A stab at meditation in Mondulkiri

     If much the same thing hadn't happened to me, it would have been funny to see Becca go from a supremely confident young woman to a scared little girl in the span of a few minutes.  All it took was one look at the spiders living in their little house, and both Becca and Megan were virtually in tears.  I kept hearing screams coming up the hillside from their house to mine.
      Now.  I can't claim that the spiders give me warm fuzzies either, especially since Jack casually  mentioned to me in passing that some of them are tarantulas.  They ARE large and creepy and omni-present.  Their eyes DO glow most eerily.  However, I got used to checking under the toilet seat before each use to see if anyone was lurking there.  I decided to forego washing my hands when one was in my sink.  If I DID have to get up in the night to go to the bathroom (and I reduced my fluid intake to avoid that necessity), I took a flashlight and simply bypassed any spiders who happened to be on the floor.  And of course, as you know, I called them all "Charlotte."  But it IS true that they simply did not terrify me to the extent that they terrified both Becca and Megan.
      They were not consoled by the consistently wonderful meals Tul gave us.  The whole fried fish he served up was among the best fish I've ever eaten, and the freshwater prawns and the stuffed squid?  Marvelous!  What DID give them some consolation was the short squat pleasant "little" elephant named Easy Rider.
     All of the elephants seem to form friendships with one or more of the others, and Easy is "best friends"--sounds like second grade, doesn't it?--with Gee-Nowl.  I spent Monday morning with these two, and a very rewarding morning it was.  Perhaps it's vanity, but it sure seemed to me that both remembered me from my hanging around the previous week, and while they were grazing, both approached me and made that wonderfully content purring sound I came to love so much.  We all would say "butter butter butter" to each other and feel better for having done so.
     I'm going to take the risk of sounding pretty crazy here, but as I sat on the ground watching these two graze and sketching them, I was overcome with a sense of well-being.  I was reminded of MANY years ago--when I was having a crisis-filled senior year at college--that I had an obviously memorable dream, in which I was in a field of grazing horses.  The horses were all content and I felt truly companionable with them, and they were all fat, and they were all the same pleasant shade of brown.
     It was jarring to look around and find myself right smack in the middle of my old dream, only it wasn't fat brown horses, it was fat brown elephants.  And it was pleasant.  OK, OK . . . I know. 
     I was so moved I thought well, maybe THIS is the time I should take up meditation and see if I can capture this feeling of amazing calm well-being, so I sat there on the grass and tried LIKE HELL to rid my mind of all the external crap.   All of 15 seconds into this endeavor, of all things, a CHAINSAW started in the distance!
     I tried to take it in as simply part of the country and its burgeoning economy struggling to get going, but I failed totally and wound up angry and worried.  So much for meditation!
     But anyway, here are the day's sketches:

    







And here is the video I took that morning which is my favorite from the whole trip.  Please view full screen if you can.

A Visit from Gee Nowl from Northpith on Vimeo.