Kaeng Sapue Rapids and Tadtohn Falls
“Cadillac” Gunships, Blue Movies and a Bicycle Race
Plan B, OR: Back to the Drawing Board
Tora! Tora! Tora! (OR: The Element of Surprise...)
The Best Night in the Sweet, Short Life of Tukada Maneewatana
Train Ride to Surin, OR: Going Nowhere Slowly
The End of the Universe, Part II
“Thank Congress” (only 54 more days...)
“Smart” Bombs and Thai Iced Tea
Training Day (only 25 more days...)
Dave’s Farewell (two more days!)
“Only Twenty-Four More Hours...”
Across the River—the Rooster Crows
31 December 1985 (The Present)
Falling Backwards
It must have been a hallucination. Sitting in a mountain cave along the winding road that led northwest to Luang Prabang, I could smell the incense floating in the air—pure, not burned to hide some weekend hippie’s marijuana cigarette—a dusky smoke perfume that had burned in Asia for a thousand centuries. The light was golden, an aura unseen in America since brigantines stopped bringing whale oil back from the Pacific…
How can I trust dream-visions that keep floating up from the murky depths? Hasn’t my memory been obliterated by drink and drugs and the passage of time? Why am I afraid to ask, afraid of being mistaken for a rambling derelict on an L.A. street corner?
Alone on New Year’s Eve in a bungalow atop Mount Washington, I snort cocaine and chase it down with Jack Daniels when I run out of stale champagne. Mesmerized by blurry car lights floating in the distance up and down the Pasadena Freeway, I can hear the voice of Ajahn Po—my first true teacher—calling to me, but I’m not sure I understand his words.
Would anyone believe that I was once a Buddhist monk who sat in Noble Silence on the rock floor of that cave, cushioned only by a thin straw mat? Deep in meditation, I recollected the painful days of my Irish Catholic youth when my heart wanted to love Jesus while my mind warred with Pope Pius and Martin Luther, with Saint Thomas Aquinas and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen and would give me no peace. When did my father, my aviator hero, become my oppressor? Why was he angered by questions about race and politics and faith? Why did he offer to help me with drums or flying lessons, but not with both? Was it a test? Did he already know the answer? Why did he never talk about his days in Florida, already a man at age eighteen, who turned English farm boys into the pilots who drove back the mighty Luftwaffe?
While candles and incense were burning on the cave’s stone altar I went into a trance so deep that the graceful bronze image of a Sukhothai Buddha, sitting in eternal serenity and wisdom, transformed into a television that droned with an endless loop of John F. Kennedy—young and handsome—giving his inaugural speech with unblinking, granite-chiseled confidence that made me eager to pay any price and bear any burden he asked of us. Deep in dreams and memories, I forgot I was a holy man and drifted in a cloud to those tragic days