Spinning my wheels while spinning the Wheel of Life...

Time passes, time passes quickly and time passes us by.
A lot of time has passed since I put in any time here. It’s not like I haven’t had the time, more like I haven’t taken the time. There has been inspiration, surely from the events of the last eight months there has been inspiration, but I haven’t taken the time to let it do it’s work here. I guess I thought I had to get back on the road to start again, like it is a place where I have the time.
I look back on the time that I was back in the U.S. and realized I was spinning my wheels. Hip replacement surgery followed by a dislocation of the prosthesis, followed by replacement surgery, followed by another dislocation { I was told by my ortho surgeon that I was a “serial dislocater”}, followed by more rehab. Spinning my wheels while I waited for the time when I could get back on the road and resume the trip. Back to Panama to live most of the year, visiting peeps in Montezuma during Feliz Navidad and finding new adventures on the isthmus. All the time being on hold while I seemed to wait for the right time to find me. 
“Like those who journey on the road,
Who halt and make a pause along the way,
Beings on the pathways of the world,
Halt and pause and take their birth.”
Shantideva
Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not like there hasn’t been a lot of fun, what some teachings refer to as worldly pleasures, there was a whole world of worldly pleasures these last months. Portsmouth passions, Gilmanton and Alton excesses and Concord consciousness and unconsciousness. All while putting the rest of my life on hold. The non-work blank space was filled with beach time and bar time and buddy time, seeing peeps that are noble friends but out of touch renewing our lives and reliving past life together. A great tan and good times while spinning my wheels as the wheel of life turned.
The wheel of life is the cycle that relentlessly spins all living beings through repetitive states of birth, death, and rebirth. At least the way Buddhists believe. In Japanese Buddhism it is symbolized by a circle made by a single brush stroke, Enzo, the never ending cycle of life and death. Now this is the way I believe, the way my practice sees it and not the way yours does perhaps but for me it was all happening while I was waiting for my shit to get together and something to happen. A spiritual deja vux, you are too comfortable with the feeling that you have experienced this moment before and will again. 
I was moving around but staying in the same place. Waiting for the time to go back to Panama and live there most of the year and come back to see kids, grand kids and the usual suspects. Continue my life on the road, wandering, un-homed and living large. 
In the midst of this came a group of Tibetan monks from India making a sand mandala in a Shaker village. Right before the first dislocation {of the hip, not my life} four days of peace and compassion and the Dharma card of the beginning of a noble friendship. 
Turning the wheel of life I found myself deepening my practice and reviewing my options, where will the road take me? Back to Panama and then where?
35,000 feet I fly through the night now on my way back to Panama as I had planned, spending the next six months in the southern summer, on the beach, hanging out in Bocas and having the fun that I know is waiting there. It’s just that now it’s a little different and it’s life moving forward. When I get back to Bocas besides surfing when my hip is ready, {even though I’m now just a boogie boarder or dick dragger as they say}, hanging out with the crew from Raw Sushi, meeting new peeps from Bocas Bookstore {where you can think and drink} I’ll be volunteering with the Floating Doctors and helping with the residents of Asilo the nursing home. I figure that’s the best place for me to do service as I’m going to be in that audience soon. 
No longer looking to live there in the wonderful world of Bocas del Toro, sort of an international RastafaPortsmouth, I am now coming back in May to really put my shit together and then leave in July for India, Nepal and Mongolia to become a renunciate and monastic.
So I put life in gear and stopped spinning my wheels and am on the path of the last part of this road I travel. 
Yogi Berra once said “if you come to a fork in the road, take it.” So I have and it’s exciting again and going to be quite the trip. I’ll keep you posted.
And if you think I’m going to change who I am and my posts are going to be full of inspiration, spiritual messages and dharma dung, all I can say is, wake the fuck up. Just saying, TmyO...