Thailand—Wet Heat and Independence

There is an unkempt park just down from the morning market near my place in Amnat Charoen in eastern Thailand. A paved outer walk is partially shaded by an African Tulip tree in eye-popping orange bloom and by two ancient pink shower trees. In the middle is a man-made pond full of catfish and murky greenish-water with plastic bags and straws eddying in one corner. The pond is bisected by a walkway leading to an island with two unused gazebos.

Most mornings before heading off to teach English at Amnat Charoen High School, I walk for half an hour, then swing into the park for a loop or two, before making my way to the island, where I stand in the shade of the shower trees, facing east, and do a series of moon salutations. What I notice is the quiet way my breath eventually synchronizes with my movement and the way the night’s residual stiffness works its way out. How after ten to fifteen minutes, I feel mentally and physically supple, pliable in a way I have not known for years.

In 2011 a series of unreasonable aches and pains, coupled with an ever-increasing mental rigidity, had settled in. For too many years I had been on autopilot, doing what I thought I should be doing—raising the children, which required ever-ratcheting standards. Being the good wife whose spent penny languished in the dresser jar. Being the industrious employee trusted to over-deliver month after month. Being the steadfast, always-there-for-you friend. I felt buffeted by life, as if I had no say in my overall trajectory through it. And in spite of fastidious fitness and nutrition, my ability to function day-to-day was plummeting. Then late in 2013, a string of loss—my dear friend in November, my mother in April, my beloved mother-in-law July—brought me to a complete stand-still.

The seed of this journey sprouted then. After thirty-four years of marriage, two kids, three dogs and a white cat all cradled in American middle-class values, I craved the one thing I had never had—independence. The who of me, separate of family, was a question I had been puzzling on weeklong writing retreats over the years, but time away only led to an insatiable desire for more time away and increased dissatisfaction with life at home. After the trifecta of death, the thought of divorce was a knee-jerk reaction, although I knew it was no solution because wherever I go, there I am, steamer trunks full of baggage, enough for a cruise on the Titanic.

So I did the next best thing. My husband and I agreed that I would take six months to a year, step out of our life in Portland, Oregon and teach English overseas. During these first 60 days facing east, I’ve experienced fresh wonder at the kindness of strangers, and conversely, despair-laden fear. At my arrival, when the job I had so carefully lined up was gone and the placement agency with whom I had contracted said they had nothing else, I was on my own. Stranger in a strange land with nothing but a cheap room, a cell phone and a laptop. Adrift. I regretted putting my fate in the recruiter’s hands, considered going home and decided I had come too far to turn back. At that moment, the fear I had been schlepping for decades vanished.

Under the shower trees my mind is quiet. Peaceful. In this simple ritual of morning yoga on new ground, I have become acutely aware of the vastness of space and my body’s relationship to it. So close to the Equator, heat makes the physicality of life in Thailand that much more immediate. Sweat rolling down my spine during morning assembly still takes me by surprise. Wet heat bends color and shape at the periphery where conversations overheard in a language not understood, become white noise easily tuned out. The smell of rain, carried always by thunder, is fresh until it hits hot pavement where it steams, releasing the fetid smell of animals and people living too close.

Rarely have I felt more alive. In Thailand I am free to be myself because there’s no one else to be—no preconceived roles or life-long expectations, imagined or otherwise. This growing independence of making my way in the world solo is tempered by a humbling dependence on strangers for help with the simplest things—directions, transportation, getting a hair cut—a self-sufficiency I take for granted at home. Yet, only by stripping away the familiar, saying yes in spite of fear, then stepping over some invisible line, Northern Hemisphere to Southern, have I gained the latitude and freedom to better know and be myself.

About the Author: Burky Achilles was raised on the South Shore of Kauai and has traveled throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Western Europe, Fiji, Australia and New Zealand. Thailand is her first foray in to Southeast Asia. Burky was the winner of the 2015 Tucson Festival of Books Poetry Contest and has recently been published online in VoiceCatcher—a journal of women’s voices and visions.

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