thick and thin

5-5-19

i left Cambodia on february 5, 2016, to stay with doug in milledgevillage, where we hiked in selma and churched in greensboro. that was the beginning of this new life based on meditation, awareness, compassion and acceptance. when doug went to germany in may i returned to cambodia. (oh, bag of pruning shears behind the fence).

i went first to mondul kiri and hiked around the forest with the pnong people and swam at the waterfall. vanna came to visit and hiked there with me. then i went to work as head of foreign language department at vattanac vichea in kampot. that was brief, but there was also input from the hampton osha fiasco and i endured.

soapy came to visit many times and we went to koh sanloem for a vacation. i also went to takeo to visit. i stayed at mac yay's house exactly one year, departing after the nail dog fiasco in may 2017 to live at otres beach for 3 months, where i worked on ely kislev's interviews for the absurd book "happy singlehood" lived at phok samok's bungalow and swam in sea every morning and evening. i interviewed 100 people and it was a mind-expanding event.

during the interviews i met another american who asked me to help him set up licensing for a new school in kampot, and so i moved there again for a month, and wound up staying at poohdon's traoy koh bungalow under phnom B. but i got sick there and then went to stay at soapy's aunt's house in november 2017.

soapy nursed my bones until i was back to work on these writing assignments which i used to get paid for studying my field of machine learning and programming. in those days i was determined to find a new place to live but not sure where, so i explored. i went to stay with hans and his companion in montreal for 2 weeks. i hiked around the park near their house in a meter of snow and worked on my articles, then returned to soapy's aunt's house for another system reset. three months later i went to stay with brian in oxford-conyers and there i began to see some progress.

march 2018... 2018 was a busy year.

funny little things i cannot get in cambodia, such as a good pair of keeeeeeeeeen hiking sandals, i got them while watching brian's horses graze and listening to little psycho a-hole threaten my computer. i also discovered the peaceful garage attic studio with view of pastoral fields and horses.

next on the agenda was a very enjoyable visit with mom at their favorite beach condo in surfside. we stayed there for a week and walked on the beach and ate at bubba's and played scrabble and that was fun! because brian was preparing to move me into the tilted cabin i decided to go to tucson to investigate my hut instead of returning to oxford.

that led to more success. after discovering that my hut had been plundered by fools searching for buried treasure and inhabited by wild bees i very blessedly sold that chunk to the man with the abraham lincoln beard and comical name. i then stayed with ocd dave in e 22nd in the sam something neighborhood an that was unnaturally pleasant for a month. i was blown up when i lit the gas stove but i recovered. i did not meet interesting people other than bethany at the closed pool park, but i did enjoy much sport especially at the al bert's son up near the other place where i made belts from dog collars and the walk there and the bus back to az campus at night. (oh, bus to bike, bike to office depot, bike stolen, skateboard home, eventually abandoned for walking).

well here is where my memory is a bit fuzzy but it seems that i once again returned to soapy's aunt's house, but soon to continue my search for a beach that is beyond the reach and thrall of chinese casino companies and that place might still be care-a-bell. but i first went to tallahassee in september 2018, stayed at shay's house in brave trail and enjoyed a lot of sport at the market and the publix. (oh, taxi to bike, bike to shay's, evie now using that bike) (and a bag of stuff).

and i biked the st. mark's trail to mashes sands and then the dangerous road to st. george island where a tent is the same as an rv, and there mom said find shelter, so i went to the franklin inn in care-a-bell and then to the excellent seahorse loft and endured the hurricane michael with another mark and pam. and i there found yongey in the library and studied that b4 during and after. (oh, mom's accident. i will come back here and add more stories to this list of travel).

back to shay's, back to soapy's but this time we stayed at the rachana guesthouse which has a/c and generator! excellent. and aunt was there and we went to cook at her house every day. and then after a month i went to kuala lumpur because she was going to singapore for the 2 month thing. then i went to singapore for her and christmas break and we stayed at a slough of airbnb places and walked all over the city and ate cold chinese vegetarian food at pangoll park and others.

then i had to go somewhere and palawan was inconvenient so i went to kota kinabalu and stayed mostly at jack's house and nina's house for two full months. then back to the rachana guesthouse for a month, and now i am almost up to the present day of may.

i went straight to greensboro because i wanted to go from there to tallahassee. so i arrived too early at mom's but it was a blessing because i got invited to dad's birthday party. we had a great visit and everyone got along perfectly well. my deep breathing meditation is a miracle from god and it was a smooth stay. i stayed mostly at keith's place in westerwood, then mom's, then keith's, then mom's. while at mom's dad drove me to ashboro to buy this impeccable piaggo bv350 which i now love in a materializtik and spiritual way. and now i am up to date, having had lunch and a walk through the arboretum in raleigh with kwd yesterday. i am ready to ride to kinston and stay a day and work a night.

to be continued....

i dart from one to another looking for a new idea, but when they try to speak it's always the same: mumbling and bubbles which defy gravity. those bubbles go up instead of down, so i follow them almost to the border of thick and thin. at that point the bubbles appear to disappear. what is happening?

if i cross that border maybe i will disappear too. vanishing might be fun. i withdraw a bit from the border and then speed toward it. as my head emerges suddenly everything is thin. i mean that i have departed from the thick realm and arrived in the thin. my whole body enters the thin realm where there is no resistance. i squirm and contort and notice that i am climbing and i can see things far away. after a short time my climb slows and i don't want to descend so i sprout wings and fly.

what really happened was that my previous wings were too small and would not propel me in the thin realm. so i quickly expanded the scope of those wings and that requires a hurried study of DNA and some cookbook tweaks in the field. anyway i head straight for a tall thing and rest on one of its many arms. i don't like the idea of "perching" too much so i quickly build a very comfortable and tiny sofa and bolt it to the arm of the tree. now i can watch buddha bird tv like everybird else.

and that's how a fish becomes a bird.

the things i saw that were far away were the welcoming sentinels of umperimble ambannifox.