Today, Sangeetha and I follow our whim through the the alleys and to the corners of this little sand and stone town.

We also weave our way in and out of the veins that sustain this community; the food, trekking equipment and hiker miscellaneous stores touting the treats one more often wants than needs.

In a Tibetan antique shop that my curiosity, running out of corners to investigate, leads me into, I greet the two men in the entrance in Nepali.

“Oh?! You speak Nepali?” one asks with surprise.

“No. Some Hindi. Only a few words in Nepali,” I shyly correct.

He switches to English and inquires as to what I’m doing in the area. I explain that we’re trekking into the Dolpa, but are stuck for lack of ponies. When he asks for what purpose are the ponies, I explain that we decided that if we’re going into such an off-the-map area, we might as well bring needed goods; in this case, some 200 pairs of shoes and socks. I then turn the question back to him, “and what do you do here?”

To this he states, “Well I don’t live here. I’m just travelling through as well. I build schools and plant trees in Mustang.”

Mustang is an equally remote corner of Nepal and I reply, “Oh? You’re doing good work!”

He squints an eye and says, “but you don’t actually know that, do you….”

And I wink back, “No I don’t. But doesn’t my trusted enthusiasm make you feel more inclined to do good work, even if you’re not already?”

He laughs and claps his hand on the table, “You’re right! That’s the right kind of optimism!”

He then spies the pendant around my neck that I had silversmithed in India. As he quickly scans the Devanagari script, he poses to me, “Parvat, huh? And where is Shiva?”

While most people immediately read and interpret the scripted word to mean that which sits across from it in the dictionary, “mountain,” I have not missed his reference to the Goddess Parvati and her relationship to her consort, Lord Shiva.

I answer, “Shiva’s at home.”

To this we both laugh out loud together.  I then leave the store, as one should all good jokes, in the linger of laughing.

The Hindu Lord Ganesha, remover of obstacles and god of all good beginnings.

There is an appropriately dusty and crooked sign at the entrance of Jomsom that identifies itself, proudly, as being the capital of a windy valley. And as evidence of this claim pushes me around on the street, I muse to myself just how fitting this trailhead town trait is….

How many times have I heard a noise, turned around, and found a whiplash of footsteps haunting my own. This quick of the eye, evidenced only by the tail of a shadow ducking behind door or bush, makes my heart stutter with the question, what exactly is on my heels? Is it a guardian spirit? Or just the over-excited realizations of my immediate future rushing ahead to catch up to me? Is it deja vu running up to the door of my reality, knocking and fleeing, leaving only its ominous giggle? Questions unanswered, I conclude only that the wind is powerful. It seems to sweep our skin of any secreting soul, assuring the only state in which we are allowed to pursue this quest: naked. If uncomfortable, it still seems only right that we go through this purification ritual before our pilgrimage; it’s a gentle reminder that for all the stores touted “necessities,” and supplies with which we might stuff our sacks, nothing we can carry will protect us more against the forces of nature so much us our naked faith and trust. Yet this wind, as much as it is kind and cleansing, it is equally brave and daring. And at the same time as it purifies and prepares us, it bullies us around. Shoving our shoulders back and shouting, “Are you really tough enough? Are you?” Luckily, in our, perhaps naive, joy, all we can do is nervously laugh. And this good humor dismantles the push in the Wind’s shove as it does the power of all bullies. So we take our beating in the ring of the Wind, accepting that this practice, of cleansing, of submitting, of toughening, of trust and of good humor, will all, in the Dolpa, serve us well.

(The following question was posed to me by the editor of TravelBlogs.com)

What does home mean to you after traveling for so long?

When I first left the country, I was an angry girl; ashamed of my country, annoyed with American tradition & culture, disregarding of my family history, disappointed with my education, and I was no longer on speaking terms with religion.

It was the story of the young shepherd, Santiago, in The Alchemist that filled my spirit with an insatiable fire to move, and specifically to buy my first open-ended ticket to what would eventually accumulate into seven years of adventures abroad. But I still vividly remember the moment when I closed that little book and said, with noted disappointment, to myself, “Wait. The boy ends up where he began?” It was foreshadowing on my life that I was just barely smart enough to note with a squinted and suspicious eye.

Of course, I ignored the winking omen. And picked up the challenge of the chase. Home? I don’t need one. House? On my back. Family? They can live without me. Country? Never belonged there. Religion? I’ve got big skies and starry nights to answer those questions now.

Over time, my notion of home as an outward place harboring social detest, devolved into something much softer and closer. For somewhere along the path, I picked up meditating. And I remember, for a few years, telling people that “home” was that warm little nook in which I centered myself every morning, with my eyes closed, about ten minutes deep into sitting.

But this version of home is lonely. And, as every long term traveler eventually learns, the charms of a transient life are, mockingly, transient. I began to feel myself scrapping; the surfaces of cities, the shallowness of temporary friends, the stereotypes of a culture, the Lonely Planet highlights of a country. Feeling my travels weighted too heavily on the side of quantity, I added a few stones to the quality side, by slowing down my itinerary and stationing myself in small communities for 3-6 months at a time, usually working with this or that NGO with the goal of fostering the connection between local and international circles. In this way, I did finally learn full names, foreign languages, local bus routes, and the best street food stand in town. But still, I found myself in the strange position of never asking a person his or her name before finding an above-par answer to the question, “How long will you be staying?”

And that is perhaps when the big “C” word entered my mind and vocabulary. I decided that I did not care WHERE in the world I lived, so long as I was surrounded by people with whom I shared like values, trust, mission, curiosity and intentions; Community. One in which I could foster my new understanding of the concepts of interconnectedness and interdependence. A place and people in whom I could invest and connect. For just as I, in my perpetual pilgrimage had learned that my travels were less about the goal than the journey. SO had I learned that my relationships were less about the people, than my interactions with them. And I needed a circle. Of brothers and sisters and parents and lovers and extended family and community with whom I could exchange: trust, teachings, experience, dependence, beliefs, challenges, support and, of course, love.

But before I continue, I must also include the most noble, impacting, profound and beautiful lesson that my travels have BEATEN into me – and that is of Humility. The thought of the arrogance and ignorance with which I set upon my world “stomp,” today, changes my cheeks to shades of shame. That I left my country on the spit and snarl of these two charges, just emphasizes the depth of my personal projection. Such self-righteousness we assume in the task and name of seeking change! The world IS change; it’s the predominant characteristic of nature and the Earth and nothing but comical to presume that we need seek it out. We human beings, both individually and cumulatively, will constantly be presented with the challenges and opportunities to evolve to our higher selves regardless of the continent upon which we happen to find ourselves born or standing. I need not cross the world on a jet engine to either solve the puzzles of the planet or recognize the mystery of life. But perhaps, like Santiago, we just have to make the physical journey to come to that same, mocking-with-good-humor-at-our-humbling-expense, conclusion.

A few months ago, I drank yak butter tea in an underground stone house at 15,000 feet, on a shelf of the Tibetan plateau. And as I watched the children playing with puppies, and the women chatting happily over the meal cooking on the fire, and the father spinning yak wool while checking in with the teenagers coming in from the fields, I realized that every community is precious, none more or less than another. Be it a tiny village high in the Himalayas or the park of a busy urban city street, the challenges, lessons and connections are the same. We don’t need to cross borders, but only to venture into the unknown. For only by leaving all that we know, do we discover exactly who and where we already are. And there, sipping tea in one of the most remote corners on the world, I concluded that the joy of travel, is not where it takes us, but the new awareness of where and who we already are. Very little does it actually matter where we go and, thus, where we began is the only place in the world in which we can end.

In the end of The Alchemist, Santiago returns to the sheep, fields, trees and family of his upbringing with a smile. Santiago’s community did not change. But his awareness and appreciation of his interwoven role within it, did. Home, to me, is defined as the circle of people and places in which we choose to foster kindness and love. It’s a community: of friends, teachers, lovers, mentors, family, students and every messenger met along the path. Home is the web of our interconnectedness. And once we realize the degree to which we are interdependent, the rest, I believe becomes irrelevant. Home is left, and returned to, as being nothing more than a new awareness of what’s been there all along.

We wake and jostle our belongings together in haste; today, as we have long planned, we will begin our journey into the Dolpa.

Sacks stuffed, teeth brushed, packs on back, we descend the steep incline of wooden stairs and emerge on the lower deck of our guesthouse. Gombu, our “English speaking guide” is on the phone. He hangs up and sighs, starring at the phone like it might change its mind.

Finally, he lifts his head, but not his eyes, and carefully states,

“No porters. No ponies. Not cheap.”

Gombu speaks only in negatives; a style which tends to bump up roughly with our overly optimistic American angle on language. This is only one of the many communication challenges that we will encounter with our local guides; the first, and most glaring, being that Gombu does not understand English.

“But Gombu, we were told that there would certainly be ponies available. And that they would be cheap with your contacts. Well, we’re flexible. So how long do we have to wait? What are our options?”

To this, Gombu nods his head up and down and says, “Yes.”

When we furrow our brows in confusion, he furrows his.

Then he swings his head from left to right and says, “No.”

And the distinction between speaking and understanding English becomes clear.

Over the course of this adventure, we will come to adore Gombu with tender, constant and unconditional love. But his “yes” and “no” answers to our open ended questions will never stop testing our patience and compassion.

It’s our turn to sigh.

Sangeetha turns to me and says, “I’m convinced that everything that happens is good for us, even this.”

And I respond, “And that is why I chose to travel with you.”

We laugh and surrender ourselves to a situation in which we have no influence aside from attitude. We retreat to the roof deck where Sangeetha picks up her drawing pad and I my journal.

“Divots carved in the sandstone walls string together like the chunky coral strands that the Tibetan women tie around their necks. Lower teeth jut from caves, which, with squinted eyes, I am surprised to recognize as stupas: the Buddhist crosses of the Christian world; shaped monuments marking sacred sites. My eyes, adjusted and attuned to stupa spotting, suddenly spy dozens. But then, when my eyes relax, I realize that I’ve misidentified a natural pile of rocks for the sacred stupa shape. Confused, I realize my eyes are lost; confronted with that wall and question I’ve encountered in the midst of lucid dreaming: But which part of this is real? And which a symbol? And is this state, of un-focus, the intention? To blur the line between the sacred and profane; that one may become the other, not physically by shape shifting, but rather in the dilation of the witnessing eye? Is this exercise in the bardo, between the physical and metaphysical, an unnamed medium of every religion? A task in which we may further practice, aside from our nightly REM cross training, in preparation for the navigation our final traverse of life between lives? Is that the goal of all our sacred symbols? Well if the intention is confusion, then I am there. Pinching my understanding along with my leg.”

We put our pens down and wander into the streets on a mission. We have one map of our destination, but figure an additional pictorial perspective could do no harm. We weave our way through the street stores, but are consistently spit out of shops, short of our objective: “No map of Dolpa.” “Sorry. No map.” “We don’t have any.” “Of the Dolpa? No. Not that.”

Funny that the trail head for the Dolpa hasn’t a single print of its own mugshot. We’d note it as fair warning, if we weren’t so wrapped up in the cozy blanket of our own naivety. But at least we got out of that bed. The preceding day, as our bare-boned bus teetered over beckoning mountain cliff ledges, Sangeetha and I decided to define the word, “precarious.”

“likely to fall”

“dependent on chance”

“insecure positioning”

“teetering on trouble”

“bound for natural disaster”

“on the edge”

We take dibs on the things that we will grab should we plummet. She calls the seat in front of her. I call her. She’s envious of my window. I remind her of the things that could jut through it as we roll. She says that if we die, our disappearance might make a great movie. She claims Carrie Russel. I, Wynona Ryder.

And so, acutely aware of the precarious state of our lives on this pilgrimage, we are perhaps more accurately labeled stupid than naive.

And there is fear. Great fear, of which we speak little. Sometimes we poke a little fun and nervously laugh, but we’ve chosen each other for a serious reason; that in our moments of self-doubt and true fear, we may ride freely on the other person’s (presumed) faith and (assumed) sense of security. Afterall, isn’t that the most common function of couple-dom?

Ironically, or not, that night I have a lucid dream: In the commotion of typical non-sense, I turn and face a wind and hear myself say in my head, “I’m dreaming.” My perceptive centers itself. And I wake up. But into another dream. Where I can hear my voice but am not speaking. The voice I hear is story telling. It’s speaking of this very adventure in the Dolpa, but in the past tense. Talking in the future of a tale all but done. Then the voice becomes my own and I AM the story teller, speaking with confidence of events long experienced and gone. I wake up. This time, not into another dream, but into my twisted sheets. And when I awake, the taste of certainty is still so strong in my mouth, that I have to shuffle through a timeline of events to convince myself that I haven’t yet finished this trip.

And only then do I realize the severity of my unspoken fear.

That my subconscious felt it necessary to provide me this favorable omen means, indeed, a fear was brewing into a less-laughable and quite formidable threat. It’s as if a third person has joined us, in whose past tense story of our present tale and in the voice of timeless and all-knowing perspective, presents a faith upon which we feel confident placing our bets.

Sangeetha awakes. I tell her my dream. We confess the most formidable of fears. We laugh a little. And sigh more.

We will return. We’ll live to tell our story in the past tense. And to this faith, we suddenly cling.

Yes! Solbeam.com just went through a dishwasher of a reorganization and I’ve now got 543 posts in which to fix broken links and sort into the appropriate shelves and drawers.

More importantly, I should be writing less about my heaping to-do list and get down on my knees and hail my praise and gratitude to a Mr. Merc who is probably red-eyed and caffeine-overdosed in his risky and time consuming venture to convert this compose heap of a website into the WordPress rich ground of which I will soon begin my own tilling.

Merc. Thank you burning the midnight oil on this petty little pro bono project out of the deep goodness of your bottomless heart. You’re an angel in my life. And I owe you golden straw AND my firstborn.

Bentonite: The definition of Bentonite sounds like a riddle:

What clarifies wine, seals the disposal system of spent nuclear fuel, is used in making professional sand castles, clears the funk from cat litter, is used in drilling mud for oil, can be found in rocket nozzels, is an important ingredient of face masks used to eliminate acne, is the main active ingredient of man’s first industrial cleaning agent, lines landfills, forms from the weathering of volcanic ash, absorbs several times its dry mass in water and safely aids in the removal of long-lodged toxins from the human body?

Well I’ve already given away the answer. But the question, Alex, is:

What is bentonite?

Or at least that’s a selection of the list of attributes and uses of Bentonize stacked by Wikipedia.

Bentonite, perhaps more practically and from the perspective of a detox faster, is simply sludgy spoonfuls of gray clay. It’s pretty tasteless and easy to swallow except for a grittiness in texture that makes every slurper grimace. On this particular detox plan, we slam our bentonite with water, psyllium husk and a little fresh watermelon juice. Once you learn not to “chew” your bentonite “shake” (and thus avoiding the grit by avoiding the grind), the shakes are actually eagerly anticipated, and even — to a few of us — considered tasty. But we are fasting. So even dirt might taste good and being a form of volcanic ash, bentonite is, after all, a close cousin of earth. But in all likelihood, it’s probably less bentonite’s enchanting affect on our palette that gets us fasters excited for our fourth shake of the day and more the fact that the psyllium husk expands in our stomachs and extinguishes the squeezes, pangs, grumbles and all other evidence and feelings of hunger. The bentonite is also functionally appetizing in that it quickly works to absorb and eliminate the toxins broken down and released into the body during the process of fasting. Toxins, being rather nasty in nature as their name would imply, are responsible for the headaches, nausea, rashes, light-headedness, etc. that are typical of a long fast. All these uncomfortable side effects of detoxification get a free and rapid ride out of the body with the help of the bentonite. And thus the friendly combo of psyllium and bentonite gives us fasters something concrete (of which bentonite is ALSO an ingredient) to cheer our sludge shakes over.

So originally I thought to document a day-by-day account of my rollercoaster ride on the detox train. But as anyone who ventures on an extended cleanse quickly discovers: this is hardly a log ride on Splash Mountain were the participants all experience the same dips, soaks and screams at the same time. Quite the contrary and much more like a marathon, each is on her own individual adventure of fasting highs and lows, hills and dips, all of which are easily empathized but never identically experienced by the faster running in front, behind or next to her.

So instead, I’m going to tackle the mysterious lingo of which I, initially, eavesdropped upon and eventually added to my own dictionary through the process of direct experience. That way I’m not presenting a recipe, but only the ingredients, allowing each to himself to sort out his own way of putting it all together.

Let’s get to it.

Detox Camp Dictionary

Detox: Now anyone who has walked through an airport terminal or supermarket checkout counter has probably noticed this word making regular appearances on the faces and front pages of our nations least reputable reporting network; the tabloids. So let us first DISPEL the myth propelled by our favorite socialite and celebrity icons that a detox is:

1. An easy ticket for anorexics to legitimize eating disorders.

2. A weekend vacation from a regular scene and schedule of party drugs.

3. Proof for the judge that one is, “cleaning up,” and doesn’t need to serve time.

4. A standard stop, before the tailor, on the way to the Emmy’s.

Yes. It IS a “secret of the (skinny) stars” to check into a five-star California-based detox center. But while the staff at such a center may assist with, and even clean up after, colonics (which, please, any earth-grounded human being should be quite capable of doing him/herself), they can never assure the “right intention” of the guest, which may be why just as often/quickly as we hear headlines of celebrities checking INTO a detox center, we hear news of them, “breaking out.”

Let’s return to Thailand.

Back in my days of irrationally fearing colonics, I asked of the Wellness Centers’ staff, “but what is natural about pushing 5 gallons of coffee through the end of your body that is made only for exits?”

And the answer, I had to admit, was good:

“It’s not natural. But neither is the diet of modern man. If we humans ate as our bodies intended, a diet comprised of mostly raw and organic vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds and even, moderately, meats, then there would be no need for cleansing. But what is natural about the pesticides, medicines, hormones, preservatives and the other chemicals that the 21st century human being ingests, thrice-plus, daily? Nothing. And what the human body cannot process, it stores by lodging itself, conveniently, in the crevasses of our bodies, particularly in our intestines. What a colonic is doing is nothing more than helping to clean out the dump of unnatural toxins we have already accumulated in our bodies. Cleansing is how we get our bodies BACK to a “natural” state.”

Yes. That’s a good answer. But even better is their final disclaimer:

“Listen. We don’t want to tell you anything. We want you to both question and figure it out for yourself. And there’s only one way to do that.”

Ah. A direct hit on the nail-head of one of my favorite life mantras: “learn through direct experience.”

Detoxification, ultimately, is a word directly linked and respective to what a person has already ingested; it’s a personal interpretation. And for that reason I have to leave the definition of “detox” up to each individual and his/her direct experience of it.

Don’t worry. The rest of the terms have a lot less outlets than the intersection that the word, “detox” just ran me in.

It’s not the first time I’ve sunk my feet into the warm white sand of Haad Tien beach on the Thai island of Koh Phangan. Three years ago, at the tail end of an extended adventure in India, I found my breath as shallow and cramped as Delhi’s traffic and, sucking the last of my air in, I high tailed it for the nearest island on a rumor of the existence of a tropical heath & yoga center where I could feast on organic goods in a bamboo bungalow perched on a cliff over the Gulf of Thailand.

The rumors all proved true; I quickly found my breath again, mostly in the form of heavy hammock-wrapped sighs, sunset gasps of awe and a snorkel mask’s air tube.

As I continued to explore the hills of the jungle surrounding my “island-on-a-island” (after all, the neighbor of THIS beach is none other than Haad Rin, home of the legendary and monthly, Full Moon Party)…

… my curiosity eventually led me to the subject of much of the vegetarian restaurant chatter: the “Wellness Center,” located discretely and quietly across a bridge from the Sanctuary Resort.

Barefoot and relaxed, I crossed the bridge from my “resort world” and let my whim take a lead in wandering me in. Immediately, I felt myself an outsider to the unusually calm and skinny crowd sucking on identical and strange-colored sludge drinks that I suspected came from the posted menu of fasting cocktails.

I picked up a leather bound information book, walked under a sign that read, “Out of respect for our fasters, please do not eat here,” and took a cushioned seat near a place where I could conveniently overhear this strange community in conversation. There I overheard a mix of the standard traveller lingo and questions, yet interspersed with some especially foreign terms, like, “bentonite,” “colonic,” “mucloid plaque,” “healing crisis” and “Bali body wrap.” And as I flipped through the pages of information, I also noted the curious spelling of, “disease” as, “dis-ease.” Yes. These were all interesting clues of an unsolved mystery and, interest piqued, I took my questions to the fasters’ bar manned by a staff of this supposed, “wellness retreat.”

“So you don’t eat anything of substance for 7 entire days? And you say that the colonics are really a necessary part of the fast? And this — this not-eating — it would cost a person how much?”

Far from being persuaded, I walked out with some sort of self-rationale that the human body should be quite capable of cleansing itself; after all, it has done so for millennia, without the aid of organic coffee colonics and clay shakes, no? But my health motivation WAS reinvigorated and I did spend the rest of my week eating only from the special pre- and post-fasting raw food menu of the resort restaurant. I retired to my hammock with a book where I spend most of the rest of my week, going only a little out of my way to respectfully keep myself, as an eater, out of the fasters’ club’s way.

Now. Fast forward three years.

Life being oddly inclined to spin us humans in such circles, I find myself, AGAIN, at the tail end of a year of adventures in India and desperately in need of a similar dose of the good health, fresh perspective and renewed balance that the sea’s infusion has proved its ingredients of consistently delivering.

This time I save myself the clumsy and wet entrance of my 3-year-prior arrival by holding my shoes and rolling my pants up to my thighs before jumping out of the longtail boat.

I don’t know why I did it. All I know is that I didn’t hesitate for a minute. I just looked up the website (http://www.thesanctuarythailand.com/) and sent an email asking to confirm my, 7-day “master cleanse” booking and 11-day stay (including my pre- and post-fasting).

As I heavy-step my way across the hot, white sand, I fondly note my favorite hammock where I read a half dozen books during my last visit.

And then I walk right past it, past the resort, and past the restaurant. I follow the sculpted path, carefully inlaid with seashells, and cross over the bridge.

I enter the bamboo thatched roof hut underneath the hanging painted sign of the, “Wellness Center” and drop my bags;

“Yep. I’m here. Reservation for 1.”

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

Well, I’ve finally got myself that cup of coffee and computer time that I’ve been craving. As well as a messy pile of stained notes and unorganized photos documenting my day-by-day account of the adventures unfolded in rural Dolpa; all to be composed and posted soon. But first, as we rewind, I’m gonna pause on Thailand and do a quick “detox camp” debriefing as it’s also a story worth sharing. And then, if we fast rewind all the way back to where the tape snaps off, you might even remember a trip to Peru, around this time last year, where I helped document a community service trip by talking to a camera and taking notes (reflections of which are posted here as well as published in the beautiful new, World Nomads Book of Travels). Well I’ve just learned that that Peru footage is now being played on National Geographic Adventure (but have yet to sort out the TV schedule) as well as many airlines in-flight programming. The man behind the camera and production, a Mr. Trent O’Donnell (pictured above), quickly became a favorite friend, and has PROMISED me that I look wise, witty and beautiful (and also that he edited the toilet bits documenting my bouts of parasite-infested intestinal disease). I have yet to see the documentary, but if you happen to catch it, do let me know if all he claims is true.

And that’s the mixed snack bag of future, past and present. Now let me get to my coffee and serving something we can actually bite into…

———————————————
*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

A four a.m. ramble chasing a case of insomnia…

Art is the greasy thumb print left on the sliding glass door through which we see our life. The artist is innate in every human being as lines to every hand. Arts expression, its imprint, needs only the “called upon” material through which it can reveal its contour, its consistency, its shape and form in our life. The specific material (of which there are as many sorts as there are people) will call, and attract, the artist to itself. Like beads of mercury, the two are hungry for reunion. Every artist starts as an amateur, and it is the duty of the amateur to actively listen for the call. To “actively listen,” means to wander around and follow your curiosity. “The call” is not a voice, but the ringing, of something that feels familiar; a ringing that makes your insides vibrate excitedly, like the inside of a rung bell. Art is not so much a paintbrush as it is a poem, a play, a fort, a flower, a healing, a home, a picture, a meal, a sentence, a scribble, a swirl made in the mud, a song, a dance, a child, or any other interpretation of a dream of ones reality. Art wakes up for breakfast, when we lay down to sleep. It paints the pictures of our dreams, but it’s up to us to interpret even our own inner Art’s meaning. Which we can do. For our inner Art works primarily with that with which we expose it. And so likewise it should be the work of our day to expose more and gather the new supplies of Art’s needed raw material: the leaves and sunsets and laughs and seasons and time spent with living creatures, which are all only a few of the finest of ingredients. But also the mistakes, the mud puddles, the bites, the spiders, the swearing and the struggles — for the light of our work will only be as bright as our shadows dark, balance will be essential to the overall composition, and the seeds of new inspiration are born like tadpoles only in the shady, dark pools where mystery is inclined to breed. Without our indentions, how would we ever leave any impression? On the sliding glass door?

(The problem is that my blog is a mass of congested intestines in need of its own colonic! Again, I have daily notes on the entirely of my 7-day “master clense”; a story I will type out and post just as soon as I have the chance to sit in a proper chair with a cup of coffee and do it. But for now, out of guilt for lack of live action on this site, I post another clip from an email to another beloved friend of mine. Don’t worry. I’ll try to stop this nasty habit soon.)

*****

…and I’ll end with a story and token. A real token. Maybe a trinket. But a trinket that I will transform, by the very act of alchemy (!), into a magic amulet! (That sentence is meant to be read in the ridiculous voice of a circus ring master). So I had your name on my mind like a mantra. And I happened to walk into a Tibetan shop where I met a beautiful woman covered in turquoise with a fall-colored striped smock who proceeded to pull out the contents of everything on the velvet underneath her glass case. And so my eye is pulled in the direction of one particularly unnotable and cheap looking trinket which she holds up and says…”Tibetan medicine! Made of many metals. To ward off evil spirits and inspire good healing and health. You can hold on your wrist or put under your pillow.” And so I buy it. At the exaggerated price that I allow all Tibetans to charge me. And then we sit and talk and as I proceed to tell her the story of my pilgrimage in Dolpa, she says, “I can’t believe you’ve been to Dolpa! I was there! When I was 8 years old. My father and many family were killed by Chinese and so we ran away from Tibet and crossed the mountains and reached to Dolpa. Oh. Such beautiful wild flowers like I’ve never seen! Only in Dolpa. Did you see the yellow ones? Near the rivers? You did! So beautiful! And have you seen the women there, how big their gold and turquoise earrings are? Oh, how beautiful I thought they were! I used to run down to the river, and pick those big yellow flowers by the stream, and stick them behind both my ears, and wave my head back and forth and look into the stream and pretend like those yellow flowers were big golden rings…”

As she tells me this story, she puts her hands to her head and tucks the imaginary gold flowers behind her ears, and then she closes her eyes and swings her head back and forth, laughing like an 8-year old.

And I suddenly am SO happy for the Amchi and Alchemist that has given me this amulet; for the 8-year old girl that found flowers and gold in the midst of death, danger and exile and for the same power that, in her touch of this amulet, she transpires to you. I imagine all the people that I will ask to hold and put their good energy and prayers into this for you, but I know it is her hand, and her story, that transformed this trinket, by her alchemy, into an amulet.