What follows comes from my erstwhile “Healing Journal” – written/compiled on a foggy meandering journey to various countries visiting all manner of hospitals, clinics and exploring various healing modalities and technique dealing with #MECFS.

Please watch the “Healing Ramble, introduction” video for context on this series.

This entry from Phitsanulok, Thailand  Oct. 2016 riffs in between 2 extended parts of the trip while flashing back on a few parts which we might get to (chronology be danged).

For reference, its now June 2021, i live in Japan, am stable if far from “normal”.  Carry on.

Phitsanulok, Oct, 2016

I wrote this declaration upon waking up,

“This past summer after literally losing my mind {long story, didn’t end well, not recommended}, I decided to step into the abyss, bravely, intrepidly and without compromise.

While holed up at a mountain cabin while chaos swirled around my life, I’d listen to the messages from records stashed in a basement 25 years before like an unintentional time capsule. I hotboxed my beloved old VW bus, which is now a sauna, where so many memories – happy memories – happened. I reunited with charming characters from my past and even better, met their children who were adults, moreso than me anyway.

Then with a solid head of mushrooms and MDMA (therapeutically), a plan came to me. So on this psychedelic carpet, i clicked enough buttons on the internet to purchase an abstract variety of plane and train tickets to send me around like a manic board game in such of a new flavour of truth and reality >> Salt Lake City to Las Vegas to Pacifica to Chaing Mai and now to this rather-anonymous-work-a-day city Phitsanulok where I’m practically the only foreigner in a city mourning the death of their beloved King. I’m finding comfort and solace and healing.

In scant days, I will leave again into (for me) un-charted territory beyond what science and reason says it’s capable of this haggard body, but I refuse to accept anything but finding some sense of joy.

I can live with pain, i accept this (i suppose, begrudgingly but practically), but i cannot accept living without my brain and without my heart and soul. I am born to give, i exist to share and i am empty without these.

Without a safety net, without an emergency escape route, without language skills, without the strength to punch my way out of a wet paper bag, i built a tiny universe and painted the walls just the colour i chose.

So, who will return to the West Coast on December 6th? Will i return? What will i look like? Who will i be? I am indifferent to all of these questions as the destination is simply a byproduct of the journey.

The journey is me and I am the journey, brick by brick, stride by stumble, i will gently apply the mortar to rebuild, to renew, to replenish and regenerate from the very mitochondrial cells outward.

Whatever the results, it will be me.”

See also: Thunderstorm in the Crash Years & Story of a bath and more to come… next stop: India, come along