Queen of Sorts

I was just doing 2 hours worth of emails, facing the modem world away from here, but inside of me. Friends all over the world, and family and friends in Detroit and other American places. I told them about Cambodia and how it really affected me as a person. How I prefer the 3rd world to the western world on all levels - even down to the redundancy of toilet roll. How living with only what you can carry on your back is an incredibly humbling experience; it makes you realize what is truly of value to you as a human, and appreciate what the world itself has to offer. I don't want to live in vanity, and I'll do my best not to ever surround myself in a lifestyle which values appearance, possessions, and money as necessary elements of happiness.

Music, Writing, Love, and Movement.

My 4 Elements, 4 Seasons, 4 basic food groups of me. I must nourish myself with these 4 things, and it is now tattooed across my chest just in case it slips my mind. If I do look in the mirror, my eyes will be drawn to my collarbone, to the symbols that this ink represents to me as a human.

I must continue to create, to feed the world with what it has fed me - to consume, process, and interpret these experiences. That sounds like I'm eating the world and shitting it out - I hope that's not what these words are - I really hope they don't come across as shite to other people.

To me, they're the beauty, the sorrow, the pain, the loveliness, the pollution, and the elements. They're what has gone through my senses, processed through my person, and drains out of my pen onto this page.

They are all of the people who have brought me elation, devastation, understanding, and some that showed me that what they value is irrelevant to their existence, their being.

Some people I have met ignore their hearts, their intuition, and their head. They think with immediate desires, and this taints them as people.

Then there are the ones who want nothing to give goodness back to the world. The 3rd world volunteers, the old wise men, the people still searching what medium is best for them to give on, how they can make their lives positive through sharing themselves.

All of these are people I have shared experiences with, and I do not discriminate and choose one over the other. I choose to surround myself with the givers, but I always learn from the takers as well. I pity them, but know they are necessary to balance the human condition.

Just as I know Cambodia has stayed poor to balance the western world. This does not make me sad for the Khmer people; I almost pity the western world more. They may have more money, but they're not nearly as happy as the people of Asia.

In Thailand, Cambodia, and this one day in Vietnam, I can see that they need my money for survival, to get by in the modern world. But they only need the bare minimum. The ones here with the most money, they're not nearly as happy as the self-sufficient hill tribe I met on the elephant trek. They had no money, only each other and the elements. They smiled more than anyone else, they were more grateful than anything when I gave them my lunch. Human interaction was a very special experience to them, and I was a fascination.

This is the attitude that makes sense to me. Sure, technology is interesting and modern medicine cures illnesses. But those boys had constructed bicycles out of bamboo, and the tree commonly found throughout the region cures malaria. We're imitating nature, and we're not doing nearly as good a job as she always does.

Me, I'm just chewing it up and spitting it all back out. I'm trying my best to balance the elements internally, and to understand them externally.