You are constantly searching for spiritual truth. In your heart, you know there is a better place.
TianGan DiZhi, Heavenly Stems, and Earthly Branches.
An evening of socializing with the men required a lot of milky homemade rice beer, dried fish, and a spicy fermented sauce accompanied by wild-gathered greens. I was careful not to take in too much, instead showing a measured enjoyment to avoid insulting my hosts.
Pete and I departed to an isolated hut away from the longhouses. It was improper to place visitors among the families. My presence could create underlying tensions that did not serve the people or my goals. It also demonstrated that I was a stranger and could not overlook the meaning.
I lay in the cool night on a woven straw mat, unable to sleep. Insomnia was not unusual in such circumstances. The beer and strange foods that required mental concentration to fool the palate made my head and my stomach unsettled.
My imagined assassin slept in the opposite corner and was not interested in the conversation of long-nosed invaders. I could tell he wasn’t a pro at this job. He stumbled in his interpretations, and his disdain for me was evident in his body language. This behavior was usually apparent in someone with a hidden agenda, and my red flags never stopped flapping in the winds of my fears and concern.
Thinking alone in the dark, I realized I was in the perfect spot for Pete to cut my throat while I slept. This cat and mouse game challenged my sense of comfort and security. As the early hours came, I found myself in a trance of memories that paralyzed me.
I lay in the dark, assaulted by the smells of overripe fish, aromatic herbs, and body odor layered by years in the hut’s walls. Damp wood and trampled dirt seemed natural, while I was the most unnatural thing to exist in this land. Physically, I felt discomfort. My mind struggled with the horror of the past.
After twelve years of violence and death, a mental photo album of suffering collected in my psyche. I could not stop the march of ghostly faces or reduce the agonized sounds of people in fear and pain. In Africa, I witnessed the killing of a warthog by a leopard. The predator-prey relationship was a two-hour ordeal the hog never surrendered to, even while being torn apart and eaten alive. The experience was no comparison to the things people do to each other.
Africa taught me the meaning of life and death. There, insurgents slaughtered the innocent because they coveted their victims’ lives. There was not enough for everyone, and a campaign of wickedness ensued. It continues to this day.
In my visions, as I lay across from my killer, I realized what a beautiful kindness Pete would grant me. At that moment, I decided to allow him to take my life when the time came. The gift of my surrender to peace unencumbered would bring Pete acknowledgment and elevated status. He would reap his rewards, and Karma would collect her debts.
With that foundational will to survive, finally suppressed, I fell into a deep sleep. I didn’t know it at the time, but my life had changed dramatically because I finally accepted that my life would not know peace as other people know peace. While I sought love and acceptance desperately, I had chosen a failed path to those human needs. My few attempts at an elusive love were destined to lose one after another. The attractiveness of someone who didn’t wish so hard to wander and return with more demons like rowdy frat brothers was more appealing to the ones I loved.
My deep passion and willingness to please did not bond the women in my life to me, and I had nothing else to offer. I was empty and alone. I felt I would never know true love, and my life played out in the darkness of the worst sins of men. I surrendered and never felt better than that moment I accepted my fate.
The path of isolation made me the perfect warrior, and I lived in the warrior ethos with the oath I swore to protect and liberate the innocent. In my heart and soul, I believed I was doing precisely that. The other layers of geopolitical intrigue and the clash of eastern and western ideology and culture were beyond my comprehension then. I would learn from my stoic masters in the Montagnard tribe, from Pete, and eventually from Miss Yang. I would transcend self-pity and acquire the mental toughness to follow the path I chose for myself.
Hyperion Sky 
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