Holiness and Pain

So I'm sitting here in Thailand and it's a little bittersweet. Once again, the memories abound and it makes me sad. The joys of finding weird places to skype and searching for beautiful gifts and dreaming the whole time about sharing these crazy experiences with you someday are over. Yesterday I found a small flower. I'm not sure what kind it is but it's white with a yellow center with about six petals that spiral up. Incredibly beautiful in it's simplicity, I couldn't help but imagine how it would look in your hair. It would be the kind of beauty men swim oceans and fight to death for. But enough of that. I need to move on, but every step in that direction drives the cracks a little deeper, like smiling with chapped lips. I will be seeing a lot of great friends though today and it will be good. It will be very good.

Thailand is an interesting place, primarily made up of people whose existence is defined by consumption. People using each other for their own purposes is not only encouraged, it's screamed in your face. It is incredibly sad to watch people sometimes. Lonely, hurting people who desire intimacy; true, freeing, honest, passionate. And yet they settle for something so incredibly unsatisfying.

I went to a temple yesterday. Inside was a giant gold statue of Buddah with an incredible array of gold trinkets and small temples surrounding his pedestal. I couldn't help but think about the men who had built this place. You know, the ones that shaped this Buddah's eyes and low lobed ears and I wonder what they thought about as they did it. To watch people come in and pray, to offer incense and stick money into branch sticks that then form a sort of money tree and sprinkle holy water on their heads, is interesting. How often do we in America do the same things with our Christian god; our big good luck charm up in the sky? I think about how Solomon's Temple was purified by the awesome and fear inducing presence of God and how little we have left of this sense of what holy is anymore. Sausage egg McMuffins come close but even they fall short... but that's a post for another time.