A Shocking Change

Back to the subject of change, and a fascinating one I find it to be. Recently, my most shocking change is also one most transitory. I got a haircut. An asian haircut, not just because I am in Asia but because it is the same style that looks beautiful on trendy Thai women and, the same cut but different (longer), that looks beautiful on all of my Lao women friends and students.
I recommend for everyone who is too afraid to change their hairstyle (as I have always been) just to go to a salon where you cannot communicate properly with the stylist. You cannot help but end up with something new and exciting. And there is no reason but to rejoice, for hair grows back and there's nothing to be done in the meantime but accept people's graciousness (my fellow teachers and students so showered me with compliments that I am almost convinced I look beautiful with short hair and bangs).
Have a piqued your interest? I'll post a photo the next chance I have but it shan't be now because there's no USB port on my computer.
While you await said photo, perhaps contemplate how you have changed recently. I think that maybe we change a little bit each day, even on the dull days. I think maybe small things like reading a poem or looking closely at a flower or, less idealistically, sitting through hours of a meeting or driving in our cars (or on our motorbikes) can change us. Maybe? Maybe that's getting carried away. I don't know what it would be like to be changed by a car ride, except that I will never forget several rides I've had-- the CD that was playing or the way I could look through the window at this star during the whole ride or peering through the windshield at the moon or the way it smelled because people had taken off their hiking boots-- and if we remember something, it has changed something in our brain (right, my medical friends). And if we change physically, can we help but be changed spiritually? Aren't our physical and spiritual selves bound up together?
I'm not saying that each change makes me a better or a worse person. But I've been trying to ask myself how today (or yesterday...) changed me and I am surprised that as I am more aware of being changed, perhaps I am changed more. For example, if I am aware that sitting through an MCC meeting to hear people's reports and listening to a monk who I could most unfortunately not understand, may have made me think more about what poverty is and what it means for someone to be Buddhist if the gate is narrrow but God is love, I may open myself up to change that I would miss if the meeting was but a meeting.
I've got to be done rambling for I'm off to a film festival (thanks to the Austrailian Embassy), to live the expat life, to be changed by a film. Look for that photo to come up soon.
Peace, Renee