Amid the Raindrops

After weeks of running, I found myself in Laos. Laos is not a path to anywhere, so I stopped.

My phone was off. No more dodging investigators, regulators, creditors.

I could live here, learn Lao, show tourists around, maybe.

Exploring my new country, I entered a temple. It was deserted and inside, the city faded away. Suddenly, I was alone in the universe.

It started raining. I saw in a cloister and just listened. At some point, amid the raindrops, the universe spoke.

When I got back to my hotel, I called my lawyer. “I’ll turn myself in,” I said.

I’m honored that Rochelle chose this picture of mine for the prompt this week, especially because this one has a lot of meaning for me. When I saw it in Rochelle’s post, it brought me back to that moment.

I took this last October in Vientiane, Laos, in a temple called Wat Sisaket. I was there for a few days in the middle of a work trip to Vietnam. The tail end of Typhoon Noru was sweeping over the country, so it rained the whole time I was there, although charmingly enough, never when I needed it not to: it always rained as I was under shelter somewhere.

I’m not sure how, but although Vientiane has about a million people, it often feels deserted. When I visited Wat Sisaket, I was the only one there except for two attendants at the entrance. It was very easy to feel like I was the only person in the world. While I was there, it started to pour, so, not having anywhere else to be, I sat on the wooden floor of the covered cloister that runs around the outside of the temple and just existed for a while, listening to the rain and being in the moment. I was probably there for half an hour or so before the rain stopped and I went on to the next place. Nothing happened, but it was one of those moments that has affected me profoundly.

Here’s a video I took while I was there.