To Laos

I'm at the Chiang Mai International airport, which feels more like a small, defunct mall than an aiport. But they took my bags and looked at my passport and did that typing thing into the old computer thing they like to do at airports, so I think I'm in the right place.

In any case, there is internet access here. So I get to write you, from the Chiang Mai, Thailand, International Aiport Dairy Queen computer terminal, where I just enjoyed a delicious soft serve small vanilla cone for 54 cents or so. Hey, the options here are limited...and I actually have always loved Dairy Queen!

OK, more to the point, in an hour and a half I will be on a plane to Laos! Whoa! I know very little about this country, and before a few months ago, never even thought of travelling there.

So why am I going? That's a good question.

You know most of my life the things I've done out in the world have been very clear, well ordered and with gusto! You may have noticed.

But this trip is different. My goal is not to plan the perfect vacation and see all the sights in just the right way. Which is a fine way to go, but it's not the purpose of this trip.

I'm not certain why I'm on this trip, but my soul said, You need to go. So I did. And my mind understands it as wanting to rest and refresh and expand my awareness and see beautiful things and new ways of life...and also to test myself, and grow, and perhaps heal, and to journey on my own into the unknown as a sort of rite of passage, an important step on my path.

Except I don't know what it all should look like or where it will lead! Yikes! Or more like, what?

But that's the point: to go with this, give myself to this river and see where it takes me.

I feel like I'm in a warm, dark labyrynth. A cave perhaps. It's not scary in here, no. But I am mostly alone. I know I want and need to travel through this cave. That not only will I pick up treasures along the way, and perhaps leave some things behind (as during my Vision Quest), but that it will take me where I want to go.

I feel as if I'm feeling my way through the dark. Slowly, and playfully even, with a good amount of trust that this is where I need to be, that I will be protected, and that this will serve me and others perhaps in some way.

And also that one step leads to another. Maybe I flew to Bangkok to get to a Mongolian medicine man. Who knows?!

In any case, I don't know where I'm going or how I'll get there. I just know I want to be here doing this now, need to be really. And so I am.

So Laos, why Laos? Well sometimes something bubbles up from our souls and we just repeat it and mull it over and come to accept it, or at least carry it with us.

And for me that has included Laos. For a few months now, I was saying to myself and others, "Really what part of me wants is jsut to melt into some Laotian village."

Well, here we go!

And the Mekong. The Mekong. I feel a wave of energy shudder through my body as I conjure my image of the Mekong River, South East Asia's lifeline.

I'm a student of history, so I know about this river. I've seen pictures and she is stunning, alluring. I imagine her to be slow and wide, gently winding through stunning hills covered in rice paddies. And that you can really give yourself to this river and let her hold and carry you. That's what I feel.

I also know something about the history of Laos, Combodia and Vietnam, about the brutal legacy left by French colonialism, and later, by the brutal American war in Indochina (the Vietnam War). We bombed this shit out of these people, illegally, as if that should matter. Destroyed their lands, and killed maybe 2 million people, if not more, and left a landscape that is still riddle with landmines and still kills and mames innocent people, children, animals, every day. And as if that weren't enough, once US forces were forced to withdraw, our actions helped lead to take overs by repressive regimes in those countries, especially Cambodia, where just now the nation is trying war criminals who tortured and killed people 30 years ago.

If I weren't at an airport Dairy Queen, I might be crying right now. In any case, you can probably sense how much this moves me.

I'm still not fully sure why I'm on this planet. I have some good ideas. And one of them might be to feel what others cannot or do not want to. That somehow the grief that is burried in the soil here and in the hearts of South East Asians and of Americans somehow finds its way through me, and then maybe out, over with, a bit more done.

I'm not the only one of course. But I feel it strongly, as I do when a forest is clear cut. It does not overwhelm me. It is not constant. But it comes from time to time, and it feels good and healing to be with it, and I think, perhaps, it is good and healing for the world in some way.

So part of me is moved as well to go to these lands and to be with that legacy. And perhaps to grieve a war that happened before I was even born, but that for some reason weighs heavily on my heart.

So there may be some healing for me on this part of the journey. And perhaps I can contribute in some way to healing and reconciliation amidst the lands and animals and people of this region, and of my people as well.

Ooh. A lot of emotion here. I'm quite close to tears.

I'm glad I wrote this. I'm clearer now. And open to the possibility that little of this will happen, and that a lot of other things will, or that it all will.

Much love to you,
Roni