STOLEN (a.k.a. Army Crawling Towards Enlightenment)

How is one supposed to feel after all of their important possessions have been stolen right from under their feet?

Ummm ...

Angry as fuck?

Confused? Disoriented? Vulnerable?

Yes, I would say.

All of these things.

Stupid? Foolish? Embarrassed?

Yes. All of these things, too ...

Oh, and little crazy, for sure ...

Yes. I have felt them all.

You see, as I sat in a small park in downtown Saigon late the other night blowing blues licks on my harmonica, some individual--I can only imagine--"army crawled" their way across the grass and stole my backpack, literally, right from under my feet as I blared-away unwittingly.

Or perhaps there is a tunnel-system dug underneath the park like the ones used by the Vietnamese soldiers during the war and he just kinda "popped out" and grabbed the pack.

I would imagine that it would have involved at least a couple feet of army crawling, anyway.

You know ... from the tunnel to the pack.

And then back to the tunnel ...

Either way, I am convinced that army crawling did, in fact, take place ...

At least I would like to believe that army crawling took place, even if only for a short distance.

I'm really not sure why.

Somehow, for no good reason--no good reason whatsoever--it brings a little solace.

Army crawling ...

You see, that night, having sufficiently appeased my harmonica playing desires, I stood up, dusted myself off, readied myself to leave and nonchalantly went to grab my backpack from the same place that I had grabbed it from a thousand times before--the same relative area that I had placed and retrieved it from time and time again without incident in a hundred different cities in a dozen different countries the world-over.

We had formed a bond of trust over the years--me and my backpack. It was a, "I'll watch your back (pun emphatically not intended)  if you watch mine" kind of relationship (someday, perhaps I'll  recount the tale of the time that I jumped off a moving train and the backpack that I was wearing at the time literally saved my back).

THIS time, however ...

GONE!

Disappeared ...

V-a-n-i-s-h-e-d ...

I would have felt better if I had seen someone running off with it.

I would have gladly welcomed a lung-busting, perilous, sweat-soaked foot-chase through the dark, polluted Saigon streets.

I would rather that I had to gawkily weave my way in and out of baffled pedestrians and motorbikes as I frothed at the mouth and swore in a garbled tongue that only I could understand while shaking my fist menacingly in the air as I chased the agile Vietnamese guy that I imagined took my pack.

At least it would have been easier to accept that way.

And made for a better story.

Instead I left the park that night feeling confused and unsure. What else could I do but leave after I crawled around on my hands and knees pathetically (technically, I was not actually army crawling) looking  in every conceivable place for the backpack that had suddenly dematerialized from that small area that surrounded me!?

Of course, I didn't leave until I had sufficiently shouted and swore like a demented madman alone in the dark, humid night.

Oh, And I pleaded ...

I pleaded to the 'theoretical' thief that stole my pack; the thief that by that point was more than likely twenty blocks away assessing the "score" he'd just made. Oh, I'm sure that by the time my pathetic pleading broke through the stale night air he was already pounding a 333 beer and basking in high-fives and pats on the backs from his thief friends as he recounted the tale of 'Ninja'-ing the backpack from the naive, stupid, squawking, harmonica-blowing dumb-ass. (Either that or he was hidden away below me in the underground tunnel doing the same).

Please! Please bring my pack back! I will pay you! I yelled like a total dork ...

FUCKING FUCK! 

MY! FUCKING! BACKPACK!  I also yelled.

Just then I caught movement out of the corner of my eye:  3o feet away a young couple that I hadn't noticed until that moment got up to leave quickly, their romantic evening interrupted by the apparently insane, gangly white guy that went from blowing shrill notes on a tiny metal object to shouting at the top of his lungs for--I'm sure from their perspective-- absolutely no good reason. The harmonica, they had apparently tolerated.  The incessant shrieking and shouting that I'd now taken to, however, seemed to push them to unanimously conclude that it might be a good time to call it an evening.

Me too.

It was time for the pathetic, hollow shell of a backpack-less man that I'd been reduced to to get atop his cheap bicycle and pedal the hell out of there.

Pretty much everything of value that I travel with was inside that pack:

My computer, my camera, my IPOD, my Kindle, and my wallet.

All Gone ...

All my reading material stored on the Kindle - GONE! All the music stored on my computer and my IPOD - GONE! All my photos (with the exception of the 10% that I'd stored on Face Book)  - GONE! All the half-finished stories that I'd been slaving over for months stored only on my computer - GONE!

The wallet, fortunately, was probably the least valuable among these items (curiously). It contained my drivers licence, a useless credit card and the equivalent of about $100 in Vietnamese Dong.

So the question becomes this:

What to feel now? now that a couple of days have passed? now that that original thunderbolt of adrenaline has siphoned from my central nervous system and the sickly, waxy pallor that froze its way into my facial expression for far too many hours has thawed? now that my sphincter has released its vice-like, bone-crushing clenches and my testicles have dropped back to their original free-hanging position?

Be angry? Be upset?

Yes, as I have said, I have felt these things...

Replay it all, realize that I could have, should have done things differently? Realize that I made some foolish choices? Remind myself that I should have been more careful; should have known better? Should have backed up my photos, stories, music, etc...

Yes, I have done all of that, also.

As I become alarmingly aware of all the creative effort stored on my computer--the computer that, by this point I'm sure has already been sucked dry of its content to be made ready for cheap sale on the street-- my heart sinks deeply and wearily into my chest cavity and I feel the ghastly pallor begin to creep back to my face.

Then I remind myself of the Tibetan Monks ...

You see, it is a common practice amongst Tibetan Buddhists Monks during ceremonial times to create extremely intricate mandalas made of colored sand that are ritualistically destroyed upon completion of the ceremony as to symbolize the Buddhist doctrinal belief in the transitory nature of material life.

Uh huh ...

My shitty stories, music and photos were certainly no different.

As a matter of fact everything in that pack was no different.

All transitory. Just like everything else ...

As I reflect on this I feel its truth setting its claws deeply into my goose-pimpled flesh:

We must learn to let go.

Even let go of the things that we value the most.

Life is a process of learning to let go without attachment. We never really "own" anything. We can only "possess" things for a short time before they are on their way to somewhere or someone "else" ... Sold. Broken. Lost. Junked. Given-away. Destroyed by fire, flood, earthquake, tornado.

Stolen.

We are only the 'temporary possessors' of anything and everything in our lives.

E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G !

Not only material possessions.

Youth, beauty, health, pets, friends, family--even ideas.They are all just a part of the same equation. Like it or not.

So, why not simply "accept" when that natural process occurs?

Honestly, sometimes you just gotta wonder if there isn't much, much more going on than we really know. Here are a couple of interesting things to consider ...

 --My backpack was stolen one year TO. THE. DAY. that I left Boulder to begin my "new life" here on the road.

Coincidence?

Perhaps ...

 --My friend Serge (the guy that had invited me to Vietnam) had been gone for almost 2 months and by chance happened to return that very next morning after my pack was stolen (thus softening the blow incredibly and helping me to find the new computer that I am now using)

Coincidence?

Perhaps ...

--Two days before my pack got stolen I had a premonition that something like this was going to happen and randomly removed the main bank-card that I carry (the only access that I have to money) and my Passport (probably no reason to stress the importance of this one) from the pack. They had sat in that same pack along with everything else for previous 363 days before, on a hunch, I removed them two days before the pack got stolen. I had been on "high-alert" those two days because of the premonition.

Coincidence?

No, this time I really don't think so ...

So, in conclusion, I say this:

Why not ... let go. Let go and accept the will of the world; the natural process of it all .

Let go and simply:

MOVE -

FORWARD -

This is my choice. This is what I shall do.

Forgive. Forget. And move forward ...