Meander Asia

​ Meanwhile, Bali. The most amazing, powerful morning yesterday with prayer and water purification ceremonies with Mama Ati, who’s in a league all her own. I had arrived late the night before; they asked me to come to reception before prayers at 7 so they could dress me.  “Prayer” doesn’t do justice to the experience with flowers, fire, water, incense, chanting, and, yes, blessings and prayers offered up by Mama Ati y esterday. Home Sweet Home Bed Sweet Bed Room With a View — Just so happened that it was just me and a tour group from Connecticut, led by the remarkable and effervescent Megan, who invited me to join the group in their closing ritual on their last day. If timing is everything, time also stands still even as it flows like a river. My time and experience at Subak Tabola was all this and more.

​I continue to have catch-up: Hanoi , Ho Chi Minh Memorial Park , the 1,500 year old Tran Quoc Pagoda ; my overnight boat “cruise” on Ha Long Bay , the kayaking, bicycling and swimming; my days on Cat Ba Island , hiking to high lookouts in the Cat Ba National Park ; then my flight to Hoi An  (if only I could have stayed longer); then another flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia, sunrise at Angkor Wat , so many captivating temples, remnants of long-ago regal times; and the magnificent and evocative Phare Cambodian National Circus  on my last night, the gravity-defying acrobatics and the tears in remembrance of the recent tragic times: the Khmer Rouge and the   2 million people murdered: babies, artists and poets, the best and the brightest, the gravitas of it all.  Clearly, I haven’t left all this behind. I will remember as long as I can remember, and I hold hope that I will more worthily memorialize this whirl and colorful time in more words and pictures one of these days....

Finally, Vietnam, all said and done, my primary destination. While in Chiang Mai, Thailand, I met South African Sacha, and she invited me to her writing circle, which was taking place in a park, lake-side, a ways out-of-town near the university. It felt too privileged an opportunity to say “no,” and  besides, I was intrigued, and she was very pretty. So I told her I’d come, and the evening before, I wrote this piece stream-consciousness: Way Far East In America, I grew up Catholic. An altar boy, a choir boy, hook line and sinker. But no sooner “thou shalt not kill,” than the priests of war wanted me to put a gun in my hand, ship me to Vietnam to fight communists - and Buddhists. To protect “democracy,” the American way of life.   And I said no way, Jose, and proceeded to protest and rage against the war. First anger; then with flowers and love. What led me here, landed here on this day? Life’s ongoing ponder. We have stories and stories and love and loss. And here I am. “Hel...