Corny collection of beach thoughts

I feel the need to explain the direction that my posts seem to be heading. I realize that my posts are becoming more and more self-involved, focusing on my own transformation and leaving out many details about the actual destinations of my travels. I am trying to travel without fear or trepidation and so I feel I should take the same attitude in expressing myself to whoever it is actually takes the time to read these ramblings. I am back in Bangkok now readying myself for India on the 31st. However rather then a spontaneous burst of writing I have decided to share something I wrote a few days ago while on Koh Samui, which is incredibly sappy and somewhat contrived and overuses the word 'perhaps', but I feel it necessary to share anyway. Also this form of communication gives me the false protection of anonymity because I don't have to be there when you read it.

Now I sit at a simple bamboo table adorned with an orange cloth and small kerosene lamp gazing out over other tables then to the flapping waves coming to a rest on the well worn sand. Sometimes when I am alone it is just the loneliness that consumes me, blinding me from the incredible beauty right in front of my eyes and other senses. I know the fullness of my own life and just how privileged I am to find the time to recognise it, yet there still exists an undeniable emptiness, always that gap eager to be filled. Somehow, even knowing that the gap is just temporary is not enough to satisfy the longing. Such is the nature of human desire, never ceasing in the wakeful mind. Perhaps there is always fear, a fear that the gap will widen never to be satisfied, that causes our hearts to ache. Stopping to feel, really feel, is often so painful it is no wonder that the people who appear the happiest are the laborers, always consumed with their arduous work and never having the time to stop and reflect. Leisure is a luxury and a curse some of the times. When I look at me what do I see? I see a young man grasping to understand the nature of his own existence, caught in a wave of desire and delusion and pressing on into the world and his own mind; confused and distraught, happy and joyously moving forward across the infinite spectrum of the universe. Each moment presents an infinite number of possibilities and stopping to see the multitude of paths at your feet is overwhelming. Perhaps that is why I admire characters like Dean or Mitch because they are never stopping, always moving, somehow knowing that their course is the right course and that stopping to question just stops the process of enjoying and digging life. For them its not the road, but the attitude they take to the road, never blinded by their own minds they press on taking it all in grinning like an idiot all the while. NTC

Some Pictures of Late

First encounter with the beautiful Cambodian children.

Seven big dudes, one small Toyota Camry, and the worst stretch of dirt road for 7 hours.
First encounter with the Cambodian experience.

The temples. What's to say, they are beyond words.

Another terrible attempt to capture another world.

Center of the Universe

Thailand, a bombardment of the senses. Nearly every waking moment is a sensory overload. So much has happened over the last few months that it has become more and more difficult to know where to begin the story. My whole existence is caught in the constant swirl of activity that surrounds me. Who is Naren? The observer, the one who occupies each moment of silence with his own research and reflection. Quietly brooding during each solitary cab ride through the jungle of Bangkok streets he concerns himself with feeling and emotion, philosophy and conjecture. so who then is the action, the liver of each moment, who from both the external and internal perspectives possesses a certain indefinable madness? Who is the legendary Mitch Cassidy? Perhaps just an amalgamation of the swirling environment, a creation formed out of every person Naren has ever read about, observed, or come into contact with. The unification of the entire universe has become a reality, the only reality. This is why it is not possible to just pick one story, one moment, or one experience to begin with or retell. This swirling madness is existence, the dizzying culmination of my own "personal" experience. Like the wild spirited Dean Moriarty from Keouac's 'On the Road' (who Mitch takes his last name from, the real life character anyhow) Mitch gives off that impression of not being concerned with any of lifes "negative" problems/situations/experiences, or for that matter anyone other then himself and his "kicks", knowing TIME, and finding people who have and express IT. This is a great misunderstanding of such characters, these are exactly the situations that they do concern themselves with, but the twist is that they search for the beauty in all experience, both pleasureful and painful. Experience is becoming brighter, more vivid and with Mitch's or Dean's attitude in the foreground the external existence of everything is just fine and dandy and wonderful. The guy at the table next to me has a massive tattoo covering half of his face. NTC