The Sun in Sunday

I spent the next day chilling in Silom, Bang Rak, and Si Phraya, visiting temples and bearing the harsh tropical sunlight. I'm so blessed to live in a Mediterranean climate zone. It's hard for me to imagine permanently living in countries like Thailand and India where summer temperatures exceed 40 Celsius. On a related note, as I walked through sois and troks, I observed the locals and their housing units. A tight community in cozy alley neighborhoods, I thought to myself that it's nice. Nice to visit, maybe not so nice to actually live here. But that's just my perspective as a Californian. To the people who live here, it's just life. It reminds me of another reason I really like Thai people. They don't get mad! It's rare to hear someone complain. I've heard it's the Buddhist culture. They just accept life as life. People who live on the equator--and people who live in the Arctic--don't have any reason to envy me because they're used to their lives, as different they may be from my chaparral homeland. Still, it's so hot, my temple trek left me feeling like a steamed dumpling.

I returned to the hostel, rested, and meditated. Meditation is a habit I want to cultivate because it has so many benefits. My Esalen experience helped a lot in getting myself accustomed to the practice. There, I learned that there are many legitimate forms of meditation besides the typical sitting in silence. Playing long tones on my trumpet, for example, is very meditative. To guarantee smooth tone, balanced pitch, and steady air flow, I must focus my attention on my posture, my grip on the instrument, and above all else my breathing. Moving meditations are also a thing. Walking, running, and dancing can be meditative when I lose myself in the act of moving. For me, dancing is the most intuitive because of rhythms at steady tempos and melodies with dynamic variations. It's easy to become one with the music, moving my body as if my motions are part of the soundtrack. In a memorable moment at Esalen, a couple of friends started an improv jam in the lodge. I recall Edson said, "Ooh, what can I do? I can dance!" It really hadn't dawned on me before then that dancing contributes to the art that is music. Music transcends the act of listening. That feels weird to say. And yet I'm fairly sure it's correct.

I vainly tried to keep my mind still for like 5 minutes on the roof of Kinnon hostel. I was going for at least 10 minutes. "Fuck!" I cried before realizing someone else had arrived. He didn't hear me so I avoided the misunderstanding that I began imagining. Dude is from Sweden and staying in Bangkok, just the city, for 3 weeks. Holy balls, that amazes me. After 3 days, I'm like "now what?" 3 weeks is a long time anywhere. It's especially tough when lacking meaningful connections. Hostel life helps, to some extent, because there are so many travelers from all over. I do love chatting up random folks from around the globe, something I'm a bit more reluctant to do in California. In most circumstances, I feel like it's safe to assume another person is more interested in their personal shit than in sharing their shit with a strange person like me. At the same time, it's nice to just dump my shit onto someone unaffected. It's like therapeutic ranting. But I have nothing to rant about, here, so I just ask tourists random questions. My favorite conversation partners are the copious Japanese tourists because I can show off my broken Japanese and my Hatsune Miku phone screen. Spanish speakers are good, too, because they validate my high school foreign language education. I must admit, I find it so much easier to construct a complete sentence in Spanish than any other non-English language. Clearly, there is value to structured education. With Thai people, I ask them if they meditate. A lot of them do. That's so nice!