The Beginning of the Journey

I had arrived at The Monastery in Thailand two days prior. Fifteen thousands kilometers away from my home, and all the trappings of Los Angeles, I now found myself crouched on a vast cool marble floor of an echoing cavernous temple. I was alone and staring into a sea of chanting bald monks. The near motionless men swathed in billowing coffee-colored robes. They droned through the notes, harmonies and disharmonies from yellowing chanting books lain carefully in their laps, legs crossed. Hundreds of these men of faith were all creating an indescribable sound reverberating through the walls of the Temple and the hills and mountains surrounding me. As the music began to fill my ears, my body and subsequently my soul, the fresh wounds of loneliness began to ebb, slightly.

How did I get here?



In one of the last conversations I had had before boarding the 8 p.m. flight from LAX to Singapore on November 12, 2008 was with my friend Ellie Fawn when she said, or shouted, rather: “Kate Bohner, you have completely lost the plot of your life.” I remember the tears pouring down my puffy, prematurely aged face realizing that I had or rather knowing that I had, seeing, feeling, touching, tasting all of it, the loss – The Works. I had completely lost the plot and it hurt like hell and I just couldn’t do it anymore.

Jesus Chris put it perfectly: “Can an anxious thought add a single day to your life?”

The anxiety became a battlefield which reason and judgment continually waged war against my passions and desires. On my 24-hour journey to The Monastery – LAX, Singapore, Bangkok, Praputabat – I read a book that had been sitting on my bedside table in Venice for, I don’t know, nine months? It’s called The Prophet, and it was written in 1926 by Kahlil Gibran, the artist, poet, philosopher and writer in his most mystical and powerful work. Somewhere above Hawaii, I stumbled upon his musings on pleasure: “And now you ask in your heart: ‘How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?’ Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower, but it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee. For to the bee a flower is the fountain of life, and to the flower a bee is the messenger of love, and to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.”

Pleasure. Ecstasy. Huh? I was in so much pain at that moment. I had no idea what was on the other side at The Monastery in Thailand. Let’s just say the ambiguity and the mystery were a gift. Back in Hollywood I had become such a workaholic – such a robot – in my dichotomized life marked by a sort of frantic success and self-pitying seclusion. I began to worship those who kept no distance between their lives and their work. It is something that is said about many artists and writers, but I have come to believe it is rarely true. Although it was something I wanted so desperately to believe because it somehow justified my own self-destruction. I began to think I suffered a constant psychic pain, which I found necessary to hide. It was almost as if I was watching myself from the standpoint of being the omniscient narrator in a play about me. Then I found myself in that now critical moment with Ellie telling me “Kate, you’ve completely lost the plot of your own life.”

About a day and a half after boarding that flight in Los Angeles I gingerly stepped out of a black Mercedes sedan onto a dirt path in front of a modest, unmarked bamboo hut. A tall man in his fifties in a russet robe with dancing blue eyes and a quiet, inner smile stood in front of the shack holding one of those school house clip boards from the late 70s.



“Ms. Bohner, we’ve been expecting you. Welcome to Thamkrabok. My name is Prah Hans.”

I stared into the hot sun, steadying myself in my black, suede Gucci loafers and … literally … threw up. Just a little.

“Sorry about that, Mr. Hans,” I replied, sheepishly.

“No worries,” he said in a heavy Swiss accent. “It happens all the time. Was it the stray dogs? There are a lot of them,” he added politely, squinting into my bloodshot eyes.

“No, I think the heat or maybe the dust.” I added desperately trying to be polite.

“Ha!” Prah Hans chortled in a quick outburst. This is the man, the monk with whom I grew closest. He was my teacher, advocate, father figure, idol and friend for the 60 days I lived at The Monastery. He was responsible for convincing the five High Monks to allow me to ordain as a Buddhist nun after only 30 days. I have never met a man like Prah Hans. I believe I never will.

He turned and rat-tat-tatted some Thai to one of the Junior Monks to take my bag and then held out his hand to guide me into the office. “The last time a beautiful woman from Los Angeles stepped out of a black Mercedes here at The Monastery – my goodness she looked so much like you, Ms. Bohner – she instantly threw up her hands … in these gigantic dark sunglasses … and said … ‘This place is not for me!’ … and she immediately got back into her Mercedes and sped back up to Bangkok!” His ice blue eyes danced with laughter as his belly jiggled while his words sputtered between chuckles. “I think her name was Sharon Stone … a movie starlet of sorts.”

We smiled a conspiratorial smile. That wise old monk and this young ingénue kind of a conspiratorial smile. “I think you’ll make it a bit longer, Ms. Bohner.”

I winked. “Call me Kate.”

To be continued …