The heat greets you at the airport sliding glass doors with a warm hug and doesn't let you go, not even when it rains. That is the kind of love we can all hope for. A love warm enough to set your coffee out at seven in the morning and collect it again at noon to find that it has improved, rich and velvety. The Thai add silk even to their coffee.
I offer no advice for returning home to beat jet lag— there might not be any good advice in the world for that—only to arm yourself with patience, to deal with grief and for the loss of such a profound experience. Sleep at noon, as though tossed into a sea of depression, climb the walls at 3 AM hunting for breakfast noodles and the afternoon sun, bike at dawn to the coffee shop on the east side and pace by the door until they open so you can finish your last entry in your journal.
Eventually the real medicine is the sun and then the stars. They will balance and guide your restless soul back into stasis, they will hush the turbulent rocking, telling you, like an animal displaced Shhh.. I know you are unsure, I know you are afraid, but you are home, you are on planet earth, it all keeps happening, and so will you. Then there is peace. And one day you wake up at 8 AM and realize you're back. And the other side of the world is somewhere out there-continuing its life without you now as it always had. Be grateful for your chance to take a turn on the great wheel.
My third to last night, I stood on my balcony— naked, but for my robe— and watched the thunderstorm. The sky has anxieties too. Perhaps the leaving of the hot season and the arriving of the monsoon season is troubling. Change can do that. Perhaps I understand the sky’s meaning tonight. With the booming Thunder and the bold and brilliant lashes of light through the dark I know what this looks like, I have been here, and will be here again as I leave. I will sweep in on a great wind and cry sheets of it and stop as soon as it comes. All in fantastic short bursts and alternating the light with the sound of cracks within, and I know enough to know that this is who I am, and this will not last, soon it will be cool, calm, where the crickets and the motorbikes trill in the night, and the pavement wet with tears, will freshen the city stench, the rivers will trickle a little faster, and soon dawn comes, with her ancient embrace, with the heat, and with the love.
