Coming Home

Flight time 1:51 - somewhere over Russia.
(Editor’s note…wrote this on the plane - though no longer feeling quite so confused or dour, I feel it is a valid representation of what I was/am going through in my culture shock return…)

What a non-stop parade of emotions. So strong, in fact, that I am writing this into the back of Hesses’s Siddhartha - my first non-extemporaneous writing. Actually, this, too, is written as a single draft (a habit which would infuriate my friends at college who went through two, three or four drafts writing projects while I’d sit and type. Once.) I feel as if someone has taken a belt sander to my nerves. Maybe this was necessary to remove the coating of jade that living in Los Angeles produces - like a counter productive pearl coating.

Flying over the Irrawaddy Delta in Burma, I just started to cry - at the beauty of our world, at enormous empathy for people, at the gift of friends, at the incredible notion that none of our lives are the same. Each path is exactly where you are supposed to be. Celebrate each hardship as one’s greatest gift.

Easy to say, but in practice, how can one be glad for illness? Death? Seperation? Because, when properly viewed, they allow us to become who we need to be.

HIV has been a tough teacher and one of my greatest gifts. I am no longer who I was. I am fully alive, fully present, fully on course to realizing my greatest good. I no longer tread to dangerous notion of temporary immortality that most people without a health “situation” live in.

Loss of parents - even more difficult to see the gift, but it’s there. Losing my parents was the hardest event I’ve been through - and, oddly, one of the most beautiful experiences. The Dalai Lama says, “Some people who are sweet and attractive, strong & healthy, die young. They are masters in disguise teaching us about impermanence.”

I think this whole discourse has been prompted by just seeing Nora Ephron’s Hanging Up just now on the plane. Outstanding movie which captures the pathos and humor of dealing with parental loss. It was so true - even in the renewed and strengthened familial ties. This experience has given me my fantastic love for my San Diego family - always there, but not fully realized.

So, where do I go from here? I do not know. To Los Angeles? A city where I’ve spent some of the darkest hours of my soul? San Diego? Near family I cherish? San Francisco? To some of my dearest friends? Or do I continue to walk alone - on my path? I know this won’t make sense to many of you, but, in reality, one’s path only need make sense within the context of their own life.

So I have a lot to figure out. Again, thankful for the conflict, thankful for the doubt - as it means I am fully alive - something I have not felt in a long, long time, if ever. A crossroads, a gift.

To quote Siddhartha, “You are clever, O Samana,” said the illustrious one. “You know how to speak cleverly, my friend. Be on guard against too much cleverness.”

So I am on guard. Against my cleverness, against cynicism. Thanks again, for letting me play the movie in my head for you, for being able to show (quoting ‘Falsettos’)
“The chink in the armour
the shit in the karma
the blues.”

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