Sunday morning 9am

Well Brandy thinks this one doesn't need text, but I am gonna give it some anyway.

I wanted this to be my 'I'm okay' picture. I didn't announce that I was pregnant because I knew, being 39 and this being my first baby, I was a high risk for miscarriage. And it happened this week - just two months into my pregnancy. But life goes on... I took this picture on my first morning back at work. The lovely morning sunlight, a cat lazing on the roof behind the British Council. I have Wolf and a wonderful life.

And I'm okay.

Advent

Every year mum sends me an advent calendar.

Correction: Previously, every year mum and dad sent me an advent calendar, AND THIS YEAR mum sent me an advent calendar.

That sounds like a grammatical exercise, but it is in fact an exercise in restrained emotion. I will try very hard to have a good Christmas without dad, as it is what he would want. But it will be hard as even as I type this I have tears in my eyes.

Funny though eh? 39 years old and still opening those little windows.

Taa Very Much

Ok this was an experimental post. Taa was showing me how I could actually send better quality images to my blog by taking a higher res picture. As lovely as Taa obviously is, I am not sure if those extra pixels are making a difference or not. I will keep experimenting.

Taa is incidentally our technology guy (not sure what his actual job title is). Being our technology guy is a thankless task, because he bears the brunt of all our complaints about slow net, faulty speakers and spastic IWB pens. He never takes it personally and always comes to work smiling (even when hungover), which is an amazing feat.

If I were in his shoes I would almost certainly burn down the building and stand in the smoldering ashes screaming "How is your bandwidth now, motherfuckers?!?"

So, thank you Taa. We love ya.

Loy krathong

Doesn't our house look lovely? We are not big Loy Krathong fans. At its heart it is a lovely festival, held on the full moon of the 12th month of the Thai lunar Calendar people float little floral rafts (usually banana leaves, orchids and jasmine with incense and a candle) on to the river to symbolise the releasing of all the bad luck and negativity from the previous year. In Chiang Mai they also set aloft hundred and thousands of Khom Fai (floating paper lanterns) which fill the sky every night for a week. However to our sensitive western ears the festival is ruined by an endless barrage of fireworks and firecrackers, and the raucous music of the riverside parties - and as we live by the river we really get the worst of it.

But the lovely part for us is that every year Fon brings us a bag of tiny candles to set around the perimeter of our house. We can handle the romantic flicker of candles.

Looks just like a house filled with love doesn't it?

Happy campers

At 10 a.m. today Lauren, Sarah & Jip (l2r) got in the office car laden down with spendy games, name tags, future board, twister, story books, a large yellow elephant and assortment of other items essential for a positive camping experience. If you are planning to go camping with 20, er 18 little kids bent on creating havoc and learning English in Northern Thailand that is. I wish them luck and hope they have fun.

Almost exactly 5 years ago my first mission for the British Council was accompany two other extraordinary teachers (Tash and Mark) and one other enthusiastic teaching assistant (Ju) on a similar camp but this time on Thailand's eastern seaboard.

So much has changed in that 5 years - mostly for the better (I have Wolf in real life now), but not completely. I was very sure of myself professionally then, now I am not. Although this uncertainty feels pretty scary I believe it is a necessary phase which will enable to me to move on to something new. People keep asking me what, but I have no idea - and I don't want to have any idea. I need to break free of this before I can envisage that, otherwise my that will be this in another form.

Anyway, today is my last day as Academic Manager at the British Council and here I am balanced between two camps. Balanced between the past and the future. A beginning and an end.

Poised.

Maybe that means I am ready to start the 'now', the 'being in the moment-ness' that Dom manages to do with effortless grace and I battle with continually. I have long suspected that my moment is smaller and more slippery than Dom's - but maybe his 'moment shoes' have better treads. More traction.

Yes, I need this time to work on my soul soles.

Dance in the pain

For the last month or so, when not dragging my gimpy sciatica stressed left leg around the British Council, I have been mainly resting in bed. Me in bed makes Roso happy and here she is snuggling into my hair and telling me everything is gonna be okay. Hers isn't the only positive message I have been receiving. A few days ago a friend posted the following on the northlands:

"Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass but learning to dance in the rain".

Simple bordering on trite yet it struck a chord. I have been waiting for the storm to pass for a while now and instead the clouds seem to get darker, and more full of rain. As much as I have loved it in the past 13 years I am ready to leave Thailand. Yet emigration to the US is as elusive as it was 3 months ago and will remain so until we find a co-sponsor. In the meantime friends are starting new lives of the kind I desire - Ian (who will one day I am sure be Yorkshire Ian) in England and Richard in his poetic Portuguese farmhouse, and I look at my grey skies and sigh.

What exactly do I want? (It helps I believe to be specific when wishing, whether on stars or rainclouds). I want to own a house with Wolf. I want to live in a place without needing a visa. I want to belong to somewhere - and not feel like an interloper or a tourist. I want to work but have nothing to do with TEFL teachers (sorry guys). I want to be able to ride a bike and walk without being drenched in sweat. I want large skies, fresh air, nature, fours seasons and peaches and raspberries in the summer. I want to feel well and full of inspiration.

I also want to stop wanting. Waiting isn't the problem, wanting the waiting to end is.

In the meantime I need to get past the debilitating stress that is filling my body with pain and my soul with anxiety. I need to believe that finishing work in October and facing an uncertain future won't kill me. I need to dance in the rain.

So the first small step to dancing is to tell myself our wishes will come true. We will get to Minnesota and the second North (the first being Northern Thailand) of my imagining will become real. Just bear with me, okay?

Hey lady, can I have my balls back please?

When we got Spike we always intended to neuter him. With the cats it had been a quick and simple decision having watched them endure several apparently agonizing 'seasons' with the attendant weight loss and yowling we had them both spayed quite young. However Spike got to the snipable age, and yet we delayed. Why?

Well he seemed to enjoy his balls, hours were dedicated to licking them - and apart from a tendency to mark his territory unless watched closely his sexuality was never troublesome. He didn't hump legs or furniture and was happy with an occasional romantic evening with Twist, his love puppy. Additionally one of the things we treasure about him is his attitude - if we cut off his balls, might he be a bit less, well - ballsy?

Then our vet, Chotana Pet Hospital, announced a half price neutering deal for the month of September, and obviously it was too good to miss. I had Spike booked in within hours of the announcement and 1st September was his big day.

Last night, after spending the evening with a sad and sore post-op babydog, I went to bed in tears having decided I had done a terrible thing. Okay so it is almost certainly healthier, and yes it is more convenient (for us at least); but the sense that my decision had been predominantly economic, and in making such a decision I had taken something that was not mine to take, was unbearably heavy. Why do I soul search so? Why didn't I feel this guilt with the cats? Has society taught me to value masculinity so much more than femininity? Am I more comfortable making decisions based on wombs as they are my territory while Spike's testicles are from a mysterious world whose land I trespassed into?

Anyway. It is done now, and I will have to learn to live with my decision - as will Spike. I am sure I will find my conscience soothed when his empty pouch looks less like an angry swollen blackberry and his eyes look less woeful and accusing. In the meantime, in remembrance of things past I leave you with... Spike (August 2009). Babydog.

Arrivals

This isn't going to be quite the post I expected it to be when I took the photo. I snapped the doors of Chiang Mai airport's international arrival hall while waiting for Dom to return from his visa run in Malaysia fully expecting to make a post about the joys of reunion.

While I waited I read bits from The Wisdom of Yoga by Steven Cope. I am reading it a second time in the hope that exposure to yoga, even passively, will make my leg feel better; which is a revealing comment in itself about the current poverty of my spiritual and physical health. I was reading about Duhkha, the cycle of suffering that we experience through continual craving, aversion or delusion. The author gives an example of longing for a banana muffin, getting and eating the muffin and mourning the fact that the pleasure is lost as soon as the last morsel passes our lips. There is so much pain around this experience - found in the longing and mourning stages that it is not worth the scant pleasure of eating, especially as we rarely eat with full attention to the pleasure anyway.

This is relevant just wait.

So Dom left on Tuesday and from the moment his taxi drove away I longed for the moment when he returned. Longed. Painfully. I hated every minute away from him. And as far as I know he felt the same. I took a photo of these doors as they were where I would see him first. I didn't want to capture him walking through them - then I would be in joyful reunion mode not blog mode. I wanted to share with you my anticipation.

This could have been titled Anticipation.

It could have been titled Anticlimax.

As I got my first glimpse of him he gave me a big beaming smile but behind that smile I could see tension. "What's wrong love?" I asked as soon as he released me.

And so began the mourning for the moment.

He was tired; he'd been up since 5; his flight was delayed; he'd been given a centre seat; the lazy cabin staff hadn't given out arrival cards and he'd had to queue (or scrimmage) for them upon landing. Not wishing to be outdone I joined in, I bitched about work (I won't elaborate... too many of my readers work with me and don't need to know what I complained about but my list was as long as his). By the time we were sitting in the taxi we were each staring out of the window rather than at each other and getting lost in our individual dissatisfaction with the world and our crappy experience of it.

It was then I realised I had passed the moment I had been looking forward to for 72 hours. It was over. We were together again but instead of celebrating that moment joyfully we had slipped effortlessly back into the trough we have been sinking in for months now.

This isn't a relationship thing, with regard to each other Dom and I are as happy as we have always been - it is just the world we are out of sorts with. We are beyond ready to leave Thailand and held up by things out of our control. Dom especially needs to leave as I have seen him change from a joyful and vibrant embracer of life to an angry and critical grouch.

I won't go into to why we are at this stage right now, this post is long enough. I just wanted it on record. We too have dirty laundry.

Damn, I need a muffin.

Bye Rob

As a teacher you try not to have favourite students and as an Academic Manager you try not to have favourite teachers. If I were the kind of person who was to flout this very sensible guideline and pick a favourite, I could do worse than Rob (pictured, left). He is one of the most talented teachers I have ever had the good fortune to observe, and one of the most laid back and self-reliant staff members I have had the good fortune to... well sit back and watch him not need me.

He also has fab taste in music and cool tattoos, so it is very lucky that any temptation to stick a gold star on his forehead and make it official has been removed by his leaving to go and work in Poland. The staff room at Chiang Mai is a little poorer for his absence, but I am sure the one in Poland is much richer for his presence. Sharing the love is important too, isn't it? Good luck Rob, enjoy life and embrace new experiences.

In other news, this photo was taken in such poor lighting conditions that I felt the need to throw all of my meagre in-phone photo editing skills at it in order to render it even marginally useable. Apart from tweaking the light balance, I added a "painting" filter. I just adore what it did to Max's eyebrows!

Someone to watch over me

There is nothing like waking a bit earlier than your loved one and watching them sleep to make you realise how blessed you are. It doesn't happen to me very often, I love my bed and Dom usually has to drag me out of it by my feet, but this morning - thanks to a powercut that woke me up and set me worrying about a range of things from the water pump to the third world debt - I got my moment. I also discovered I was not alone in my watchfulness. Lily is very much a daddy's girl and I found her nestled in the crook of Dom's arm, leaning against his chest and enjoying the rise and fall of his sleeping body as the morning sun warmed her whiskers.

That's cool, I can share the moment.

Sick wolf

Dom enduring the hardships of hospital life. The nurse on the left places an ice pack on his forehead, the nurse on the right gets ready to take blood samples while he chooses his meals for the rest of the day.

Yeah, Dom got a bacterial infection that had him Chiang Mai Ram hospital for just over 24 hours (the time it takes to absorb 3 bags of saline solution). We were worried for a while that it might be the dreaded H1N1, after a night of fever and chronic diarrhea, alarming blood pressure and high pulse rate. The doctor however reassured us that it was probably bacterial and once in hospital tests confirmed that. He was badly dehydrated though which is why they opted to keep him in. Luckily I got to stay with him as Thailand hospitals are very reasonable and our health insurance allowed him to have his own "VIP" room on the international ward though, as you can see from the picture, the bed is Thai sized. Poor baby.

Um Klim Kalika-yei Namaha

Rather than uploading an image from my phone today I thought I would share something I painted and then manipulated using a simple hue colouriser. Kali, the best goddess in the world for when you are having one of those "don't mess with me" moments - and every spiritual journey has those moments I am sure.

She has been sitting neglected on my draughting table for some months now. So I dusted her off finished her and took some photos (photos of paintings are always a bad idea unless you have good lighting, but I wanted to capture the essence rather than a faithful reproduction so I am willing to ignore the glare of the flash if you are).

I have an interesting relationship with my artistic talent, I neglect it horribly and yet I am proud of it. Proud at least of what it could be and too afraid of failing to really explore what I am capable of producing artistically.

Anyway today we have a glimpse of a side I usually keep hidden. Be nice or I will set my 'Goddess of Don't Mess' on you.

Spike modelling his cage.

In preparation for moving to the US I have asked for a quote for shipping the animals. The thought of sending them with the movers scares me, I would rather have them accompany us however the thought of arriving in the States with 2 cats and a dog but no home and a 2 day road journey to Minnesota is daunting in the extreme. So I want to know how much my other option is going to cost.

The movers asked for size and weight of animals and dimensions of cage. I just took this picture to see if this cage would be okay. The answer is no, we need to buy new airline compliant cages - I'm cool with that, it is safer.

Anyway, although I only uploaded this from my phone to my blog for convenience (to send the photo to the movers) it got a comment so I will leave it. In fact I will do more than that - I will use the post to answer the question.

Mita goes crazy if you put her in a cage. I sometimes have to put her in one when travelling and she always throws up all over it. It's just too stressful for her.

And an unrelated question: is he yappy? Mat says every single chi...thingy is yappy and that's why he doesn't want one. I'm hoping you'll say he's well behaved and there's no reason why we shouldn't get one;

Spike loves his cage because that is where he sleeps every night, and has done since he was a puppy. If he gets tired when he is pootling around in the day (on the rare occasions we let him do his own thing) he will often sneak into his cage for a nap. He also runs into the cage and sits and waits for a treat after he has 'been' outside.

And he never yaps. If he barks it is for a good reason, to alert us to a possible intruder (the maid - who he adores, the water delivery guy - who he doesn't) or because he has heard another dog bark in distress or anger. But he will bark once or twice and once we acknowledge his voice he is quiet. He never does that pointless endless yapping - but that is because he knows we listen to him. I think Chihuahuas (and all small dogs) are often spoilt rotten at first but neglected later - when the novelty of owning a new baby has worn off. We love him to pieces, but we rarely treat him like a little dog. And from his point of view he is as big as a bear and as brave as a lion... and of course like everyone in our household he has strong streak of wolf in him. RWAAAHHHHRRR!!

Love and marriage

It is hard to imagine a more unassuming wedding day. Dom and I got up, showered, dressed and hopped on the bike to go to Khun Nulek's office (Khun Nulek, right in the picture, is our fixer). We sat around a while waiting for her to arrive and when she did she made a few copies and then we all got in her car and drove to the Sansai District Office.

There we took a number and waited.

People arrived and sat and took care of business (birth, marriage, death, divorce, family book registration, and ID card all in one crazy little world). There was no air-con, but ceiling fans whirred slowly so as not to disturb the paperwork. A kid sitting next to Dom drank a cartoon of milk and then puked on the floor and the ceiling fan obligingly stirred the smell into the air. Next to me an old lady slept - sprawled across the bench. Her business done, she left and we were able to shuffle right, away from the sick and wait some more.

Eventually it was our turn. We moved from bench to desk and Khun Nulek and the other lady pictured laboriously filled in our paperwork, first by hand, then on computer - which was printed, and then by hand again.

They gave up part of their lunch to marry us and joked about their pay rate O-free rather than OT (though I am sure the 2,000 baht I saw our fixer slip into an envelope in the car helped soothe the rumbling stomachs).

By 12.30 I was Mrs Dumais. My husband and I went for lunch, popped home to show Fon our pink lotus edged certificate and then we went to work.

It was, simply, one of the happiest days of my life.

Sometimes

Sometimes, despite all your best efforts, it rains. Sometimes you lose sight of sky, sun and hills and the view is obscured by a shifting wave of grey. Wet cobwebs, close enough touch (net curtains soaked in seawater), close enough to taste (an old dusty picture frame with a zing like the tines of a fork). Sometimes the rain on your face smells of salt sorrow and regret.

Sometimes you have days like this and you just have to let it fall.

Be yourself

I'm trying to embrace my inner demon. Well, kind of. After yet another OOE (overly emotional event) chez Northlands I was grumbling to a Foxy friend who had inquired how my Wolf was feeling, post drama. My grumble was:

Wolf is dealing with it much better than I am. He has one burst of anger and all the girlies are instantly pm'ing him and telling him they love him and didn't mean to hurt HIM or make HIM angry. And he is ok. I have one burst of anger and feel like the bad tempered bitch who would have no members if I didn't have my adorable Wolf to come along and clean up the mess I made.

To which she replied:

You are a bad tempered bitch.

I think she was joking but I know it is how I am viewed by some. Probably. Sometimes I wish people would just TELL you what they thought of you. Not out of some egotistical desire for affirmation but because it would be so much easier to have a more complete and realistic self-image that way. I mean I role-played the Goddess of the Underworld for so long (years) I absorbed aspects of her into my actual identity. It can change a woman, I still have to remind myself I don't command legions of demonic undead everytime I log on. I struggle with virtual in combination with realistic.

I have another friend (online) who deals with several... layers of identity. I still don't really understand where they come from, but I do think role-playing extensively over a period of years can damage your (mental) health. Playing a role reaches the parts real life doesn't reach and fucks them up, bad. I briefly flirted with a new RP character called Lolah Magic (actually another incarnation of the Goddess, but a mortal one) who was a lesbian motorbike riding thief hiding out in a convent (yes she was a lesbian nun - I'm not afraid to embrace porno-cliché). She still keeps me awake at night. But, really, thank God I never got the chance to explore that identity. I would be scarred for life, and possibly the afterlife.

I touched on the nature of identity (particularly online) in my studies. My tutor said "I am very careful to be myself online" and while I appreciated the value and sincerity of that assertion, it did occur to me that was possibly easier if you hadn't enter the interwebs through the dark and mysterious sidedoor that is role-play.

Incidentally, today's picture is a drawing done by one of my colleague's primary learners. When he showed it to me I looked at is nervously - wondering if this child had planted a camera in my bathroom. Aside from the green legs and banana feet, this is almost exactly how I look in the morning, in the shower, before I have become fully human.

I have a fetish...

...for stationery.

And like many other fetishes worth having Thailand is a good place to indulge myself. I am a real connoisseur too – I don’t just get turned on by post it notes, glue sticks, multi-coloured bull-dog clips and high-lighter pens I like it ALL.

For example these are a few of my favourite kinks: old-fashioned financial ledgers – lined for double entry, with lickable gummed labels and 100’s of individually numbered pages; full sets of graphite pencils that range from 9H-to 9B; manila envelopes of all sizes and sticky labels – round square and rectangular; acetate sheets for making OHP transparencies (though of course I never do that); index cards of all sizes (white and coloured); blocks of Chinese ink with grinding stones (and bottles of ink too, for the days you really don’t have time to make from scratch) and Chinese brushes with fake bamboo handles; pots of latex glue; and bags of plaster of paris and super hero rubber moulds; patties of polymer clay; drawing pins with transparent triangular knobs; gold rings for binding papers that look like pirates’ earrings; mechanical pencils with tiny boxes of lead of varying diameters; putty rubbers, ink rubbers, scented rubbers, rubbers for the end of your pencil, and retractable rubbers in the shape of a pen; craft knives that look like scalpels; tape of every colour and width - transparent, magic, glittering, canvas, brown gummed (for taping wet watercolour paper onto a board) and masking; staplers; holepunches; scissors; paper paper paper; notebooks and pens…

…and of course you must buy this pen to go with that notebook because that notebook absolutely MUST be written on by this pen and if you don’t understand that you may as well just stop reading now and wait for tomorrow’s post.

And of course in this also I have found my perfect match – for a kink is just a repressed and shameful secret unless you can share it with your lover. Thanks to Dom I own things I would have never bought for myself: a guillotine for precision paper slicing; a pencil sharpener that you can attach to the desk; whole entire POTS of pens; BOXES of HB pencils with unsharpened ends… yes you understand, when it comes to private stationery use Dom thinks like an office supplier.

We are even thinking of moving into lamination.

Full circle

I remember my first night in Thailand. I had come with my then future but now ex husband for a two-week holiday from Singapore to meet his family, his country. I stood in the window of our Bangkok YMCA hotel room (it was almost classy 16 years ago) looking out onto a busy, pre-skytrain Sathorn Road, crammed with gaudy taxis, tacky billboard ads for M150, beggars on footbridges, the ugly mess of tangled wires and I said, "promise you will never ask me to live here".

Three years later we moved into an apartment across the river in Lardya, Thonburi. Our apartment block was next door to Thonburi comedy cafe and I think most of the other inhabitants were hookers. We lived in a box with a bed, a toilet and a balcony that we could take it in turns to stand on. Noi bought us a little t.v. that I watched but couldn't understand. I remember being mystified by a segment of a comedy show that appeared to revolve around a transgendered juggling dwarf. I expressed my (finely trained) western scorn and Noi did his best to explain why it was funny. I didn't get it.

I hated Thailand for almost four years and then one day I woke up and realised I was in love with it. The ugly mess of tangled wires and tacky billboard ads for M150 had become invisible. The gaudy taxis filled the streets with rainbows and I didn't need anyone to explain to me why transgendered juggling dwarves were funny. To clarify, they still didn't amuse me, but the world had expanded and there was plenty of room for those who found dwarves (and other birth defects) funny and I to co-exist.

About that time a woman I loved decided to return to the UK with her husband and son after about 7 years in Thailand. She was a friend and hero to me: she had lived in Isarn and spoke Thai fluently. Everyone adored her and she had, until recently, adored everyone. When I asked her why she had decided to leave she said "I have to go before I start to hate it". I didn't get it.

Nine years later. Today. I get it. My connection to Thailand was severed with the divorce. I try to love it with the passion I once had but the best I can manage it lukewarm respect. Yes, it is lovely and diverse, the people can be wonderful, the food is great and living here affords me a fantastic lifestyle. But today I sat in Icon Plaza while Dom was talking to our favourite tech guy, sipping a latte, looking at the film poster pictured above - and I experienced the hot flooding return of scorn for a society that found transgendered juggling dwarves (and other birth defects) funny.

I expect I'll start seeing the ugly mess of tangled wires and billboard ads for M150 again soon.

Motion

"Keep the paint up, and the rubber down!" Author unknown.

Tonight as we drove to dinner I tried to take a few pics that capture the sense of moving through the streets of Chiang Mai on the bike. I wanted to capture that because although I don't particularly enjoy it now I am sure it is something I will look back on fondly.

A drive through one hundred smells: rain-drenched tarmac, exhaust fumes, incense, dried squid, roasting chillies, jasmine, fetid canal, sun scorched earth. A drive through one hundred near deaths: the idiot on the Honda Dream talking on the phone, the songthaew driver swerving across lanes to pick up a passenger, the Isuzu running a red light, the boy on a monkey bike trying to scare the farang, the jealous guy on his girlfriend's baby pink Fino.

At least I hope it's his girlfriend's.

Right now I spend most of the time hating this mode of motion, the lunacy of Thai drivers, the stress, Dom's anger. But I know one day I will remember this and smile.

Openness?

Well when I said I was going to blog about openness I thought I would have something important to say. Something profound and meaningful. On the cusp of a crisis of conscience I was faced with a dilemma – do I impose on myself the kind of diplomatic censorship I accept as my due on the Northlands? There I am providing a service to a community and were I to be open there it would be a community of one, so I hold my tongue (mostly) and give others the floor. On the rare occasions that I have opened my mouth I have lost members but then I closed it again and they came back.

Recently I have been confronted with my blog’s power to offend and possibly hurt others. As this struck me I felt I had a choice:
1) I stick with the ethos of openness and honesty
2) I consider poor passersby who might read and (rightly or wrongly) see themselves in my words and moderate my tone
3) I stop blogging

I actually went offline while I considered this.

Oddly enough at the same time others in my blogging circle were faced (whether or not they saw it in the same light) with a similar dilemma. How much responsibility do you have over what you write (and read) in the Great Online? Should we guard against the temptation to be ruder and more obnoxious in our opinions here than we would face to face? Are we entitled to disregard the feelings of others just because we are a channel they have willingly tuned into? Is it so much easier to be cruel when you don’t have to watch your victim’s reaction; see their face fall or watch a shadow of annoyance and anger flicker across their eyes? Of course it is. But, if the courage of online anonymity or distance is false courage then what of e-openness - is that false too?

Yeah, and I thought I had something profound to say. Ha! How ridiculous I was a week ago.

Or maybe I have. Kind of. Just not in the way I expected.

As often happens I find it easier to make a point with the help of an image. You see that honest and open photo of me at the top of this post? That is me at work today… early Sunday morning, no make up, looking at the camera saying “This who I am, as I am, no frills and no fakery”.

Do you know how many attempts it took to get an image I liked?

Seven.

How open is that?

Really, if we wanted to be open and honest, the internet is the last place we would choose to express ourselves. We are here because we are attention-whores doing our best to make ourselves look good, or at least interesting.

In conclusion? Believe nothing. Openness is a myth. Honestly.

Negativity

(Don't panic, this isn't a post about Dom - I just used his negative image as a visual metaphor, he is one of the least negative people I know - in fact this is about me learning to be more like him.)

Negativity is traditionally a stage in a process rather than an outcome in itself. It has value, but it is rare to see it replace positivity as a final product. As a negative is a developmental step in photography, negativity is a developmental step in the evolution of the psyche. In the growth of who we are.

Sadly it is a rather addictive step and one I am only just starting to understand. I have recently had reason to reflect on this because I have noticed a couple of important relationships in my life have been based, to a varying degree, around negativity. The common ground was dislike of people or situations (and the pleasure derived from dwelling on and examining that dislike) and we (I and the two theys) were equally culpable, co-dependent even, in our negativity. Oh yes, occasionally one or other of us would make a break for the fresh air and sunlight of a positive outlook but the other would be sure not to let too many days pass before we dragged our newly optimistic partner back into the slough of despond.

But as alluring as this addictive form of relationship is, I can no longer make a place for it, at least when we have through neglect allowed the negativity to become the only common ground. Negativity is as ugly and poisonous as smoking (another addictive old friend whose time passed). If the relationships can't survive the transformation to positivity they aren't worth it and I won't mourn their loss.

As it stands now, although I have hope for both relationships, one I believe will survive and grow stronger and one I am afraid won't. I am not sure why that is so - maybe in one the negativity was an aberration while in another it was all we had. Maybe I sense one friend is just as sick of me of the taste of negativity whilst the other is not yet ready to give up their fix.

Parasites

Nothing profund today, just an observation on the loveliness of orchids growing on a tree bough at the start of monsoon season. Actually the title is misleading as this type of orchid is actually an epiphyte and epiphytic organisms usually derive only physical support and not nutrition from their host. But I was thinking that parasites are seen as negative in that they take from the host whilst giving nothing in return. Unless of course we consider beauty to be of value.

Maybe this symbiotic relationship is like that of a beautiful young woman with a leafy sugar daddy. He gives support and she offers nothing but her loveliness.

Friendship, connectedness and the meaning of life

"In Dzogchen, perceived reality is considered to be unreal."

Wikipedia entry on Reality in Buddhism

Sorry I am not in the mood for chronology and orderliness. I found this image on my phone today and what shocked by the memory of when and why I took it. As I mentioned in a previous post my dad died on April 13th... exactly a month ago today. Knowing he was ill, but not realising how little time he had left Dom and I had been to see him (and enjoyed a 2 week holiday in England) and had just returned to Thailand when he passed away. We couldn't both afford to return for the funeral so I went alone. Making the return trip to England only 4 days after being there under such dramatically different circumstances was one of the most surreal experiences I have ever had.

It went something like this.

From mum and dad's house with Dom: bus to Hucknall tram station, tram to Nottingham, train to London St Pancras, underground to Heathrow, flight to Bangkok, flight to Chiang Mai, taxi to our house.

From our house alone: Taxi to Chiang Mai airport, flight to Bangkok, flight to London heathrow, underground to London St Pancras, train to Nottingham, tram to Hucknall, bus to mum's house (notice the subtle difference).

The photograph above was taken during the journey stage indicated in bold.

Compare it to this image taken exactly 17 days earlier:

Ok so the angle is slightly different and there is a pane of glass between lens and the world in the first image but you get the idea, this is where only 17 days previously Dom and I had stood with Autumn and Warrick and posed for Jamie's photograph. I was happy, very happy with Dom and friends. The sun was shining and my dad was alive.

And thus, even though neither picture is of him in a sense (to me at least) Dad isn't 'in' the first image where as he most certainly is 'in' the second.

It is only one small step from understanding this to understanding, according to the teachings of Dzogchen he is equally in both. In fact the extent that he 'is' anything he is more than 'in' both - he IS both, as am I, and Dom, and Autumn, and Warrick and Jamie, behind the lens.

Our ultimate nature is all encompassing, "space that is aware".

And that is what I saw (but until now didn't understand) when I snapped the first photograph. Although I was alone, and hurting, and it was raining, and the grief for dad was so bad I could taste it - I turned my head, not even realising even where I was and saw the spot where 17 days earlier I had stood in happiness with friends and loved ones. And oddly enough I understood they were there still.

We had hung that brief moment on the spot for eternity, and I could see it.

And, as I am beginning to realise, so could dad.

Good things

On the first day of our weekend (currently Monday) Dom and I celebrate being alive and in love with breakfast at the Blue Diamond Breakfast Club in Chiang Mai. This is a lovely place full of vitamins and good vibes run by a wonderful couple Nee and Eed. Dom always has a super omelette, in fact I think they start it as soon as they hear his bike turn the corner of the soi, as it just appears in front of him along with a gallon of orange juice and a bucket of fresh coffee. I usually have baa mee nam (noodle soup) though sometimes I vary it with banana pancakes or museli and yoghurt over a mountain of fresh tropical fruit.

More than breakfast I go there to absorb the atmosphere of wellness that the owners so generously fill their thriving business with. They are happy and successful because they are doing their thing... you know, how everyone has a thing - just some of us don't know what it is yet? I hope that by being in their world some of that attunement may rub off, and I will find my thing.

In the meantime I am simply content to be a part of their world and to gather inspiration, nourishment and hope from the good things they have created.

Killer bees

This bees nest is in our garden. 4ft in length, at least 2ft deep I swear it wasn't there yesterday. I hate it, I hope it will be gone soon. I am scared to leave Spike outside while they are lurking - I mean when they decide to move it is going to be one hell of a swarm.

Soul mates

Sitting in Bangkok airport waiting to board the plane to return to England for my dad's funeral I was struck by the tenderness between this old Chinese couple. Admittedly grief had done the emotional equivalent of removing top few layers of skin leaving me open to every nuance, positive and negative that surrounded me. However this love touched me deeply. He had spread a newspaper over her to ward off the icy chill of the air con, opened his jacket to shield her eyes from the light and he held her hands, both of them - to reassure her that she could sleep, peaceful and safe under his protective gaze.

State of emergency

(photo taken April 13, post made May 8) The streets are wet, not with rain but with water from 100 buckets and water-pistols. Bangkok was under a state of emergency (red shirts this time) but Chiang Mai was in the state of chaos that is the annual Thai New Year celebrations called Songkhran.

But in the end this was simply the day my dad died. Nothing more to be said.

The end?

Firefox can't find the server at www.thenorthlands.net because our evil web hosts have done a disappearing act taking our beloved forum, blogs, galleries, years of posts not to mention three years' advanced webspace rental, with them.

I am here to be quietly miserable. Alone. Northlands' family has returned to its original HQ and what seems to be a bunker in times of crisis - Northlands Fantasy. But I don't really want to be there. That is the place Dom established with Kirk and Dan. I loved it. It is, after all, where we fell in love. But it isn't mine.

It is like having your 3 bedroomed home repossessed and having to move back into your lover's bachelor pad. Yeah, better than sleeping under a bridge. Marginally.

Don't know what to do. But in the meantime, I will be here, licking my wounds.

Die webspace depot. Die.