Cambodia

“And we will not remember that we ever felt the pain.

We shall walk in gardens misty with rain.

And we will never grow so old again.”

We were sitting on the deck high over the San Francisco Bay, watching a hawk, soaring high above us, and now another, soaring, spiraling in great sweeps in the blue sky, and now a smaller hawk, soaring upward, following one of the larger ones – it’s a flying lesson! Higher! Higher! The young hawk soaring into the blue distance.

“Just then I saw a young hawk, and my soul began to rise” – from Roll Me Away

Jean and I met on OKCupid. Her name on that site was birdsoaringhigh. Life!

We were listening to When the Healing Has Begun and we talked some – realizing that we’re experiencing “our song” differently now, because we’re different – no longer crushed by grief. It’s not that the grief is gone; it’s that we’re both so much better now – seeing the healing process as mostly in the past.

Yet the song resonates so strong within both of us…

“We’re gonna stay out all night long

And in the morning we’re gonna run across the fields.”

It’s been about 10 months since we stayed out all night long – in our tent, in the forest, psychedelic trance music echoing through the woods – and in the morning we did yoga with Kristina and then swam in the cold spring-fed lake. Cannonball!

Precious days and nights overlooking The Bay in our warm bed, grey mornings and now the light breaking through the clouds like in layers and the coffee is strong and good. We’ve learned not to talk too much about the coming day because then we’re there and then and we’d rather be here, now. It’s cool in the bedroom, the temple, here with a shaman princess (seriously). There are always flowers by the bedroom/deck doors, the curtains are three layers of lace, of starry night, of black and white, stirring barely in the soft morning breeze.

(I was in a guest house in Siem Reap, the town closest to Angkor. I had a fever and I was lying in the bed, barely able to move. Someone was knocking on the door with a quarter – click click click click on and on and on will it ever end click click click and later that day, when David and Jeff got back to the room, I discovered that it was the fan, clicking along driving me insane like some old Indochina colonialist way up river, lost in a jungle fever…)

Will we really never grow so old again? Surely we’ll be sad again, we’ll grieve, we’ll lose our way, we’ll die, but old like before? No. That was like soul loss. Those were the darkest days for both of us. Then arcing across 1700 miles our hearts united. Our life together a magical poem. Knowing, yet again, love is the main thing in life.