To That Place....

I was sitting down, I feel happy and I feel something was accomplished, there I was a nobody, a stranger, I live a normal life there, people do not know me. For the past 25 years of my life it was all that I wished for, a simple and normal life, a life where I will wake up in the morning and smell the scent of the grass, drink my hot coffee (except that they have hot butter milk which absolutely tasted like JESUS CHRIST!) go teach in a provincial school high up in a mountain or a state owned college in a remote areas of the hill side, where the greens are waiting for the white fairy snow to fall in winter.

I look at the white capped laden mountains and asked myself: "What is waiting for me back there Bangkok? What will Manila offer me? Will New York give me the same happiness as I felt here? What About Geneva? or London? Will they make me smile?" There, in that place, I was happy, happy because even though no one knows me, people see me as something that can be of great help, even though that I am a stranger, I can help people live better lives, mend more broken strings and at the same time live nearer the trees, closer to my real mother: the Earth. The thing between me and my dream is this green passport and sky blue color ticket bound for Bangkok. (Click Photo for a bigger view)

What was I thinking, well I was planning to strip my ticket into half and throw my passport outside the cliff and ran back to Thimpu. Go back, meet my friend(s) and sleep to the bed where I woke up. NUTS? Yes I am, but may I ask you, if contentment and the happiness of simple living was in the grasps of your hands would you let it go? Will you give up everything and anything just to have that feeling of being a human of being mortally simple? Will you do anything, even stupid and illogical ones, just to keep the things you have dreamed of in your life? For me yes I do, even carve my heart out of my chest and bargain it so that I can stay. Yes, the temptation was so strong, my urge to run away and live as a fugitive there was the loudest cry of my soul.

Unfortunately, I did not stay, I cannot stay, I know deep inside me it is wrong and I have a mission to do on my way back, not just the post training evaluation report, not just the meeting with regional high level people from different countries, I have a community to go back to, a community that will not be complete if I will no longer step my foot back. But then again the nostalgic feeling of "Will I ever step foot on this place again?" makes me want to run away back to the place where I was, to that clock tower...to that area where those betel nut chewing old men spit red saliva on the floor whom at first I thought he was suffering from hemorrhagic convulsions and that I panic in the kind intention of saving him from further harm only to discover myself being spitted on my slippers...with his red betel nut covered saliva, they looked at me and apologize stood up and went back splashing my whole leg with water.

Compassionate people, kind people, there is an air of mystery in that place, something that I wanted to unravel. Unfortunately, I did not have much time, I was only given 5 days to train some selected few there, when deep inside my heart I hoped that something will happen like the ones in the movie film, some man would come up to me and offer me to stay as long as I want. But reality sucks, it bites! And so I have to settle down and accept my bellowing defeat. I have to leave my dog, Dinner, to the mercy of those kind people who will offer food to him.

5 days was given to me, 4 nights of preparation and 1 night of discovering life's gift in that place. But I will not crush out the possibilities. I am waiting for an opportunity to go back there, I am wishing for an opportunity to be back there, I am hoping for an opportunity to stay there. There in a place high above the mountain, where the blue sea of poppies sways in the airy cliffs, to that place where the sky kisses the mountains, where the spirits run free and wild, to that place where simplicity is valued over complexity, to that place where your foot steps will echo the songs of the trees, to that place where the golden sun touches my skin and the silver moon brushes my hair, to that place where I am cradled by the mountains, to that place where I fly with the crows, to that place that captured my soul, to that place where I left my heart...To that place...to that place....