Phantasms in Paris

Paris removed our tails of clanking golden jingle bells and blessed us with anonymity. Virtually invisible, transparent ghosts, we savored our privileged vantage. As thin fleshy spirits, we floated through the city, our eyes feasting on objects of sensual beauty, and our mouths filling with buttery delicacies.

Against the soft backdrop of cool, gray skies and verdant spring, we found art. We oogled at human form captured in marble and bronze, flesh and bone, living, breathing, animate, timeless, universal, immodest. Spring blossoms, curvaceous and colorful, memorialized in oil pastels and canvas, popped through greenery, scented the air, dripped with raindrops, and excited the senses. Beguiled by angiosperms, we lingered in parks, devouring baguettes and fromage, sipping wine and sparkling water, filling the air with dual articulated thought worlds.

We wanted nothing. Speaking a botched French-Polish-Spanish-English mix, we communicated our desires, which were received and fulfilled graciously. We felt at home in Paris with its outlandish pleasantries, rich familiarities, wanton fortune, harbingers of America.

In Chuck the Gaul airport, we slid into the belly of a fat airbus. As our flesh-filled vessel sliced the air westward, our foreign journeys drew to a close. In a few hours, we approached our kinfolk and our homeland. With a few good stories and enthusiasm for the ever changing present moment, we end our travel blog. Thanks for reading. See you soon!

G and C, C and G

Pura Vida

When we arrived in Varanasi, India, we told our rickshaw driver the name of a hotel, but he refused to take us there. This was nothing new: in India, someone or something else was making our decisions for us. We could have fought for control, but we were like two grains of sand trying the dam the Ganges. It was better ride to the current. In this case, the rickshaw driver's hunger for a commission led us to three dingy, poo and fly infested hotels before we settled on a clean, spacious room with a big bed, towels, soap, and a balcony overlooking the Ganges River - the holiest river in India, at the holiest curve of the river. The Hindus believe the Ganges not merely represents purity, but is in fact purity itself.

From our balcony, we witnessed the public life of Varanasi, which spills out into the river. Events that are strictly separated and sequestered into private arenas in the West mingle raw and unabashedly naked along the riverfront ghats of Varanasi. In this place, play and meditation, asceticism and greed, survival and death, the ancient and the modern, mix into one giant whirlpool.

We bunked above a crematorium. Funeral processions paraded below during all hours of the day and night. Petite corpses wrapped in cloth, orange with geranium blossoms, tied to banyan stretchers, flowed through crowds of people, cows, goats, dogs, and buffalo, down concrete steps to the shore. The corpses were ritualistically bathed, blessed, and carefully placed on 250 kilogram stacks of wood. Eruptions of banging drums and bells announced the journey of souls. When a body is burned alongside the Ganges, the Hindus believe the soul proceeds directly to heaven, without enduring another wretched cycle of birth, life, and death.

Immediately in front of the funeral pyres, a man fished in the ash and flesh rich waters (certain bodies get dropped into the river unburned). Next to the fisherman, a herd of buffalo cooled themselves in the river. Beside the buffalo, lines of washermen slap, slap, slapped clothes, whacking them on rocks in the river. Alongside the washermen, women prayerfully dunked themselves into the river, fully clothed in colorful saris, jeweled with bangles and rings. Between the women and the buffalo, men in terry cloth underwear soaped their protruding bellies in the communal river tub. All the while, frolicking swimmers squirted the Ganges in arcs from their mouths.

On the wide concrete steps leading down to the river, pooping goats, dogs, and cows lingered among squatting men pissing under loin cloths. Poo farmers carefully crafted cow patties, lined up in neat rows on concrete steps to dry. Riverside food vendors cooked veggies and dough patties directly on cow patty coals. Boys played cricket adjacent to the burning ghat, with balls bouncing occasionally off creamatorium wood stacks. Along side the cricket game, bare-chested sadhus wearing orange skirts, face and arms painted with white stripes, red dots in middle of foreheads, meditated lotus-style. Elbow-high children weaved among cricket players and meditators, peddling floating flower candles. Back and belly fat flowed from colorful saris draped over female forms. A tourist wearing white pants skidded on a fresh cow patty and grimmaced.

How could we make sense of these wild juxtopositions? We were staring across a cultural divide that was deeper than anything we had experienced. But rather than feeling separted from this alien culture, we felt subsumed by this blur of humanity. The ego which publicly witnesses these discordant sights shrinks in humble recognition of that which we share as lifeforms on our blue marbled planet. The ego feels, then, not so unique, not so powerful, and more willing to recognize its place in flux among many in the inexplicable river of life.

After a few days in Varanasi, we flowed out of town like droplets in the monsoon, and we were washed away in the flux among the multitude in New Dehli, before floating off to Paris.

Tea House Trek

Following a vision of wool sweaters, glaciers, and prayer flags, we trekked in Langtang National Park, Nepal for 16 days. The mountains and scenery exceeded all our expectations of Himalayan grandeur. During this "tea house trek," we traveled from village to village, which afforded the comfort of light packs, soft beds, and lovely company, both Nepalese and Western. We include here some of the pictures and conversations we gathered in those steep and vast "hills" and valleys.

Zoe - Syabrubesi - Lama Hotel

The Australian Zoe smiled and leaned back over after dinner tea. After several days of hanging out, she was ready to tell her real story.

"Actually, I am supposed to be on my honeymoon in Japan right now. But I called off the wedding and came here instead: a place that I always wanted to see, and I knew I would never get to if I followed through with the marriage. My ex-fiance would never have gone trekking.

My ex-fiance and I had been dating for less than a year when we decided to get married. He really wanted to get hitched. In fact, I'm his second ex-fiance. We made all the arrangements, set a date, booked a venue, ordered a cake, and I bought a big white dress. My parents were really embarrassed when I called it off.

Since I had already arranged to take five weeks off from work, I decided to go to Nepal by myself. I barely survived my first trek. I got really sick while in the Annapurna region. I had sores all over my face and could barely stand up. When we got to the pass, I had an asthma attack and collapsed into the snow. But I had no choice except to keep going. After we got over the pass, one of the guides walked me to a jeep that took me to the hospital. On the day I was to be married, I was vomiting alone in a hospital room. They gave me antibiotics and I went back to Kathmandu to get better. Except after a couple days in Kathmandu, I got food poisoning. And I still have diarrhea. Maybe that's karma.

Anyway, calling off the wedding was the right thing to do. I thought I wanted someone who was easy-going, not too ambitious, good-natured, and unconcerned with material wealth. When we first got together, I was happy as could be playing video games with him. But it struck me all at once: all the things that I would not get to do to if I stayed with him, considering how content he is doing nothing.

My ex is weird. He is doing fine. He's dating someone else already. . . "

"Blankets?" the guides came around throwing thick, dusty blankets at people. It was time for bed.

Martin - Langtang Village

"I never believed in love at first sight until it happened to me. I had just crossed the border from India into Nepal where there was a bus strike. Our bus driver stopped for a woman who had been riding for 22 kilometers in a rickshaw, a giant, rickety, man-powered tricycle carriage, and offered her a ride on our bus. The moment she climbed on our bus, it was love. That was three weeks ago.

She was travelling in Nepal on holiday for a few weeks, so she's back home in Hungary now. I planned to travel for a year, but am cutting my travels a few months short so I can be with her sooner. I will be moving to Hungary at the end of the month. I'll have to learn Hungarian and I'm not sure what kind of work I'll be able to do there, but we are not worried. I did not plan to return to my lawyer job in Austria anyway.

It's amazing - today is her 34th birthday and there's international phone service here in Langtang, in the middle of no where. I called her to say "happy birthday" and she was so happy to hear from me!

Garig - Thulo Sybru

"I need to change my trekking route because my guide needs to leave early. He applied for a visa to work for three years in Dubai and the visa came through. He has two days to say "good-bye" to his parents, wife, and child before he leaves.

What is he doing going to Dubai!? He'll be working in a grocery store earning $250 a month. He says he can live on $50 a month and send the rest home. But he also has to pay for the visa and the plane ticket. And he'll be leaving a wife and child behind in Nepal for three years. I think it's totally not worth it. Not worth it at all. To work in a grocery store in Dubai?

We sat and pondered Garig's guide's new life in a hot city in the middle east. Outside, the sun set on a red colored, fluted, snow-covered peak.

Langtang Baker

"Apple pie? Chocolate cake?"

Zoe, Cindy and Greg looked at each other in disbelief. At over 3,000 meters elevation, after a climb of 1,100 meters, nothing sounded better than apple pie. They nodded to each other in front of the stone house with the dilapidated "German Baker" sign. Following the baker, they ducked inside.

The baker unwrapped an apple pie like a family relic ("baked fresh today!"), sliced three pieces, and delivered them with a small story.

"I'm half-Tibetan and half-Nepali [meaning culturally, not geographically] and I was born and raised in the Langtang. The monsoon season here is very slow and many people go to Kathmandu. But I do not. I like it here. The air is fresh.

I was in Kathmandu for 4 months to study as a German baker. For two of those months, I was sick. I had to go the hospital twice. The air in Kathmandu is brown and the streams are full of garbage. I do not like Kathmandu. I don't understand how anyone could live there.

In the monsoon season, I make cheese from the Yak. The Yak only gives milk during the monsoon season, so the cheese factories are closed now. I still have 90 kilos of cheese from last season if you want some. Many people have asked me to send my cheese to Kathmandu, but I do not. I like to sell it here. I make pies, cakes, bread, and cheese. I also sell wholesale to the hotels. Come to me if you want anything cheap!" And with that, we licked our plates clean and ventured out into the crisp mountain air.

Krishna - Sing Gompa - Gossainkund

"My father called me two weeks before my wedding and told me that I was getting married. My family is Hindu - second cast - and it was an arranged marriage. I met my wife one week before we were married. She is second cast as well.

Getting married is expensive - you have to buy your wife gold jewelry and throw a big party. My wedding cost around $2,000. I was still in school, so my father paid for everything.

That was four years ago. Now we have a three-year-old daughter. Love marriages may be better in some ways, but with an arranged marriage we will stay together. Divorce is not acceptable."

Kevin - Malamchigyang

On a beautiful sunny afternoon, surrounded by stone houses, rock walls, cows, plots of greens and wheat, and large mountains beyond, the Australian Kevin, Cindy and Greg sat down to tea and coffee at a picnic table.

"You know, that place, Gosainkund, is bizarre. I think it is the wind. The wind up there makes people crazy. You are not the only people with a strange story of the place.

When I finally got up there, I was completely knackered. I layed in my room, with my feet elevated against the wall to keep the circulation moving. Just at that moment, the wind blew my door open, and the proprietress of the place walked by and saw me lying there on my back with my legs up the wall. A few minutes later, my guide came in and said that we had to go to the other guesthouse. I packed my things and moved. I found out later that the proprietress had decided that she didn't like me and kicked us out. I wonder what I did!

You know, I'm not very spiritual. I'm a yoga instructor, sure, but I'm also a butcher. In fact, one time during a yoga retreat, we all had to write something spiritual on the board. I didn't know what to write, so I wrote the first thing that popped into my head, "Bullets cannot harm me, my wings are like a shield of steel." I don't know where I came up with that. Everyone else had either been thinking about spirituality for a long time, or they seemed to have been reading a lot of poetry. It took a while for the instructor to forgive me over that one, but we eventually became friends.

Anyway, there is something about that lake, Gosainkund. It is a Hindu pilgrimage site, but it doesn't make the place have good vibes. In fact, don't the Hindus go there to wash away their sins? Where do their sins go? I think they just hang around in that icy, devastating wind, and cling to the poor people who live there."

We thought back to Gosainkund: the lodge without a cook, the drunken proprietor, the mysteriously missing key, the satanic graffiti, the cold pools of dead flies, thick swarms of mountain mosquitoes, the pre-dawn run-away maid, and Kevin's trail of vomit in the fresh snow. We nodded in agreement - the sins the holy had washed away lingered in that place.

The Old Ladies - Helambu

"Hey! It's Greg and Cindy!" one of the "old ladies" yelled to us as we arrived back to the guest house after an afternoon saunter through a medieval-looking stone and wood village. We smiled and beheld the most impressive group of all the trekkers in Langtang, the 6 Americans, four of whom were over age 70. They were enjoying their afternoon popcorn while telling us about themselves. "Two of us are from Boston. We trained for this by walking up a 300 foot hill over and over again. I threw out my back on the first day, but I've been living on Aleve and doing fine."

"Among all of us we have enough medicine for all of Langtang."

"A friend asked me where I buy my clothes, 'Chicos?' I said, proudly, 'Kathmandu.'"

"Today was the first day that I didn't fall. You want to see my bruises?"

"(To the guide) That was a hard day, my son! (To us) Two of us decided to adopt our guides for the trip, that's why I call him, 'my son.'"

Garden of Earthly Delight

In Kathmandu, Nepal, while organizing our Himalayan odyssey, our minds drift back to Thailand. We dream of spicy coconut curry, rich with rainbows of julienned vegetables; the sounds of blenders crushing ice into refreshing mint shakes; steam billowing carrying exotic aromas from boiling pots; trays of green coconuts poked with flexing straws; oil sliding and popping in great sidewalk woks; little pyramids of mystery custard wrapped in green banana leaves; plate after plate heaping with starchless vegetable delight. Yum. Every meal was an extravagant sensual journey.

Thailand intoxicated our gastronomical senses while spellbinding us with visual whimsy: rows of golden Buddhas lotus positioned; fat, giant amusement park Buddha wearing lipstick; smiling garden cherubs gazing, laughing, playing; hot pink flowers blooming in perpetual summer; glowing green vines; miniature temples for invisible little household gods; orchids flaunting delicate features from the trunks of coconut palms; clustered green coconuts hoovering 30 feet above the sand.

Thailand's humidity reduced us to limp, languid lumps. Whenever we aroused our limbs, our senses were saturated within steps. These rich environs lulled us into lingering, never far from where we started, intoxicated and spellbound in the "land of smiles."

Seven Days of Silence

Dipabhavan

The seven day Dipabhavan Meditation Retreat on Koh Samui allows individuals to isolate themselves in silence to explore the inner workings of one's own mind. Students stay in dorms on the forested retreat grounds and maintain a rigorous schedule. In the mornings, students rise before dawn at 4:30AM, listen to meditation readings, practice yoga, sit in meditation, and then eat breakfast. After breakfast, students reconvene for Dhamma talks and walking, sitting, and standing meditation. At 11:30AM, students eat the final meal of the day. After lunch, students receive meditation instruction, practice sitting and walking meditation, chanting, and loving kindness meditation. Students break for tea and then practice more sitting and walking meditation by candlelight until 9:00PM. Lights go out in the dorms at 9:30PM. During breaks, students may bathe, wash clothes, do chores, and rest, but no reading, writing, or talking is permitted. Only vegetarian food is served.

If we were allowed to write during the retreat, we might have written the journal entries that follow.

Night 1. Awake on a Pillow of Thoughts

The first night, I laid in a giant dorm room in a human-sized three-sided plywood box with no mattress or sleeping mat. I felt the weight of my body press my bones into the wood. I forwent the monk-style wooden pillow in favor of a standard one, and my head, at least, luxuriated softly. But sleep did not come.

Instead, I laid on my back for seven hours listening to the sounds of the night, including my voice circling and chattering loudly in my head. My mind was louder than the fire-alarm bugs in the jungle. I journeyed back and forth in time, remembering, anticipating, and planning. Many of my thoughts were mundane and repetitive. Others brought feelings, ranging from pleasure to boredom to yearning. Sometimes I drifted into dream thoughts. Other times I analyzed the noises in the night - the jungle sounds, the rooster crowing, the cat crying, someone wailing, someone snoring. That night permitted no peace.

As I listened to my voice and observed my thoughts, I marveled at how they never stopped. Where did this chatter come from? Whose thoughts were these? Did I make these thoughts? Am I these thoughts? Who's listening to these thoughts? Why don't they stop? I feared for a moment that I was self-inducing madness. But could one really become mad simply by listening to one's own thoughts? From time to time, I tried to make the thoughts stop. But they wouldn't stop. Not even for two breaths. The week promised to be grueling.

Day 1. Trying to Meditate

In the morning, I sat on the cushion and tried to meditate. In mediation, one attempts to silence the mind by focusing on the breath. The cushion, posture, and focus should help the thoughts stop, I thought. But they didn't. As it turned out, 1 1/2 days passed before the thoughts stopped for more than two breaths at a time.

Day 2. Devilish Thought Tapes

I watched my repetitive thoughts from a distance. Many were joyful, most were neutral, and some were devilish little tormentors.

I witnessed the scourge of self-consciousness as I skipped chores for an extra cup of tea. My hyper-critical thought-tapes looped loudly when our apparently autistic instructor taught yoga in monotone. And impatience! Out of 10 hours of meditation, 9.5 were filled with impatience.

Gradually, I was coming to understand these nasty little mental habits. Slowly, I was learning to let them go.

Day 3. The Super-Mundane

As my mind began to calm, it felt like watching a really really long, slow movie. The longest and slowest movie in the world. An excerpt:

"in breath, out breath, in breath, out breath, tired knees, sore quads, focus on the breath, fill the lungs with air, exhale, fill the lungs with air, exhale, the floor boards are brown, there are two dark ones and two light ones, focus on the breath, in breath, out. . . "

I was reaching a state that the golden-robed, emaciated, super-heroes of meditation call the super-mundane.

". . . in breath, out breath, in breath, out breath. . . "

The mundane isn't just a consequence of meditation, but a goal. It is only through the super-mundane that we can train our minds. When we can focus on the most ordinary of all things, our own breath, then we can focus on anything. Many people say that their "meditation" is running, rock climbing, programming spreadsheets, showering, litigating, or another engaging activity. While these focus the mind, they do not train the mind. In meditation, we practice clearing the mind in the most challenging of circumstances: when we sit and do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

" . . . in breath, out breath, good God what drudgery!. . . "

Finally, I dove so deep into the ordinary, that the extra-ordinary resulted.

Day 4. Realizing the Minority

The humans around me had become zombies, eerily disconnected from one another. But incredible hoards of insects crowded me, so I never felt alone. As I became more and more aware of the insects, I, and not the insects, began to seem puny and insignificant.

Walking from the dorm to meditation, I realized that the metal handrails alongside the steep, winding stairs leading up to the meditation pavilion served the insects and not me. These elevated superhighways enabled ants, geckos, and spiders to zip uphill, bypassing mountains of tangled foliage. The tiny criss-crossers also owned the stairs and pathways, but, unlike the handrails, they shared these, mercifully, with me.

My heightened awareness of insects led me, for the first time in my life, to make eye contact with a bug. When an erratic little flapper dove towards my face while I was meditating, I sat motionless and looked directly into bug eyes. We locked eyes for an instant before she darted abruptly away. Making eye contact with that bug, who I recognized to be a member of the dominant group, made me feel strangely validated.

At night in my bed, I hid under my bug net and listened to the sounds of insects buzzing around light bulbs, slamming and clacking themselves against deceptive surfaces, and screaming in the jungle. Beetles overturned onto their hard shell backs spun in circles trying to flip themselves over. Listening to the insect cacophony, I drifted off to sleep.

Day 5. A Rhythmical Sermon of Nonsense

The sanga sat in silent meditation, waiting for our abbot to give the daily sermon. The 78 year-old monk shuffled in barefoot and bow-legged in his golden robe and big glasses. Slowly, mindfully, he assumed the lotus position at the head of the hall, rang a wonderful bell three times, and adjusted the microphone.

We sat cross-legged in rapt concentration, but the sermon was still a rhythmically-delivered string of non-sense with a bunch of Buddhist catch-phrases thrown in:
"Non-sense non-sense non-sense impermanence non-sense non-sense suffering cessation of suffering non-sense non-sense non-sense in and out in and out non-sense non-sense selfishness non-sense non-sense non-sense impermanence non-sense non-sense non-sense suffering cessation of suffering non-sense non-sense non-sense non-sense non-sense non-sense non-sense non-sense non-sense in and out in and out"

His English was mostly unintelligible. But after this long undecipherable monologue of unknown content, peaceful meditation followed.

Day 6. Doing it Right

When the thoughts actually stopped, I felt shocked. I dabbled briefly in marveling over the shock of silence, which limited the initial silence to a few breaths at a time. Quickly, though, the silence expanded. I sat now for minutes at a time, feeling an internal quiet. My mind frequently interrupted this stillness with questions such as, "What is this stillness?" and "Is this the peace that proceeds death?" The thoughts never stayed away for long, but as the days passed, the frequency and duration of the silence increased. During some silent moments, I seemed to have lost myself. I became this fabled "oneness": I was the screaming jungle; I was the crystalline birdsong. For fleeting moments, there really seemed to be no "I," no "my."

The Buddhists say that meditation works irrespective of race or religious beliefs. Once achieved, meditative silence brings to some feelings of transcendence. While achieving silence feels gratifying, the silence itself is not the "goal." Thoughts invariably return. As one observes one's thought patterns and the feelings that come with them, one comes to know oneself better. The process of observing thoughts and returning to the breath is mediation.

Day 7. Loving Kindness

We broke from focused, sustained, mind-clearing to perform the Loving Kindness Meditation. In this meditation, we widen the circle of compassion by showering ourselves, our family and friends, strangers, and enemies with good will. I started generating loving kindness by picturing a little happy baby smiling. Then I pictured the sun rising in the morning, beaming brilliant radiance on verdant hills. Then I became that sun.

I shined my loving heat energy at people in my life. First, I shined at a picture of myself, because if you can't love yourself, then you can't love others. Next, I shined loving energy at my lover. Just before reaching ecstasy, I began to shine on family and friends. The official loving kindness script is, "May you be happy and well, may you find inner peace, may you avoid suffering. . . " and other dry Buddhist ideas. I preferred to improvise. I focused on peace and wisdom, but I also hoped that people would tell funny jokes, eat good food, make lovely art, make lots of money, or whatever seemed right for the individual. By this time, I was smiling from ear to ear and beaming with energy.

Next, I widened the circle of compassion, shining loving energy at acquaintances, new friends, co-workers, fellow meditators, and grocery store clerks. Finally, the hard part, I attempted to shine loving kindness to annoying pissants and mosquitoes.

The bell rang. With a wide smile, I meditatively strolled to tea.

Day 8: The Glorious Release of Friendliness

After seven silent days of pretending that our fellow mediators did not exist, we were free to look at each other and even to speak. In no time flat, fast, loud, exuberant talking overwhelmed the familiar sounds of the crowing rooster, crying kitten, and screaming jungle critters. Curiosity now unleashed, we probed and extracted each other's stories and scrambled to catch up on days of lost speaking before we dispersed.

We returned to Lamai beach, near the spa, with our new meditation friend, Nicky, and reunited with Armand. Over the next four days, we feasted on plate after plate of superb and healthy spa food while laughing endlessly. Through our tamed minds and fresh eyes, the world seemed new and captivatingly nuanced. People appeared exceedingly witty and beautiful, and nature's smallest hiccup gave us reason to pause.

Our minds felt crisp and relaxed. Normal annoyances dissipated, normal pleasures amplified. Trusting our intuition, we decided to follow our visions of wool sweaters and prayer flags. We found cheap tickets to Kathmandu from a Sikh travel agent tucked in an alleyway in Bangkok. We leave this afternoon. Himalaya here we come.

Love,

Brunksocki

Magic on Poo Island

Greg laid on the bed overwhelmed by nausea, contemplating that threshold moment between monitoring a spinning stomach and rushing to the toilet. Luckily, the nausea subsided and Cindy entered the room with two buckets and large-mouthed Wysocki smile. If you have a strong stomach, like Cindy, then this blog entry is for you. If the word "entrails" leaves you queasy, then you may want to skip this entry.

What brought us to Poo Island (aka Koh Samui) is the allure of health. Spa Samui is a magical place which Cindy discovered five years ago while in the throes of a chronic ailment. A 69 year-old elf-like retired psychologist, Armand, brought her here from Poland. Armand, angelic advocate, has been traveling the world for 25 years, helping people with whatever needs, problems, or issues they have in the present moment. Five years ago, Cindy's problem was a bad case of candida, and Armand's solution: Poo Island. Her stint on Poo Island transformed her health and spirit. We returned 5 years later, not seeking transformation, but to boost our health and experience the magic of the place.

Most people would not call the 7 day detox program "magical." Many would consider it sadistic, disgusting, and fit only for new age fruits. The program is a fast, but we are constantly imbibing in some way. Five times a day, we take a detox drink, a suspension of psyillium and bentonite clay, which must be chugged before it thickens. This drink fills us up and flushes us out. We take hand fulls of herbs and drink tons of water. As a luxury, we sip two vegetable broths, 2 coconut waters, and 2 carrot juices per day. We also take coffee, but unfortunately not in our mouths. We self-administer colemas twice a day.

Why are we punishing ourselves like this? The theory is that three square meals a day keep the body very busy. These meals sustain us and entertain us, but they eventually get in the way of other tasks, such as doing away with that five-year-old undigestible pork-chop gristle caught in a fold of the colon. During the detox, the body checks the boxes of that long forgotten to-do list.

On the first day of the detox, it was the pale-faced, antiseptic, staff drone and his introduction to the colema procedure that wretched Greg's stomach. Cindy's familiarity with the tubes, bucket, clips, lube, reclining colema board, and poo-catching basket immunized her against the sterile presentation. Cindy completed the first colema like a whizz in 30 minutes and walked out of the bathroom smiling. Greg, on the other hand, toiled for over 90 minutes and emerged cursing.

As the detox days passed, Skinny Bones felt drained and remarkably less motivated compared to five years ago now that she no longer struggled with a chronic malady. On the fifth day, upon stepping on the scale and finding the number more slight than when she started, Mrs. Bones decided to call it quits, leaving Mr. Bone to perservere alone.

Meanwhile, Greg was full of energy and without hunger. His gait perked, his face thinned, and his eyes cleared. However, his outward healthy appearence belied a typhoon of toxic reactions. Headaches, sewer mouth, pains, and strange odors riddled him. The colema board became a nemesis; the twice daily enemas became epic battles. But the evidence in the poo basket suggested that radical emmissions were giving way to improved gastrointestinal fitness.

"My goodness! Let me look at you! You must have lost four inches on your waist!" Cindy would comment chipperly as Greg emerged from the War Room. He would collapse on the bed, moan, mutter a derogatory comment about the Spa, and wait out the nausea.

We write this on the ninth day and zucchini has never brought such pleasure. A piece of raw, unrefined, organic chocolate pie sent us into spasms of delight. We left the Spa jogging through the surf in the night. In the end, the detox program boosted our spirits and perhaps our health, too. Cindy had her overall state of health validated. Despite breaking many of her strict dietary rules in Africa, her health is the best it has been in years. Greg leaves the Spa knowing that he extricated several small aliens from his colon, and that he added at least 10 minutes on to the end of his life.
We came to Koh Samui seeking not only health, but also magic. On the second day of our fast, magic flutterd in in the form of our spry elfin friend, Armand. Serendipitously, after spending eight months in India, Armand's return to Spa Samui coincided with our visit. After a joyous reunion over bowls of vegetable broth, he has been fluttering about the Spa, into people's lives to help them in any way he can. Tonight, we will celebrate with him around a table of solid food.

Now that our physical cleanse is over, our mental cleanse begins. From March 20-27, we will be meditating at an austere retreat, also located on Koh Samui. This promises to be another challenging and fascinating experience. We'll be back on-line after the 27th.


Peace and love,