The Lines In Between

The introspection will last well past nine days. Most likely it will last into the rest of my life.
We leave in seven days to stay for two nights in one of the most upscale hotels in Bangkok...a crazy cheap deal we jumped on post Bangkok airport crisis and the decline in tourism.

It took seven weeks for me to make a conscious decision to take my camera out of my bag. Life here had hit normalcy. The five people crammed on a moto, including two sleeping kids with no helmets is normal. The sea of colorful plastic bags on every inch of earth is normal. The chaotic traffic and inconsistent laws, and rainbow of fruit, and live turtles for sale with eggs, and squirming fish being scaled in the stinky, sticky market, and the sound of the high pitched Khmer language...it is all normal. And I realise that in a week, it will no longer be normal.

And that I don't have images to share with friends and family of my normalcy, only words that form a half-assed attempt at describing life over here. So, the lists of to do's gets reformed: what restaurants and food stalls to visit before we leave, what needs to be documented in photos, what places needs to be visited because we no longer have the flexibility to say, "oh, let's just do it later."

And I have my friends and family to thank for pulling me out of my pathetic, privileged, depression and over-introspection of the meaning of MY life. Which I soon realized was such a selfish question, and that asking "what is the meaning of life" meant that I could share laughs, and smiles, and love and tenderness with strangers. You all are the backbone to bringing back the light and helping me to chase my shadows behind me, rather than in front of me. Needless to say, it's important to look your shadows in the face once in a while, and I'm thankful that this trip has let me do that more than I could handle.

So, since last writing, I've been living. Eating, sleep, dreaming, creating, writing, drawing, and accepting. One of the girls in the bar came to me with a "female problem." In which I guided her, listened to her, laughed with her, taught her new words, and hopefully cured a yeast infection for her. I became her big sister, her mother, her nurse and her doctor...and in one fell swoop. And in a matter of hours, all the girls at the bar where talking about it, holding pill boxes up, asking questions. And, through it, I wrote a short story that I'll post once it's had some polishing. It's an ironic situation for me...

I became the "sister" to the wife of a couple that owns a shop in the market...an endearing remark that was accompanied with a gentle shoulder massage, a gift of a silk scarf and a hand holding until we see her again in a day or two.

Don't fret, we have adventures to come, such as a hot air balloon ride above Angkor Wat, a visit to a waterfall that has lingas and yoni's engraved below the water (penis's and vagina's), a "fashion" shoot at the Sofitel in Bangkok...and then all the lines in between that make up more of life than we can remember while actually living it. Until next time, keep living those lines in between and remember how sweet they are!