.
Clammy aromatic whiffs entering nostrils without compunction.
Spray spewing droplets from one of Mother Nature’s infinite fingertips
(She has fingers everywhere, don’t you know? Everywhere!),
soaking us in caresses so demanding, invigorating,
tasting of her unconditional regard for life with only one demand:
Receive me!, without excuses as I receive you, in this moment, now!
What choice is there? Opening,
ecstatic life erupts within and without, now.

Just moments later, standing
within the cradle of a forest, pristine
a blanket of fine fine mist spread by another of our Mother’s fingers
(already, so close. Oh, oh my love)
touching from so deep within
the gift of utter profound gentleness.
In stillness, yesterday’s footsteps are already rooted in the moist rich soil,
and tomorrow’s leaves are hardly a whisper
in this deepening moment of silence.

Peace on a Fruit Farm

As I sat peacefully on the deck of the cabin that we had rented for two days, looking over an orchard of rambudon trees (that grow fruit similar to lynchee fruit) to Doi Luang, the third tallest mountain in Thailand, it occurred to me that today was September 11th.

Although I had blissfully not seen any world news in several days, I had no doubt that today, the word ‘terror’ was on too many politicians’ lips around the globe, and that the world media were happily communicating these frightening thoughts to whomever they could gain access to. I knew that Al Qaeda had distributed a video staring their hero, Osama bin Laden, and that George Bush had recently been upping the volume with the message that terrorism was the new ideological evil of this century that had to be fought every step along the way. Sitting in this peaceful setting, I also couldn’t help but wonder how real those messages were. Sure, group and state terrorism has seen a horrific increase in the last number of years. But is this the primary reality for the more than 6 billion inhabitants of our planet? Or are these messages simply broadcast to support the greedy interests of certain politicians and corporate entities? And are there not other messages that we could listen to that could be just as real and provide far better rewards for us ordinary folk who just want to get on with our lives?

Looking around me, I knew the answer to these questions. We were staying at the Yang Tone Farm Stay for Nature Lovers, a fruit plantation several kilometres outside of the small town of Chiang Dao, which is itself about an hour and a half bus ride north of Chiangmai. On this 200 Rai (approximately 170 acres) organic farm are thousands of mango, lychee, rambudon and orange trees interspersed with each other that is owned and managed by Suvit Chootiwat. In the middle of this orchard sits a cluster of about ten cabins next to an outdoor restaurant run by his gracious wife, Sriboot. She has lovingly planted many bushes and flowers that sprout a symphony of colours beyond description. Outside our bedroom windows, for example, is a hedge of birds of paradise that commingle with other bushes whose names we do not know.

Starring past the cabins, flowers and trees, the mountain comes into view. At this time of year, which is the monsoon season, the vista is constantly changing. At times clouds embrace the top, and then moments later it peaks through as the clouds rush by. Later in the day, as the heat of the day evaporate the clouds, it stands out in all of its majesty. Covered by thick jungle, there is a spiritual feeling about this mountain that we can feel if not verbalize. Part of it has a similar shape and feeling to another mountain, Lone Cone, situated on Meares Island on the west coast of British Columbia, under which Lucy and I met for the first time ten years ago at a spiritual retreat that we go back to every year.

The cabins have all been designed by Suvit, who is an architect by trade. They are made with natural materials whenever possible. There is beautiful wood framing, thatched roofs and woven mats from some type of palm tree for the walls and ceilings. The bathroom is outside, surrounded by a brick wall covered in locally grown ivy, ensuring privacy. What a treat to be standing under the open sky while having a shower. There is not a TV or telephone in sight. There is simply homemade wooden furniture constructed of teak wood resting on our brick deck, from which we can sit quietly and view our surroundings.

Suvit and Sriboot are both around 70 years old. The beautiful peaceful surroundings of this environment are certainly a reflection of their state of mind. These are two wonderful people who seem to know how to slowly walk through their day with their feet softly touching the ground as they engage in various chores with open hearts and wonderful smiles. Suvit adds wonderful extra touches to each meal. After a breakfast of kaew tom -a traditional Thai breakfast of rice soup with chicken and herbs (there are other selections one can make as well) – we were given a treat of sculptured fruit. Half of a passion fruit was decorated with slices of carrot and rambudon fruit to look like a turtle with eggs.

Suvit is a fascinating man. He is up every morning by 5:30 a.m., and on the go throughout the day. The energy of his sparkling eyes radiate outward from under his baseball cap, atop his khaki shirt, jeans and gumboots. When the workday is over, he exchanges his boots for a pair of sandals. He never seems too busy for a conversation, of which we had many hours with him. He remembers coming to what is now his property when he was a child and walking through the old growth teak forest. By the time that he returned when he was 30 and bought the land, the teak forest was all gone. By then he had completed university in the Philippines, getting a degree in architecture, and was teaching this subject in one of the universities in Chiangmai. Over the next 15 years he developed an orchard until he was able to retire from the university and run his farm on a full time basis. He uses natural means to grow healthy trees. Various types of trees are interspersed with each other so that harmful insects do not propagate as easily. He allows grass to grow naturally between the trees. Later in each season he will have it cut and then piled around each tree to provide natural fertilizer. His trees are like his children, and he claims to know each tree on his farm.

He is also quite the local historian. One story that sticks out from the time he bought this land were the opium growers. At that time, as in many places in northern Thailand, there were large farms that grew nothing but the opium flower. He remembers hillside people walking down the road past his gate with huge sacks on their pack filled with the picked opium. They would stop to chat and offer him a handful. He never did say what he did with this gift, and in politeness, we didn’t ask. Most of the opium is gone now, although he says there are still some areas off the beaten track that still grow it. He invited us to come back in May or June, when the flowers are blossoming, and he would show us where they are growing. From what we have heard, hillsides are covered in magnificent colours; it must be quite the sight.

Suvit takes great pride in maintaining his land as a natural preserve. He is deeply saddened by much of the destruction of the environment that he sees around Thailand, such as the disappearance of natural teak forests. He told us a heartbreaking story of a beautiful butterfly, which was called the Tiger of Chiang Dao, because it had the markings similar to a tiger and only lived in this region. The Japanese offered the economically poor villagers a high price to capture this butterfly, probably as much as they would normally earn in an entire month, and now this beautiful creature has become extinct.


On the other hand, he is proud of the villagers who fought against the proposal by the prime minister to develop a cable car to the top of the mountain. Apparently the he had come up to this area and had wanted to go to the peak, but wasn’t willing to spend two days hiking up and down. Right now there are government regulations that only give 200 people a year permits to climb the mountain. The villagers have been able to maintain this status quo that will continue to protect the delicate balance of nature on the mountain. Suvit, himself, was offered a huge sum of money to sell a portion of his land to a developer, but he turned it down with the statement “I don’t know what my wife and I would spend that much money on!” Behind the statement was the recognition that there was nothing that money could buy that would give them more than what they already had by living on their beautiful land. After all, how many pairs of gumboots could he possibly store in his closet.

Suvit and Sriboot are an example of people who can combine a love for preserving nature with running a successful business. They have approximately 10,000 mango trees alone, each bearing up to 100 fruit a season. In order to get a higher price for his produce, he exports them to Malaysia and Singapore. Fruits for export need to be of a higher quality. In order to protect the skin of the mangoes from being damaged by fruit flies, he has them individually wrapped with newspaper. Imagine having up to a million pieces of fruit wrapped in newspaper! About 15 years ago he also bought some cleared land not too far from his farm, on which he planted about 40,000 teak trees. While they will be cut down in several years, he will replant trees again for the future.

This morning, Suvit offered to drive us to a natural hot spring about two and a half kilometres away. We climbed into a small old jeep without doors or any other convenience. Lucy sat up front in the open cab, while I balanced on a log on the small flatbed behind. As he drove off he shouted over the shifting gears that this was an American army jeep that was used during the Vietnam War. (The Americans had a number of mega airfields in Thailand from which B-52’s would regularly take off to drop their 750-pound bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.) As we bounced up his long gravel driveway, I couldn’t help but wonder what this jeep had seen in the past. I also couldn’t help but chuckle at how this beautifully peaceful man had transformed this jeep into a companion for on his organic farm.

We drove along a small road past other orchards and farms, with the thick natural jungle never far away. Everything was green and thick with dampness, as only a tropical environment on the edge of a jungle can be. So much of this land was still unspoiled, or developed in very simple ways. For the moment, progress has been kept at bay in this beautiful paradise.

We approached our destination and climbed out. We were at the foot of the mountain. Up ahead was a closed gate to a bird and wildlife research sanctuary. Suvit told us that people come from all over the world to see unusual birds that migrate in the winter from China and Mongolia to only this area. Coming out of the earth was a natural hot spring that had been diverted with plastic pipes into several large cement rings for sitting in. The excess hot water emptied into a river, several meters downhill. About 10 meters down the river a cold stream emptied into the river, complete with a small waterfall that one could sit under. What a treat! After deliciously soaking in the hot tub, we sat under a waterfall to cool down, all the while looking up at the jungle on the opposite bank.

We couldn’t image a better retreat. We will have to return again when the noise, pollution and traffic of Chaingmai get to us. Its good to know that there are places like Yang Tone Farm Stay on this on earth where gentle people like Suvit and Sriboot tend to the earth and the fruit she bears. Blossoming under these branches, we found a state of peace in our hearts and minds. (If you are interested, you can check out their website at: www.yangtonefarmstay.com).

Over breakfast our last morning here, the tune ‘life is but a dream’ kept bouncing around in my head. We often try to distinguish between reality and dreaming, but is this not really just a false dichotomy? I imagine that the inventor of the paper clip must have initially dreamt of finding a better way of holding paper together, and then used his or her ingenuity to turn it into a real product that most of the world now uses. Do not all physical objects, works of art, explorations, profound relationships, new discoveries, etc. all come from daring to allow the dreams of our hearts, souls and minds to see the light of day?

So, is terrorism real? It is for those who dream up ways of creating violence and fear, and then unfortunately, it becomes a real nightmare for those who fall victim to it. What frightens me so much is that we allow the Osama bin Ladens and George Bushes of this world to define their dreams as reality and then impose them on us.

For the past two days, we were honoured to enter the very real environment of two beautiful elders, Suvit and Sriboot Chootiwat, who seemed to derive so much pleasure in sharing their shining dreams with others. What could be a more fitting way of honouring the horrors of September 11th? Rather than dreaming of fighting terror and violence with more of the same, we could come away with the dream of peace, harmony and beauty, and know that this dream not only has the potential to be transformed into reality, but also know that it has the power to spread, one person and one dream at a time.

Arriving

The week began for Lucy and I without a Friday.

Waiting at the security check of the San Francisco Airport, as the clock passed the midnight line, hardly felt like the dawning of a new day, but rather the extension of one very long Thursday, in which we had spent many hours repacking, doing our last minute errands and saying our good-byes. I couldn’t help but mutter that the new security arrangements, although necessary, seemed awfully similar to the practice of safe sex, with the obliteration of any contact with fluids on one’s person. Probably a bad joke, I would agree, and I don’t mean to sexualize things, but it got me thinking about what our population has to do in the name of security in this new world order. Water and fluids often symbolize the essence of life in many spiritual practices. As our world becomes more complex and threatening, this seems like a paradoxical metaphor in which we need to remove ourselves from the flow of life in order to stay safe and secure.

For the past two years we had been trying to find a sense of security in our lives in Vancouver. It probably would have worked if we weren’t both struggling with the god-awful Lyme’s disease that sucked the energy and sense of well being right out of our bodies and souls. For years, we had both been invaded by nasty bacteria that wormed their way into the core of our immune cells causing havoc and destruction wherever they went. Our immune systems seemed helpless to combat this camouflage warfare, other than screaming out in futile protest in the form of growing symtomotology.

The good news was that with finally getting a correct diagnosis and with a highly effective treatment plan, known as the Marshall Protocol that was being administered by our wonderful holistic doctor Greg Blaney, a cure was in sight. For me, I have not suffered from my headaches in over one and a half years, and if anything could be considered a blessing, that certainly was. The bad news was that this treatment, while successful, could take over two years. It is a long series of detoxifications that result in physical and mental exhaustion beyond belief, muscle and joint aches, nerve disorders, mental confusion, sleep disturbances and all sorts of other thrilling experiences. Knowing that there is a light at the end of the tunnel is a consolation worth holding onto, but it does make functioning in the real world challenging, and some days we couldn’t help but wonder if that light was another train approaching us on our single track within the darkness.

During this time we tried starting a small business providing innovative holistic workshops in health and wellness for both the Aboriginal and general population in British Columbia. Lucy and I have a wonderful way of working together, and the work that we did was well received. We found the work exciting and looked forward to doing more. Like any new business, however, a tremendous amount of mental and physical energy is required for marketing and development, and consistent energy was not something that our treatments afforded us.

In trying to work at a slower more sensible pace, I found myself sitting around too much going through internal conflict. It became quite clear that the demands of healing and the demands of starting a business were forming their own battle lines. Healing conforms to neither schedule nor pressure, while work certainly does. After much discussion and debate, we decided to get our business development past its initial stage with the completion of a website and certain commitments that we already had, and then take an eight month sabbatical to focus on our healing. (If you are interested in checking out our website, please go to www.steppingstonesworkshops.com. We welcome any feedback you might have.)

Once we made this decision, it didn’t take us long to decide to follow our hearts and return to Thailand. For reasons of both the economics of not having an income, and the affinity we have for the Buddhist culture, this was an obvious choice for us. We decided to initially set up base in Chaingmai, where we lived and worked several years ago. This time around we were going to take time for ourselves, and simply see what unfolded. We knew that we wanted to spend time meditating in a couple of wats (Buddhist temples), that I wanted to write and Lucy wanted to explore art. Other than that we were going to simply invite life to unfold in front of us without any specific plans. We didn’t even know if we were going to travel much; maybe yes, maybe no.

Sitting on board Singapore Airlines several hours later, I attempted to not try to make too much sense of what was occurring. Hurling through space above the Pacific Ocean at speeds and altitudes that defy basic human modes of functioning, through a night that would seem endless, while punching through time zones that ridiculed the notion that one could rely on one’s wristwatch, and having tomorrow obliterate today (which never really began) as we crossed some imaginary International Date Line, logic was no longer the ruler of this flying roost. Several movies on demand and meals later, when it was apparently Saturday morning, we stretched our legs at the Hong Kong airport and treated ourselves to some noodle soup, not trying to figure out if this was breakfast, lunch or dinner. We figured that by West Coast time (although that was yesterday here) it was just two days since we had left Lake Tahoe where we had taken my parents for a holiday, and spent our last day in America in San Mateo, a suburb of San Francisco. We were now in the outskirts of Hong Kong, and that within the next 5 days we would spend time in Singapore and Bangkok before taking a night train to Chaingmai.
Flying south over the east coast of China, I tried not to think of the sadness of leaving so many people behind. It had been great to spend the last two years with our children and grandchildren, becoming more intimately part of their lives again, and knowing that we were closer to our parents and siblings. We never realized how many wonderful friends we had until we had to say good-bye, once again, to all of them. I also tried to push away the thoughts of once again being homeless, and the exhaustion that we had faced over the past couple of months closing up shop. The life of a wanderer can certainly be a two-edged sword. So I thought back to the first time I flew this route four years before, not quite believing that I was over China. Later as we had flown over Vietnam on that previous voyage, I couldn’t help but reflect back on how a previous brutal American war with this country had shaped the life that I was to embrace. I never did make it to Vietnam in my travels, but I vividly remember one night in Laos, watching a full moon reflect on the Mae Kong River, a body of water that is birthed in Tibet and after travelling through 7 countries, empties into the Pacific in a delta in Vietnam where too much of the violence of that war took place.

After yet another meal, movie and a bit of shut-eye, the pilot announced that we were approaching the end of our journey in Singapore. We had spent time in Singapore on several other occasions, and were looking forward to three days here this time as well.

Singapore is probably one of the most modern cities in the world, with architectural designs sprouting out of the earth in Jetsonesk-like fashion. Much controversy is generated in this city between the concepts of freedom and good governance, something that I hope to write about more soon. While fascinated by this modern city, our passion lies in the older quarter of Little India. Here the buildings are only several stories high, old and thrown together in a hodgepodge of fascinating shapes, colours and patterns, along streets that are bustling with people at any time of the day or night. There is litter strewn on the streets here, and certainly nobody gives you a fine for chewing gum or blocking the street with you car, truck, bike or cart. The stuff of life oozes out of every pore of this neighbourhood, which is what is so appealing to us.

Everywhere you turn there are out-door fast food restaurants. Before I hear gasps of shock across the e-waves, let me assure you that the notion of fast food in Indian culture is not even a distant cousin of that back home. Delicious and healthy curries of every description, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian, are in hot trays, ready to be served with a variety of Indian breads and rice. Drink it down with water, soda, Ceylon tea or a lassi that is served in some restaurants and you are in culinary heaven at prices that fit any traveller’s budget.

We had chosen the Royal India Hotel, which we had seen on previous visits, as our resting place. I suspect that this hotel has seen better days when it may have been the place to stay in the centre of Little India. Although I wouldn’t call it a dive now, it was certainly run down. A saving grace was that our room not only had running hot water, although it took us a day to figure out how to use it, and air-conditioning, not to mention a window facing the street. The first room we were shown was a cell without a window, but thankfully, we were able to switch. While the hotel staff were not overly friendly, they were efficient and helpful.

Our plan was to sleep off jet lag in our hotel and wander out in the sticky heat to fill our bellies whenever we felt the urge. The fact that both of us arrived with a combination of the flu and a head cold, not to mention exhaustion, only strengthened our desire to happily hole up in our tiny room. We had brought several novels with us that kept us content.

Sunday evening was an exception. Looking out our window in the late afternoon, we noticed an unusually large number of people, mostly men, hanging out and walking along the streets. Within a couple of hours this had turned into what can only be described as a flood of men surging through the streets. Some were walking alone, but most were in pairs, often either arm in arm or rubbing shoulders, or there were small groups standing to the side in animated conversation, some standing, some sitting, some squatting. We were later to learn that for most men, Sunday is their only day off, and that there is a tradition of gathering with friends in the evening. We noticed busses that had obviously transported men here by the thousands from other parts of the city. What the tradition for women was, if any, was only speculation. They were certainly nowhere to be seen. Whether they congregated together in their homes, or whether taking time out to socialize was not one of their allotted luxuries was and remains outside of our knowledge.

Soon our bellies were beginning to growl and out into the crowds we went. We were one of the very few Westerners out and about, and dear Lucy was even in a smaller minority, but that didn’t deter us. Everywhere we went, we had to dodge and push our way through the sea of men. There was a hum of energy that was palpable, but never once did we feel anything other than safe or even noticed, for that matter. It was as if we were invisibly bobbing through another dimension that only we could see and feel. What an experience!

The next night was Lucy’s birthday. We celebrated it by doing what we enjoy most; eating. Walking down an alley of upscale shops the day before, we had found an interesting restaurant called The Banana Leaf. Very modern and air conditioned, there was a large menu to choose from. After much difficulty, we finally settled on a spinach paneer and a curried chicken, along with garlic naan, all served on a banana leaf; the traditional way of eating. The flavours were exquisite, transporting our birthday girl, as well as her host, into heaven.

The next day we were back to the airport for the relatively short flight to Bangkok. (After crossing the Pacific, almost any flight is short.) Bangkok was relatively unremarkable, as we didn’t feel the need to see things that we had seen before. To compensate for a simple hotel in Singapore, we completed Lucy’s birthday celebration by staying at quite a decent hotel; the Royal River Hotel. Although we usually stay in very simple and inexpensive accommodations in Thailand (between $5 - $10Can a night), we splurged and rented a suite, certainly something we have never done before. For about half the cost of a normal hotel room back home, we spent two days and nights in luxury, drifting through our spacious suite with a beautiful view of the river. It came complete with a double door entrance, with sculptures of lions on either side, not to mention two separate balconies.

One night we went to what looked like a basic restaurant next door, the River Bar, that we could see from our suite. With an outside on the river, we figured we would have a enjoyable evening. While the food was good and reasonably priced, the treat in store for us was the music. The inside sported a night club with a modern décor in all black and white with a performance by a local four piece Thai band, Blue on Blue. There was a combination of jazz, blues and old time rock and roll, with the lead member playing some of the finest guitar we have heard anywhere, with a voice to match. We were mesmerized by this music and didn’t want it to end.
The next night we took a night train to Chaingmai where we have been for the past week and a half. This account is getting long enough so I will write more at a future date. Suffice it to say that we are happy to be back here, and taking life very slow. Just what ‘the doctor’ ordered.

After much encouragement by many of you, I hope to write more accounts of our experience here. As we don’t plan on doing an extensive amount of travelling, they will probably be in the form of vignettes of impressions of a different way of life. I’m in the process of setting up several connected blog sites, and will let you know about them once they are up and running. If you don’t want to be on this email list please let me know, and I will take you off.

While far away, Lucy and I love to keep our relationships alive and would love to hear from you. We look forward to old-fashioned personal letters (on email), as well as this group format. So we look forward to hearing from you if you wish, and we will certainly write back.
Keep well for now.

Regards from Ralph, and his sidekick, Lucy

I Wish I Was a Wanderer

I am seeing myself in first grade. I am sitting cross-legged on the floor surrounded by my classmates with a joyous expression on my face. Looking out the window, I see the brilliant colours of the leaves; yellow, orange and red. A window is slightly ajar and I am smelling the crispness of the November air of New York tickling my nostrils. Prior to this moment I have been wishing to go outside, run through the leaves, scoop them up using everything available to my body, hands, arms, chest, throat and stomach, to throw them in the air, and then and only then wait for that delicious long pause of a split second before they flutter down covering my hair, eyes, ears, and nose, sticking to my fall jacket and khakis pants, finally settling in a light drift over my brown leather shoes. With few exceptions, the call from outside would pre-empt any activity within the classroom. This is one of those joyous exceptions that is keeping my attention focused inside.

In this scene we are singing the Thanksgiving song "The Happy Wanderer". Looking back now, I can hear the exuberance of my singing, having no concern for whether or not I am remotely in tune, which no doubt, I am not. I can hear many of the words going over and over in my head, although some of them have faded away with memory. Something about I wish I was a wanderer with a knapsack on my back, wandering until the day I die. I am always seeing the mythological wanderer the same way; as an old man in corduroy pants and a flannel plaid shirt, sporting a white scraggly beard and a canvas knapsack with a wooden frame on his back. I am noticing now that he never seems loaded down, he always seems so free.

I am always seeing the wanderer in the third person, although the song is sung in the first person. Many of this boy's thoughts are lost to me now, but it is hard to conceive that there could have even been an inkling that maybe someday I could be that wanderer. This certainly did not fit into my world within an upper middle-class, predominately Jewish suburb on the North Shore of Long Island, New York. Everything was very nice in my community, the nice streets with overhanging trees, the nice houses with nice people inside. 'Nice' was my mother's favourite word; the opposite of nice is 'screcklish', a Yiddish expression meant to send shutters up one's spine. Everything in our house was nice - all the time.

Nothing was ever out of place within my mother's domain, including my bedroom. There certainly was no place for a canvas knapsack with a wooden frame, not even in the far recesses of my closet. The thought of a scraggly beard donning my face sometime in the decades to come when my biology would have caught up with such a fantasy would certainly have set off the screcklish shutters. This being the early 50's, a time to forget the horrors of the previous decade and recline into niceness, there was not even a glimpse of what was to come in the late 60’s when many a young man's face, including mine, would erupt with unkempt hair.

For my father, a successful and moral business man, the extent of his wandering was the daily commute via the Long Island Railroad into his office in Manhattan, with his companions, a brief case and the New York Herald Tribune. A major change came when the Tribune closed the New York edition and my father switched to the more conservative New York Times, which at 92, he still reads daily from his retirement home in a suburb of San Francisco.

Yes, we were Jewish and through the decades my paternal ancestors had wandered up from Spain into Germany and the Netherlands, and my maternal grandparents from the Ukraine and Lithuania had wandered into Germany and later to Palestine, but in each case, they were refugees fleeing religious persecution, mass eviction, pogroms, and the early years of Hitler's Regime. A happy wanderer embracing freedom: no, that was not part of the scheme of this little boy’s life, I am seeing joyfully singing out of tune.

And yet, seeing this delicious scene again, I am now detecting the first echoes of a call that would return as I moved through the decades. From whence the call came, discovering its meaning, deciphering the complexity of its messages, all that means nothing now. All that is of interest is that the call kept coming, over and over again, in different guises and shapes, in different degrees of intensities, sometimes speaking seriously, sometimes cunningly luring me into fantastical escapes, sometimes hauntingly pulling upon my soul like a loon's song reaching across the water.

Fast forward about 40 years now. It doesn’t escape my notice that this is the period that my ancestors wandered through the desert. I am at the 24th annual folk music festival in the idyllic setting of Jericho Park on the west side of Vancouver, British Columbia in July, 2001. On the south side of the park is a meandering pond with wild ducks, swans and other fowl, beaver and even the occasional turtle. Beyond the pond is a thick stand of trees buffering the park from the traffic on 4th Avenue. To the north is the beach on the Vancouver inlet. At this time of year one not only gets the visual scene of the dozen or so freighters in the middle of the inlet waiting for a berth at the dock in the East End, but numerous pleasure vessels out for a summer’s day romp. Beyond the masts of the sailing boats are the beautiful mountains of North and West Vancouver and further to the east one embraces the skyline of downtown Vancouver melting into the beautiful Stanley Park. Although more than a dozen years had elapsed since I had last lived in Vancouver, I still considered myself a Vancouverite, proud of a scene that no city in North America can match.

In its 24 years of folk music extravaganza, I had only been absent a handful of times. As with so many of my generation, I came of age listening to the likes Pete Seager, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Buffy St. Marie and Phil Oaks. So it was a forgone conclusion that when the infant festival opened in 1978, I would be in attendance, and remain one of its loyal fans over the years. Scheduled in mid July, it was often the first weekend of the summer in which the sun was in attendance. The hallmark of this festival is that it is global in context and invites creative and unique artists and groups who generally have not made it big on the mainstream music scene.

The main attraction for me this year was Utah Philips. He was definitely not wearing corduroy pants. Other than that, however, he looked, acted, sang and told stories, as I imagined my metaphorical wanderer of those bygone elementary schooldays would have done. He even sported the necessary plaid shirt and flowing snow-white beard. It had been many years since I had last been entertained by Utah at this festival and I was looking forward to it. Irreverent as one can possibly be, he is brilliant at getting one to think about the injustices of this world through his songs and stories.

In the middle of Utah’s performance, he asked if we knew the difference between a bum, a hobo and a tramp. Well, he says: a bum is a wanderer who drinks; a hobo is a wanderer who works occasionally; a tramp is a wanderer who dreams.
After the laughter subsided, I looked at my dear wife Lucy seated at my side and said: “Well darling, I can’t drink because it gives me headaches and working is killing me. I think it is time for us to be tramps!!”
Lucy’s first response was to laugh. Her second response, which surprised herself as much as me, was to agree.

Our life was no longer working. We had known that for some time now. My daily migraine headaches, which had been plaguing me for several years, had drained all my strength and resources, and yet I continued working in my private psychotherapy practice. Healing others and teaching them to take care of themselves came easy to me. Following my own advice was another story. Lucy was exhausted beyond imagination from trying to hold the two of us together. And yet we continued on and on, thinking that we were doing the responsible thing.

Responsibility. How often had I broken down the meaning of that word for my clients into ‘response’ – ‘ability’; the ability to respond? How often had I heard myself say that responsibility did not necessarily mean working hard, making money or following the mainstream assumptions of what one should sacrifice in life to be considered a good citizen? No, I would explain, it is one’s ability to respond to life and that self-care is often a huge component of that quality. I knew that, but didn’t follow it. I seemed to be following the old adage: do as I say, not as I do.
I return to that moment now. I am sitting beside my wife wishing to follow my dreams. I am thinking of becoming a tramp. How will I explain this to my parents, I am thinking. Hi mom, hi dad, guess what? I’m going to be a tramp. I’m going to be wandering. I’m going to be dreaming. Isn’t that grand? I’ll be down to visit them in their exclusive retirement home and they will be introducing me to their friends as their middle-aged son, the tramp.

I am laughing as we begin walking across the field after the concert. I am laughing with equal measures of excitement and nervousness. We are already becoming aware that that comment, absurd as it may have been, was hitting a chord that was not remotely absurd. As I sit here now, writing about this event that seems part of another lifetime already, I am listening to a CD in which Utah Phillips is singing a song: “I am all used up”. Watching back through time I see these two folk walking hand in hand, becoming more and more aware of how used up they really are. Wandering and dreaming isn’t seeming quite so absurd to them at this moment.
Making the decision to leave home and begin the journey to find the answers they are looking for is still six weeks in the distance, but from that moment on, they feel its inevitability and proximity. It will always remain a poignant and defining moment.

The Gift of Illness

There are certain defining moments in the history of a long-term illness that stand out from the steady stream of trials that becomes one’s new life. The first such event is the recognition that all is not well.

For me this occurred on a spring evening in Victoria, British Columbia. Lucy and I were taking a course offered by our friend, Samantha in Jin Shin Do, a comprehensive form of acupressure body treatment. We were staying in her apartment and having dinner together. A bottle of red wine was opened and we each filled up a glass. The food was good, the companionship was better, I was having fun and feeling relaxed, but within a short order of time, I developed a raging headache that lasted more than 24 hours.

Over the past two years I had progressively been getting more headaches to the point where I was suffering from them several times a week. At the same time, I was becoming more sensitive to a host of foods and alcohol. Until that evening, however, if I limited myself to a couple of glasses of wine, I had not had a problem.

Until then, I had explained away my headaches and food sensitivities as the outcome of too much stress, resulting from a recent separation of a long-term marriage, becoming involved in a new relationship with Lucy (wonderful though it was), financial pressures and operating a full-time counselling practice. That evening, however, I came to the conclusion that this was more than just stress. Something was physically wrong, and I didn’t know what it was.

Over the next several months I made various decisions about how to lower my stress level. Regardless of what I did, however, my headaches kept increasing. It wasn’t long before I was having headaches every day.

For someone who had always been physically active, healthy and thrived on an active life, it was not easy defining myself as being ill. The diminishing definition of who I was in this world changed from being a healer, a father, a son, a partner, a friend, a hiker, etc., to being an ill person. Looking back on this period, I realized what a shock this was for me. I believe now that this changing concept of who I was in this world had as much of an impact on me as the physical symptoms themselves.

Another defining moment, a couple of years later coincided with an event so powerful that most of the world sat up and took notice. By the time the horrors of September 11th occurred, I had been through the full gamut of medical intervention to no avail. My symptoms continued to increase, compounded by the addition of various pharmaceutical substances that were destroying my body and mind. Being a believer in natural healing, I tried every approach I could think of, but nothing made a difference. Continuing my career, supporting ourselves and paying off the mortgage on a house and property on the beautiful west coast Quadra Island were important to me, but I was becoming more and more desperate. I was worn down, and didn’t know how to continue.

Beyond the similar reactions that everybody else had that awful day abut the people who were senselessly killed, I went through a very personal set of questioning. While I had huge political qualms with the hegemonious American military-industrial complex, that the Pentagon and the World Trade Center symbolized, I recognized that I must have bought into it on another level. If nothing else, they at least had represented what was secure and impenetrable. If they weren’t secure, who and what was, I wondered.

In the days that followed, Lucy and I finally came to the decision that had been brewing for several months. With my illness, we could no longer count on building a secure life in the normal fashion. It was time to focus on healing. For both of us, this must take the form of giving up home and careers, parting with family, friends and pets for a while, and travelling to Asia to look for other approaches to healing.

Two months before, I had been listening to one of my favourite folk singers, Utah Phillips, at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival talk and sing about wandering. In one of those rare moments of life, it triggered a powerful yet unexplainable calling that had been with me ever since I was a child. (For a more detailed account of this, click onto the story ‘I Wish I Was a Wanderer’.) For many years I had known and embraced the calling to be a healer. To pursue the mythology of being a wanderer, however, was far more threatening to the values of a middle class lifestyle, and had been suppressed. In ways that I couldn’t explain then, I knew on a visceral level that healing and wandering were deeply connected for me, and that I simply had to follow upon a journey that I didn’t have a clue as to its
outcome or destination.

Many amazing and profound experiences presented themselves to me in our time in India and Thailand that I now embrace as gifts of ‘divine love’, although for the life of me I can’t even begin to define what I mean by that term. (I am presently in the process of writing a book on this whole journey.) One moment stands out for me, which occurred not more than a couple of kilometres from where I am writing today in Chaingmai, Thailand.

We were still new enough to Asia that simply being on the street was an adventure in itself. You have to understand that in Asia urban areas life is centred on the street. People are buying or selling their wares on the street, on the sidewalks, bulging out of small shops or carts, they are moving in what appears to be chaotic directions, they are rushing, they are loitering, they are gabbing, they are napping, they are watching, their vehicles are making noise and spewing pollution as they weave in and out of a stream of maddening traffic, some are smiling from so deep in their bellies that it lights up the entire street, day or night, while others are scowling, pulling in the darkness, some are begging, others simply want to meet you, while others want to take advantage of you for their own profit. There are colours and smells and sounds and visceral connections waking up all the senses, whether you want them to or not.

We were passengers in a tuk-tuk, a mythological beast that has the head of a bike and the back of an open carriage, usually big enough to hold two people, although here any number of passengers is possible. In the old days the driver was peddling a bicycle, and there are some old timers around still doing this. The vast majority of tuk-tuks have motorcycle engines that sputter and roar and spew out exhaust onto the street. Being two cylinder engines, they burn oil with gasoline, and sometimes even propane (so much for going green), resulting in noxious fumes. It doesn’t really matter, however, because when you are a passenger in this open-air vehicle, you are riding at the level of all the other exhaust pipes, which are also spewing out their guts which are fast tracked right into your lungs. The drivers are usually quite the characters and if you get one who speaks a few words of English you can have quite the intriguing conversation, once you get the point across that you really don’t want to hire him for the full day at inflated prices to take you to all the boring and expensive tourist sites.

Anyway, here we were in the back of one of these beasts going down Thaphae Road outside the old city. Everything was exciting, and even through the fog of a migraine headache, I felt fully alive. Although I didn’t know where our lives were headed at that point in time, I had been coming to the realization that my illness and the life I had been living were more deeply connected that I had previously thought. I heard myself saying to Lucy “I no longer want a life in which I go against my grain!” It sounds corny, I’ll grant you that, but for an instant, silence and stillness descended upon the cacophony of the street. ‘My grain’ – ‘migraine’. Sure, these words are spelled differently, but the metaphor was clear enough.
I had, in a sense, come full circle. I was no stranger to the essential truth that my illness was not just of the body that was separated from my life. I had known for some time already that it was a pretty bizarre notion that we could blindly drag our bodies along a conflictual path in life, and somehow expect it to take care of itself. And when it started screaming out in pain and discomfort, we could assume it had nothing to do with us. Likewise, it had been obvious to me that we couldn’t just bring our bodies to a healer, natural or allopathic, and once it was fixed and returned to us, carry along in the same old way.

I had begun, several years before, by challenging the stress level that I had put myself under. Fair enough, but the term ‘stress’ has become such a euphemism for dealing with things on a surface level. The truth that was whispered in this moment of silence was that my journey had to be about challenging the core issues of how I had been going about living my life, and that this discovery had to become part of my healing process.

Yes, there was something physically wrong at this point in time, that was deeply imbedded in my body. Emotional healing, on its own, would not be enough. I also knew that I couldn’t do it alone. I needed a gifted healer to diagnose and offer solutions. But I had to be part of this healing with some pretty fundamental challenges to myself. I didn’t have the answers yet. In fact, I still wasn’t even sure what questions to ask. But from that defining moment on, I knew that it had to be a collaborative venture in which I was fully involved in a different way.
It wasn’t until more than two years later that I was finally diagnosed properly. In this period I had been through an endless cascade of hope and despair. With some healers I found temporary relief from my symptoms, but they always returned. In my personal journey I discovered new ways of being in this world that forced me to appreciate my headaches as a difficult but profound teacher. At other times I reached such despair, that I seriously began to contemplate suicide on one occassion.

Through a string of serendipitous events I wound up in the office of Dr. Greg Blaney in Vancouver. Within several moments of talking with him, I intuitively knew that this was the person who would help me through my difficult struggle, although it took another few months until he recognized that I had Lyme’s Disease. In a nutshell, this illness is caused by small bacteria that live in the saliva of a biting insect, such as a tick. Sneaking into the body like a terrorist attack, it moves into the white blood cells, causing havoc within the immune system itself. It is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the body in a futile effort to defeat this intelligent invader. Sounds a bit like some reactionary politicians we all know. My case was so severe, according to Greg, that I was lucky to be alive. (If you want more information on Lyme’s Disease – not reactionary politicians, go to: www.marshallprotocol.com).

There is a very difficult and prolonged treatment protocol, which can take two years or more to succeed. It is a constant and escalating process of detoxification in which many symptoms are elevated. I was fortunate, however, that my headaches stopped immediately, even though I have had to deal with many other unpleasant conditions. I am now within 6 months of finishing this treatment, and questioning how I will once again re-enter the world.

What I now know is that I had unconsciously laid the groundwork for these nasty bacteria to thrive in my body. By living a life of conflict and confusion, by making many decisions on many different levels over years and decades that went against my true grain, I created a body/mind in conflict, thus weakening and confusing my immune system enough that the bacteria found this a haven for settlement. There is an interesting theory that the immune system is our only true identity. The immune system is the only biological system that distinguishes the difference between ‘me’ and all else in the universe, and then decides what is safe and useful to allow into the biological community that is me, and what is threatening that needs to be excluded or defeated. It is really not a big jump to the recognition that a confused or conflicted mind eventually filters down to an equally confused and conflicted immune system.

But what I have also been learning on a deep visceral level is how to work together with the medical treatment by creating a different climate within my body/mind that is creating fertile ground for becoming healthy once again. This is not something that can be done once and then finished with. It is an ongoing process of becoming more self-aware or awake, involving every day of my life. Every step along the way I come upon fascinating tests, such as learning how to lovingly challenge myself to be the person that I am meant to be. Through many moments of confusion, doubt and conflict, I eventually find clarity, and in these special moments I feel strong and balanced.

I still don’t know what the answers are yet. Maybe I never will. But the questions that I need to challenge myself with are becoming clearer. And one of these questions is how to fully give gratitude to these little ‘nasties’, who have given me the opportunity to open up to learning some of the most profound lessons that life has to offer. In essence, they have forced me, on a daily basis, to bear witness to who I am and what I am doing. Maybe these are the messages of divine love which I so strongly need to listen to.

Life works in mysterious ways. Stranger things have happened.