I get by with a little help from my Friends...

Tom O'Flaherty
March 5 via YouTube
I get by with a lot of help from my friends. I started my hipcapades with the help of Devaya keeping me going with her healing touch, Brittany, Jason and Julio keeping an eye on me and getting me back to the States. My mejor amigo AJ and his wife Katie K picked me up when I was down and got me going again, got me back to where I physically needed to be and put up with me as long as they did. Jackson, Lindsay, double A, Frank and Sally, Evan and Jen and all my Portsmouth peeps for the morale support that I needed and being there for these last 6 years. My Buddhist Sister Be who gave me a place to live and opened the Vajrayana door for me and the most wonderful spiritual friendship.My teacher Venerable Seonaidh Perks for his guidance and love. Tamar and Arnold were there on the second dislocation and still love me even though I got blood all over their rug and made them get up at 0330. Kevin and Susan for their many offers to help and their friendship. I am thankful for The Floating Doctors who were all over this last one with Otis, Shannon, Dr. Ben, for their 6-7 attempts to reduce it while I was lying on the floor of my kitchen in spite of my begging, pleading to stop. Helen for getting my act together so I could head to David. Mark and Andy for helping me get up and down three flights of stairs in the wheelchair and checking on me all that long Saturday night. Dr Dan's great x-ray machine, such gentle caring way with someone he just met, scrambled eggs for breakfast and Cindy's incredible jam. Brittany, Jason, Julio once again doing whatever it took to get it done and being there as always. Otis for going on a stormy boat ride to Almirante to make sure I got there and Delfines for the 4 hour taxi ride to David. Julio's dad who made the calls to make sure I had the best Ortho guy. Dr Barria who not only went out and bought me a veggie pizza because they brought me pollo for dinner, went to the airport to pick up the parts they would need if they had to revise and through his surgical skillset got me to where this should be the last time. His assistant and the staff at Hospital Chiriqui for getting me through the process quickly and their kindness to a busted up old gringo who hablo Espanol muy pocito. Floating Doctors again for Lorie hanging out all day while I waited for surgery, waiting until after midnight and being a kind friend and neighbor and Dr Ben who with all the things on his plate was there waiting in my room when they brought me down after 5 hours in the OR, sleeping on the other bed to make sure he could talk to me and the doctors. Justine for always being there, offering to come down and being the best friend anyone could ever have. Kamal, Cece and all the Boston peeps for their thoughts and friendship. My Brothers at Drepung Gomang Monastery in India for their prayers and Pujas. All my friends who reached out to me here when they saw the hospital johnie profile picture with kind words and thoughts. I know I have missed some I wanted to mention but I can blame that on the anesthesia, the hora of the dia and the state of my battered body right now. I wouldn't be this far in my hipcapades without all of you and I wouldn't be this far in my life without Ginny and my five wonderful kids.
I am humbled and deeply moved by your love and kindness all and I am reminded everyday of my fortune. Tashi Delek and Salud to you all. TmO

 Dr. Nicholas I presume...

The ad:

"My name is Dr. Nicholas. I have a special gift. My 1st and 2nd Sight has allowed me to assist people worldwide with their love, illness, relationship and business problems. I am a psychic analyst with two PHD's and deal with the unknown, working to remove curses and evil spirits. All calls are direct and confidential. Call Dr. Nicholas today at 720.231.2419 {USA}."

So of course I have to call Dr. Nick to see if he is a true psychic and knows why I am calling.  He doesn't. He has 1st and 2nd sight but I'm looking for some insight not hindsight which in Dr. Nicky's practice is more like hineysight.

I want to have the curses on my life removed and gave him my short list:

• curse of not always being in the right place at the right time
• curse of not ever, EVER, winning Powerball or Megabucks
• curse of having a prosthetic joint
• curse of not having enough joints
• curse of impermanence
• curse of having three decades more than everyone else on the road here
• curse of reading ads in third world newspapers
• curse of psoriasis

There are other curses in my life but I treat them topically or should I say tropically but these were the ones I thought he could help me with. 

He told me that there were ways to deal with these things and wanted to know if there is anyone who would likely lay a curse on me? That list is not a short list so I narrowed it down to-

•  my first wife
•  fundamentalists of any faith
•  Richard Nixon's ghost spirit
•  Republicans
•  the Chinese government
•  myself

He said I would have to make several preparations before he would be able to remove these curses and it started with my bank account. After I was to give him access to my important information so he could better understand my situation I was to go to his My Space page and,

wait a minute, here was my first clue that Dr. Nickel might be putting us on. I thought the only people that still do My Space are wannabe famous bands and pedophiles? I mean if he was on top of his game wouldn't he have a Facebook page? He assured me that Facebook was one of the biggest curses in all our lives and he said that Mark Zuckerberg was the anti Christ. 

After that I should fast for three days which would give him time to get the funds from my bank account, steal my identity and give it to a friend of his here in Panama. If he steals my identity does that mean the other Tom O gets all my curses or just the low credit score?

After fasting for three days he said that I should find an old woman, a goat, a carrot and a bottle of coconut oil. At this point I feared for the future and insisted on a taste of what he could do about my curses. I guess he realized that I wasn't going to be a good mark and reluctantly gave me a few answers to my short list:

• go to the right place and wait...
• don't buy any lottery tickets then it's not just the curse of your shit luck...
• stay away from magnetic fields and rub bath salts on my hip...
• do bath salts instead {I told him I had tried them twice and stayed in the bath tub until the water got cold both times. He said I apparently missed the point}...
• he told me he couldn't help me with the impermanence thing because I am a Buddhist...
• Viagra and "greenies"...
• don't answer any ad in any paper anywhere in the world especially ads for used, stained mattresses and psychic services other than his...
• suffer...

By this time I had enough of Skyping a scammer and gave him my old Yahoo email address so he could send me important updates. So now he'll join the legion of scam artists at that address who want to:

•  send me money that I didn't know I had 
•  share in some one's inheritance
•  lose 75 lbs in one month
•  make my dick into a fire breathing orgasm producing monster
•  meet hot chicas who are waiting to become my next wife

 Dr. Nicholas is not a lot different than a lot of televangelists, other charlatans and most governments. They all want our money and don't really give a fuck about our problems. 

At the end of the day I think the first place we should start in dealing with our problems is the last one on the list, ourselves. 

I'll get to it tomorrow. Just sayin, TmyO...

Early Observations in a familiar place...

• I quickly realize how little spanish I know as soon as I get here. Bobblehead Tomas is back...

• I must look like a drug addict with all the dudes on bikes going by and saying,”psst, psst”. One dude said he had anything I want but got pissed when I told him I wanted world peace...

• $1 cervesas and all day happy hours are the way to go...

• When it rains you get wet and that’s as wet as you get...

• 60 year old Canagringos come down here to drink or run away from something. I run away from winter. I drink to summer...

• Everyone under 40 is hooking up...

• There are 2000 peeps in Bocas and 500 of them are gringos...

• Monday is service industry day at the beach. Pretty much any day at Red Frog with Punta Lava’s $2 version of Poon Juice is a good one for me...

• Besides Spanish, I suck at German, Italian, French, Mandarin and a host of other languages passing through...

• Even in paradise you have to be careful...

• it is only the start of December but it seems six nights a week I can hear the steady bass line of some bar’s beat drops....

• You know it's a monsoony rainy time and you live on the ocean when you have to rescue a little crab from behind the refridge...

• It's slower this year to start but I think it's gonna be the shitz when ti gets it 's run on...

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...

Making another list...

• Hip dislocations, another hip and the seven week syndrome...
• Summer 2012... 
• Back on the Path...
• Panama and India...
• What the future holds...

I'll get to it soon, TmyO...

Randumb...

• When spellcheck checks my name it offers these as viable substitutes:

1. Foolhardy
2. Offloaded
3. Ovulate
4. Afloat
5. Overheat

• Why is it that every Orthopedic Department is always at the very end of a long hall? This in the land of shitty hips, knees and ankles.

• We were talking about assisted suicide and my boi AJ says, "don't worry my friend when the time comes we got you covered." I asked him if he would really do that? "Fuck that I'll be at breakfast. My brother Joe will do it. Solo estoy diciendo" he said. Nice.

• is there ever a shitty sunset if you see it?
• If I wasn't here, where would I be?
• when I take monastic vows two of them are to not take intoxicants of any kind and the vow of celibacy. Shit it's two of my favorite things.
• why is it that I would text and drive but wouldn't text while walking because I thought it was too dangerous? just sayin, TmyO...

I don't really know what I do for a living...

So the hip puts me at the charity of others. I'm lucky because I have the two best TomO Charities. But I don't have a gig this summer like I thought. So am I really retired or just retiring for the summer? This weekend I was the farm hand feeding the calves out of nipple buckets and trying to get three piles of grain in the paddock with three frisky ponies. Never did I imagine 6 months ago that I would be back on a farm cleaning cow and horse shit off my shoes with the smell of hay, manure, milk replacer on my clothes.
I miss the ocean fierce! I miss the smell of the tides and the feel of grains and stones on my feet and the sound of the surf. The sense of salt on my body most of the day and the color of sun all over me.
In the interim I'm back to where I was five years ago and I re-learn the appreciation for the trees, fields and the large sweet water lake. As much as I love the salt water, there always was the jump in the lake after two weeks on the Island, from salt water to sweet water.
There is beauty everywhere in nature and I am basking in the belly of it it seems.

This is what I see every good night so I can close my eyes and see the sunset reflecting on the sand in Montezuma or Bocas while I smell the fir trees and lilacs in the wind.
It 's sweet watching bees in the blueberry fields and remembering having hives at Goodtime Farm across the lake, raising a family and creating history.
I am a lucky fuck if you look at it. I go from the one great setting to another and all I have to do is go with the flow.
I'll paint barns, drive a hay truck, feed critters and whatever else needs to be done and maybe some time at the bar on the work side.
I don't really know what I do for a living but I know how I'm living my life. Pretty sweet. Just sayin, TmyO...