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.