Next Life in the Afternoon

I made this video a year and a half ago and posted it to another blog but thought I would bring it on over here. It’s about three minutes, as I recall, and made up of images from my last trip to Thailand, which the book is about. Enjoy!

Click To Play

Technorati Tags: Thailand

I had planned to go to the Songkran festival today at Wat Pananachart in Aldie, VA but woke up feeling like my whole body was held together by pus and snot. It must be a cold or something. Hack, wheeze, snort, sneeze.

Songkran is the Thai New Year festival and is really quite a to-do. People set up stalls to sell all sorts of stuff, people spray each other with water guns and the Sangha – the monastic community – plays an active role in blessing the laity for the new year.

I try to have contact with the Thai community here in the DC area and attend festivals like this when I can. One problem I have had with staying in touch has been the distance to a temple. From what I can tell, there is no Thai temple in Washington, DC or Arlington.

I recently stumbled on a temple in Alexandria I hope to visit again sometime. This one is only thirty minutes away, as opposed to the hour-long drive to get to the one in Aldie. And that’s if I drive like Rusty Wallace, which I find myself less and less willing to do the older I get.

Alas, no Songkran for me this year. What can I say but, “Cha na bai bai,” – next life in the afternoon.

Dear Phra Rasamee,

Sincerely,
Epstein’s Mother

Technorati Tags: Songkran, Wat Pananachart, Thai New Year, Sangha, Thai, Washington, DC, Arlington, Alexandria, Rusty Wallace, next life in the afternoon, Epstein’s Mother

I get a lot of folks asking what I talk about in the book. I suppose if I had to simmer it down to cocktail hour chit-chat I might say that Next Life in the Afternoon is a first-person anthropological look at the cultural dichotomies that are broken down and reformed upon stepping out of one culture and into another.

Or something like that. I would never really claim that, partly because I could never get all those syllables out of my mouth while sipping highballs.

Really what’s in the book are some views of one culture in light of another. It all comes down to this: what we learn from traveling is less about other cultures and more about our own and ourselves.

Also I discuss things such as Buddhism, giant bats, elephant spoor along the road, getting held up in highway traffic by wandering cows, tiger attacks, being assaulted by Thais and other farangs, living in monasteries and with monks and even Thai children singing a Barry Manilow song to me when I stood in for a teacher.

No joke.

It’s an exciting tale and it’s been a lot of fun to put this together. Thinking back on that journey, I miss Thailand for some reasons and really don’t miss it for other reasons. Why the two-sided feelings? Keep reading here. Subscribe to the blog and get updated on each new post. Better yet, call up your cousin, who is an acquisitions editor somewhere, and tell her to call me about my book.

Technorati Tags: book, Next Life in the Afternoon, culture, travel, Buddhism, bats, spoor, cows, assault, farang, monk, Thai, Thailand, acquisitions editor

When I tell people that I traveled to Thailand to become a Buddhist monk, they typically either focus on the Buddhist monk aspect, asking why the heck I would want to do such a thing or else ask why the heck I would want to go to such a place. It is rarely a positive conversation.

A few people, like my coworker Melissa, think it is really fascinating. She told me that I must have one of the most interesting lives of all the people she knows. Apparently, she has not seen me very much outside of work. Most of my non-work time is spent doing what I am doing right this moment – typing in front of a computer.

To the people who ask with contempt why I would want to be a Buddhist monk, there is really very little I can say. They have already made up their minds that it is a bad idea and I do not have the desire to fight that battle.

To the folks who want to know why Thailand, I have a host of great things to say about the place. For instance, it is a fascinating, beautiful country with many rich heritages to learn about, has lots of (mostly) friendly people, is the only Southeast Asian country to not become a European colony and has a long tradition of beneficent monarchs to provide an example to the common people.

The colonization factor is really just a curiosity for me, but let’s be honest for a second. Politically, Thailand was never a colony. Economically, it has been for quite some time. When you step foot into many tourist areas in the larger cities, you see Starbucks, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Swensen’s, Dunkin Donuts and even Auntie Anne’s Pretzels.

In short, you see the lowest common denominator of American culture – the bits we do not find particularly appealing but comfortable all the same when we are lodged in a foreign land and really need a half-caf double-tall part-skim mochalatteccino. With whipped cream.

This really dumbs down the experiences and perceptions other countries get of the US. It gives people a sense that we don’t care what goes into our bodies, as long as it is laced with fat and preservatives. Is that the message we want to send? I suppose exporting decent restaurants, foods and good elements of our culture might be expensive but it would give us a better appearance.

What would this do for Thailand? I am not exactly sure of the country’s benefit but at least it would have less crap going about the economy and less blind commercialism. That’s a good start.

Technorati Tags: Thailand, Buddhist monk, Southeast Asia, colony, colonization, American culture, culture, commercialism

So far the manuscript is a bit beyond 40,000 words. I will be posting updates here from time to time as I pass key mile markers. You have to understand that one of the points of this blog is to publicly shame myself into actually writing and finishing the book.

Folks often ask how long it will be by the end. I don’t know. It will be precisely long enough to tell the story. I figure it should be at least 50,000 words. At this point that looks about right but we will see how it fleshes out. Right now I am on the second round of content creation, having finished the first round of the same and done a round of editing. At 50,000 words I will stop and edit again, then likely pick up the content creation once again.

Writers are never happy. We are editing creatures, like knife sharpeners who insist that they can get a blade just a tiny bit sharper with one more pass along the grindstone.

Here is my visual tracking I do in my office on the white board:

The dates are on the left and the corresponding number of words on the right. As you can tell, I had quite a bit of time to work on the project in late February and early March. That was a mixed blessing, as my main market was in its seasonal slump. Now I have less time but more work. It’s like my father used to say – you either have time or money; you rarely have both at once.

So the book continues. When I have time I can often sit down for a few hours and be super concentrated and hammer out 750 words in an hour or so but those times are not common nowadays.

Technorati Tags: manuscript, book, content creation, Writers

I never intended to be a monk when I was growing up. No interest inventory ever pointed me toward Buddhist monasticism and no career counselor in high school recommended I pursue this. They had more practical suggestions, lke studying history or maybe joining the military – whichever I prefered.

My foray into Buddhism began at the age of 12 when I was stuck in my grandmother’s oven-hot trailer in Florida, bored to tears and needing something to do. I found my way to a book store and bought the Dhammapada after reading the cover. Interesting book.

Since then, I have not stopped being interested and finding new layers of Buddhist philosophy to examine and appreciate. It’s a bit like the petals of a lotus flower, whose opening brings such beauty to the world and whose core is covered by the several intertwined layers of petals.

Such was the beginning.

Technorati Tags: monk, Buddhist, monasticism, Buddhism, Dhammapada, philosophy